1

Omar Jamal
Ms. Stadelman
AP Literature and Composition
October 16, 2014
Character Analysis
Katherine Mansfields short story, Miss Brill, explores a typical Sunday afternoon in
the eyes of an elderly woman. Miss Brill enjoys her ritualistic outings at the park and really
absorbs all that the park has to offer, such as the band playing or the people talking. She relishes
the feeling of being included and really takes part in honing in the lives of others through simply
sitting on a bench listening. Mansfields Miss Brill expresses Miss Brills attempt to cope with
loneliness through the means of distorting the world around her.
A crucial part of Miss Brills character lies within her fur. She strokes it and pets it and
personifies it and the fur serves as her joyous companion on her Sunday outings. The fur serves
as a mean of showing that Miss Brill is very lonely and seeks companionship, even if it is in the
form of an inanimate object. The reader is encouraged to view her as quite optimistic, yet quirky
and out of place at the same time, which serves as a reason as to why she prefers to sit on the
park bench and drown herself in the thoughts and happenings of others. She transforms the park
into a stage and she, as the actress, deems herself to play a part in this play. This of course sets
up a false reality for Miss Brill that unknowingly causes the harsh truth of reality to hit her
harder.
The young man in the story causes Miss Brills set to come to a close with his harsh
statements regarding, why did She (Miss Brill) come here at all- who wants her? We see that
Miss Brill then runs off to her house again and really loses the same glamour and quirkiness we

2
see in the beginning of the story. Her ritualistic Sundays were not perfect and neither was how
she deceived herself to the conceptions of a false reality. She was able to fool herself for a while
and copes with her loneliness, but faces the truth and harshness of the reality she sought to
escape.