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The character, Miss Brill, lives in a fantasy world that hides her aging and loneliness. Throughout the story denial of the character is depicted through her actions and interactions with others. Miss Brill spends her Sunday afternoon seated on a park bench. She watches others around her and pretends that they are all actors in a play; this vividly expresses Miss Brill's fantasy and denial, as do other importances in the story. In, "Miss Brill", Mansfield creates an elderly character that lives in a fantasy world.
Miss Brill is a character of familiarity and routine. Each Sunday she spends the afternoon in the park watching and listening in on others lives. Knowing the details and flaws in others, as well as her surroundings, boosts her self esteem. The band and the scenery play a larger role in the life of Miss Brill. Throughout the story, the band's tempo and speed is mentioned: "And the band changed again and played more quickly, more gaily than ever" (273). In the fantasy life of Miss Brill, the band plays the roll of an accessory in her play: "Wasn't the conductor wearing a new coat, too? She was sure it was new." (271). Miss Brill does not personally know the conductor of the band, but she notices something as simple as his new coat. This shows how familiar Miss Brill is with the band. Familiarity is something Miss Brill strives for throughout the entire story, and this is most evident when she talks about the band and the scenery of "her play."
Miss Brill shares her Sunday seat, "her special seat," with only two other people. (271). This couple reflects Miss Brill in a way that she also sits there as still as a statue. The old couple that sat on the other end of the bench were as "still as statues" (271). She was ups...
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...ions and never stops to think that others can do the same. These statements devastate her; it begins to shoe her that people can judge her and make assumptions just as she does. The incident with the young boy and girl was like holding a mirror in front of Miss Brill to show her true self.
Miss Brill's fantasy is crushed by the judgments of the young boy and girl. She can no longer deny that she is aging and alone in her world. Seeing herself for what she truly is devastated her. She went straight home and replaced the fur back in the box. When she put the lid back on, it was as though "she heard something cry." (273). It was like putting the lid on her fantasy world.
Works Cited
Mansfield, Katherine." Miss Brill."Freshmen Reader.Mason: Custom Publishing, 2004.Parknet.National Park Service.12 Dec. 1999 http://www.nps.gov/.
All in all, Miss Brill is a character in her own perception of watching other people’s lives, but a lonely woman in reality. Through the actions of Miss Brill using her fur scarf as an inanimate object to become her friend, to watching the woman rejecting the flowers from the little boy, Miss Brill has created her own fantasy world of actors and actresses getting on and off the stage, making her not wanting to discover the woman who she is right now. As Miss Brill hears the teasing of the young couple and wakes up from her fantasy world and imagination, she has finally understood how the world is not perceived as she wanted it to be.
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Miss Brill is a story about an old woman that lacks companionship and self-awareness. She lives by herself and goes through life in a repetitive manner. Each Sunday, Miss Brill ventures down to the park to watch and listen to the band play. She finds herself listening not only to the band, but also to strangers who walk together and converse before her. Her interest in the lives of those around her shows the reader that Miss Brill lacks companionship.
Rather than engaging in conversations of her own, Miss Brill prefers to observe the other people and listen in to their conversations instead. Although she is constantly surrounded by people in the park, she is still very isolated. She takes pride in the fact that she has gotten so good at listening to other people’s conversations, rather than realizing how she is further isolating her and preventing herself from living life to the fullest. Another defining characteristic of Miss Brill is that she is very concerned with the way she looks and her age. “They were odd, silent, nearly all old, and from the way they stared they looked as though they’d come from dark little rooms or even-even cupboards.” This shows how insecure Miss Brill is about her age and not fully aware of everything in her life. Both Miss Brill and the old people in the park are silent, not engaging in any conversation, and just observing others going about their daily lives. She looks down at the other old people at the park, and fails to realize how similar she actually is to them. She seems to think that by showing disdain towards the other old people will prevent her from being like
Katherine Mansfield's "Miss Brill" perfectly captures the phases one's mind goes through when faced with becoming old. Elderly people tend to be nostalgic, even sentimental about their youth. In later years, the nostalgia can develop into senility or fantasy. The ermine fur in "Miss Brill" is the catalyst of her nostalgia and symbolizes the passing of time in three stages: an expectant youth, a vital adulthood, and finally, a development into old age and fantasy.
In this story the interpretation of Miss Brill's character is revealed through her observation of other people. The story starts out as Miss Brill with Miss Brill describing the sensation of her fur coat upon her skin and how it made her feel. The setting takes place on a bustling Sunday afternoon in the center of a town. Miss Brill has made it a routine for her to go out on these Sunday afternoons dressed up at her finest, and go people watching.
...she has to deal with her reality because there is nothing and no one she could use to dramatize her life. Brill is forced to accept the idea that she is no more significant to the world than any one she encountered in the park. She is the old person who comes from a little cupboard. She is the person which she never wanted to be and all her attempts to preserve her false image were now null. The truth has become clear to her thus having to accept sorrow.
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 is an older woman who is depicted as lonely because she sits by herself in the park and listens in on other people's conversations. Mansfield says, “This was disappointing, for Miss. Brill always looked forward to the conversation. She had become really quite expert, she thought, at listening as though she
Miss Brill is without any relatives or close friends. She has no acquaintances to converse with. Therefore, she treats her fur as if it were a pet. Her fur is a “dear little thing” (98) with eyes and a tail. She sometimes feels like “stroking” it (98).
One of the first major themes of this book is the constant battle between fantasy and reality. Blanche explains to Mitch that she fibs because she refuses to accept the hand fate has dealt her. Lying to herself and to others allows her to make life appear as it should be rather than as it is. Stanley, a practical man firmly grounded in the physical world, disdains Blanche’s fabrications and does everything he can to unravel them. The relationship between Blanche and Stanley is a struggle between appearances and reality. It propels the play’s plot and creates an overarching tension. Ultimately, Blanche’s attempts to rejuvenate her life and to save Stella from a life with Stanley fail. One of the main ways the author dramatizes fantasy’s inability to overcome reality is through an explorati...
The story is written in a third person omniscient (although limited) point of view. Miss Brill also interprets the world around her in a similar fashion. She is her own narrator, watching people around her and filling in their thoughts to create stories to amuse herself. Compared to most people, Miss Brill's thinking is atypical. Generally, in viewing the world around him, a person will acknowledge his own presence and feelings. For example, if something is funny, a person will fleetingly think "I find that amusing." While that entire sentence may not consciously cross his mind, the fact that it is humorous is personally related. Miss Brill has no such pattern of thought. She has somehow managed to not include herself in her reactions; she is merely observing actions and words. In this manner, she most resembles the narrator of the story by simply watching and relaying the events around her.
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