“A Rose for Emily” by William Faulkner and “The Garden Party” by Katherine Mansfield are both short stories centering on characters considered (or at least consider themselves) high social status. “A Rose for Emily” is about a recluse named Miss Emily Grierson and her lonely life in the town of Jefferson. After her death it is discovered that she had killed her lover and even lay next to his corpse for long periods of time. “The Garden Party” centers on a young girl named Laura Sheridan, whose mother is throwing an extravagant party in their backyard. It turns out that an ordinary man down the street named Mr. Scott has died in an accident, and Laura is troubled by the thought of going through with Emily's house which perfectly embodies how her life has gone, as it is described at his funeral. as “an eyesore among eyesores” (Faulkner, 114), and the interior even worse, to the point that “the dust slowly rises” (Faulkner, 115) when others try to sit on the furniture. Emily is broke and the last of the Grierson family on Earth; when she dies, the family name and all the status she once had will die with her. She is a loner and a recluse; she desperately clings to anything resembling human contact, including the corpses of her father and her lover Homer Barron. Laura, on the other hand, lives in a reasonably sized family with both parents and 3 siblings. They are quite wealthy and can afford gardeners and workers to work long hours just for an afternoon garden party. They also have hundreds of roses, canna lilies and exotic karaka trees on display for such an occasion. Laura will most likely never know what it means to be alone and forgotten like Emily, who lived and died poor and alone. Laura, unlike Emily, also attempted to make a real connection with lower class people and even felt like a “working class girl” (Mansfield, 292). We especially get to see his indoctrination wear off when he visits the family of the late Mr. Scott. She is amazed at how "handsome" (Mansfield, 301) the poor dead man was and even apologizes to someone she once considered to be of a lower social caste for his inappropriate hat. Although they grew up similarly, Laura's attempts to put herself in the shoes of the working class will allow her to avoid the tragedy that Emily's life had.