Katherine Mansfield's Miss Brill: Principles To Live By

Miss Brill: Principles to Live By
On Sunday afternoons, a solitary woman living in France, routinely liberates herself from the unbearable prison of separateness by attending live concerts in a garden park. These outings prove miraculous, exhilarating, and wonderful to someone estranged from love. Underneath the vivid coloring and musicality of the narrative, the author, Katherine Mansfield, shows the dangers of carelessness, judgement, and eavesdropping in her short story Miss Brill.
Caring for personal belongings implies a capacity to love oneself and others. It’s easy to ignore personal items that are not a part of everyday use, but neglecting them suggests an inability to love. If care is put into an object, then those same feelings
Negative personal judgments about others are often made to feed the ego or to us feel better about our limitations. Every person is guilty of judging others; it is done every day mindlessly. Miss Brill is no exception. In Mansfield’s short story, she goes to the park every Sunday setting in judgment of everyone that crosses her path. Miss Brill labels those she observes as “old” or “odd” and their clothes she describes as “dreadful,” “funny,” and “shabby.” (x) Miss Brill see herself as better than those around her—they were the oddities. That is until a “beautifully dressed” girl laughs and makes fun of how Miss Brill is dressed, the girl says, “It’s her fu-ur which is funny, it’s exactly like a fried whiting.” (x) The girl’s judgement is turn toward Miss Brill like a mirror, shattering the inner image she has of herself. Miss Brill is left sad and deflated. (X) Countless afternoon quietly spent critically judging others, Miss Brill never thought to examine herself. The world would be a better place if everyone paused to look at their own faults before pointing out the faults of
When out in public we assume that are conversations are private but that is not always the case. Society has basic unspoken rules we should all adhere too; eavesdropping his frowned upon. Miss Brill doesn’t heed to this rule. The narrator states, “She had become really quite expert…at listening as though she didn’t listen, at sitting in other people’s lives just for a minute while they talked round her.” (x) Miss Brill had done this so much that she had become an expert at overhearing. She had become quite the spy. Eavesdropping carries some deeper implications for Miss Brill: she wasn’t just listening to intimate personal details of strangers but becoming a part of their lives. Miss Brill feels powerful. Then the rug is pulled from under her when a young couple comes along and Miss Brill overhears then refer to her as a “stupid old thing” then continue to say “...who wants her? Why doesn’t she keep her silly old mug at home?” (X) The couple take away her power with a few words. Miss Brill’s experiences is the main reason eavesdropping is ill-advised. Overhearing the truth is always the