Good Example Of Miss Brill By Katherine Mansfield Essay

Miss Brill is a short tale written between 188-1923 by Katherine Mansfield. The story was first published in 1920 and reprinted in the Garden Party and Other Stories. It is a story about a lonely English teacher living alone in a French town next to the Public Gardens. The novel tells us about how she spends her time waking and sitting in the on every Sunday afternoon. As the story begins, Mansfield narrates how Miss Brill chooses to wear her fur, and while in the park, she notices that it is full compared to the last Sunday. When she is joined by a young couple on her bench, they make fun of her saying that she was a "stupid old thing", and the fur she is wearing makes her look funny (Mansfield 241). This made her furious and she never passed by the bakery for her slice of honey cake, on her way home like any other Sunday, she just went home to her dark room.
The story is written in a third person as Mansfield introduces the audience to a weird character who he does not say much about. We are only told of how she spends her days every Sunday which makes her more peculiar. The protagonist is depicted as a lonely aged woman who goes to the park to meet people and get away from her lonely dark room. The story gets interesting when Miss Brill went to the park to spend her day out of her house. The events in the park make the story more interesting.
The fur is about to decay because it was left in a dark lonely box and Miss Brill only took it out on that day. While she is seated on a bench in the park, the decay parallels the grayness of the people seated near her on the park benches. In addition, the fur she puts on symbolizes her hidden inner deadness. Miss Brill hides the deadness when she goes to the park looking for fake companionship with the people who do not even recognize her presence. The protagonist lived a life that was dead already because of her isolation, but she masked it when she went to the park every Sunday. There is the orchestra playing in the story and Miss Brill’s seems to enjoy it as it makes her life lively (Mansfield 243). However, her emotions are reflected and echoed in the performance because, Mansfield writes that, as the band plays, she envisages that what they are singing about corresponds to what is happening in the park. In addition, when a song is changed by the band, she still imagines everyone in the park singing the song and this leaves her crying at the thought. In addition, the shabby Ermine toque is used by the author in Miss Brill. According to Miss Brill, she was identifying with this woman to be of her kind. As the woman with the shabby ermine torque tried to approach a well dressed man, he smoked in her face and she felt mortified/. When she went back to the house, she felt mortified like the woman with the torque because she was alone and the young couple was making fun of her fur.
There are a number of themes in the story for instance loneliness, rejection, illusion versus reality, and youth and age. The theme of loneliness is evident in the story through the life of the protagonist. Miss Brill is introduced as a lonely character because; we are not told if she has any family because from the story, she stays alone in a dark room. Miss Brill is lonely and that is why she has to spend her Sunday in the park in order to meet people or just have some company before she goes back to her lonely room. Mansfield writes that, she went to the park, took her favorite seat and at times eavesdrops on people’s conversation because she is lonely even at the park without company. Another instance that shows the theme of loneliness in the book is when we are told, after the young couple made fun of her fur and her age, she went back to her dark room all alone.
In addition, her behaviors in the park reveal her loneliness. While in the park, she is alone and all she does is watch and evaluate the people seated next to her or passing by. She is lonely and has no company and all that is left for her in the park is just to watch everything that is happening and trying to analyze it. Moreover, while in the park, she even imagines herself in the theatre as an actor and all she does is to fantasize in order to forget about her lonely life while in the park (Mansfield 242). Moreover, while in the park, she strokes her fur and even tries to talk to it, this shows how lonely she was because, she could not be talking to herself if she had company. She identifies with the fur throughout the text because it is the only company she had and bearing in mind that it is a fur which obviously is from a dead animal, she identifies herself with a dead creature.
There is the theme of rejection in Mansfield’s story Miss Brill. Miss Brill left the park that Sunday feeling rejected after her encounter with the young couple. The young couple had broken her love affair with the park, where she got company while away from her lonely house. According to her, the people who came to the park were like her and she felt accepted until she met the young couple who broke her heart. Miss Brill lived as an outsider and this is seen through her conversations with herself and eavesdropping on other people’s discussions.
The protagonist’s fate changed when she left the park annoyed of how she was treated with the young couple. Miss Brill was trying to make her life lively by visiting the park every Sunday, but on this one day, the visit was not pleasant, she went back home feeling dead inside. The protagonist lived a lonely life in isolation, but the encounter with the young couple made her life difficult. Even though the author does not solve her situation in the end of the story, we are left wondering of what happened later on in the dark room. Moreover, the character did not solve her problem in the story. The protagonist’s life is very weird because of the isolations she faces, if I had such a personal experience, it could have been hard for me to live peacefully.
Work Cited Mansfield, Katherine. "Miss Brill" Compact Literature: Reading, Reacting, Writing. Ed. Laurie G. Kirszner and Stephen R. Mandell. Compact 8th ed. Boston: Wadsworth, 2013. 241-244. Print