An Analysis Character of "miss Brill"

An Analysis Character of "Miss Brill"

In "Miss Brill," Katherine Mansfield portrays a lonely and sensitive woman who finds Sundays very enjoyable and comforting. She tends to go out to the park on those particular days and observe all of the people out there. She's very interested in the lives of others and enjoys being part of their lives for only moments long just by eavesdropping on their conversations or arguments. This could be due to the possibility of her life being dull and lacking excitement. She tends to temporarily escape her realities by drifting off and joining the realities of other individuals. In order for us to really understand Miss Brill we need to look her closely as character.

The character of Miss Brill is first portrayed as an elderly woman, happy and satisfies about her life. On her Sundays in the park she enjoys watching people, and taking part in what she calls a play. She also gets a lot of satisfaction when she listens to the conversations of others. Miss Brill believes her life is wonderful; she takes rough insult from a stranger and this experience transformed her completely. This is when Miss Brill develops into a woman realizing she is all alone, lonely, and she is forced to step out of her daydream and face reality.

In reality, Miss Brill is a part of nothing. She sits alone on a bench with her ratty old fur and watches the world pass before her. She sees other people sitting on benches Sunday after Sunday and thinks of them as "funny...odd, silent, nearly all old...as though they'd just come from dark little rooms." Rather than see herself as one of them, she creates a fantasy world to escape facing the truth. Even in this seemingly perfect production, within Miss Brills mind, Mansfield shows us that there is the possibility of evil. Along come the "hero and heroine" of Miss Brills imagination and the nasty truth cuts like a knife. The young couple begin to ridicule and make fun of the "stupid, old, lonely lady that no body wants," and in that instant her dream is demolished and little world crumbles. Miss Brill solemnly walks home, passing up things that she used to look forward to. She sits on her bed, puts the fur back in its box, and thinks she hears something crying. The fur is symbolic of something old and lonely that has lost its beauty over the years. The fur is not crying...Miss Brill is. The fantasy is over and the truth must now sink in.

Work Cited

Mansfield, Katherine. "Miss Brill." Backpack Literature. Ed. X.J Kennedy and Dana Gioia.

Boston: Longman, 2010. 71-75. Print.

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