The Flower Garden is a short story about how a person can have a certain place in society, and then after a short amount of time, they have a completely different position.
The story to me is mainly dealing with the idea of conflict because of opinion and bias. Mrs.MacLane is given the situation of person-against-society. In the beginning of the story, Mrs.MacLane was well known, and had a reputation as a good lady. She had created friendly neighbors, and even a best friend, Mrs.Winning. Mrs.Winning and Mrs.MacLane shared the passion and love for gardening. They both appreciated the gifts that flowers brought to a home, as well as the feeling of warmth they created. When Mrs.MacLane began growing her garden, she found that she was in need of a helper to assist her with the gardening. Tension began to rise in the story when Mrs.MacLane was nice enough to give a colored man the job as her assist. The community created a sort of “stereotype” against this man and his family. It was utterly frowned upon that Mrs.MacLane would let this man and his child into her house, let alone without a shirt on. It became perfectly clear to Mrs.MacLane that she was suddenly blocked out from the rest of society. . “That’s wrong, Mrs.Winning was thinking, you musnt’t ever talk about whether people like you, that’s bad taste.” Neighbors weren’t so friendly anymore, and even Mrs.Winning became un-excited about the colored man being around so often.
In conclusion, the story shows that often time’s people get caught up in choosing right from wrong. Mrs.MacLane thought it very right of her to invite a man of color into her house. Mrs.Winning disagreed because she was too ignorant to realize that she never had even spoken to this man, so how could she know anything about him and his family (besides possibly false information from the rumors)?
