“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
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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
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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
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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
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Loneliness
Illusion vs. Reality
Rejection
Isolation