Who Is Katherine Mansfield's Miss Brill?

“Miss Brill,” by Katherine Mansfield is about and elderly spinster woman who, every Sunday goes to the public gardens, or park, and sits and listens to the conversations of all the people around her. At the beginning of the story, she is overjoyed with her life, perfectly content. She has been alone for a while, and she contents herself by ‘inserting’ herself into other people’s lives by listening in on their conversations. She loves just sitting and listening to people, watching them interact with each other. She thought her life was perfectly fine, and she scoffed at the people she saw at the park every Sunday, “They were odd, silent, nearly all old,” (138). But she doesn’t realize that she is just the same as they are. As she’s watching
all these different people, she comes to realize it was just like a play, and not only was everybody watching it…everybody was participating in the play. As soon as she has this realization, a young couple in love sits down behind her, and she quickly turns her attention to them. The boy was trying to get the girl to answer a question, but she wouldn’t because Miss. Brill was there. And they started making fun of her, scoffing at her mink fur, and calling her names. On her way home she usually stops and buy’s a slice of honeycake, but this time, she passed by the bakers. And when she got home, she took her fur off and put it back in the box, and as she was putting the lid back on, she thought she heard something crying. At the beginning of the story, Miss. Brill is happy and content, even though she is alone. Throughout most of the story, she is perfectly content, but when the couple scoffs at her, she gets somewhat depressed, and doesn’t follow her usual route, getting honeycake on the way home. By the end of the story, she has changed drastically. Going from a bright, lively woman who loves to watch people, to a somber lady. Miss. Brill is a very dynamic character, having changed greatly by the end of the story.