Katherine Mansfield - Miss Brill

Miss Brill Summary
In "Miss Brill," Miss Brill works as an English tutor in Paris. Her only respite
from her dull, dreary life is the weekly concert she attends in the park.
However, it becomes clear at one of these concerts that she's the subject of
ridicule. She returns to her shabby apartment.
Miss Brill makes a living by reading to invalids and tutoring French

children in English.
She goes to a concert and sits in her "special seat," where she feels she
can participate in the lives of people around her.
Gradually, she realizes that these people are looking down on her, and
she returns to her little room in a boarding house, ashamed and lonely.
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An aging, lonely woman living in Paris and maintaining herself by teaching English is the
subject of this character portrait by Katherine Mansfield. Miss Brills life is one of shabby
gentility and pretense; this impression commences in the opening paragraph as she lovingly takes
an old-fashioned fox fur out of its box for her usual Sunday outing to the gardens. Looking
forward to the new Season, she is, however, distracted by a peculiarly ominous feeling that
seems to be in the air and for which she does not know how to accountlike the chill from a
glass of iced water before you sip. Maternally caressing the fur, she looks into its dim little
eyes, hearing its fearful question: What has been happening to me? With this question, the
narrator submerges the point of view into the psyche of Miss Brill, and the reader beholds her
pathetic attempt to build a fantasy life to protect her from the harsh facts of her existence. Like
the insidious illness that seems to be creeping to life inside her, Miss Brill is abruptly forced to
confront the reality that her imagination seeks to escape: She is growing old and lonely in her
exile, and the world is an unfriendly place for such people.
Occupying her special seat, Miss Brill gives only partial attention to the band music, for it is
obvious that her main interest in coming to the park each week is to participate in the lives of
people around herin fact, she prides herself on her ability to eavesdrop on the conversations of
those nearby without seeming to do so. This is her escape from a dreary existencea dark little
room like a cupboard in a rooming house from which she emerges four afternoons a week to
read to an invalid and cadaverous old man until he falls asleep in his garden.
At first, an elderly couple share her seat but prove uninteresting. Miss Brill recalls last Sundays
old Englishman and his complaining wife, whom Miss Brill had wanted to shakepresumably
because the wife scorns the companionship Miss Brill lacks in her life. Soon, however, she turns
her attention toward the crowd of passersby: raucous children, an old beggar who sells flowers
from a tray, and laughing young girls in bright colors who pair off with soldiers. Hovering just
beyond the threshold of a conscious reflection is the knowledge that all the people who meet in
the Jardins Publique Sunday after Sunday, occupying the same benches and chairs, are nearly all
old and look as though they, too, have just come from the same dingy little rooms.
As if the thought were too painful for close scrutiny, Miss Brill focuses on the crowd once again,
and this time she notices a woman wearing a shabby ermine toque approach a dignified, elderly
gentleman. Miss Brills sudden, intense identification with the woman blurs her literal point of
view: Now everything, her hair, her face, even her eyes, was the same color as the shabby
ermine, and her hand, in its cleaned glove, lifted to dab her lips, was a tiny yellowish paw.
Immediately, Miss Brill projects a fantasy aura around the pair; next, however, she sees the man
rebuff the woman, crudely blowing cigarette smoke in her face. The womanwhom Miss Brill
has come to identify by her toquecovers her humiliation by smiling brightly and retreats out of
Miss Brills sight. As usual, whenever a painful thought comes too close, Miss Brill turns her
attention outward to the sights and sounds around her.
Now, however, a new perception has been awakened in her as a result of this slightly sordid
encounter, and it fills Miss Brill with elation: Oh, how fascinating it was! How she enjoyed it!
How she loved sitting here, watching it all! She conceives of life as all theater and playacting,
and she herself as a participantone of lifes actresses, no longer a mere eavesdropper and
spectator. The premonitions that tugged at her spirits at the beginning of the story are dispelled
by this vision; she even imagines a future dialogue with the old man to whom she reads, in which
she pronounces herself an actress.
Like the ominous leaf drifting from nowhere out of the sky, a warning chill fills her with sadness
and presages the storys denouement. A young, well-dressed couple appear nearby; inescapably,
Miss Brill prepares to overhear, first having assigned them their romantic roles as hero and
heroine fresh from his fathers yacht. Their dialogue overwhelms Miss Brill with its blatant
cruelty:No, not now, said the girl. Not here, I cant. But why? Because of that stupid old
thing at the end there? asked the boy. Why does she come here at allwho wants her? Why
doesnt she keep her silly old mug at home?
The youth continues to importune her, but the girl breaks off in a fit of giggling, derisive laughter
at Miss Brills fur, which to the girl looks like a fried whiting.
The narrator then summarizes Miss Brills return home, commenting only that she bypasses her
usual stop at the bakers for a slice of honeycake. Back in her room, mortified like the woman in
the shabby toque, she hurriedly replaces her fur in its box without looking at it; as the full shock
of her rejection strikes, the narrator concludes the story in a manner reminiscent of the opening:
But when she put the lid on she thought she heard something crying.

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Miss Brill Summary

Miss Brill makes a living by reading to invalids and tutoring French

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