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  • Essay / Review of "Miss Brill" by Katherine Mansfield

    Kathleen Mansfield Murry is known as a prominent New Zealand modernist short story writer who wrote stories under the pseudonym Katherine Mansfield. Miss Brill was published in the 1920s and is set in France after the First World War. In "Miss Brill" Katherine Mansfield introduces readers to a reserved and lonely woman who loves to spy on strangers, who looks at her dearest friend's fur coat and sometimes imagines herself as an actress. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why violent video games should not be banned”? Get an original essay The theme of the story “Miss Brill” is how loneliness and feelings of rejection can prevent an individual from differentiating between perception of reality. . This is seen very clearly in the way Miss Brill sees and perceives the world in a rather positive and playful way. At the beginning of the story, we see Miss Brill removing a fur and "bringing life back to the little dark eyes." In a sense, this fur represents Miss Brill; she brings some enthusiasm into her life and starts her day in a positive way. And so, as she walks towards the gardens, she engages with everything around her, noticing small, seemingly insignificant details. She loves this vision of her Sundays and she tends to create stories in her head about everyone who passes her. So we see how Miss Brill creates this ideal environment around her by distorting what actually surrounds her. We can think that this mentality is a consequence of the woman's loneliness and, as we will see later in the story, her feeling of rejection. The story picks up steam when the girl refuses to do something for her lover because Miss Brill is watching her. The story reaches its climax when Miss Brill overhears the young couple talking about wanting Miss Brill gone and them making fun of Miss Brill's fur. After learning this, Miss Brill leaves and returns to her "closet" which refers to a dark room. In the end, Miss Brill puts the fur back in the box, and as she does so, she thinks she hears it crying. In this case, we can see how Miss Brill's loneliness and misconception of reality led to a harsh dose of reality, ultimately leading to the woman's feelings of rejection. It can also be assumed that this is not the first time that Miss Brill has faced rejection, which gives her a reserved personality. The physical setting of Miss Brill is set in France in the 1920s. The story takes place in a popular park with a band that plays every Sunday. The emotional scene of the story unfolds around loneliness and judgment. In this story, Miss Brill is a protagonist as the story centers around her and her weekly visit to the park. The young couple in love is presented as an antagonist because they cause the conflict in the story. Everyone in the park, such as the old couple on the bench, the young women and the soldiers, and the little children running around, are minor characters. The story of Katherine Mansfield is written from the omniscient point of view limited to the third person. This point of view allows readers to step into the mind of Miss Brill and was the right choice to convey the message of Mansfield's story. If readers were not able to know Miss Brill's thoughts and feelings and hear and see what she hears and sees, the same aspects could not be conveyed. For example, by only knowing Miss Brill's thoughts, the author was able to create this false world in Miss Brill's eyes, which ultimately led to a deeper understanding of her loneliness and inability to »..