How would you describe the character of Miss Brill in "Miss Brill"?

It is hard not to feel incredibly sorry for the character of Miss Brill in this excellent short story. We are told that she teaches English and that she also reads the newspaper to an "invalid old gentleman" four times each week. However, without a doubt, the highlight of her week is going each Sunday at the same time to listen to the band in the Jardins Publiques--the public gardens. This is clearly an important event for her, as she takes great care in the way that she dresses. This time of the week is so important for her because she loves watching the other people in the gardens and listening in on their conversations:

She had become really quite expert, she thought, at listening as though she didn't listen, at sitting in other people's lives just for a minute while they talked round her.

It is this "sitting in other people's lives" that is the central attraction, as we can infer that Miss Brill has no "life" of her own to "sit" in, and therefore she is reduced to living other people's lives vicariously through such trips to distract her from the emptiness of her own life. As she observes more and more, she imagines that the scene before her is like a "play" in which she too has a part and is significant. However, this dream of hers is punctured rather suddenly and rudely when a couple that she imagines to be "the hero and heroine, of course, just arrived from his father's yacht" make fun of her and send her back home to her "cupboard" of a room in tears.

Miss Brill therefore is a single woman who is profoundly lonely and isolated, and goes to the gardens each week to savour something of the life that she herself has never experienced. Although she tries to forget the empty reality of her existence by elaborate illusions and fantasies designed to give her significance and meaning, and link her in with others, at the end of the tale she is forced to confront her shadow of a life.

Sketch the character of Miss Brill.

Characterization is a detailed description of a character’s physical and personality traits.  You have chosen an excellent story to ask about characterization, because this story is a perfect example of indirect characterization, which is the process of describing a character indirectly through the character’s thoughts and actions, rather than telling us directly about the character.

We know several things about Miss Brill from her visit to the park.  First of all, we know that she is a people watcher.  She enjoys watching people as if they were a show.  We also know that she cares about people.  She is a teacher, which is a service profession, and she reads newspapers to old people.  Both seem to indicate she is selfless and giving. 

Miss Brill is also a bit naïve.  She is unmarried, thus the miss, and she doesn’t seem to have any romantic relationships.  She gets so caught up in watching the people, especially the young couple on the bench next to her, that she forgets that this is real life and she is eavesdropping.  She means no harm though. She lives largely in her head.

Miss Brill is sensitive, but she does not really recognize the emotion.  She loves her park, she loves watching people, and she loves her necklet almost to the point of imaging it has feelings.  When she is ridiculed, she does not really internalize the emotion and recognize that she is, indeed, sad.

Sketch the character of Miss Brill.

Ms. Brill is a expatriate British teacher living in France, presumably a spinter, who lives in isolation with the exception of sporadic visits to an elderly friend to whom she reads. Her visits to the park on Sunday, and her connection to the fur necklette she wears make you realize that she is alone in the world, with not much to do, since she has spent her life in isolation, consoling herself with the simplicity of park visits, and observing people.

Due to her lack of social interaction, she has internalized a world of her own, where she gives roles to each of the strangers she sees in the street, perhaps as an attempt to connect with them in some internal way as she is unable to do so physically.

She is obviously not happy with her life, though she makes herself believe that she is. This is documented in the way she metaphorically shows how her fake necklette, which she is so proud of, is "crying" as she puts it back it its isolated box. She was crying too, internally, as she put it away since she felt (through the mockery of other park visitors) that she may not be at all welcomed in the world. Maybe, she feels, she must remain alone. It is her reality.

Ms. Brill is the epitome of the human being hungry for connections and communication. She is incapable of changing her situation, so she succumbed to it. Her nature is undeniably a call for help, but nobody seems to listen.

Sketch the character of Miss Brill.

Miss Brill is an English teacher, presumably to middle or secondary school students.  By all accounts, she is good at her profession.  Teaching occupies a great deal of her life, not because of a particular passion or zeal but more because there is little else in it.  The weekends, in particular Sunday, allow her to indulge in her once a week routine of taking out a prized and revered fur necklet and sitting in the park and, essentially, engage in people watching.  Her engagement in this activity allows her to believe that she is an integral and essential part of this community setting.  She believes that band plays music that she enjoys, that the people in the park are empty without her presence each and every Sunday, and with her fur, represents the center of this small communitarian universe.  Within this setting is a strong sense of denial of reality, for she is committed to the power of her self imposed illusion.  Her connection to this world is an illusion, and Miss Brill's inability to distinguish between what is real and what is in her mind represents a great deal of this character.  In Miss Brill, the reader sees how dreams and illusions can be both motivating, but also painful, as one is crushed under their weight.  Certainly, Miss Brill, as she blames the fur for the climax of the story, seems to be pinned under such a burden.

Sketch the character of Miss Brill.

For starters, give a physical description of the character. She's middle aged and thinks that she is well dressed and fashionable. This initial presentation of her is merely a facade and we learn that she is a rather tired and deluded character.

Another area to look at is her clothing and what this represents about her. Her personality is directly reflected by what she wears and her internal dialogue shows us that Miss Brill verges on arrogant.

By the end of the story, she realises that she is far from a glamorous player in the game of life, rather she is insulted by a young couple who look down upon her. She is dull and alone.

How does the setting in "Miss Brill" by Mansfield establish Miss Brill's traits?

Nowhere is this question more relevant than in the painful and poignant ending of this excellent short story, where Miss Brill is forced to realise how her lodgings reflect the emptiness of her life, which is void and meaningless of purpose. There is an intense irony in this, as, at the beginning of the story, as Miss Brill sits on her bench and watches other people who come every Sunday, just as Miss Brill does, she comments about 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!

The irony lies in the way in which Miss Brill is able to notice the way that others are oppressed and meaningless in their lives, as reflected by the "dark little rooms" from which they emerge, every Sunday, and yet is blind to her own meaningless existence. This is an irony that is reinforced at the end of the story, after Miss Brill has overheard the couple insult her and goes back to her home in tears and depressed. Note how this is described:

But today she passed the baker's by, climbed the stairs, went into the little dark room--her room like a cupboard--and sat down on the red eiderdown.

She, just like the other people she looks at when she arrives at the park, has an equally empty and meaningless life, and this is reflected in the description of her room being "like a cupboard" and being described as a "little dark room." The use of repetition yields fascinating discoveries about her character.

What details in "Miss Brill" reveal her character and lifestyle?

I think one of the most important and most significant details we are provided with is when she is sat in the park and she begins to imagine that the events she sees are some kind of entertainment or drama that even she is involved in. This helps her to believe in a world where she has meaning and is significant, as opposed to being a lonely old woman who is ignored and looked down upon by the world. Note what Miss Brill believes:

They were all on the stage. They weren't only the audience, not only looking on; they were acting. Even she had a part and came every Sunday. No doubt somebody would have noticed if she hadn't been there; she was part of the performance, after all.

Miss Brill is a woman who craves significance and meaning, and wants desperately to believe that she is valued and important. The fiction she creates about the park being a play that she has a role in allows her to believe, however fleetingly, that she is important and that her absence would be noticed. However, when she returns to her dingy little room, "like a cupboard," by the end of the story we realise that this is a desperate attempt of a desperate woman to make herself believe she is significant.

What specific details can you infer about Miss Brill's character in Mansfield's "Miss Brill"?

The opening line allows us to infer quite a bit about Miss Brill's character traits. This first sentence informs us that Miss Brill is headed to the "Jardins Publiques" on an outing. In France, public gardens (jardins publiques) are often the estates of nobility that have been converted to public gardens. Throughout France, these are elegant, gracious, spacious gardens, if examples in Paris can be taken as a model. From this setting, we can infer that Miss Brill has a background that has given her elegant taste and that she appreciates the richly cultivated beauty of the Jardins Publiques to which she walks every Sunday.

We can also infer that she is content (or has been up until the day of the story) with the changing tides of the seasons and finds peace in each variation of season. We can infer this because of her stream of consciousness response, as reported by the limited third person narrator, to the chill in the early summer air in which she finds a poetic pleasure:

The air was motionless, but when you opened your mouth there was just a faint chill, like a chill from a glass of iced water before you sip ....

We know it is early summer because in her reported stream of consciousness she says it is the beginning of the season and that she anticipates the pleasures of the season with relish:

And the band sounded louder and gayer. That was because the Season had begun. ... although the band played all the year round ....

As an aside, this quote may be seen as symbolically indicating that, though Miss Brill is not yet really old, she is in the last breathe of vigor before the blazing sun of life burns her energy out and approaching winter chills her beyond the reach of a favored fox neck-fur.

We can further infer that even though her circumstances are now constrained and her present social class may not be what it once was, she is:

• affectionate; "Dear little thing! It was nice to feel it again."
• optimistic: "Never mind--a little dab of black sealing-wax when the time came ...."
• cheerful: "the band sounded louder and gayer."
• observant:"Wasn't the conductor wearing a new coat, too? She was sure it was new."
• appreciative of beauty: "Now there came a little "flutey" bit--very pretty!--a little chain of bright drops."

What is the nature of Ms. Brill's character in "Miss Brill" by Katherine Mansfield?

Katherine Mansfield brings to life a lonely, spinster.  In “Miss Brill,” the protagonist does not engage with anyone. In her mind she shares her Sundays with the other people who come to the park to experience the band concert.  It is Paris in the 1920s, and Miss Brill is all alone.

The narration is third person point of view with a sympathetic narrator giving life to the thoughts of Miss Brill.  The protagonist is a teacher in an English school.  Miss Brill is a self-deluded perfectionist.  She goes to the park every Sunday.  In her mind, she believes that if she did not go to the park, someone would notice and miss her. 

When Miss Brill prepares to go out, she wears her fox stole.  It was the type that still had the face of the fox on it.  The fur held great importance to Miss Brill.  The narrator gives the reader insight into how much Miss Brill loves her Sundays: the beauty of the park, the children laughing, the melodious music, and the conversations of the people all convey her enthusiasm. 

Oh, how fascinating it was! How she loved sitting here, watching it all! It was exactly like a play.  Who could believe the sky at the back wasn’t painted? They were all on the stage.  They weren’t only the audience; they were on the stage.

Miss Brill thinks of herself as an actress and the others in the park as actors as well.  She loves the park. This is the stage for her play of life.

Miss Brill actually is uncommunicative.  Unknowingly, she thinks that she is interacting with other people: however, she actually has learned to listen to people without letting them know that she is listening. Her perception of the scene is different from the reader.  She sees herself taking part in the play that is happening around her.  On the other hand, the reader sees a lonely woman sitting on a park bench waiting for someone interesting to come and sit on her bench. 

The view of the Miss Brill's world is highly romanticized.   Her enjoyment comes from eavesdropping on other people’s conversation.  She is not grotesque or insane. Her state of mind comes from her loneliness and lack of human contact. The reader does not want to laugh at her, but rather welcome Miss Brill into real life and converse with her.

It is not revelation that Miss Brill actually knows no other people in the park.  Her fellow actors are people that she recognizes and names them by their clothes. For example, she sees a man that she has seen before wearing a new velvet coat. Miss Brill pretends that these people are performing in her play. 

Her bench is normally occupied by other people with whom Miss Brill identifies. All of them will return to their little cupboards and resume their normal lives. Her enthusiasm for her Sundays prevents her from feeling sad or lonely.  In her self-deception, she has a purpose and is needed in this place. 

Today, Miss Brill has two young rich teenagers sit on her bench. They represent the outside world.   These obnoxious, giggly adolescents thoughtlessly wound Miss Brill.  In their foolishness, they insult and make fun of Miss Brill and her fur, the emblem of her identity. 

Miss Brill withdraws from the scene and returns to reality.  Her little, dark room becomes her haven. She takes off her beloved fur without even looking at it and puts it back in its box. Still incapable of showing true emotion, she thinks that she hears someone crying.  The reader knows that it is Miss Brill. 

What are Miss Brill's circumstances in Mansfield's "Miss Brill"?

Miss Brill's circumstances are simple and modest. And elderly lady, she lives alone and has few  possessions, but one such is her fur necklet. These were prized by their owners and signified some small level of elegance and social attainment. Thus she may have had a pleasant social life at one time, complete with a gentleman suitor or two--all this may be deduced from the little fox taken out of its box for a special outing in the park "because the Season had begun."

We are not told her circumstances in detail. We rely more on her actions and inner dialogue, though her emotions and thoughts are expressed throughout: "still soundlessly singing, still with that trembling smile, Miss Brill prepared to listen."

The scant description of her living circumstances suggests the presence of a closet, as she "had taken [the fox] out of its box" for a dusting (from a long retirement as in a closet) and a brushing. The description also gives us a "red eiderdown," another clue to a pleasant past lifestyle as an eiderdown (as in eiderdown comforter) is the prize of duck down comforters since Eider ducks have the most coveted feathers.

She goes to the park each Sunday to be in association with other people. She has the impression that the people who anonymously join her there are of a different sort from her and are as cheered by her welcome presence as she is by theirs while she surreptitiously listens in on their conversations. In this way she vicariously shares their lives with them. Her delusion of a constant focal point in her life, a life on pause, as it were, is shattered when young people speak of her as being reprhesible and unwanted. And this occurring while in her good mood and in the welcome company of her fox necklet, which gives off just a hint of confusion and sadness:

What has been happening to me?" said the sad little eyes .. . [and] breathed, something light and sad–no, not sad, exactly–something gentle

Whatever the further details of her circumstances were when she left home, they are vastly different when she returned after leaving the park. She doesn't stop at the bakers. She enters her single, dark, cupboard-like room and sits on the luxurious red eiderdown "for a long time," before quickly removing the necklet and returning it to its box. The gentle crying she thinks she hears as she closes the lid may be a transference of her own crying over her dream of sociability and continued innocence being cruelly crushed or it may be the metaphorical tears of the fox who weeps for the loss of a pleasant, simple life.

What are Miss Brill's circumstances in "Miss Brill"? 

Part of the beauty of this short story is that we are left to infer much about the central character, Miss Brill, and her circumstances, rather than being given information about her situation directly. This is because Katherine Mansfield tells the story using the stream of consciousness point of view, so we see the thoughts of Miss Brill as they pop into her head and are shared with us.

However, what becomes movingly clear by the end of the tale is that we are presented with a desperately lonely woman whose only joy is to go out at the same time each weekend and sit and watch those around her, listening in on their lives and appreciating the "drama" that she sees. Note what the text tells us about her thoughts concerning her weekly trip to the park:

Oh, how fascinating it was! How she enjoyed it! How she loved sitting here, watching it all! It was like a play. It was exactly like a play. Who could believe the sky at the back wasn't painted? ... They were all on the stage. They weren't only the audience, not only looking on; they were acting. Even she had a part and came every Sunday.

Miss Brill is so lonely and isolated that she is forced to imagine this "drama" to distract herself from the barren emptiness of her life, that consists of teaching English to students, reading a newspaper to a an "old invalid gentleman" and a "dark, little room" which is described as "a cupboard." This is the kind of woman that is so lonely that having an almond in her weekly-treat of honey-cake "makes a great difference." She is a character who is only able to live life vicariously through what she sees others doing.

Describe the characterization of the protagonist in "Miss Brill" by Katherine Mansfield?

We can also see the way Miss Brill thinks of the world around her as evidence of the way she conceives of herself.  She doesn't see herself as isolated and alone, especially because she can "[sit] in other people's lives [...] while they talked round her" at the park.  

In fact, the first paragraph, with its cheerful imagery -- "light like white wine splashed over the Jardins Publiques" -- shows us Miss Brill's idealism and attitude toward life.  The narrator's description of her fox fur as covered in moth-powder and wondering, "'What has been happening to me?'" seems sad, but Miss Brill is happy to see its "dim little eyes" that she's rubbed back to life, and they seem to "snap at her" in a rather playful way.  She imagines the dead fox as a "Little rogue!"  Thus, it seems to be somewhat symbolic of herself.  Although it seems a bit musty (and it is actually a dead thing), she doesn't notice its age or condition as a major setback; she imagines it to be, still, full of life and spirit and vigor.  This is how she sees herself until the rude young man insults her.  We know that she has realized her true situation in the end, then, when she believes the fox to be crying as she tucks it back into its box, just as she has been tucked back into hers.

Thus, all of her early idealism and romanticism fades quickly when she understands how she is seen by others.  In the beginning, she is full of hope and cheer, and, in the end, she is saddened by the knowledge that she is as old and unimportant as the other elderly people at the park with nothing better to do.