Comparing Miss Brill And The Storm

The short story “Miss Brill” by Katherine Mansfield, written and published in the 1920s, tells a story of middle aged woman who spends week after week alone at her local park. Another short story, "The Storm" by Kate Chopin, was published in 1969 in spite of Chopin writing it 1898. It was more than seventy years after it finally got published. “The Storm” is about two people who have an extramarital affair in a small town in Louisiana. “Miss Brill’ and “The Storm” undertake similar themes and their protagonists have very similar characteristics that cause them to take certain actions that are influenced by their current situation.
The protagonists in both stories appear to have dull lives. Miss Brill spends once a week at the park just observing people and seeking for a way to relate to the people around her through silence. During the week, she reads to an elderly man who pays little to no attention to her. Miss Brill’s life illustrates that her lack of conversations, causes her to starve for a real conversation. She seeks every motive to “interact”

She has a tradition of listening to the conversations of others while trying to be in their shoes.“She had become really quite expert, she thought, listening as though she didn’t listen, at sitting in other people’s lives just for a minute while they talked around her (65). She enjoys and finds excitement through her weekly observations of people at the park. She enjoys the concerts and notices whenever a band is playing better than before. She does not realize how people view her until the end of the story. A common theme for both stories is loneliness. Calixta is doing chores while the storm comes. Comparably to Miss Brill, Calixta needs a break from her long days of work, and finds an opportunistic time during the storm. The storm allows Calixta to escape her loneliness for a moment and fill it temporarily while she has an affair with