Miss Brill

by Katherine Mansfield

'And again, as always, he had the feeling he was holding something that never was quite his - his. Something too delicate, too precious, that would fly away once he let go.' Three sharp and powerful short stories from Katherine Mansfield, one of the genre's all-time masters. Introducing Little Black 80 books for Penguin's 80th birthday. Little Black Classics celebrate the huge range and diversity of Penguin Classics, with books from around the world and across many centuries. They take us from a balloon ride over Victorian London to a garden of blossom in Japan, from Tierra del Fuego to 16th-century California and the Russian steppe. Here are stories lyrical and savage; poems epic and intimate; essays satirical and inspirational; and ideas that have shaped the lives of millions. Katherine Mansfield (1888-1923). Mansfield's works available in Penguin Classics are The Collected Stories of Katherine Mansfield and The Garden Party and Other Stories.

Genres: Short Stories, Classics, Fiction, School, Literature, Read For School, 20th Century

64 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1920

About the author

Kathleen Mansfield Murry (née Beauchamp) was a prominent New Zealand modernist writer of short fiction who wrote under the pen name of Katherine Mansfield.

Katherine Mansfield is widely considered one of the best short story writers of her period. A number of her works, including "Miss Brill", "Prelude", "The Garden Party", "The Doll's House", and later works such as "The Fly", are frequently collected in short story anthologies. Mansfield also proved ahead of her time in her adoration of Russian playwright and short story writer Anton Chekhov, and incorporated some of his themes and techniques into her writing.

Katherine Mansfield was part of a "new dawn" in English literature with T.S. Eliot, James Joyce and Virginia Woolf. She was associated with the brilliant group of writers who made the London of the period the centre of the literary world.

Nevertheless, Mansfield was a New Zealand writer - she could not have written as she did had she not gone to live in England and France, but she could not have done her best work if she had not had firm roots in her native land. She used her memories in her writing from the beginning, people, the places, even the colloquial speech of the country form the fabric of much of her best work.

Mansfield's stories were the first of significance in English to be written without a conventional plot. Supplanting the strictly structured plots of her predecessors in the genre (Edgar Allan Poe, Rudyard Kipling, H. G. Wells), Mansfield concentrated on one moment, a crisis or a turning point, rather than on a sequence of events. The plot is secondary to mood and characters. The stories are innovative in many other ways. They feature simple things - a doll's house or a charwoman. Her imagery, frequently from nature, flowers, wind and colours, set the scene with which readers can identify easily.

Themes too are universal: human isolation, the questioning of traditional roles of men and women in society, the conflict between love and disillusionment, idealism and reality, beauty and ugliness, joy and suffering, and the inevitability of these paradoxes. Oblique narration (influenced by Chekhov but certainly developed by Mansfield) includes the use of symbolism - the doll's house lamp, the fly, the pear tree - hinting at the hidden layers of meaning. Suggestion and implication replace direct detail.

Reviews

[Ilse · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oh, how fascinating it was! How she enjoyed it! How she loved sitting here, watching it all! It was like a play. It was exactly like a play. Who could believe the sky at the back wasn’t painted?

Perhaps worse than becoming invisible when aging is to find oneself becoming risible, out of touch, the laughing stock in the merciless, condescending eye of youthful brashness. It is hard to cultivate and maintain an unconditional sense of self-worth when confronted which such cruelty. Who are you in the deepest parts of your fragile being, when nobody is watching?



Miss Brill, a middle-aged English teacher residing in a seaside town in France, makes a habit of crawling out of her dark little room every Sunday, spending her idle afternoons in the park, observing the people, enjoying the tunes a band is playing, eavesdropping on conversations of the people surrounding her. As the season is changing and it is getting chilly, she cheerfully warms herself by taking out her cherished fur stole and basking in the radiant natural beauty that meets her eye: Behind the rotunda the slender trees with yellow leaves down drooping, and through them just a line of sea, and beyond the blue sky with gold-veined clouds.

Sitting on a bench, observing the people around her from a distance, sitting in other people's lives just for a minute while they talked round her, she feels part of the whole, without needing to participate herself – as if attending a play. Nevertheless some sense of belonging engulfs her and she permits herself some mildly cheeky thoughts and judgements on others, filling in their interactions with her own imagination as if she were a playwright - until her carefully self-created illusionary world is shred to pieces. Boxing herself in again like her fur stole, even her innocuous Sunday treat, a slice of honey cake, loses his lustre.

As ever elegantly written and well-composed, replete with well-chosen symbols, motifs, echoes and reflections this is a quietly devastating short story showing Katherine Mansfield in excellent shape. The emotional impact of this intense evocation of loneliness and disillusion on the reader corresponds to Mansfield’s dexterity in drafting mood pieces, making the allusions to her literary indebtedness to Anton Chekhov sound plausible (the puncturing of illusions in particularly bringing Chekhov's equally heart-rending The Kiss to mind).

There is no sadness like Sunday sadness.

The story can be read here.

[Gaurav Sagar · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ageing is a routine process of human life or life per se, the life which sprouts from a tiny form blossoms into an amazing creation of nature, with numerous possibilities or perhaps every probable possibility, but gradually as the cruel ticking of time goes on, it surreptitiously goes on to obscurity and thereby eventually annihilated to nothingness. The process may appear as uncomplicated and straightforward as it is but is it so, what about that life form which goes through this gut-wrenching transformation, wouldn’t its soul get scorched from the fire rising from the hell of nothingness. And what could be worse than that, if there is anything, to crush your soul by utter disdain.


Loneliness is a reality of life, even if it may appear to be harsh, as we say we are essentially alone, for the solitude of our existence is a stark reality which gazes into our eyes, and we can’t get away from it. Human beings have an innate virtue (or perhaps iniquity) to devise a world of their own, created around their presumptions and assumptions and thereby creating an existence (it may be an inauthentic one though) of their own for them which helps them brave the ordeal of life. The sense of comfort it provides us assuages our soul from our throbbing and disquieting loneliness of our life and save us from our dark and agonizing nothingness.



link: source

We concoct our universe as per our convenience (if we have the luxury to do so or at least we think so) wherein our desires, our preoccupations and our notions lays foundations of it. The world we create for ourselves gives us a quiet and comforting inkling that perhaps our life is a play, and we are actors of it playing our roles as per the best of our abilities. The denial to accept our fate of being essentially lonely assuages our anxious and anguished soul by sending a feel that perhaps we are understanding our life in better way which is beyond the comprehension of normal human beings and thereby elevates us to a position which is unthinkable to be achieved by normal people. It may so happen that gradually we may feel to be ennobled to the level of director from the actor of that play.


The act of our lives goes on, we become its controller thereby providing us tremendous impunity from the probing eyes of the people and raising us to the level of god, as if we are the creator our universe. It inevitable brings to mind the authority an author commands in his world, which is essentially his creation- the piece of literature he conjures up. The author brings up an universe of his own wherein the supreme authority lies in his hand being the creator of that universe and therefore acting like a god, and the characters of his story are perhaps the actors who act as per his will. And what about us- the reader? Normally, the reader stays on fringes of that universe and enjoys the deft but cruel hands of the author to mauver the characters of the story as if watching a play but like an audience. However, over the years we have seen that literature has evolved immensely and the reader has been pulled in from the edges to play an active role in the narrative and thereby surrendering himself to the omnipotent hands of the author.


We eavesdrop on other people talking to each other (even ready to participate in it on the first inkling of invitation) and encroach into the lives of others as if peeping through a hole. The innate desire to connect with others is based upon the inherent loneliness of our existence, so we want to engage with others to get away from this cruel existential ordeal but perhaps with a superior sense that we are immune from any probe. The sense of comfort, we get from the understanding that perhaps we are actors (or perhaps the directors) of the play our life is wherein people pretend to behave in a certain way which we (having immunity from scrutiny) understand, shreds into nothingness on encountering probing eyes of others who can see through us. What as if someone else is watching us like we (think) do with others and perhaps we ourselves are part of a play which is beyond our comprehension and therefore we are no different from the others. The cruel eyes of the world see through us and robs us from any comfort we might be driving from the false position of impunity and brings us down to the level of others.


However, it raises a tantalizing possibility that is perhaps we too are being watched by someone else as we presume, we do in our seemingly play, and therefore someone else is the director of our play or someone else is the creator (or god) of our world or perhaps we are just in a simulation pretending to act as we are advised or programmed to do. So, the entire propaganda of devising our own existence may actually be a farce.



link: source

The question we need to ask ourselves is that what lies below all these tempting and provocative possibilities, the answer may not be the simple one but invariably it deals with the loneliness of our existence. As human beings we have an innate tendency to communicate with others, to be with others but at times it may become agonizingly difficult to fulfil this basic need, since the distance our soul has to travel to reach out anyone is sometimes appearing too much to cover. The alienation of our soul rides upon the cruel indifference of other people, the brutal and probing eyes of others rob us from any sense of comfort we may driving from our inauthentic existence and burn us in the fire of nothingness, and the tears of our soul fall onto unsympathetic and deaf ears. The melancholy of life appears too much to bear when are unable to find a shoulder to cry on. But isn’t our basic human nature, aren’t we all essentially alike.

[Adina ( back from Vacay…slowly recovering) · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am lucky to have discovered yet another wonderful short story writer thanks to the Short Story Club. Katherine Mansfield is her name and her talent lies in making the reader care for the characters or to feel exactly the mood she wants to convey. She takes simple moments from people lives and turns them into something important, a social commentary or a statement about love, loss, cruelty etc.

In Miss Brill, we are introduced to an old woman who visits the local park everyday dressed in a fur stole. She comments on the sights and the people she meets, mainly critically. She thinks she is above them but in the end she has the revelation that she is also ridiculed by the others visitors. A sad story, where one soddenly realises his/her place in the world. The story is subtle and the punch is smoothly introduced, the story grabs you without noticing.

[Maureen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Miss Brill is an English teacher who loves to spend her Sunday afternoons in the local park. It’s a place where she can people watch, or more importantly listen in to their conversations. She finds most of them odd in some way, not as important as herself, with her fine little fox collar round her neck. It’s as if the park was a stage, and she an eager audience member. One particular afternoon, she’s enjoying her usual observations and judgements on those around her, until a young couple sit nearby, and she hears something they say about her, something very mean which destroys her illusions of her standing in the world!

Thanks to Cecily for putting this one on my radar.

[Cecily · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fur

As a child, I spent a lot of time at my grandparents’ farm. The bedroom my little brother and I shared had two huge mahogany wardrobes with Narnia vibes: they contained a couple of fur coats and a fox stole - the latter with eyes, teeth, and tail - and little else. I would sit in the wardrobe to stroke one coat, while snuggled in another, always careful to avoid looking the fox in the eyes. I didn’t consider the ethics of wearing fur or the irony that many in the family went foxhunting. Back then, the furs were just an exotic source of mysterious comfort and pleasure. I'd almost forgotten about them: it's so long ago in time, as well as attitudes. Reading this created a disconnect between my love in memory and my revulsion in the present, which fits with the story.

This poignant vignette opens and closes with literal and symbolic fur, plus a contrasting one in the middle. Miss Brill’s stole - probably a fox, as teeth and tail are mentioned - lives in a dark box most of the time. It’s a smaller version of the “little dark room - her room like a cupboard”. Perhaps that’s why she relates to it and talks to it.

Sunday in the park

It’s Sunday afternoon, and Miss Brill dons her fur and goes to the Jardins Publiques for a spot of people-watching, eavesdropping, and assumptions, as is apparently her habit. She’s lonely. There’s plenty to see and surmise, even on a quiet day.


Image: “Jardins Publics” by Edouard Vuillard, featuring a solitary woman on a bench, albeit from 1894, a generation before this story (Source)

You are what you wear

Miss Brill judges people by their clothes:
“An Englishman and his wife, he wearing a dreadful Panama hat and she button boots.”
But she doesn’t recognise those like her:
“They were odd, silent, nearly all old, and from the way they stared they looked as though they’d just come from dark little rooms or even - even cupboards!”

When she spots a woman in a shabby ermine toque (white fur hat) and man in grey, in her inner monologue, she identifies them as their clothes, not by them (“the ermine toque”, rather than “the woman in the ermine toque”). The couple’s encounter is intriguingly ambiguous.

“Oh, how fascinating it was! How she enjoyed it! How she loved sitting here, watching it all! It was like a play… They were all on the stage. They weren’t only the audience, not only looking on; they were acting.”
For once, she happily feels part of something - until an incident prompts painful reflection. We're often told the importance of introspection and knowing ourselves, but a piece like this makes one realise the risks as well.

In the end, it comes back to my grandparents, this time my grandfather: one of his favourite sayings was:
“Judge not, lest you be judged.”
I later learned it was Matthew 7:1.

See also

* This story is in the collection, The Garden Party. I’ve reviewed a couple of other stories from it:
- The Garden Party, HERE.
- The Daughters of the Late Colonel, HERE.
- Bliss is from a different collection, HERE.

* I loved CS Lewis’ Narnia books as a child. But not as an adult. See my review HERE.

* I could imagine a version of this story as an Alan Bennett Talking Heads monologue. See my review HERE.

* Shakespeare’s As You Like It includes the famous soliloquy, All the world’s a stage.

Quote

“Although it was so brilliantly fine - the blue sky powdered with gold and great spots of light like white wine splashed over the Jardins Publiques - Miss Brill was glad that she had decided on her fur. The air was motionless, but when you opened your mouth there was just a faint chill, like a chill from a glass of iced water before you sip, and now and again a leaf came drifting - from nowhere, from the sky.”

Short story club

I read this as one of the stories in The Art of the Short Story, by Dana Gioia, from which I'm aiming to read one story a week with The Short Story Club, starting 2 May 2022.

You can read this story here.

You can join the group here.

[Nika · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars

Miss Brill is a middle-aged woman living alone in a French town. We might assume that she earns her living by giving English lessons.

Her life may be dull and monotonous, but Miss Brill has one special day every week. She awaits Sundays when she, in a cheerful mood, heads to a nearby park.
Sitting on her favorite bench, her "special" seat, she observes all those strangers around. She watches them talking, laughing, silently passing by, or having an argument. Everything that plays out before her eyes interests her and holds her attention.
Miss Brill enjoys when she can overhear the conversations people around her are having. She gets irritated when they are silent. Learning about these strangers gives her genuine pleasure.

She [Miss Brill] had become really quite expert, she thought, at listening as though she didn't listen, at sitting in other people's lives just for a minute while they talked round her.

Miss Brill amuses herself with imagining the park being a big stage on which a performance is given and regarding herself as an actress having an important role in this performance.

However, Sundays do not always go smoothly. On one Sunday, Miss Brill happens to overhear something that upsets her. Something that makes her feel unhappy. Her self-esteem suffers an unexpected blow. The day is spoiled. Miss Brill feels rebuffed in what she seems to crave most - appreciation by others. Will she come another Sunday to the park? Will she soon be able to recover from that incident? I hope the answers to both questions are positive. It would be cruel to deny Miss Brill her brief moments of happiness. These Sunday strolls enable her to briefly disconnect from the reality that she lives in most of the time. By spending each Sunday in the park and embracing the moment, she probably attempts to escape that ubiquitous feeling of loneliness.
But it appears that the main character continues to feel lonely in the crowd, even when there are many people around.

This short story is well-written and full of subtle symbolism, but I was not fully engaged while reading it. Although I did not love it, I am glad to have read it.


The story can be read here. You can also listen to it on YouTube, as I did.

[Petra X · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pride comes before a fall, or so the saying goes. Miss Brill, the pompous and condescending old lady finds this out when she is seen as one of those weirdo eccentrics who sit in the park and talk to themselves. And she suddenly realises her place in the world.

Good story, well told, very sad. I hope it doesn't happen to me.

[Leonard Gaya · Rating 4 out of 5]

This taster of Katherine Mansfield’s prose includes three short stories centred around couples’ relationships and an inescapable sense of rejection and isolation. In all three, Mansfield displays an incredible mastery of narrative technique, chiefly based on a Flaubertian use of free indirect speech, a cutting irony, and bittersweet dénouements. The fact that two of these stories are told from the husband’s perspective is also quite remarkable.

“Marriage à la Mode” (1921) is about a man unable to communicate with his wife, who spends her time with a group of unconventional and sarcastic partygoers to ward off her feelings of boredom and shame.

“Miss Brill” (1920) is a short tale about a funny old lady and her fur. It starts on a glorious Sunday afternoon at the Jardin Public, with a kaleidoscopic spectacle of park-goers and band performance; it ends in a shabby little room, dark “like a cupboard”.

Finally, “The Stranger” (1921) takes place in New Zealand (Mansfield’s country of origin) and is about the reunion of a husband and his wife after a long separation. The husband’s possessiveness and jealousy, the wife’s heart-breaking experience during her absence, and the narrative structure; almost everything in this story evokes James Joyce’s “The Dead”, published a few years earlier.

[Duane Parker · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's difficult for me to describe why I love Katherine Mansfield's short stories so much. Their vibrations fit my vibrations I guess. This story has a simple premise, one identifiable character (Miss Brill), in a park setting, for one short afternoon. Yet Mansfield, in a few short pages bares the soul of this woman. Miss Brill is the Eleanor Rigby of short stories.

[Hanneke · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the second short story of Katherine Mansfield which I read and I am just blown away once again by her miraculous writing. Katherine Mansfield manages to conjure up Miss Brill in less than a page. The lonesome woman with her fur fox coat from which dull fox eyes stick out and which is wrapped around her shoulders. She is waiting very anxiously for a chance to talk to other people attending the Sunday concert in the park, but only if they seem to be a correct sort of people. Reading this short tale, your heart aches to witness in such a rare way the utmost loneliness of Miss Brill. What an outstanding poetic author Mansfield was!

[Linda · Rating 4 out of 5]

Miss Brill, the Eleanor Rigbyish protagonist of Katherine Mansfield's short story, connects with the wider world by visiting the same park each Sunday, observing the regulars, and eas-dropping on their conversations.She imagines it as a glorious play in which she is a participant. These Sunday outings served as a source of joy until her bubble burst.With her finely-tuned prose and excellent pacing, Manfield creates a compelling character study.

Thanks to GR friends Ilse and Daniel Schindler for inspiring me to read this story.

[PattyMacDotComma · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5★
“Miss Brill put up her hand and touched her fur. Dear little thing!”

With her furry friend draped around her neck, Miss Brill was ready for her Sunday walk. She likes to sit on ‘her’ bench and eavesdrop, not that she would ever call it that. She’s disappointed when the two older people who sit near her aren’t having a conversation. There’s nothing for her to listen to and imagine.

Then, she has an epiphany. She’s watching a play. She’s in a play herself!

“Miss Brill discovered what it was that made it so exciting. They were all on the stage. They weren’t only the audience, not only looking on; they were acting.”

Now she imagines she and her furry friend, probably the height of elegance in her mind, are an important part of the cast, part of the action. When a couple of younger people arrive ‘on the scene’, so to speak, they have a different take on everything.

My mother used to have a little fox collar (yes, with eyes and tail and little feet) that she wore on Sundays to church, as one did, back in the day. I thought it was creepy, and I think Miss Brill is a little – well, not exactly creepy or unhinged, but she might do better to go to church and find a friend. She certainly needs more than her little fur, poor woman.

This story is a hundred years old, but change the clothes, and it could be today.

I have always enjoyed Katherine Mansfield's writing. She shows rather than tells. We know this woman. We would recognise her and probably feel uncomfortable and wander past. It would be kinder if we joined her on her bench.

New Zealand has a great resource for Mansfield, one of their most famous authors. You can find this and other stories here:
https://nzetc.victoria.ac.nz/tm/schol...

Thanks to the Goodreads Short Story Club Group for selecting this one to read.

[Connie G · Rating 4 out of 5]

Miss Brill is a lonely spinster who enjoys spending her Sunday afternoons in the public gardens. She likes to "people watch" and listen to the band. She often eavesdrops on other people's conversations because it makes her feel like she is part of a community. Miss Brill imagines that she is part of a play where everyone in the park are actors, but her illusions are soon destroyed.

This short story is written in a stream of consciousness where we find out details about Miss Brill's life from her thoughts about other people in the park. It's about loneliness, and ignoring reality through illusions. There is also a divide between the vitality of youth and the older people sitting silently on the benches. Miss Brill is a sad story about someone who has a desperate need for human contact.

[Sean Barrs · Rating 3 out of 5]

Whilst I enjoyed the short stories in here, I was surprised that Bliss wasn’t included. It is her most renowned short story and, perhaps, her best one because it shows us the power of an unreliable narrator in a memorable way. I don’t think this edition is very helpful to those looking for an introduction to Mansfield, I’d recommend starting with Bliss.

The main story in here is called Miss Brill, and the character, Miss Brill, has built herself a little bubble to protect herself from reality; she has created a little fantasy life that is crumbling around her as her loneliness pushes in. She eavesdrops on people in the park and imagines future conversations with them that she will never have. She tries so hard to continue with her life, though she, ultimately, realises that she has been rejected by those around her: she is alone.

“Yes, I have been an actress for a long time.



Miss Brill is, indeed, a sad creature. She has practically detached herself from her own emotions; she seems unaware that it is, in fact, her crying at the destitute that is her life. She just doesn’t perceive that it’s herself. So this is a deeply felt little tale of woe. That being said though, Bliss is a much better short story. It is one you have to read a multitude of times to get the full effect and fully comprehend the remarkability of it. So, if you’re interested in Mansfield I’d start there.

Penguin Little Black Classic- 72



The Little Black Classic Collection by penguin looks like it contains lots of hidden gems. I couldn’t help it; they looked so good that I went and bought them all. I shall post a short review after reading each one. No doubt it will take me several months to get through all of them! Hopefully I will find some classic authors, from across the ages, that I may not have come across had I not bought this collection.

[Daniel Shindler · Rating 5 out of 5]

When reading a Katherine Mansfield story, one is drawn into a web of imagery, symbolism and intrigue. In “Miss Brill” the author assembles a series of emotion filled words and phrases to create a maze of hope and despair inhabiting a human heart.

Miss Brill, a middle aged teacher, lives in a French seaside resort town. During the week she is sequestered in her small drab lodgings. The dreary constrictions of her daily life are only alleviated by her Sunday routine. On Sunday, Miss Brill looks forward to her visit to the local park. On this one day in the week, Miss Brill is able to use her imagination to choreograph a setting that connects her to a pulsating world and holds her loneliness and isolation in abeyance. Seeking out her preferred bench, she eavesdrops on conversations, passes silent judgment on passers by and imagines herself as an important cog in a passing parade of humanity. Her delight can be so great that she salivates in anticipation of her Sunday slice of honey cake that she savors while rehashing the day’s events. On one Sunday, though, a young couple utters a quick and thoughtless phrase that transforms Miss Brill’s honey cake from an anticipatory joy to a sensory despair.

This story has the ability to viscerally convey the emotions of loneliness and hopelessness.The portrayal of these emotions is timeless and transcends the setting and location.When I was a youngster growing into my teens, I would explore my neighborhood and outlying areas. Wherever I went, I could always look up or around and notice solitary older women looking out of their windows for hours at a time. I often wondered what motivated these women to maintain their silent vigil day after day. The portrayal of Miss Brill connected me to the loneliness and isolation many of these women must have felt. I now know these women better than I did when I encountered them in my youth. Additionally, had any of these women ever met Miss Brill, they might have given a nod in recognition of a kindred spirit.

[Laysee · Rating 5 out of 5]

On a fine Sunday, ‘the blue sky powdered with gold,’ Miss Brill wore her fur stole and went to the Jardins Publiques, to hear the band play and to find congenial company for conversation. Part of the ‘entertainment’ was people-watching. She couldn’t help passing silent judgment on how others dressed: ‘… he wearing a dreadful Panama hat and she button shoes’. Mansfield subtly conveyed Miss Brill’s sense of superiority over the old folks who ‘looked as though they’d just come from dark little rooms or even – even cupboards.’ She took pleasure in watching the social interactions around her and even luxuriated in the thought that she was an actress taking part in a play. Then an encounter with an insensitive young couple ruined the sense of contentment she had tried so hard to summon up from the depths of her loneliness. Mansfield wrote with a keen sensitivity to the vulnerability hidden in her characters. The vivid and lush description of a resplendent day lent a keener edge to Miss Brill’s broken spirit.

[Dave Schaafsma · Rating 4 out of 5]

“They were all on the stage. They weren't only the audience, not only looking on: they were acting.”

“She had become really quite expert, she thought, at listening as though she didn't listen, at sitting in other people's lives just for a minute while they talked round her.”

Miss Brill is perhaps the best and certainly most anthologized Katherine Mansfield short story, about an isolated woman who has theoretically insulated herself from loneliness by building a fantasy life for herself, as she observes the small world she lives in. She goes to a park to listen to a band play as she watches people and imagines the reality before her.

“It was like a play, exactly like a play.”

I like the description throughout, that reveals connections to her emotional reality, such as:

“The air was motionless, but when you opened your mouth there was just a faint chill, like a chill from a glass of iced water before you sip, and now and again a leaf came drifting–from nowhere, from the sky”

and

"Behind the rotunda the slender trees with yellow leaves down drooping, and through them just a line of sea. . .”

If you look closely at the iceberg (cf, Hemingway, all the unsaid) of the story we can begin to construct a life in which she has become alone, perhaps. She notices a man talking down to a woman:
“ . . . he shook his head, lighted a cigarette, slowly breathed a great deep puff into her face. . . “
And then we hear “the drum beat, ‘The Brute! The Brute!’ over and over.”
“Miss Brill had wanted to shake her.”

Later, “A beautiful woman came along and dropped her bunch of violets, and a little boy ran after to hand them to her, and she took them and threw them away as if they'd been poisoned. Dear me! Miss Brill didn't know whether to admire that or not!”

And still later: “Just at that moment a boy and girl came and sat down where the old couple had been. They were beautifully dressed; they were in love.”
“No, not now," said the girl. "Not here, I can't."
"But why? Because of that stupid old thing at the end there?" asked the boy. "Why does she come here at all–who wants her? Why doesn't she keep her silly old mug at home?"
"It's her fu-ur which is so funny," giggled the girl. "It's exactly like a fried whiting."

So, a humiliation, a cruelty that breaks the plane of her play. All women and their callous men.

And then: “On her way home she usually bought a slice of honeycake at the baker's. It was her Sunday treat. Sometimes there was an almond in her slice, sometimes not. It made a great difference.” But she decides against it on this day. And later,

“. . . as she put the lid on, she thought she heard something crying.”

Of course it was her, the fantasy veneer cracked. She’s interestingly outside of herself, unavailable to herself. It’s a perfect illustration of dissociation. When, earlier, we learn she has read to an old man each week, the narrator asserts that she is so caught up in her little self-enclosed play world that she might have read to him days after he was dead. She is not really there! She's in her head! She’s “Eleanor Rigby,” and America’s “This is for All the Lonely People.” It’s a sad and sentimental story with lots to speculate about. I like thinking about it. It's really, really well done!

[Kathleen · Rating 4 out of 5]

“It was like some one playing with only the family to listen; it didn't care how it played if there weren't any strangers present.”

Miss Brill lives alone and visits the park every Sunday. She is acutely aware of the weather, the band’s music, and, of course, the people. She shares her observations here, and so much more comes through beyond her words.

This is the kind of very short story you want to read a few times and pay close attention to every phrase because each one is packed with meaning.

All the world may be a stage, but there are times when our lives feel so full and complete that the people around us have little impact. At other times, a little deflated maybe, those people gain prominence and power over us. Needy, we seek them out. At these times, when we open our eyes to see others, judge them, muse about their stories, it’s easy to forget they are looking back and seeing us.

Like other Mansfield stories I’ve read, this is full of observant, prescient detail. I enjoy reading single short stories and appreciating them on their own, but when I finished this, I wished I had the rest of the collection in my hands so I could continue reading. What a talent.

Can be read online here: https://jerrywbrown.com/wp-content/up...

[dianne b. · Rating 3 out of 5]

I’ve now read this sad little tale after being intrigued by Ilse’s review and given the link. See the dangers lurking on this GR website? Beware!

Published in 1920. It’s hard to imagine old women being so fragile just over 100 years ago. I believe few actually were, if any. They are the stuff of fiction.

My grandmother, in 1920, sans education, money, employment, or any familial support was about to be left by her husband to care for three small children; left to raise them throughout the Great Depression, raise them to live on their guts, wiles and humor, because those were available. Decades later, as an old woman (she lived to 88) she would not have heard something crying after the flippant insult of an entitled horny teenager. She might have smacked him with her cane, but I suspect she’d have laughed with pity.

But cry? Not a chance. Grandma Jo had long since made a pledge. Made at a much earlier age, just about ma petite chere’s age, and a pledge she kept to her grave, that she’d shed her last tear.

So I think, tragic as this story was; the tragedy lay in the smallness of Miss Brill's world; the circumspection of its joys, the fragility of its imaginings. She was very blessed, however- to live that long and still actually care at all about what other people think of her. That is a cosseted life, indeed.

***
Should you want to read this short short tale here is the story’s link:
https://nzetc.victoria.ac.nz/tm/schol...

If you want to read a more subtle, more literary, and much more insightful review, I highly recommend Ilse's:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

[Liz Janet · Rating 2 out of 5]

The main story here is the story of a lady that spends her time listening into people’s conversations as she sits in the park, and then she begins creating her own imaginary world as her loneliness becomes more evident. In the end, it is a tale of isolation, and it made me quite sad to think of poor Miss Brill in her bench, and how some people in the story make fun of her. Karma is not nice.
..........................................
This book was read for the #readwomen month.
My favourite of her stories (Bliss) was not shown here, that one would have definitely put this short collection into the four-stars range.
The main story here is about an old lady and how the fantasy world she has created is caving around her as her loneliness seeps through. It is about her finding her place in the world after being judgmental of everyone else. A brilliant warning piece.

[Michelle Curie · Rating 4 out of 5]

"And again, as always, he had the feeling he was holding something that never was quite his. Something too delicate, too precious, that would fly away once he let go."

Katherine Mansfield got some serious skill. My God, she knows how to write a story for sure. In this Little Black Classic we get presented three of her short stories and each individually impressed me.



I love good writing (duh). Give me some pretty, poetic phrases and I'll be all over you. Not everyone is capable of using the right words, but Katherine Mansfield is able to go beyond that - and write smart stories. Stories that entertain, but let you do some work for yourself, too. While her writing is pristine and precise, there's enough room in her narratives to allow interpretations and coming to your own conclusions. Show and don't tell they say and this is what they must mean.

In Marriage à la Mode we have a wife who found herself some new bourgeois friends and emotionally growing distant from her husband through all those new exciting things she's now doing that he is just too boring for. The Stranger let's us in on a husband's mind, who does not realise how he's obsessing about his wife.



Miss Brill is the most heart-wrenching one of them, about a schoolteacher who goes to Public Gardens on Sundays. The narrator tells us how much she enjoys her trips in solitude, her little rituals like picking up a slice of cake as a present for herself and listening in on other people's conversations:

"She had become really quite expert, she thought, at listening as though she didn't listen, at sitting in other people's lives for just a minute while they talked round her."

Sounds like she's having a brilliant time, but as a reader you notice the underlying loneliness. It's a bit like she's trying to convince herself that the life she's living is fulfilling, but you know better. Try not to feel anything when reading that. Short stories don't get any better than this.

In 2015 Penguin introduced the Little Black Classics series to celebrate Penguin's 80th birthday. Including little stories from "around the world and across many centuries" as the publisher describes, I have been intrigued to read those for a long time, before finally having started. I hope to sooner or later read and review all of them!

[[ J o ] · Rating 3 out of 5]

I did so much enjoy these New Zealand short stories, though I'm not certain why. Written well, but often subtle and vague, which often infuriates me. Occasionally with pointless moments, but also of the kind that speak to you across the ages.

[Hossein Sharifi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Summary
Although the day was warm, Miss Brill was happy she had decided to wear her fur. She had taken it out that morning for the first time all season, brushing its coat and polishing its eyes. She enjoyed the way its sad eyes looked up at her and how soft the fur was. Miss Brill called it “little rogue” and liked how its head tickled her behind the ear. She was so happy she thought about putting the fur on her lap and stroking it.
هرچند هوا گرم بود اما دوشیزه بریل خوشحال بود تصمیم گرفته بود که خَز بپوشه. بعد از مدتها اون رو درآورده بود و بهش رسیده بود.
Sitting on her usual bench at the Jardins Publiques, a public local garden, Miss Brill adjusted her fur and watched all of the people around her while a band played nearby. There were more people than usual and the band was playing beautifully to entertain them. Miss Brill liked to watch all of the people and listen to their conversations, without them knowing she was listening in. She had perfected a technique of looking uninterested in her surroundings but in reality she was an avid observer of life at the gardens.
بریل جای همیشگیش توی یک پارک نشسته و داره خز رو تنظیم میکنه روی شونش و مردم دارن نگاهش میکنن. همونجا هم یک گروه موسیقی در حال نواختنه. مردم از همیشه بیشتر اند و گروه داره قشنگ آهنگ میزنه. بریل دوست داره که یواشکی به مردم نگاه کنه و حرفاشون رو گوش بده. اون تو این تکنیکی که خودش رو بی تفاوت نشون بده اما در حقیقت حواسش به همه جا باشه استاده.
An old couple sat near her but they were not very entertaining and sat as still as statues. She watched the crowd as they passed as she did every Sunday, no matter the season. Miss Brill came to realize that nearly all of the people she observed at the gardens on Sundays were somewhat odd. They had a pale look about them, as if they had all been hiding in cupboards and were only now coming out for fresh air.
یک زوج مسن کنارش میشنن ولی اصا سرگم کننده نیستن. بیشتر مث مجسمه می مونن. اون به جمعیت نگاه میکنه که مثل همیشه هر شنبه از جلوش رد میشن و مهم نیس که چه فصلی باشه. بریل می فهمه که هرکسی رو توی پارک شنبه ها میبینه یه جوری عجیب غریبه. همشون رنگاشون پریده است انگار یه جا گیر کردن و الان برای هوای تازه اومدن بیرون.
Behind the band’s rotunda Miss Brill had a perfect view of the sea, a beautiful backdrop to the stories unfolding before her. Two girls walked past and were joined by two soldiers. A woman with a straw hat ambled by with a donkey. An attractive woman went past, dropping her flowers. A young boy stopped her and gave her back the bouquet but the woman tossed them down again. Miss Brill wasn’t sure what to make of that.
پشت گروه موسیقی، بریل نمای خوبی از دریا می بینه. دوتا دختر میبینه که به دوتا سرباز ملحق میشن و با اونا دور میشن. یک زن رو میبینه با کلاه حصیری و یک خر که با هم راه میرن. یک پسر جوان جلوی اون زن رو میگیره و اون دسته گلی که روی زمین انداخته رو بهش میده ولی اون دوباره پرتش میکنه روی زمین. بریل هم نمیدونه به چه نتیجه ای میرسه با این.
Another woman wearing an ermine toque appeared with a gentleman. Although the woman was trying very hard to keep the man’s attention, he blew smoke rings in her face and then left her behind. The band seemed to sense her mood and played more softly. Eventually the woman left and an old man appeared bobbing his head to the music. Four girls almost knocked him over and Miss Brill was thrilled with them all.
یک زن دیگه رو میبینه که یه مدل خز پوشیده و با شوهرشه. هرچند که زن داره خیلی سعی میکنه که حواس مرد رو جمع کنه اما مرده دود سیگار رو فوت میکنه تو صورت زن و اون رو عقب جا میزاره. انگار گروه موسیقی حالت اون رو می دونن که دارن نرم تر و لطیف تر آهنگ میزنن. در آخر زن میره و یک مردی میاد که داره سرش رو به هوای آهنگ تکون میده . چهارتا دختر تقریبا اون رو زمین زدن و بریل از دیدن همه اینا هیجان زده شده بود.
It was like watching a play where the sea was the backdrop; the band the orchestra and all of the people were the actors. Even Miss Brill was apart of the production! Miss Brill had had always been very mysterious when her students asked her how she spent her Sunday afternoons. She had gone so far as to tell the elderly gentlemen that she read to during the week that she was an experience actress. And as the band struck up a playful tune, Miss Brill wanted to sing aloud, believing that when she did all of the people around her would join in. They were only waiting for their cue.
مثل نگاه کردن نمایشی بودش که دریا صحنه ی پشت نمایشه. انگار همه ی مردم و اعضای گروه بازیگرای نمایش ان. حتا انگار بریل هم از اعضای تولید نمایشنامه اس. دوشیزه بریل همیشه خیلی مرموز میشد وقتی دانش آموزاش میپرسیدن که عصر شنبه هاش رو چجوری میگذرونه. ته تهش به مردای مسن گفته بود که طول هفته رو مطالعه میکرده چون یک بازیگر کارکشته است.
بریل میخواد با صدای بلند همزمان با گروه موسیقی بخونه و فکر میکنه اگه این کار رو بکنه بقیه مردم هم اونجا بهش می پیوندن و باهاش میخونن. فقط منتظر یک تلنگر ان انگاری.
Miss Brill was just preparing her voice when a handsome boy and girl sat down on the bench with Miss Brill. She immediately recognized them as the hero and heroine of the play and prepared to listen to their conversation.
بریل داشت صدای خودش رو آماده میکرد وقتی که دید یه پسر و دختر زیبا کنارش نشستن. اونا رو مثل قهرمان نمایشنامه ی خودش دونست و آماده شد که حرفاشون رو بشنوه...
The girl said she would not kiss the boy while seated on the bench. The boy said “But why? Because of that stupid old thing at the end there? Why does she come here at all-who wants her? Why doesn’t she keep her silly old mug at home?” (113). The girl laughed and said Miss Brill’s fur was funny looking.
دختر گفتش که پسره رو بوس نمیکنه وقتی اونجا رو صندلی نشستن . پسره سوال کرد خوب چرا؟ بخاطره اون چیز احمقانه ای که آخر اونجایه؟ (منظور احتمال سر خَز باشه). چرا اون اصا اینجا میاد؟؟ هیچکس اون رو نمیخواد؟؟؟ دختر خندید و گفتش که خز دوشیزه بریل قیافه ی مضحکی داره.
On the way home Miss Brill usually stopped to buy a slice of honey-cake from the bakery. Sometimes there was an almond in her slice and sometimes there was not. She always felt very special on the days she found an almond in her cake. Today; however, Miss Brill walked straight past the bakery and headed home.
معمولا وقتایی که بر میگرده خونه میره یه برش کیک عسلی از نون وایی میخره. بعضی وقتا توی کیک بادام هست و بعضی وقتا نیس. اون روزایی که بادام پیدا میکنه خیلی احساس خاصی داره. اما امروز بریل از جلو نونوایی رد شد و مستقیم به طرف خونه رفت.
Sitting on the side of her bed, in her little dark room, which felt like a cupboard, she took off her fur and quickly placed it inside its box “but when she put the lid on she thought she heard something crying” (114).
کنار تختش بریل تو اتاق تاریک نشسته و تقریبا شبیه یک گنجه احساس میشه. خز رو خیلی سریع از دور گردنش بر می داره و میزارش توی جعبه. اما همین که در جعبه رو میزاره احسا میکنه یه چیزی توی جعبه گریه میکنه و جیغ میکشه.



Characters:
MAJOR characters:
Miss Brill Character
The protagonist of the story, which is named after her. She is an unmarried woman – a spinster according to the time and culture the story depicts – who works as a teacher as well as a newspaper reader for an old man. In both of these aspects of her life she feels bereft of meaning and connection: the children don’t listen to her and the man doesn’t seem to care whether she reads to him or not. For this reason she comes to the park every Sunday to watch both the band perform and the people playing as they listen to the band. Over the course of the story she imagines herself as part of an elaborate stage production in which she herself plays a vital role, but an encounter with a boy and girl who dismiss both her and the fur coat she cherishes – but that is actually quite shabby – forces her to reassess her place in the world and makes her retreat back home to her renewed loneliness and alienation.

Ermine toque and Gentleman in grey
Ermine is a type of white fur and a toque is a type of woman’s hat. Miss Brill identifies the woman by nothing more than her clothes, thus placing utmost importance on this aspect because she understands clothes as a mark of one’s importance in and engagement with society. Though the ermine toque and gentleman in grey speak pleasantly with one another, Miss Brill notices how the woman’s hair is faded into the same color as her hat, which is also worn-out.

Fine old man and big old woman
This pair sits near Miss Brill on the stands, though they do not talk to each other and so Miss Brill has no one to listen to. They are dressed nicely and elegantly, but, just like everyone else in the stands, they seem tired and aged. After they leave, the boy and girl sit in their spot.

Minor Characters

Boy and Girl
Two young adults. They are a well-dressed couple that sit near Miss Brill and quickly and loudly state that they wish Miss Brill wasn’t there. They then make fun of Miss Brill’s fur coat, and call her a “fried whiting.”

Old Man
Miss Brill reads to this man four days a week from the newspaper, but he hardly notices her presence, and does not seem to be listening.

Englishman and his wife
A couple on whom Miss Brill eavesdropped the week before. They argued over spectacles (i.e. eyeglasses), because the wife refused every option available to her. Miss Brill was so frustrated by the wife’s ridiculous behavior that she wished to shake her.

Symbols
Fur Coat and Garments
At the start of the story, Miss Brill speaks fondly to her coat as if it is alive. This strange behavior can be seen as reflecting her nostalgia for a lost youth, when her coat was new and she was at the hopeful age of marriageability At the end of the story, she puts it back into its box, “without looking”, and “she thought she heard something crying”. This arc from fond engagement with her fur coat to her final rejection of it mirrors how she feels about her own place in society over the course of the story: at first she thinks she is part of the community, a participant in the scene she sees around her, but at the end of the story, after she is rejected by the boy, she concludes that she is not important to anyone else at all. The fur coat in which she delights, she sees in that moment, is actually rather shabby and old, and Miss Brill puts away her coat with the same callousness exhibited by the boy, while its “crying” reflects her own despair. Garments in general in the story – such as the ermine toque, the conductor’s coat, or the boy and girl’s beautiful clothes – serve as a marker of class and importance in the story: if you are not well-dressed, you are not well-regarded either.

Fried Whiting
The “fried whiting” – or a cooked fish – does not actually appear in the story as a physical entity, but the boy uses the image as a way to swiftly describe and dismiss Miss Brill. Thus, the fried whiting is invisible just as Miss Brill is in her society. The deadness of the fish (for it is cooked), in turn, expresses the irrelevance and nonexistence of Miss Brill for those around her – no one will miss her if she is not there. Additionally, a whiting fish is rather unattractive and, because it is common, unremarkable; this suggests how Miss Brill blends into her society: she is at once unseen and also undesirable.

Themes
Loneliness and Alienation
Miss Brill, the protagonist of the story, is a spinster – a word used, at the time of the publication of the story, to refer to an unmarried woman – who spends her days teaching schoolchildren and reading the newspaper to a half-dead man who cares little for her presence. Miss Brill yearns for conversation, yet both the students and the old man don’t listen to her.
Her weekly visits to the park are a result of her loneliness and alienation and her desire to exist and interact with a wider world. At the park, she watches and listens to the people and goings on around her and in that way feels like a part of the community. And though she is essentially alone in the stands—an old man and old woman sit next to her, but don’t speak—she finds a way to include herself in what she watches. She sees all of the people, in their separate interactions, as being part of an elaborate stage production. And she thinks of the people in the stands, including herself, not as audience members but rather as performers too. She thinks of herself as being such a part of the production that if she were missing someone would be bound to notice. Indeed, she thinks that she might tell the old man who cares little for her presence that “I have been an actress for a long time.”
Yet the only conversation Miss Brill holds in the entire story is with her fur coat. She is not a part of the community, and the reader understands this with the same pang of pain that Miss Brill feels when she overhears the boy and the girl mock her fur coat as old and shabby and speak about her as if she has no right to sit next to them. In this way, the community she thinks she belongs to rejects her, and Miss Brill retreats back to her apartment and lonely life. Her curiosity and desire to connect makes her vulnerable and ends up leading her to realize her alienation from the people she saw as a source of life’s excitement.

Delusion and Reality
“Miss Brill” alerts us to the title character’s tendency towards delusion and fantasy from the very start, when she starts speaking fondly to her fur coat. Miss Brill is not actually out of her mind, but she is desperate for communication with others. In order to feel a part of something, she goes to the park each week, where she enjoys watching all the people who come to enjoy the band and play on the field. Though Miss Brill is not delusional about what she sees, nor does she speculate much about what she hears—she takes things as she they come—she does begin to feel how connected everyone is to one another, that everyone is a player on a stage, and that she herself is part of the play. Indeed, she thinks that people would miss her if she were not to be there.
However, Mansfield shows Miss Brill to be rather self-deluded about her place in the community when a boy and girl dismiss her, saying, “Who wants her?” The couple’s exchange forces Miss Brill to face the reality of her alienation, and the illusion that Miss Brill builds around herself to feel connected to others comes apart. Through the cruelty of others, Miss Brill begins to understand her own self-delusion. And yet, as the story ends with Miss Brill sadly packing away her fur coat, the story asks the reader to think about how important it is to be realistic about one’s own life, and whether some delusion is necessary for happiness.

Connectedness
Miss Brill, during the time she spends in the park, constantly looks for connections between people. She notices how two young girls and two soldiers meet each other and laugh. She sees a boy picking up a bunch of flowers a woman has dropped. She notices a woman in an ermine torque and a gentleman speaking to each other and imagines what they are saying to one another. These are not Miss Brill’s imaginings; they are real interactions between separate and different individuals who nonetheless mean something to one another. The theory that Miss Brill develops, that everyone belongs to part of a tremendous stage production, remains a valid way to understand and visualize how everyone together makes up a community or a society.
Miss Brill has a strong desire for people not only to be connected to one another, but also for these connections to be positive. The week before an Englishman and his wife were arguing about something so silly that Miss Brill wanted to shake the woman. What happens within the connections Miss Brill observes has a visceral effect on her. Put another way, even though Miss Brill deludes herself about her own importance in the scene around her, Miss Brill herself feels connected to the people she watches. That feeling of connectedness also isn’t a delusion: she feels connected, which makes it real. To some extent, that the other characters don’t feel as connected to her doesn’t matter, doesn’t lessen the reality of the connection she feels. Of course, once the cruelty and rudeness of the boy and girl makes Miss Brill view herself through the eyes of others and get the sense that those others don’t feel connected to her, she retreats in pain from what to her now seem like unrequited connections. The pain Miss Brill feels, then, asserts both the importance of feeling connection to human beings and how trying to forge such connections makes one vulnerable. At the same time, it is worth noting how much more noble and exciting Miss Brill’s sense of a universe of connections is to the callous cruelty of the boy and the girl. The story’s power comes not just from the tragedy of Miss Brill’s pain after realizing how others see her and then shutting herself away, but also from the ruin of the beauty of her vision of the connectedness of all people.

Analysis of Miss Brill
The self-titled protagonist blurs the line between fantasy and reality on an ordinary Sunday outing to the public gardens. There, she imagines she is taking part in a grand play when in reality she is merely sitting alone on a bench observing the world around her. Mansfield takes particular care in establishing a sense of realism in "Miss Brill." Although the exact location is ambiguous, Mansfield’s descriptions of the public gardens and the imagery of the many people who Miss Brill observes, helps create a rich, atmospheric setting of movement and commotion. The motif of music, often used by Mansfield to set the tone of her stories, is utilized in "Miss Brill" to reflect the various moods of the characters as they interact. Miss Brill notes the reflective quality of the music in her own observations, using it as a backdrop for the imaginative scenes developing in her own mind.
Mansfield, a modernist, often experimented with structure and narration in her work both of which center on the use of internal monologue in "Miss Brill." Internal monologue was often employed by the modernists to express the thoughts of the characters without disturbing their actions. Mansfield’s use of internal monologue in the character of Miss Brill breaks free its usual constraints because Miss Brill begins to believe her distorted reality is true. The story’s structure is divided between what Miss Brill thinks and what is really happening in the story. The third person narrative supports the structure, creating a rounder picture of Miss Brill’s circumstances while the internal monologue allows the reader access to Miss Brill’s inner, fascinating world.
As a character, Miss Brill lives in two distinct worlds. In reality she is a schoolteacher who spends her spare time volunteering and goes to the public gardens on Sundays. A private woman, Miss Brill enjoys the simple pleasures of life like almonds in pastries and seems content in her solitude. Her inward life; however is very different. She images that she is a great actress and dresses herself in fur, most likely a fox head stole which is draped around the neck. Note that the fox’s eyes are glassy when Miss Brill takes the stole from its box, essentially freeing it from storage now that the weather is getting cooler. She strokes and pets the fox’s fur as if it were alive and once she is at the public garden she wants to put the stole on her lap and pet it, as if it were alive. In doing so Miss Brill’s grasp on the difference between reality and fantasy begins to shift. A people watcher, Miss Brill imagines the rich and diverse lives of those around her, observing them and pretending they are apart of her inner world. Note that Miss Brill remains sitting while everyone else around her is in some form of motion. Their lives are full and active while Miss Brill’s remains stationary. Note too her preoccupation with observing couples. Perhaps she yearns to be loved but for her own reasons would rather watch rather than participate suggesting low self-esteem. Interestingly, Miss Brill does not cast herself as the lead in her imaginary play but the performer who opens the show with a song. Just as her imagination has gotten the best of her, Miss Brill physi

[Janelle · Rating 4 out of 5]

Miss Brill is a sad story of a lonely woman. She enjoys going to a weekly outdoor concert, getting dressed up in her fur (now rather shabby) and sitting in the same place, watching the people go by. And then it’s all spoilt when she overhears some young people talking about her. The careless cruelty of the young!

[Katy · Rating 4 out of 5]

This short story by Katherine Mansfield highlights MissBrill taking her regular Sunday afternoon stroll in the park. It seems she imagines herself to be in the privileged set of society as she takes in the band and watches all the visitors, imagining herself to be part of the activities, like in a play. She expresses her views (in thought anyway), of the people she sees. Judging them by what they wear, what they say (as she eavesdrops), who they are with, and clearly considers herself to be above them all. Then upon overhearing a young couple make a comment on her, referencing her elderly appearance and her ratty fur stole, her daydreaming bubble is burst bringing her down to someone no better than the rest. She abruptly leaves the scene and forgoes her usual stop at the bakery coming to the realization that she is not whom she imagined herself to be. An oh-so-sad ending to what started as a lovely “walk in the park” on a sunny brisk day.

Lovely emotion filled writing providing vivid images of the setting and characters. You could almost hear the band, the lively chattering of the park patrons, the warmth of the sun in the brisk afternoon, and then the biting comments suddenly bring the gaiety of the moment to a crushing halt for poor Miss Brill.

[Vanessa · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was my first taste of Katherine Mansfield, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. This book contains three of her stories - Marriage à La Mode, Miss Brill, and The Stranger.

Out of the three, Marriage à La Mode was my absolute favourite. I found it cutting and funny, and a great comment on society and personal identity. It was an incredibly clever story, and one I would highly recommend everyone check out. Miss Brill, the title story, was sweet but ultimately quite sad, and the final story The Stranger, although my least favourite of the three, was a great look at marital jealousy.

I'm glad I picked up this mini collection, and am looking forward to reading The Montana Stories in September.

[George Ilsley · Rating 5 out of 5]

There is a faint chill in the air and Miss Brill was glad that she had decided on her fur. She gave "it a good brush, and rubbed the life back into the dim little eyes."

The fur is one of those peculiar types which no longer seem to exist — the whole animal, biting its tail.

Those dim little eyes can now see more clearly, and judges the attire and demeanour of all those encountered on Miss Brill's Sunday outing to the band stand in the park.

We are all on a stage, Miss Brill decides, and she too is an actress. But is devastated when she discovered her role, the part she is playing, the way she is viewed by some of the other actors.

Oh, Miss Brill. Living her life through that fur piece with a spongy black nose, attached to its own tail.

[Stacey B · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very short story.
It sends different messages to the readers.

[Chrissie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Available free online here: http://www.katherinemansfieldsociety....

A quick observation of how people critically view others. If they stop .... and take the time to think, how will they view themselves?

Delightfully descriptive writing of a middle-aged English teacher, sitting in a park n France, on a lovely Sunday afternoon. She is listening to the oumph-pah-pah of the garden band with her ear tuned not only to the band but also to those around her. She sees the world as a stage. She condescendingly observes those around her. Then she realizes, they are observing and judging her too!

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The Garden Party 3 stars
Miss Brill 3 stars
Pictures 3 stars
Feuille d'Album 2 stars

[Kabrina · Rating 5 out of 5]

Miss Brill reminded me of myself and I was surging with happiness that an author could put in to words the feelings I get-which seem so hard to explain to people who are often completely inside their heads and overly cynical-every other day.

When I read the young couple judging her, I teared up. It cut too close to home, along with feeling bad for them attacking a person who did nothing but be.

I know what it feels like to wear something-deemed weird by many- just because you like it and to be truly happy with just simply living-in your own little, content world-and have someone flatten your esteem.

What's worse is when this feeling is a huge part of your personality...