Miss Brill
As Shakespeare's character Jacques says in his play As You Like It, "All the world's a stage, / And all the men and women merely players," but as Mrs. Brill finds out in Katherine Mansfield's story, the part given to us to act out is often quite different from the part we think we have (Act II, Scene 7). "Miss Brill" is a story about an old woman who starts out the day with an exuberance, only to have her idealization (and/or visualization) of herself and the world around her broken apart as she realizes just how old she truly is with the help of an arrogant child.
The story starts off with Mrs. Brill getting ready for her weekly excursion to the park. The worn out fur she takes out is symbolic of how she might perceive herself: a little worn down, but nothing that "a little dab of black sealing-wax" can't fix (260). There is little physical description of Mrs. Brill herself, leaving it up to the reader to make his own judgments about her appearance. The story is told in a manner such that we see what she sees, and we hear what she hears, so for the most part, the reader becomes Mrs. Brill, but in a detached sort of way.
Mrs. Brill's description of the world around her is vivid and detailed. She describes the other people who sit on the benches at the park as "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" (260). Most of the story is her comparing the world around her to that of a play, with the same characters and script. She uses this idea of a play to explain her "queer, shy feeling at telling her English pupils how she spent her Sunday afternoons" (260). She even imagines a scene where the elderly man to whom she reads a newspaper four times a week every week makes a comment about her being an actress to which she replies "Yes, I have been an actress for a long time" (261).
The band is the element that ties the aspect of...
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