Who Is Katherine Mansfield's Experience Of Humankind In Miss Brill

In “Miss Brill,” Katherine Mansfield’s main character, Miss Brill, attends her weekly concert at the park. When arriving she sits in her “‘special’” seat, where she feels she can participate in the lives of people around her (835). Gradually, Miss Brill realizes these people have been looking down on her, and she returns home ashamed and lonely. Mansfield’s main point is to demonstrate humankind as spiritually empty and even vulgar. She exemplifies this idea about humankind through Miss Brill’s experiences of denial, man’s inhumanity to man, and disillusionment. Miss Brill goes through denial and she uses fur as an extension of herself to deal with the spiritually empty and even vulgar humankind. While getting ready for the concert at the

When Miss Brill arrives at the concert she begins people watching. As she curiously looks around she spots a “beautiful woman” carrying a bunch of violets that she drops (836). A young boy quickly picks up the violets for the lady and runs “to hand them to her” she took the violets and “threw them away as if they’d been poisoned” (836). Furthermore, Miss Brill witnesses a young lady “pleased to see” even “delighted” a gentlemen in grey (836). The young lady describes where she was on the “charming day” she went “everywhere, here, there, along by the sea” and the gentlemen responded with cruelty (836). He shook his head, lit a cigarette and “slowly breathed a great puff into her face” and walked away while the young lady was still talking and laughing (836). Following the unrelenting encounter the young lady smiles and raises her hand as if she saw “someone else” and “pattered away” (836-837). Miss Brill also experiences disillusionment at the ending of the story due to spiritually empty and even vulgar humankind. In the article “Reductive Imagery in ‘Miss Brill’” Miriam B. Mendel states, “Miss Brill consistently reduces the world in which she lives in”