Who Is Miss Brill?

In the short story “Miss Brill”, Katherine Mansfield narrates the protagonist’s activities on a typical Sunday. The protagonist, Miss Brill, spends the day at a park, observing and eavesdropping on the lives of others. In the story, the narrator describes Miss Brill’s observations and descriptions of other characters, the band, and the world surrounding her to indirectly reveal her personality. At the park, Miss Brill witnesses many events that reflect on her life, and realizes the fictional reality she has created for herself. With “Miss Brill”, Mansfield shows how an old, unwanted woman tries to suppress her loneliness by hiding in an imaginary world, but in the end is overwhelmed by the sudden confrontation of what she has attempted to hide. By going to the park every Sunday, Miss Brill has created
Since she has become “quite expert” at “sitting other people’s lives”, Miss Brill notices the tiniest of details in the people she observe, such as the conductor’s “new coat”, the wife’s “spectacles” and the beautiful woman’s “ermine toque”. With these details that she finds in her subjects, Miss Brill tries to relate in some way to that person in order to feel like she is relevant in other peoples’ lives, such as when she “wanted to shake [the Englishman’s wife]” when she heard her complain, joining the couples’ lives “for just a minute while they talked around her”. For Miss Brill, finding a connection with those she observes is the only way she ensures “somebody would have noticed if she hadn’t been there”. When she watches others at the park, she ensures herself of her existence by thinking she is “the audience”, and everything that unfolds in front of her as “exactly like a play”. In doing so, she confirms her presence because surely, members of a play would notice if they had no audience. However, by realizing she is part of an audience, Miss Brill then has an epiphany of the reality she has suppressed: by being the