Stream Of Consciousness In Miss Brill
In the stories “The Jilting of Granny Weatherall” by Katherine Anne Porter and “Miss Brill” by Katherine Mansfield, both of the ladies let the reader delve into the depths of their characters’ minds by the use of stream of consciousness. A simple way to explain stream of consciousness is when a character’s thoughts and dialogue become one and it can be hard to distinguish what is real or not. This method in literature can be useful when portraying a character who is mentally unstable of some sort. In both stories, they appear to talk to themselves (in their heads) but their thoughts are not actually spoken out loud nor are they actually happening. Granny is hallucinating because she is dying while Miss Brill “hallucinates” because she is in
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When read, the story shows that Miss Brill always comes to the park by herself, if her beloved fur stole is not counted as a friend, and she appears to “people watch”. She observes all of the park goers and makes fairly conversational comments to herself about them: “It was like some one playing with only the family to listen; it didn't care how it played if there weren't any strangers present. Wasn't the conductor wearing a new coat, too? She was sure it was new”, and when Miss Brill is still at her some, getting ready for her day trip to the park, she begins taking to herself about her fur stole; “Never mind–a little dab of black sealing-wax when the time came–when it was absolutely necessary . . . Little rogue! Yes, she really felt like that about it.” (Mansfield). Miss Brill is an odd old woman; she talks to herself, imagines herself to be in a play “and it also explained why she had a queer, shy feeling at telling her English pupils how she spent her Sunday afternoons. No wonder! Miss Brill nearly laughed out loud. She was on the stage” (Mansfield). She is in clear denial of her life being as miserable as it is and in the story, she appears to mock some of the people she is seeing by coining them as “odd” and “nearly all old” and the “way they stared they looked as though they'd just
When read, the story shows that Miss Brill always comes to the park by herself, if her beloved fur stole is not counted as a friend, and she appears to “people watch”. She observes all of the park goers and makes fairly conversational comments to herself about them: “It was like some one playing with only the family to listen; it didn't care how it played if there weren't any strangers present. Wasn't the conductor wearing a new coat, too? She was sure it was new”, and when Miss Brill is still at her some, getting ready for her day trip to the park, she begins taking to herself about her fur stole; “Never mind–a little dab of black sealing-wax when the time came–when it was absolutely necessary . . . Little rogue! Yes, she really felt like that about it.” (Mansfield). Miss Brill is an odd old woman; she talks to herself, imagines herself to be in a play “and it also explained why she had a queer, shy feeling at telling her English pupils how she spent her Sunday afternoons. No wonder! Miss Brill nearly laughed out loud. She was on the stage” (Mansfield). She is in clear denial of her life being as miserable as it is and in the story, she appears to mock some of the people she is seeing by coining them as “odd” and “nearly all old” and the “way they stared they looked as though they'd just