Miss Brill the Actress
In his introduction to the story, Miss Brill by Katherine Mansfield, Michael Meyer says, “Mansfield tends to focus on intelligent, sensitive protagonists who undergo subtle but important changes in their lives” (226). Two key questions in Miss Brill are what kind of intelligence and sensitivity does she posses, and what is the true nature of the change that she undergoes as a result of the young man’s cruel remark about her, “But why not? Because of that stupid old thing at the end there? Why does she come here at all – who wants her?” (Mansfield 229).
Miss Brill’s turns her sensitivity outward rather than inward. She possesses keen eye for outward appearances and detail, but has little knowledge of inward life. As Rhoda Nathan comments, “…the genteel Miss Brill is an observer of life, one who sits on the sidelines and watches the game in all of its striving, contending, and passion” (92). This is clear from her observations of people in the park. She describes the two people who initially share her seat, the older gentleman with the carved walking stick and the big old woman with her knitting, but they do not interest her because they are not engaged in conflict (Mansfield 227). Instead, they seem perfectly happy together. In fact, most of the old people in the park do not interest her. However, the couple that sat there last week was more interesting because they were arguing. She said she needs spectacles, but when he suggested ones with gold rims, she replied, “They’ll always be sliding down my nose!” a statement that irritates Miss Brill (Mansfield 227). Likewise, the brutish gentleman in gray who blows cigarette smoke in the face of the “ermine toque” also fascinates her (Mansfield 228).
Miss Brill also seems intelligent and highly imaginative. It is this facet of her personality that leads her to perceive the park as a drama. “It was like a play. I was exactly like a play” (Mansfield 228). She sees herself on stage acting, part of a fascinating drama that occurs each Sunday, and she surmises that “no doubt somebody would have noticed if she hadn’t been there; she was part of the performance…” (Mansfield 228). She even imagines that the old man she reads to once a week sees her as an actress and replies to his imaginary question about her, “Yes, I have been an actress for a long time,” (Mansfield 229). While she is sensitive and imaginative, creating roles for others as well as herself, she uses them to mask her lonely and empty inner life.
When the young man rudely says nobody wants Miss Brill there, and his girl friend compares her treasured fur to a “fried whiting,” Miss Brill walks home without stopping at the bakery for honey cake, her usual Sunday treat. Instead, she goes directly home, puts the fur back in its box, and when she puts the lid on, she thinks she hears something cry (Mansfield 229). According to Rhoda Nathan, while Miss Brill undergoes a change, she is not consciously aware of exactly what has happened to her:
As she puts away her Sunday fur, she imagines she hears something crying in the box. So inauthentic
is her life, made up of second hand experience as well as second hand furs, that she is incapable of
recognizing the origin of her tears, which of course, is her grief and humiliation. It is more natural for her
to imagine that her weeping comes from the glass eyes of the fox’s head on the boa. (Toth)
Her behavior here is consistent with her behavior in the park. Miss Brill has dramatized this final scene just as she has dramatized her life and the lives of those around her rather than experiencing life directly. She distances herself from her own suffering and does not allow herself the feel the emptiness of her existence.
While Meyer says that Mansfield creates sensitive and intelligent characters that undergo subtle changes (226), Miss Brill in the final analysis is neither sensitive nor intelligent; nor does she change. Her interest in people is purely superficial, often insensitive, and often used to mask her own inferiority. When a young boy returns flowers to a woman who dropped them and the woman throws them away, Miss Brill doesn’t know whether to admire that or not (Mansfield 228). She refers to the woman who is treated so rudely by the gentleman in gray as the “ermine toque” rather than as a real person, and she seems to take a certain delight in her humiliation, feeling that she somehow deserved his brutish treatment because of the way she is dressed. At any rate, everything works out for the best because she smiles and goes on to someone else (Mansfield 228). Finally, right after she sees an old man almost get knocked over by four young girls running through the park, she thinks, “Oh, how fascinating it was. How she enjoyed it!” (Mansfield 228).
Miss Brill’s imagination, which at first seems so creative, is conventional at best, certainly not “the stuff that dreams are made on” (Shakespeare 1680), but the stuff of romance novels. She sees herself as an actress, a recognizable star, instead of the bit player that she really is. She is ironically correct when she says, “Yes, I have been an actress for a long time,” (Mansfield 229). She has been acting the part rather than living her life, and dramatizing conventional ideas and feelings rather than probing the depths of her soul for such a long time that she cannot change now. Even the last line, which at first seems so poignant, is also part of the act, an overly sentimental and banal ending that masks rather than reveals the emptiness of her existence.
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