“A Cup of Tea” is a short-story by Katherine Mansfield originally appearing in a literary magazine titled The Story-Teller. It is one of those deceptively simple stories featuring few characters, little action, and seemingly no grand themes or direct meanings. Not much happens on the surface of the story: a wealthy young woman is met by a poor young woman begging for enough money to buy a cup of tea. The older woman instead invites her back to her home, makes some altruistic promises, engages in conversation, and seems on the verge of fulfilling her intention to prove to the poor woman that not all rich people are bad. Then the woman’s husband comes home and is unhappy to see the poor girl. After trying to subtly urge his wife to dismiss the woman he finally appeals to her vanity and jealousy by remarking on how pretty the girl is. Almost immediately, his wife goes through with his wishes to get the beggar-girl out of their upscale home without offering her monetary assistance. The story ends with the older woman making an inquiry to her husband about whether he thinks she is pretty.
Throughout the story appear a series of doors. Each of these doors are situated as borders between one world and another. The two worlds are those of privilege and the lack of such fortunate circumstances. The border separating the extremely upscale store in which the story begins with a rich woman shopping and the world outside in which a poor woman is begging is a “discrete door shut with a click.” The narrator asserts that “Hungry people are easily led,” just before the footman holds up the door to the car of the rich woman into which the poor woman follows. The door into the home of the rich woman opens upon a lavish scene of privilege which leaves the poor woman “dazed.” The seeming care and attention the rich woman is showing toward the poor woman is fatally interrupted by the opening of the door revealing her husband’s return.
The most interesting appearance of doors in the story, however, occurs near the end when, twice, the rich woman is described as “leaning against the door.” This physicality changes the effect of the doorway. Whereas the doors have been opening and closing and Rosemary Fell, the rich woman, has been entering or exiting, here she is portrayed as lacking movement. She is stuck in the doorway and the description of her “leaning” suggests very strongly that she has reached a point where she may actually be on the verge of a realization that all is not nearly as clear-cut as she has assumed. That doorway in which Rosemary is caught and the lack of certainty in her physicality implies an epiphany may be coming. This is also the very first point in the entire story in which most readers will able to sympathize if not actually empathize with the rich woman.
Up to this point, Rosemary has not looked for any sense of similarity with the poor woman because even though she doesn’t consciously calculate it, she feels certain there is nothing equitable between them. She certainly doesn’t think the poor woman could be superior to her in any way. The story ends with Rosemary taking things back to that upscale store. She found a very pretty little box that she wanted but she exits through that “discrete door” without it. It is only at the end of the story that the mystery of why she didn’t buy it is revealed—after all, the narrator explains that she and her husband are “really rich, not just comfortably well off.”
She must first ask her husband, “May I have it?” The circumstances in which this is asked paint it as more like a child begging a father for an expensive present than a grown woman making sure the financial situation supports such an indulgent purchase. It turns out, however, that this begging for permission was “not really what Rosemary wanted to say.” What she really wanted was to ask her husband if he thinks she is pretty.
Thus, by the end of the story Rosemary has come to realize that she has much more in common with the poor beggar-girl than she could have imagined. She is leaning in that doorway because she is becoming uncertain about whether she really belongs on the rich side of the border represented by the door or not. It is a story of feminist awakening to a world where gender is the real basis for the doorway. Women, Rosemary’s tale suggests, are all judged on their looks and the manner in which they spend a man’s money. Rosemary has, after all, decided to retain part of the money earned by her husband and given to her as allowance that she had originally decided to pass along to the needier young woman. She is realizing that the doors do not separate the have from the have-nots in the way she has always assumed. She is on the same side of the door as the poor girl whom her husband has judged on exactly the same basis she is asking him to judge her.
