Miss Brill Literary Analysis

In “Miss Brill”, by Katherine Mansfield, Miss Brill demonstrates how she feels unfulfilled in life by her money habits, her delusional outlooks at the park, and her reactions and emotions throughout her daily life. We can easily figure out that Miss Brill is poor from the beginning of the story. She decides to wear her fur (Mansfield 84) leading us to believe she is wealthy. However, we learn that is her only fur, and in addition to that the nose is busted. Why does she not replace the fur, or have more than one? She also acts as if the fur is her best friend as she pets and talks to it (84). This is concerning because the fur is not real. Miss Brill does not mention any intention of getting a pet to make her feel less lonely, perhaps because pets cost money to feed. Miss Brill also eats the honey cake and if it has even a sliver of almond she gets excited, but she never orders almonds in her bread to begin with (87). We can assume that she gets excited by the sliver of almond because she cannot afford to purchase almonds. When Miss Brill goes to the park she compares the music playing to the music of a play and the people around her and herself are all actors (Mansfield 86). The delusion she creates and the way she dresses with

When she talks about the two young children, she over hears them talking about her looking like a fish (Mansfield 87). She gets so upset that she does not even go to get her honey cake like she does every Sunday evening. Instead she goes home to her room which is the size of a cupboard (87). When she puts up the fur she swears she can hear it cry, because that is what she wants to do. However, she does not say she cries herself because she must keep up with her illusion of happiness to get her through the