The Feelings Of Oppression In Katherine Mansfield's Miss Brill

The short story “Miss. Brill” authored by Katherine Mansfield is about the protagonist of the story Miss Brill and her weekly Sunday jaunt to the Jardin Publiques. Miss Brill goes to the park to hear the band play and to people watch. In “Miss Brill” Mansfield depicts the story of a lonely old women who in an attempt to alleviate her loneliness, creates a fantasy world where she is an actress on a stage and the strangers in the park are her supporting cast. Miss Brill gets great enjoyment from her weekly visit to the park and she receives satisfaction from observing others and their interactions, and by eavesdropping on their conversations which is evident when Mansfield writes “Oh how fascinating it was! How she enjoyed it! How she loved sitting

It is apparent from the beginning of the story that Miss Brill does not have much human interaction, instead the fur that she wears appears to be her only companion. She refers to it was a “dear little thing” and brushes it as though it was her pet and “rubbed the life back into the dim little eyes” (Mansfield.) It is inferred that she is not only rubbing life back into her fur, but also herself. As analyzed by Devi Gayatri, “The tenderness that she shows the dead animal reminds us of the absolute loneliness enveloping her life; the only emotional outlet for her affection is a dead animal. She is rejected by the human world” (Gavatri). Mansfield further illustrates the loneliness of Miss Brill’s character when she talks about the invalid man that she reads the newspaper to. Miss Brill reads to the man four days a week and states that “If he’d been dead she mightn’t have noticed for weeks; she wouldn’t have minded.” This portrays how lonely Miss Brill truly is; that she would not have minded reading to a corpse, as it was still some kind of companionship and she had a purpose by reading to