Miss Brill Summary / Study Guide

Miss Brill | Introduction

"Miss Brill," Katherine Mansfield's short story about a woman's Sunday outing to a park, was published in her 1922 collection of stories entitled The Garden Party. The story's enduring popularity is due in part to its use of a stream-of-consciousness narrative in which Miss Brill's character is revealed through her thoughts about others as she watches a crowd from a park bench. Mansfield's talent as a writer is illustrated by the fact that she at no point tells what Miss Brill is thinking about her own life, yet the story draws one of the most succinct, complete character portraits in twentieth-century short fiction. "Miss Brill" has become one of Mansfield's most popular stories, and has been reprinted in numerous anthologies and collections. The story is typical of Mansfield's style; she often employed stream-of-consciousness narration in order to show the psychological complexity of everyday experience in her characters' lives.

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