“Miss Brill” Katherine Mansfield

Building Context "Miss Brill” was written in 1920 and published in the 1922 collection of stories entitled The Garden Party. The story's enduring popularity is due in part to its use of a stream-of-consciousness narrative in which Miss Brill's character is revealed through her thoughts about others as she watches a crowd from a park bench. It has become one of Mansfield's most popular stories, and has been reprinted in numerous anthologies and collections. The story is typical of Mansfield's style; she often employed stream-of-consciousness narration in order to show the psychological complexity of everyday experience in her characters' lives.

Katherine Mansfield Katherine Mansfield was born Kathleen Mansfield Beauchamp to a wealthy family in Wellington, New Zealand, on October 14, 1888. She was educated in London, deciding early on that she wanted to be a writer. She studied music, wrote for the school newspaper, and gained her intellectual freedom by studying Oscar Wilde and the other English writers of the early twentieth century. Three years later she returned to New Zealand, where her parents expected her to find a suitable husband and lead the life of a well-bred woman. However, Mansfield was rebellious, adventurous, and more captivated with the artistic community than of polite society. She began publishing stories in Australian magazines in 1907 and shortly thereafter returned to London.

Katherine Mansfield – The Rebel A brief affair left her pregnant, and she consented to marry a man, George Bowden, whom she had known a mere three weeks and who was not the father of her child. She dressed in black for the wedding and left him before the night was over. Upon receiving word of the scandal, and fueled by rumors that her daughter had also been involved with several women, Mansfield's mother immediately sailed to London and placed her daughter in a spa in Germany, far away from the Bohemian artists' community of London and her best friend, Ida Baker, whom Mansfield's mother considered a bad influence. During her time in Germany, Mansfield suffered a miscarriage and was cut out of her parents' will. After returning to London, Mansfield moved in with Baker, continuing to write and conduct various love affairs.

Mansfield and Murry

Mansfield and Murry In 1911 Katherine Mansfield and John Middleton Murry, magazine editor, began a relationship that culminated in their marriage in 1918. They led a troubled life during this time - Mansfield left Murry twice in their first two years together. Mansfield's life and work were changed forever by the 1915 death of her brother, Leslie Heron "Chummie" Beauchamp, as a New Zealand soldier in France in World War I. She was shocked and traumatized by the experience, so much so that her work began to take refuge in the nostalgic reminiscences of their childhood in New Zealand. Despite this turbulence in Mansfield's life, she entered into her most productive period of writing in early 1916, and her relationship with Murry also improved. At the beginning of 1917 Mansfield and Murry separated, although he continued to visit her at her new apartment. Baker, whom Mansfield often called, with mixture of affection and disdain, her "wife", moved in with her shortly afterwards. In December 1917 Mansfield became ill, and was diagnosed with tuberculosis. She moved to Bandol, France, and stayed at a half-deserted and cold hotel, where she became depressed.

Katherine Mansfield – Final Years Mansfield spent her last years seeking increasingly unorthodox cures for her tuberculosis. In February 1922, she consulted a Russian physician’s "revolutionary" treatment, which resulted in hot flashes and numbness in her legs. The Dictionary of National Biography reports that she started to feel that her attitude to life had been unduly rebellious, and she sought, during the days that remained to her, to renew and compose her spiritual life. Mansfield suffered a fatal pulmonary hemorrhage in January 1923, after running up a flight of stairs to show Murry how well she was. She died on 9 January and was buried in a cemetery in France. Mansfield proved to be a prolific writer in the final years of her life, and much of her prose and poetry remained unpublished at her death. Murry took on the task of editing and publishing her works. His efforts resulted in publication of two additional volumes of short stories in 1923 (The Dove's Nest), in 1924 (Something Childish), her Poems, The Aloe, a collection of critical writings (Novels and Novelists) and a number of editions of her letters and journals.

“Miss Brill” - Plot The story is about Miss Brill, a middle-aged English teacher living by the "Jardins publics", the Public Gardens, in a French town. The story begins by Miss Brill "deciding on her fur[...] dear little thing! It was nice to feel it again” Sunday afternoon in the park, which she spends walking and sitting in the park. She sees the world as a play, if it were a stage, and enjoys watching the people around her, often judging them and eavesdropping on the strangers. The reader learns that Miss Brill's life must be unfilled and this is how she develops her pride.

“Miss Brill” - Plot When she arrives at the park, she notices that there are more people than last Sunday, and the band is especially louder because the Season had commenced. Sitting next to her on the bench was an elderly couple. Their lack of conversation disappointed Miss Brill because she enjoys, "sitting in other people's lives just for a minute while they talked round her.” Watching others in the park, she notices that most of the people that sit on the benches are the same; the people are elderly, silent, idle, and appear as though they have come from a small dark place. A woman drops her violet roses, only to be picked up and returned by a young boy. The woman proceeds to dispose of them, and Miss Brill does not know if that is to be well-regarded. After the elderly couple left the bench, Miss Brill seemed to believe that even she took part in the play she attended every Sunday.

“Miss Brill” - Plot Beginning to daydream about how she reads to an elderly man four times a week, she plays a scenario in her mind with the man. She envisions that he would no longer sleep through the stories as he normally does once he realized she was an actress, and he would become engaged and excited. Continuing her idea of the play as the band played a new song, she envisioned everybody in the park taking part in the song and singing, and she begins to cry at the thought of this. A young couple sit on the bench where the elderly couple had been before. Miss Brill believes they are nicely dressed and she is prepared to listen. As she does, she hears the boy make a rude remark about her being a "stupid old thing", and the girl responds, "It's her fu-fur which is so funny,” which hurts Miss Brill terribly because of her love of her fur.

“Miss Brill” - Plot On her way home, a typical Sunday would involve the purchase of cake at the bakery, but instead she went home into her own dark room. As she quickly put her fur back in its box, she hears a cry, this cry is Miss Brill. The reason why the story says, "she thinks she hears a cry” is because Miss Brill does not want to accept that she is the one crying, or accept herself for that matter. Mansfield's use of rhetorical devices throughout the passage reveals a sense of loneliness belonging to Miss Brill.

“Miss Brill” – Point of View This story is written in the Third Person Limited Omniscient point of view. We know only what is going on inside Miss Brill’s mind and what she sees and hears. This is the case until later in the story, after she is rejected by the young people, and the narration switches to Objective.

Symbolism Fur: She refers to the fur as a "rogue" which is ironic that she is very attached to this garment. A rogue is an adventurer which she lacks in her life. The fur lives a similar story as she does, living in a dark small room, getting hit in the nose as she did when the boy made the rude remark about her, and when returning to the box, crying for its destruction, and Miss Brill crying for her hurt soul. Ermine toque: The nice fur has now decayed and withered. This fur is similar to those sitting on the benches at the park, and Miss Brill herself. Orchestra: Her emotions are reflective of the gaiety of the songs played by the orchestra. The orchestra mostly plays throughout Miss Brill's entire park experience. It is her that ranges in emotions, like the many genres the orchestra must have played.

Themes Loneliness Illusion vs. Reality Rejection Isolation