Katherine Mansfield's Miss Brill

In "Miss Brill," Katherine Mansfield shows us a view of a first seemingly young or vibrant woman whom enjoys her Sunday afternoons. The setting of the park tells an accounting of the repetitive social interactions of the same people or “actors” as Miss Brill fantasizes them.
The story begins with the façade of a possibly young woman scoffing the boring acts of the “old” people around her. Really Miss Brills accounting of her environment is a sad attempt to transform the conversations and events around her as to be revolving in attention to her. When in reality Miss Brill is an old woman fantasizing acts to make her own world seem grand. She seems the equivalent of a lonely old person in a nursing home clinging to the thought of another life. Therefore she is able to recreate her own version of a life envisioned before being crushed by reality.
This particular Sunday in the story is particularly special to Miss Brill because she envisions suddenly that she is a part of something more organizational, as member of a cast.
On this day she transforms her reality of being a lonely women in a park into an actress in a stage play. She discovers in her mind that all the usual park goers are actors as well. This representation allows for her to replace the idea of being obsolete with a self-purpose. She states, “ no doubt someone would have noticed if she hadn’t been there, she was part of the performance after all”. This shows her mechanism of coping with being an unnoticed citizen in her world. She also reinforces this coping mechanism by reassuring her self she arrives at the park every week at the same time for this
“play”. Miss Brill first appears in the story as a young woman, this being derived from her description of those around her. She uses the word old at least three times in an effect to contrast the relation to herself as vibrant and most certainly not old. “They were odd, silent, nearly all old.” The numerous repetitions of the description of the elderly in the park and somewhat surprise of it cements the idea of youth upon the character herself. Even though she looks down on the women in the ermine toque, Miss Brill observes a mirror of the type of reality she actually lives. It seems at first that she could be imagining or recollecting an event in her past, due to the personification of another piece of clothing. However it seems more reasonable that Miss Brill understands the loneliness and sadness the women faces, even if unable to admit it to herself. The feeling of embarrassment the woman with the toque feels is similar to what Miss brill endures at the end of the story. The characters mood at the beginning of the story begets three highly different moods. First Miss Brill begins her afternoon in an indifferent manner with a superior attitude to those around her. This is her first step into gaining self-confidence by putting herself onto a pedestal against those around her. Next her mood changes to extreme pride and self-gratification by assuring herself she is a part of something important, this being a play. Finally Miss Brill in struck down into reality and depression by realizing she is everything she looks down upon, an old woman in a park with no companionship. Methods of imagining others conversations as part of her own backfires when she overhears the young couple speaking directly of her. Even in her own made up world she cannot deny the truths of what was actually spoken about her, and she realizes her fantasy is over. Miss Brills fur serves as the metaphor for herself throughout the whole story, yet she doesn’t want to believe it until the young couple declare it. The fur shows a representation of age and how something that was once young and fresh is now old and tattered. In the beginning the author hints at the real image of Miss Brill by describing the effort it takes to ready the fur for wearing. The way she stated, “shaken out the moth powder, given it a good brush, and rubbed the life back into the dim little eyes” showed a foreshadowing of the life of a person. The readying of the fur was a representation of the readying of her self as a renewed person upon society. The last sentence was a reference to Miss Brill putting away he fantasied thoughts and returning to reality. Most likely she herself was the one crying as she still at this point could not think clearly into her own reality. The Author paints Miss the character as a developmental one by the deep contrast of her views on reality and mood changing by the end. However one could believe there is a trace of a static description within the character as even at the end she uses the fur as a shield to against reality of she herself crying. Therefore in the end Miss Brill still manages a small suppression of the truths presented to her, as she goes into her own “dark little room”.

Works Cited

Mansfield,Katherine. “Miss Brill” Kirszner and Mandell 135-137.