Monday, September 21, 2009
We view the people and events of "Miss Brill" by Katherine Mansfield almost entirely through the eyes and feelings of its protagonist. The author relies upon indirect presentation for her characterization of Miss Brill. Write as full of an account as you can of the nature and temperament of the story's main character.
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The nature and temperament of Miss Brill in the story “Miss Brill” by Katherine Mansfield is very strange and unusual for an elderly English teacher, who would normally appear as a wise, well rounded, and intellectual character. In contrast to that stereotype, Miss Brill is judgmental of people whom she knows nothing about, rude, because she listens in on conversations that are going on around her, and purposely blind to the reality that she has no life. Miss Brill is also immature because when that fact that she is an old thing and not wanted in the park bursts her bubble, which is the belief that life is a stage and the play wouldn’t be able to continue if she wasn’t there, she hikes home with out her cake. When she reaches her cupboard type house she puts away her fur, which is a symbol of her youth, back in its box, symbolizing her not taking advice and continuing to hide away her bad habits and beliefs in her mind. In a way Miss Brill is hypocritical without knowing it. She judges peoples actions, looks, and lives, but she doesn’t judge her own. Even though she is not aware however of how wrong she is, she also never takes the time to consider the judgment passed by others and correct herself.
ReplyDeleteIn “Miss Brill” the author, Katherine Mansfield uses the protagonists’ thoughts to demonstrate the nature and temperament of Miss Brill. The entire story is told through the eyes and mind of the childish, judgmental, lonely woman. One fact that catches the readers’ eye in this story and makes them question Miss Brill’s personality is the fact that she is an English teacher. Miss Brill is an old lady who is supposed to be a role model for children and yet she acts so evidently childish throughout the whole story. Every Sunday after she goes to the public gardens she stops at the bakers and gets some cake. One Sunday, when she overheard a young couple talking about her and saying how she was an old hag and should just stay home, she childishly ran home without getting her cake. This shows how immature and childish Miss Brill acts in the story, she lets the things that happen around her affect her mood significantly. Another example of her being immature is how she lets the music that the band is playing affect her mood. When they played gay music she was happy and had a smile on her face, but when the band switched to playing slower music she became sad. Another characteristic of Miss Brill that the reader sees through the story is that she is extremely judgmental. As she sits in the public garden she does nothing but listens to other people’s conversations and makes radical assumptions about their lives. Through the mind of Miss Brill the reader comes to see that she is immature and judgmental and because of these things she has a missed epiphany. Because she lives her life through other people she does not realize that she herself has flaws as well.
ReplyDeleteIn “Miss Brill,” by Katherine Mansfield, the protagonist Miss Brill, is used to present the story to the readers. Every Sunday Miss Brill goes to Jardins Publiques, sits in her “special” seat, and waits for people to sit near her so she can eaves drop and make judgments on them. Throughout the story Mansfield shows that Miss Brill is a loner and very hypocritical, because she intrudes on other people’s life’s and judges peoples looks, actions, conversations, etc. Further into the story, Miss Brill comes up with the idea that every person that attends the park on Sundays are all actors in a play, and that everyone plays their own part. She says that she also plays a part, and if she were not there people would notice her absence. Mansfield shows us that Miss Brill does not think highly of herself, because she is always judging everyone but herself. Also Miss Brill’s fox fur that she wears every Sunday symbolizes her; it’s old, dusty, unwanted, and only comes out once a week. Towards the end of the story while she is still at the park, Miss Brill has a couple come and sit by her. She listens in on what they are saying and realizes they are mimicking her and wondering why she always comes to the gathering. On her way home from the park, she usually stops and gets herself a slice of honey cake, but does not this Sunday, due to her bad experience at the park. Combining this and Miss Brill’s actions in the story, shows she is very childish and immature. Throughout the story Mansfield shows Miss Brill as a childish loner who is hypocritical, judgmental, and has no social life at all.
ReplyDeleteIn Katherine Mansfield’s short story “Miss Brill”, the nature and temperament of the protagonist, Miss Brill, are exposed through the author’s characterization of her. Miss Brill is an elderly, lonely woman who lives her life through the conversations of others, a constant activity she performs in a nearby park in France. Miss Brill, hoping she’ll get the pleasure of a good afternoon’s gossip, sits impatiently on a park bench soaking in the conversations and events going about around her, just waiting for someone to speak of something of interest. When the time comes when something catches her attention, she is quick to judge the person and the situation as if she’s the expert of everyone else’s lives. This characterization of the judgmental Miss Brill is seen when a young lady comes walking through the park with flowers in her hands, and while walking, the girl drops the flowers, and a little boy rushes over to pick them up for her. When the flowers are safely returned to the girl’s hands, she looks at them in disgust and throws them in the garbage. Miss Brill, astounded but what she’s just seen, is quick to jump to conclusions, immediately assuming that the girl threw the flowers away because the little boy touched them. This event in the story shows the reader the negative characterization of Miss Brill in such a way because she truly does not know what the girl was thinking, and because this is the immediate conclusion Miss Brill draws, it is probably something she would do herself. Right away, Miss Brill dragged out the worst possible suggestion as to why the girl threw the flowers away, when in reality, the girl could’ve already been on her way to throw the flowers away with just the coincidence that the little boy touched them while in route to her destination. This event alone shows the flaws in Miss Brill’s personality, showing that she is judgmental, pessimistic, immature, and completely ignorant to the truths in society. Miss Brill is able to pick out and condemn those around her, but she can’t seem to, or refuses to turn the light upon herself and realize that she is the one who is flawed, not everyone around her. This ignorance to recognize self proclaimed fault causes Miss Brill to completely miss her epiphany, her one chance to be able to live her own life without the need of another’s help, resulting in her return to her “cupboard” to live the rest of her life as a hermit. Miss Brill, who was quick to pass judgment regarding others, failed to recognize the blemishes in her own life, which shows that only negative qualities make up her nature and temperament.
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ReplyDeleteThe protagonist in the short story “Miss Brill,” is an older woman, who sees life as a play, paying more attention to everyone else’s life than her own. Miss Brill has a judgmental sort of personality to her and feels the need to occupy herself by listening in on other people's lives. Her emotions and feelings are set so that she feels what others around her are feeling. When someone is yelling at another and trying to get a point across, Miss Brill gets all tense and starts to feel the same anger as the one yelling. Miss Brill doesn’t understand though, that she’s somewhat delusional. The fox fur she wears on that special Sunday isn’t exactly the best looking article of clothing you could choose to wear. But of course, Miss Brill thinks she’s the best looking thing around. The fox fur used to be beautiful, just like she was, but now it’s all old, dusty and unwanted. Miss Brill is very immature for her age, listening in on conversations, walking away from the crowd because she’s upset, and thinking she has to ‘play a role’ in society, or else if she’s not there, everything will get messed up. But even if she wasn’t there, there’s no doubt that her absence wouldn’t be noticed. Miss Brill doesn’t seem to realize that her part in life isn’t as important as she sees it, and she’s not like other older women. She used to be a normal woman, working as an English teacher, but now she’s just part of the crowd. Her foolish, immature ways, don’t relate whatsoever to being a school teacher and so her loneliness grows to be apart of her, the fox fur giving off a negative effect to everyone that she comes into contact with. Miss Brill’s attitude is just as childish as the children she used to teach, and her nature will probably never change, featuring her every Sunday entrance into the Public Gardens and her lonely walk home, her fox fur her only form of accompaniment.
ReplyDeleteMiss Brill is a very delusional woman, thinking life is a stage. Every Sunday she goes to the park to play her part she feels that if she doesn’t go she will be greatly missed. On her Sunday outings to the park Miss Brill wears her fox fur around her neck. The fur is old and dusty; its face is being to show its age. The fur is symbolic because it is Miss Brill, through the fox fur, the author Katherine Mansfield, demonstrates the reader how Miss Brill has aged that is obviously to all but Miss Brill. Miss Brill is physically old as shown through the fur, but she has the mental tendencies of a child. At the end of the story it has Miss Brill running home crying, not stopping to get her Sunday treat, after the young man made a rude remark about her. Miss Brill is a loner, she goes to the park every Sunday and yet she doesn’t interact with any of the others at the park. She just sits and passes judgments on the people around her. Miss Brill judges them based on their actions and their topics of conversation. If the people she is setting next start a conversation that she finds offensive or unpleasant she immediately begins to criticize them, even if the topic has nothing to do with her. This adds to her child like nature. Miss Brill has a very childish and judgmental temperament to her which is seen by all but her, until the end of the story when she here’s the fur cry. She ignores the cry because she knows if she acknowledges the cry that would be that same as seeing her true self and her imperfections.
ReplyDeleteThroughout the story “Miss Brill” you can tell that the main character, Miss Brill, is a lonely old woman who has lived a long life in which the way she acts, thinks, feels and behaves is completely dependent upon her surroundings and those around her. The author, Katharine Mansfield, uses surroundings and other charters to help the reader understand who Miss Brill really is and the reader can make some very accurate assumptions about Miss Brill and how she behaves as a person. In the story, Miss Brill never has any interaction with any of the other characters, even though she judges all of them. Despite her lack of interaction, she sees the park that she visits as a play, with her being one of the few main characters, and her not being there would surely ruin the performance and she would be greatly missed. She feels like she needs to be there because without her there would be no show, and the show must go on. This shows that she really inflates her own importance and doesn’t realize her own flaws and how alike she and the other characters are. Another example of her lack of ability to see her own flaws is when Miss Brill is watching the woman with the ermine toque. Miss Brill is critical of this woman when she is talking to another character and when he leaves the woman just moves on and talks to someone else. Miss Brill is critical of this woman by calling her clothes worn out and outdated; but Miss Brill’s fox fur is as bad, if not worse than the old ermine toque. The faults that Miss Brill is seeing in other characters are the same faults that she is blind to in herself. The faults truly surface to her when she hears the young couple talking about her, and her worn out fur, which symbolizes her in the story. She allows the judgment of the characters to ruin her whole day and she goes home without her cake. This childish action allows us to see that she really isn’t a mature adult, and she acts more like a child with a temper than a grown, sophisticated woman. She doesn’t realize that the couple is judging her the same way that she judges the rest of the characters. The temperament of Miss Brill is one of childlike ignorance and temper in the sense that she is either unable or unwilling to see her flaws and when her flaws surface she has a tantrum and runs home allowing it to effect the rest of her day. Miss Brill’s nature is that she sees the world only through her eyes and allows herself to fade into the scenery without even realizing it. It is also in her nature to overstress her importance ad under stress the importance of others.
ReplyDeleteThe protagonist of the short story, Miss Brill, is an individual who is characterized as being very delusional. Through out the story, she suppresses obvious truths that are presented to her through several other characters. For example, the woman in the ermine toque and the gentleman she was meeting. They had a brief conversation, and the whole time that Miss Brill is observing their exchange, she is thinking about how poorly the woman is dressed. When this woman is rejected by the gentleman, she was suddenly alone. Shortly after, she scurries down the street, acting as if nothing ever happened. Miss Brill thinks so lowly of this woman, she disapproves of the situation, and moves onto another conversation. In reality, Miss Brill is a mirror image of this woman, and fails to recognize any kind of resemblances. She is alone and wastes her life living off of other people’s gossip and chitchat. When something goes wrong, she simply seeks out another story, acting as if no one can see her eavesdropping to get their latest gossip. Miss Brill never realizes that she is ultimately alone, lost in the solitude of delusions in her mind.
ReplyDeleteKatherine Mansfield’s short story “Miss Brill” follows the protagonist, Miss Brill, on her routine Sunday outing to a local public garden, a place that holds much importance to her. Miss Brill is an elderly, lonely English teacher who believes that her presence in the garden is necessary for the day to go on. Despite being an English teacher, Miss Brill possesses contradicting qualities of a usual teacher, such as being childish, highly judgmental and delusional. Miss Brill is a woman who is failing to properly live her life and therefore subconsciously lives through others, and Mansfield exposes this by using Miss Brill’s surrounding environment to hash out the true Miss Brill. Sitting on her bench with her worn out, dirty, moth bitten fox fur, a garment that represents Miss Brill herself, Miss Brill starts to heavily criticize those that aren’t up to her standards, however several of the people she harshly criticizes possess the same qualities that she does, except Miss Brill fails to understand this occurrence. She just sits and watches people, all the while being under the impression she is a main character in a very important play, adding to her delusion. Miss Brill never comes into contact with any of the people that would “miss” her throughout the story, but she is able to judge each and every one of them based purely on speculation, observation and eavesdropping. By exposing the hypocritical nature of Miss Brill, Mansfield gives insight into how childish and judgmental this lonely, elderly woman is. Miss Brill continues to live in her metaphorical glass house until she overhears a couple talking about her, describing her almost exactly how Miss Brill described her symbolic clone, the woman in ermine toque. Being judged in the manner she judges others is not at all pleasing to Miss Brill and she hurries home, forgetting her favorite treat and acting like a typical child. Once home Miss Brill puts away her raggedy fur and cries, although she can’t accept what happened to her on her trip to the garden. The events of the day expose the truth that Miss Brill’s temperament and nature is far from a mature English teacher and that she is in fact an unstable, lonely, and hypocritical woman.
ReplyDeleteMiss Brill, the protagonist from Katherine Mansfield’s short story, “Miss Brill,” is given a very unique nature and temperaments. She is an older woman who teaches English and has traits that contrast these facts, such as not participating in conversations with others and living her life as if it’s a play. The story starts out with Miss Brill preparing herself, and her fox fur, which symbolizes Miss Brill, for her visit to the public garden to listen to a band, which she does every Sunday. While at the park, Miss Brill’s judgmental traits are revealed when she eavesdrops on other’s conversations and disapproves of them for what they are saying. She imagines that the other people at the park have come from their “cupboards” just for the concert, which, in reality, is what she does every week. At one point, when she hears a couple make a rude remark about her, she becomes immature and lets the comment ruin her day. At the end of the story, when she puts the fur back in its box, she hears a faint cry, which she assumes to be the fur, but, in reality, is her. Miss Brill proves to be hypocritical by judging all of those around her but never noticing those same flaws in herself, and because of this, she returns home every Sunday to sit in her cupboard and cry.
ReplyDeleteAdmit it or not, we all know that we have judged another, be it by what we hear, or what we see. Miss Brill, the oblivious, senile English teacher with a tendency of pitching criticism upon unknowing audiences, is no exception to this common human nature, as exposed by Katherine Mansfield’s short story, “Miss Brill”. "... There was always the crowd to watch," (Mansfield 135) Miss Brill had concluded early in the story, and she wastes no time on this Sunday afternoon for immediately setting in on an elderly couple who share her “special seat”. They did not speak to one another, and Miss Brill takes offense to this, for she comes the Public Gardens each Sunday to eavesdrop and make assumptions on others’ lives, for it becomes clear that she has no life of her own. As she dawns on other passersby, she states that there is “something funny about nearly all of them. 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!” (Mansfield 135) This is ironic, for Miss Brill herself is elderly, tattered, and doesn’t participate in the conversations she so contently thrives on. Though Miss Brill refuses to contribute to all interaction around her, she views life as a play, and the Garden as her own personal stage. She is delusional in the way that she feels that she is a crucial actress to this routine broadcast, where as she fulfills no act of remembrance in the afternoon. Aside from these traits, Miss Brill is also insanely immature. She spends each Sunday afternoon picking pedestrians apart, yet when a young couple proclaims her as a “stupid old thing,” (Mansfield 138) she storms home, avoiding her monotonous act of stopping at the bakery for a sweet treat of honeycake. Despite how we have judged Miss Brill, we can each find a little of her mentality within ourselves. Katherine Mansfield is brilliant in the way that she has embodied the human race within a single, dysfunctional character.
ReplyDeleteIn the short story “Miss Brill,” by Katherine Mansfield, the protagonist clearly reveals her thoughts and feelings about the people in her surroundings. She believes that life is one big play, and that her role is an immensely important one that would clearly be missed by her fellow actors and actresses. Miss Brill does not live her own life, but only lives through other people’s lives, and critiques them from her own perspective of perfection. She believes that the music discloses people’s feelings at that time, allowing her to decipher every aspect of their lives. Miss Brill is ultimately characterized as an incredibly judgmental and unrealistic old lady. She evaluates people’s lives as boring, uninteresting, and dull, but does not realize that those are the exact characteristics and flaws of her own life. The protagonist concludes that the people “were odd, silent, and 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.” This ultimately illustrates how blinded Miss Brill is from reality, and that she does not even recognize her own hypocritical statements, as the author implies that she, too, lives in a small, dark “cupboard.” Miss Brill, a sophisticated English teacher who is supposed to act as an example to her students, is extremely childish and immature. After the young couple call her names and make fun of her old, dusty, long out of style fur, Miss Brill runs home without buying her honeycake, climbs up the stairs to her room and puts the fur back in its box for good. She then “heard something crying,” which in reality was herself, but she did not recognize it. Katherine Mansfield clearly portrays Miss Brill as a judgmental, immature, and unrealistic old lady, who ultimately experiences a missed epiphany, and will never learn to live her own life.
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