Miss Brill

Ms. Brill from the story "Miss Brill" is a very judgemental and lonely person. Katherine Mansfield uses many different foil characters in the book that reflect who Miss Brill truly is. Miss Brill never actually has any encounters of her own but rather she lives through the lives of others because there is no purpose to her life, not realizing that, she continues, listening in on people, to go to the same park every Sunday where her dillusions come alive. When Miss Brill travels to the park she is very judgemental to everyone she sees and imagines herself as if she was in a play and that the park was like a stage and if she didn't go there then she would surely be missed. Miss Brills character i reflected through the many people that she sees, asseses, and judges, yet she still manages to find no fault in herself. For example, when Miss Brill is watching the woman in the ermine toque she believes that what this woman i weraing is ugly but also, when this older woman is turned down by someone she takes a moment then walks away as if nothing was wrong. The ermine touque woman, who is a foil character of Miss Brill, acts as if nothing is wrong and just keeps moving on in life just like Miss Brill does. Miss Brill doesn't see the faults in herself but only the people around her such as the woman who is complaing about glasses who she just wants to shake when, truthfully, she is seeing her own faults in other people but doesn't realize it yet. Another way that she judges the people and, appearing hypocritical, looks at them and sees them as people who have just crawled out of their cupboards when really she is the one crawling out of a cupboard. Miss Brills temperament is that of a childs especially at the end of the story when she is insulted because she was listening in on others conversations and they were talking about her and wondering why she just didn't stay at home and so, like a child, Miss Brill goes home, not even treating herself to a piece of cake because she is so sad. The nature of Miss Brill is that she lives in her own world where everything is just a certain way that she doesn't realize what's missing in her world in reality because of her childish temperament and the way that she lets many things affect her mood in such a way that they will either make or ruin her day.