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Haley Leuthart
English L202
Paper 3—Comparative Analysis
23 November 2010
Comparative Analysis: A Character Study
Three different short stories about a day at the park, the life of a murderous hermit, and a
couple living on a farm in a California valley do not, at first glance, seem to have anything in
common. A factor that links them all, however, is that the main character in each story is a
lonesome woman who makes efforts to convince herself that she is not alone. The characters
have delusions, which, according to the Oxford English Dictionary Online are “anything that
deceives the mind with a false impression.” The false impressions the women adopt are different
in nature, but they exist for similar reasons. The characters Miss Brill, Miss Emily, and Elisa
Allen suffer from delusions and have trouble distinguishing between illusions and reality. By
casting the characters in a sympathetic light, the authors encourage readers to pity them, and
suggest that human relationships and love are necessary for survival.
Miss Brill, Miss Emily, and Elisa Allen are all deluded in some way, perceiving parts of
their lives differently than the way they really are. Watching and listening to people in the park
on Sundays, Miss Brill convinces herself that the action occurring around her is “exactly like a
play” (Mansfield 74). She imagines that she and everyone else at the park are performers,
following some sort of script in which they each have a specific role. Miss Brill even plays out
part of a scene in her head, telling an invalid that she has “been an actress for a long time” (74).
Though she may want to believe she is an actress, readers know that Miss Brill is really just an
English teacher who visits the park every Sunday. As readers learn more about Miss Brill, they
understand that she is deluded in thinking life is a play. Readers know that everyday life is not
scripted and planned out like television shows or movies. Although Miss Brill listens in on other
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peoples’ lives like an audience would at a play, she does not interact with anyone, suggesting
that she is not really a part of the action. She is not an actress in a community play, but merely a
woman watching life happen around her.
Miss Emily also suffers from delusions that confuse her sense of illusion and reality. She
lives her life under the misconception that she can bend reality to her will. Her attempts at
controlling unavoidable events range from her refusal to pay taxes to her denial of her father’s
death (Faulkner 35, 36). The belief that she can control such inevitable events hints to readers
that Emily is deluded and has trouble differentiating between reality and her own perception of
life. Her delusion becomes more evident when, after Emily’s death, the townspeople discover a
room “furnished as for a bridal” in her house (40). On the bed lay Homer Barron’s corpse next
to a pillow with “the indentation of a head” and a strand of Emily’s hair on it, indicating that
after Emily murdered Homer, she repeatedly laid on the bed with his dead body (41). Such an
act could only have been committed by a deluded person like Emily, who thought she could
avoid total abandonment by keeping Homer’s corpse with her. Emily’s delusion pushes her
further away from reality and creates for her an imaginary environment in which such a horrific
act is permissible.
Though Elisa Allen in “The Chrysanthemums” commits no such gruesome act, she is also
deluded. When the tinker arrives at the Allen’s farm, Elisa sees him only as a burly man who
reminds her of “teamsters and of sailors” (Steinbeck 214). Looking past the fact that he is first
and foremost a salesman, Elisa lets herself believe that the tinker is interested in her as a woman
and not just as a potential customer. The tinker shows an interest in her chrysanthemums;
flowers that Elisa treats as more than mere plants. At the mention of her flowers, Elisa shows
great enthusiasm and expresses pride for the chrysanthemums she “raises” every year (215).
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Elisa’s language and actions suggest that she feels about the flowers the way that many women
feel about their children. In this way Elisa defends her flowers to the tinker, arguing that the
“nasty” smell he attributes to the chrysanthemums is really “good bitter smell, not nasty at all”
(215). She knows much about the flowers; she knows how they are made and thinks of them as
her own creation. Having no children of her own, Elisa puts passion and energy into her flowers,
raising them as one would children. She is deluded in thinking that the flowers will fulfill the
needs of the mothering instincts she feels.
The various delusions Miss Brill, Miss Emily, and Elisa Allen experience share a
common cause; the characters are all isolated from others. Going to the park on Sunday, Miss
Brill watches the action, but makes contact with no one. She admits that she “had become quite
expert at listening as though she didn’t listen” to other peoples’ conversation (Mansfield 72).
The only thing she interacts with throughout the day is the fur stole she wears around her neck,
which she refers to as a “dear little thing” and a “little rogue” (72). Having no one else to talk to,
she resorts to addressing the fur as if it were a live companion. Miss Brill does mention her
English pupils in the story, but only to say that she “had quite a queer, shy feeling” at telling
them about how she spent her Sundays (74). That feeling suggests that she is not comfortable
with her students and does not know them very well. It is easy to understand why Miss Brill
would generate a fantasy about being part of a play with the people around her when one realizes
how alone she really is. She longs to be included with the action at the park, convincing herself
that “somebody would have noticed if she hadn’t been there” (74). For a woman who lives alone
and seems to have no close friends, the illusion of a play that unites her with her community is a
way to ignore the reality of her loneliness.
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Loneliness and isolation also cause Miss Emily to develop a delusion and drive her to
irrational behavior. Emily lives near other townspeople, but she lives as a hermit, vanquishing
people who come to her door. When she dies, the townspeople are anxious to see the inside of
her home, “since no one had seen it in at least ten years” (Faulkner 33). Emily’s hermitage
seems to have stemmed from her young adult years, a time in which, as we learn from the
narrator, her father drove away all her suitors (36). Never having been courted or married, Emily
wants a husband of her own. When Homer fails to propose to her, she murders him to keep him
with her. Her extreme loneliness drives her to insanity, believing that a corpse can fill the void
in her life like a living companion could. Though she murders Homer to combat her isolation,
when the townspeople discover the pathetic scene in the bedroom, an image of loneliness is
presented that is more complete and desperate than they imagined.
Elisa Allen lives on a farm with her husband in the Salinas Valley, but is both physically
and emotionally isolated. The valley in which Elisa lives is “closed off from the sky and from all
the rest of the world” (Steinbeck 211). It is a “closed pot” with “no sunshine” (211). Elisa is
both literally and figuratively fenced into her position on the farm. During a conversation with
her husband, Elisa works in her flower garden while he leans over the wire fence that protects it
(212). This literal boundary between Elisa and Henry mirrors the emotional separation of the
couple. Though the marital relationship is a seemingly loving one, it appears to be more platonic
than romantic. When Elisa dresses up to go into town with Henry, he reacts by saying she looks
“nice” and “strong… strong enough to break a calf over your knee, happy enough to eat it like a
watermelon” (219). Such a response is not one that a woman would like to hear from her
husband, a man that she should be romantically involved with. The relationship between Elisa
and her husband produces no children, though children would have been a social expectation of
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married couples in the 1930s when the story was written. In this way Elisa does not fit into her
social position. Women were expected to be housewives and stay at home mothers, but Elisa has
no children and longs to be out in the world rather than at home. Readers realize this when Elisa
“reaches out” to the tinker and almost touches the leg of his pants with her hand (217). She
longs to be with a man who would appreciate her as a woman and whose mobile lifestyle could
take her away from her sedentary position on the farm. Elisa’s isolation leads her to believe that
she could leave with the tinker and be happier than she is at home.
As we see in the ends of the short stories, the delusions do not, in the long run, save the
characters from loneliness and abandonment. Miss Brill overhears young people call her a
“stupid old thing” and comment that she should “keep her silly old mug at home” (Mansfield
75). After hearing that conversation, Miss Brill returns to her home, skipping her usual Sunday
treat, and retreats into “her room like a cupboard,” noting that “she thought she heard something
crying” (75). Her spirit is broken and she loses the excitement and happiness that her delusion
momentarily gave her.
Elisa Allen also realizes her hopefulness for a better life is in vain when she sees her
precious chrysanthemums discarded on the side of the road. At the sight of her creations being
thrown away and unappreciated, she hides her face from Henry and cries “weakly—like an old
woman (Steinbeck 219). At this point Elisa’s hopes are crushed and, because she hid her
emotions from her husband, we can infer that she realizes her marriage will continue to be less
than intimate.
We do not get to see how Emily feels at the end of her story, because she is dead, but we
can also assume, in her situation, that her delusions did not lead to a happy ending. She lives
with Homer’s body, but he is not there in spirit, so she still dies alone, in spite of her effort to
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change that. Emily’s delusions are an attempt to combat her loneliness, but in the end she seems
more alone than ever.
The way in which “Miss Brill,” “A Rose for Emily,” and “The Chrysanthemums” are
written allow readers to understand the characters’ problems and influence our impression of
them. The stories are told from the point of view of someone other than the main character. The
distance between the narration and the characters let readers recognize that there is something
wrong with the characters’ judgment; they are deluded. In “Miss Brill” and “The
Chrysanthemums,” the omniscient narrators allow readers to understand how dejected Miss Brill
and Elisa feel after realizing that what they thought was real was really a delusion. Readers can
hear their thoughts, letting them understand and empathize with the characters. The author even
urges readers to pity the women. The townsperson narrator in “A Rose for Emily” also seems to
pity Miss Emily, putting his or her thoughts into the story and urging the readers adopt his/her
attitude. The narrator never offers a judgment about Emily’s behavior, but does compare her to
“a fallen monument” and an idol, making readers feel the way he/she does; that Emily’s story is
significant and sad. Even the title “A Rose for Emily” suggests that the explanation for Emily’s
behavior provided in the story is homage to her; an attempt to justify her actions and show that
she is not fully to blame. The authors of all three stories write in a way that prompts readers to
not just recognize that the characters do not accept reality completely, but to question the causes
of the characters’ actions and understand why they act the way they do.
By writing stories about characters who develop delusions that make it difficult for them
to distinguish between illusion and society, the authors tell us something about people who are,
like the main characters, isolated. Miss Brill lives alone and does not seem to have any close
friends or relatives, and therefore creates a fantasy world for herself in which she and the other
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members of the community are actors and actresses in a play. Living in a desolate valley with
her distant husband, Elisa Allen, too, creates an idea in her mind that she can raise flowers like
children and possibly travel around the country with a tinker. Miss Emily goes to great lengths
to do what she thinks will save her from loneliness, but actually further alienates herself by
performing the desperate act of killing her love interest. These three cases of lonely women who
try ineffectively to make themselves feel wanted suggest to readers that people need human
interaction and love in their lives, because without it, they cannot survive in the real world.
Works Cited
Faulkner, William. "A Rose for Emily." Backpack Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry,
Drama, and Writing. Ed. X. J. Kennedy and Dana Gioia. 3rd ed. Boston: Pearson, 2010.
33+. Print.
Mansfield, Katherine. "Miss Brill." Backpack Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry,
Drama, and Writing. Ed. X. J. Kennedy and Dana Gioia. 3rd ed. Boston: Pearson, 2010.
33+. Print.
Steinbeck, John. "The Chrysanthemums." Backpack Literature: An Introduction to Fiction,
Poetry, Drama, and Writing. Ed. X. J. Kennedy and Dana Gioia. 3rd ed. Boston: Pearson,
2010. 33+. Print.