Her First Ball

“Her First Ball” is a 1921 short story by the New Zealand author Katherine Mansfield, first published in The Sphere magazine and later included in Mansfield’s collection The Garden Party and Other Stories. “Her First Ball” follows country girl Leila as she attends a dance with her city-dwelling cousins the Sheridans. Leila’s joy and excitement are briefly punctured by one of her dancing partners, an older man who paints a bitter picture of Leila’s future.

The story opens in a cab: Leila is on her way to her first ball with her cousins the Sheridans. The Sheridans tease her gently for never having been to a ball before, and Leila explains that her country home is very remote. She feels very excited about the ball, and about being part of a family: as an only child, she feels a little jealous of the Sheridan sisters and their brother. Leila tries to copy the Sheridans’ calm indifference to the ball, but she cannot.

They arrive at the drill hall where the ball is to take place, and the Sheridan sisters lead Leila to a door marked “Ladies.” On the other side is a room packed with women removing their traveling clothes, making repairs to their outfits and taking programs for the ball.



Finally, Leila’s cousin Meg leads her out on to the floor. The band has not started playing yet, and the room is packed and noisy, but Leila “quite forg[ets] to be shy.” The narrator notes that before leaving for the ball, Leila was so nervous that she begged her mother to call the Sheridans to make an excuse for her. But now Leila gazes at the splendidly decorated ballroom and thinks, "How heavenly; how simply heavenly!"

At first, the ladies are lined up on one side of the room, and the men on the other. On the stage at the far end, sit the “chaperones,” older women in black dresses.

Meg introduces Leila to the other girls as “my little country cousin Leila.” Leila notices that the girls she meets aren’t seeing her: their attention is on the men. Suddenly, the men approach as a group, and Leila finds her program marked by several men, including “quite an old man–fat, with a big bald patch on his head.” It takes the old man a long time to find a dance they both have free. He asks Leila, “Do I remember this bright little face?...Is it known to me of yore?” before he disappears for his first dance.



Leila remembers learning to dance in a “little corrugated iron mission hall” at her boarding school. Her first partner arrives, and she “float[s] away like a flower that is tossed into a pool.”

Leila’s partner comments that it’s “Quite a good floor,” and Leila replies that it’s “beautifully slippery,” which seems to surprise him. Leila thinks that he is a good dancer, and she compares him to the girls she had to dance with while she was learning. She tells him that it is her first ball. He replies indifferently: “Oh, I say.”

Her second partner is much the same as the first. He opens with a remark about the floor, and he is not very interested in the fact that it is Leila’s first ball. She finds this lack of interest surprising, because “it was thrilling. Her first ball! She was only at the beginning of everything. It seemed to her that she had never known what the night was like before.”



Leila’s next dance is with the balding older man. She sees that his outfit is “shabby,” and dancing with him is “more like walking than dancing.” Nevertheless, he recognizes at once that Leila is at her first ball. She asks him how he knows this, and he replies that he has been coming to balls for thirty years. Leila is surprised. The fat man says “gloomily,” “‘It hardly bears thinking about,’” and Leila feels sorry for him. She makes a kind remark to cheer him up. He responds:

“‘Of course…you can't hope to last anything like as long as that. No-o… long before that, you'll be sitting up there on the stage, looking on, in your nice black velvet. And these pretty arms will have turned into little short fat ones, and you'll beat time with such a different kind of fan—a black bony one.’ The fat man seemed to shudder. ‘And you'll smile away like the poor old dears up there, and point to your daughter, and tell the elderly lady next to you how some dreadful man tried to kiss her at the club ball. And your heart will ache, ache’—the fat man squeezed her closer still, as if he really was sorry for that poor heart—‘because no one wants to kiss you now. And you'll say how unpleasant these polished floors are to walk on, how dangerous they are. Eh, Mademoiselle Twinkletoes?’”

Leila is upset. The man’s words strike her as “terribly true.” She asks to stop dancing. For a while, she stands by the wall, wanting to go home. Then she realizes she will have to keep dancing until she can find her cousins. As she starts her next dance, she forgets all about the fat man, and she feels joyful again. When she accidentally bumps into the fat man on the floor, she doesn’t even recognize him.



Katherine Mansfield is regarded as one of the most important writers of the Modernist era, and her reputation is founded on the stories of The Garden Party. “Her First Ball” is typical of Mansfield’s use of Modernist techniques to achieve intense psychological realism, portraying subtle shifts in mood and thought.