Miss Brill by Katherine Mansfield

This short story revolves around an old woman who we can assume is in her 50s. She doesn’t have any family or a circle of friends to keep her company. She’s well aware of the fact that she’s lonely but she tries to sooth that loneliness by going to the park every Sunday & observing other people’s lives. What she likes the best is listening to other people’s conversations. One may consider it indecent & immoral. But someone with a real insight to the human mind would consider it extremely sad. How cruel this world must be if some people are made to peep into other people’s lives simply because they are deprived of a life of their own. Miss Brill doesn’t have a family of her own & she doesn’t belong to anything or anyone. But that is exactly what she most desires. But it is remarkable how she finds comfort by merely observing other people. She loves to listen to other people’s conversations because that gives her a glimpse of what kind of life people privileged with loved ones experience. It is not really a bad thing as she’s not doing it with a wrong motive. She’s simply curious and she’s a neutral observer. And we can’t blame her for doing that. If anyone should be blamed it is modernization as is shown by Katherine Mansfield in this short story.

Miss Brill is not only deprived of company, but also communication. Communication is one of the basic needs of any human being. Depriving someone of that very thing is a psychological punishment. This poor lady is given this punishment not because of her fault, but because of modernization & its consequences. As a result of modernization people get busy. They don’t have time even to spend with their loved ones. So people are simply made to ignore others & worse to become selfish & egocentric. In the past though there were people who didn’t have any families of their own, the others took care of them & kept them company. Therefore even if people were lonely, they were never distanced from the society. In other words the society held them on a tight leash. But with industrialization this situation changed & as a result occurred pitiable situations like with Ms Brill. Thus Katherine Mansfield criticizes modernization because it isolates people, makes people selfish & ego-centric and worse, it leads to monotonous routinization.

Miss Brill is a victim of this routinization. During weekdays she taught English at school. Most probably she would have spent her evenings alone.  Then every Sunday she went to the park & listened to other people’s conversations. On the way home she bought a slice of honey-cake at the baker’s and enjoyed it at home while sipping a cup of tea. The way how she liked to be surprised by an almond in the cake shows her attempt to break this revolving nature of events. She adored that little surprise. It makes one’s heart weep. Another thing we see about Miss Brill is she exists for the others. She thoroughly believes that the old invalid gentleman to whom she read the newspaper in the garden four afternoons a week needs her. That thought comforts her and helps her to survive. She also believes that she belongs to the group of people who came to the park on Sundays. She also considers the park as a kind of family where she thinks that the others are also like her. We can see a great degree of inter-dependence here where she exists on the assumption that she is needed by the society.

But at the end comes the startling realization that she is rejected by the very society that she relied upon. She realizes this with the boy’s remark “Why does she come here at all-who wants her?”. With this remark she feels immensely humiliated and her entire imaginary world shatters. Finally she collapses not physically but psychologically which is far more dangerous than physical harm. Though one might consider it as self-awakening, it is truly traumatizing and mortifying. Up till now she lived on the false assumption that she was needed by the society. She was also aware of the fact that she was lonely. But the false knowledge that she was an essential part of the society comforted her & enabled her to survive. But this shocking new knowledge that she was rejected by the society broke her heart and stole the reason for her existence. That is why Katherine Mansfield criticizes modernization and it’s important to mention that she’s not a critic of modernity. She simply blames the negative aspects of modernization.     

Source: My own ideas, Lesson notes of ENG111