Miss Brill - Katherine Mansfield (4)

Themes

<1> Loneliness and Alienation

    The people Miss Brill can talk to are her students and a half-dead man who rarely notices her presence. In fact she is really eager to communicate with others and interact with the outside world and that is why she expects every Sunday afternoon when she can escape from her loneliness and alienation. But actually she could not join any conversation with others and the only conversation Miss Brill hold throughout the entire story is with her fur. The fact that she is totally ignored by others is highlighted when the boy says "who wants her". 

<2> Delusion and Reality

    Miss Brill is apparently a self-deluded woman and very delusional about her presence in other people's eye and in society. She believes that she is an actress playing a role in many people's dramas but in effect she is the actress in her own stage. She mistakenly considers that people will miss her if she were not to be there until the conversation between the boy and the girl to "wake up" and become realistic. 

<3> Connectedness

     When she is in the park, Miss Brill constantly yearns for conversations with others, i.e., connections with people. All the descriptions of what she has seen, for example, the dropped flower, the woman's ermine toque and the beggar's tray fixed to the railings. It can be seen that connectedness is what Miss Brill lacks, needs and wants and what can make her happy. But tragically at the end, she is rather stressful and painful after the young couple's words ruin her illusion of her connectedness with the world outside her "box".

<4> Youth and Age

    Miss Brill's talking with her fur in the beginning reveals her nostalgia for her lost youth. This short story was created and published in the post WWI time period when women got married at an early age and men had to work really hard to gain bread for the whole family, according to Mansfield's other works. Thus, Miss Brill might also be a woman married at a quite a young age probably around 19 years old and wearing the fur reminds her of her happy youth and gives her the illusion that she is a young pretty girl wearing a fashionable fur. However, in reality, her fur and herself are "odd, silent, nearly all old".