Miss Brill
There is going to almost always be a chance in a persons lifetime to have the unique experience of making the acquaintance of someone who strikes them as extremely fascinating, but yet that person also seems to be lacking something in their life. In Katherine Mansfield's story, "Miss Brill," the main character of the story seems to consider herself an expert on involving herself in the lives of the people whom she comes in contact with; therefore, one can assume that Miss Brill is a woman who lives a very lonely life. When I try to picture Miss Brill, the mental image I receive is a lonely old woman who has lived alone her whole entire life. It seems as though Miss Brill is trying desperately to be acknowledged by others and so she insists on going every Sunday to the park to hear the same band play and sit in the same special seat. Maybe this is her way of trying to get everyone else there to acknowledge her the same way she acknowledges them. Katherine Mansfield tells the story through the eyes of the protagonist, which happens to be Miss Brill, and she is able to convey to the readers the protagonist's loneliness and lack of self-awareness. In the story there is no explanation of Miss Brill's past, leaving the readers
After reading the story and studying Miss Brill's character, I have come to the conclusion that her character fits the description of a round character. One reason for this conclusion is based upon the fact that she is the central character in the story; therefore, she is also the protagonist. I feel that Miss Brill does have the opportunity for change, and it clearly shows at the end of the story that she is beginning to change by her newly found self-awareness. Whether or not her loneliness and lack of a social life will change is still unknown, but there is a very good chance that maybe she will strive to seek that male companionship to fill that void in her life. Also, in the story, Miss Brill tends to adopt a more critical, at times even hostile, attitude toward the women she observes in the park than towards their male companions. When Miss Brill first arrived, she described the man who was sharing her special seat as a fine old man, but then she described his wife as the big old woman (Mansfield 448). And then when she recollects the events of the previous Sunday at the park, she remembers the patient Englishman with the difficult to please wife, whom Miss Brill wanted to shake (Mansfield 448). These negative observations of the women could possibly be a sign of envy that Miss Brill feels because these women have male companionship, and Miss Brill has no one except her fur. At this point in the story, we still do not know too much about the protagonist except that she is a lonely woman who seems to be a bit envious of the women who have male companionships i
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Approximate Word count = 1068
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)
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