Who Is The Protagonist In Miss Brill

Katherine Mansfield’s short story, Miss Brill, is a well-written story of an elderly, unmarried woman in Europe. In Miss Brill, Katherine Mansfield uses stream-of-consciousness point of view to show alienation and loneliness, appearances and reality, and Miss Brill’s perceptions as she attempts to make herself fit in with the park goers. Miss Brill is an older lady who makes a living teaching English to school children and reading newspapers to an “old invalid gentleman” (Wilson 2: 139). Her joy in life comes in her visits to the park on Sunday where she is notorious for “sitting in on other people’s lives” (Wilson 2: 140). It is there that her ritualistic, monotonous journey that Miss Brill refers to as a “play” takes place.

In the Bedford Introduction to Literature, Characterization is defined as "... the process by which a writer makes that character seem real to the reader"(2126). In order to do this a writer has multiple tools at their disposal that add to the depth of a character and simplify roles in a story. This includes the use of Protagonists and Antagonists, static and dynamic characters, showing and telling, and motivated and plausible action, as well as many others. The short story "Miss Brill" by Katherine Mansfield is no exception to this and displays the main character of Miss Brill as the protagonist, who is confronted with the reality of her existence.

Loneliness is the state of being alone with no human or living creature near you; the emptiness inside a person. Katherine Mansfield’s short story “Miss Brill” and Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story “The Yellow Wallpaper” use similar literary element of situational irony, and provide insight into the protagonists’ own conflicting struggles with society through social norms. Both short stories protagonist characters in “Miss Brill” and “The Yellow Wallpaper” struggle with their identity, their place as a woman in society, and loneliness in different ways because of their age. The two short stories are similar in their use of irony and conflict.

Writing in the third person objectively makes him just the observer. He is indifferent towards both the man and the girl. In this story, the authors job is not to educate the reader of what the characters are thinking, for it is up to the reader to distinguish what he or she thinks of the situation. Instead of telling the reader what the characters are thinking or emotions they are feeling, he instead incorporates things such as verbal irony, to show what the characters are feeling, and symbols to represent alternative

When reading Miss Brill written by Katherine Mansfield. The story starts off in the perspective of Mrs. Brill a elderly lady wearing a fur coat. This is when the story starts to progress, Mrs. Brill decides to wear her fur coat to the public garden. She then proceeds to sit in the garden on a bench and observe the various foot traffic. She would sit and observe and listen to the peoples conversation without them noticing her ease dropping. The garden was quite busy that day due to the band that usually plays there playing so beautifully. An elderly couple come and sit by Mrs. Brill on the bench, they were not interesting to Mrs. Brill. Mrs. Brill started to notice that the people on Sundays were usually very odd, they looked very pale like they had been in a cupboard all week and only came out for fresh air. Two girls then walked by Mrs. Brill they were accompanied by two

In the short story “Miss Brill” the protagonist, Miss Brill, is a lonely and isolated woman who likes to spend her Sunday afternoon’s in the park observing everyone around her and listening to their conversations without them knowing. We can infer that Miss Brill has created her own fantasy world to escape the harsh reality of her own life. At the end of the story the audience can come to the conclusion that Miss Brill experienced an epiphany that will change her life.

1. Despite mention of passersby, Miss Brill is the focal point in this story. How does Mansfield develop her character?

“Day of the Butterfly”, On page 33, the author points out “In small towns you have no privacy at all. You have a role, a character, but one that other people have made out for you.” The quote by the author points that in her story loneliness is expressed, because people peg you by your appearance and stay away. On page 35 the teacher Mrs. Darling says” Well, why is she never playing

A narrator, who is without a name, tells of his first hand experiences throughout the story. This is in contrast to ‘Miss Brill’ in which narrative is delivered in the third person, with the use of free indirect speech to depict the story and portray the characters. By Wells selecting a first person narrative he draws the reader closer into the character’s mind set. This gives Wells the ability to convey the primary characters full spectrum of emotional thought, from open mindedness to the conflict and fear within him. First narrative provides the reader insight to thoughts and observations therefore adding suspense of the unknowing into the gothic style.

She is an elderly woman, but she is not a “normal” old woman. "The old people sat on the bench, still as statues. Never mind, there was always the crowd to watch.” This quote shows what Miss Brill thinks about elderly people. By doing this, she is acting like a teenager, sort of immature. She likes to be different from the other elderly people or people who act like old people. In the same way, when she saw old people who were sitting on benches, she said that they were "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!” In this way, she is putting herself away from that “old people”. She describes them in a negative tone and showing that she is much more than one typical frail old

In the story "Miss Brill," an old, lonely lady spends her Sunday observing people in a park. Although ignored by everyone around her, Miss Brill manages to convince herself that she is really an integral part of the scene and would be missed if she weren't there. Her illusion is shattered by a chance remark at the end of the story, and she returns home, clearly devastated by her new understanding of her place in life. What this story is trying to illustrate is that sometimes people can be happy through living in an illusion. However, this kind of happiness is fragile and can be easily destroyed.

about the depths of her loneliness. Loneliness and desire are integral to Blanche's being. She

The lady’s solitude is evident in the multiple actions that she does on her own, being unable to fill her shallow basket, sighing inwardly for her husband and leaving the basket on the road. The image of the basket, a single object in a vast expanse of the big road, can also be seen to reflect her solitude. In spite of the vibrancy and lushness of the natural environment around her, as seen in the line “thick grows the cocklebur”, her loneliness overwhelms

In “Miss Brill” by Katherine Mansfield, the reader is given a sense of the way that Miss Brill perceives the world around her “like white wine splashed over” the Jardins Publiques she visits every Sunday. Miss Brill is optimistic and inquisitive about the lives of the other visitors to the park and from her “special seat” weaves herself into their stories eavesdropping on their conversations to form her own opinion of the quality of their lives (Mansfield 1). We learn the reality as the story progresses, that her perception of others and most importantly herself is skewed and when hit with the harsh reality that her world is not as wonderful as she perceives she feel shame and sadness for her lonely life.

Miss Brill is a single woman, probably in her mid to late fifties. She lives alone in a very small space without even a cat or bird. She has a collection of vintage clothing. Her physical appearance is only alluded to in the 18-paragraph short story by Mansfield, but in reading about a day in her life, one has the impression of an intelligent, sensitive