Loneliness is a term used to describe a person 's response to lack of human contact. In the short story "Mrs. Brill" written by Katherine Mansfield, the main protagonist Mrs. Brill suffers from being lonely. Mrs. Brill journeys to her local park every Sunday in hopes of escaping her aloneness, by people watching the park goers. She familiarizes herself with the Sunday band that plays music and the conversations among the people around her. The interactions between the strangers brings joy to Mrs. Brill but when a young couple belittles the fur piece worn by the lady, Mrs. Brill cannot help but fall back into her solitary state of mind. In the story "Mrs. Brill" by Katherine Mansfield, symbolism and imagery are used to present and support the …show more content…
Without the use of symbolism and imagery in the story, the reader would lose a sense of closeness to Mrs. Brill. The symbols and images show the "between the lines" viewpoint that better explains the main character the way Katherine Mansfield, the author, intended. One of the first symbols seen in "Mrs. Brill" is the fur piece. The piece represents the mirror image of the main character. "Miss Brill put up her hand and touched her fur. Dear little thing! It was nice to feel it again. She had taken it out of its box that afternoon, shaken put the moth-powder, given it a good brush, and rubbed the life back into the dim little eyes" (Mansfield 393). The fur is placed in a dark secluded box and is only taken out and refreshed on Sundays. This is precisely like Mrs. Brill. The lady stays in her dark, secluded, lonely house until she takes her Sunday trip to the park. Even to the very end of the story, the fur mirrors the women. “Gradually the fur piece comes to be a symbol of its owner. Both are of advanced age and a little the worse for wear” (Komentar 1). When Mrs. Brill is insulted by the young couple at the park, she shuts down mentally, the joy that the park brings her disappears, and the women returns to