Alienation: Miss Brill

"Miss Brill"
Katherine Mansfield

Miss Brill uses her fur as a way to avoid her sense of alienation. She imagines her furs as living things and talks to them. She performs the same routine every Sunday in going to the park. However, this Sunday is even better because there are more people due to the beginning of the season. Her main enjoyment in going to the park was listening to other people's 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" (Mansfield, 183). I think this shows how lonely she was if listening to other people's conversations was of such an interest. She liked entering other people's lives because that life was not her own. Though for most of the story Miss Brill feels content with her lifestyle, it's just one big performance. However, when the young couple shows her how other people view her she is very upset, but the speaker does not say at the end that it was Miss Brill crying. However, we know that it must be her but she does not want to admit her state of loneliness and sadness.