This story was written in 1920.

This is about a middle-aged woman , Miss Brill, living in a French town.

One Sunday she goes out to the park and sits on a specific bench as she does every Sunday.

Here she loves to observe everyone passing by and sitting nearby and is very judgmental of them. She thinks there is something funny about nearly all of them.

These days, we hear about how everyone we meet is in some way a projection of ourselves.

Miss Brill projects onto those she sees that they look as though they’ve just come from dark, little rooms, or even cupboards. Later, it turns out that she herself lives in a dark, little room, like a cupboard.

But then a boy and girl sit down nearby and talk about her; the boy calls her a “stupid old thing” and says she should “keep her silly old mug” at home, while the girl says her fur is funny and exactly like a fried whiting.

So Miss Brill is treated the way she treats others: critical comments are made about her and her fur.

It has also been said these days that everything has consciousness, even inanimate objects.

I’m not saying that Katherine Mansfield believed this, or she is directly indicating that Miss Brill did, or the former is just using a literary device, but when Miss Brill gets home and puts her beloved fur back into its box, she thinks she hears something crying.

Perhaps this was Miss Brill’s projection onto the fur of her own sad feeling of how it had been maligned?

A brilliant story! ( )

I have to give this short story 4 stars because Mansfield's descriptive prowess floored me. This vignette so aptly paints Miss Brill (love the chill in that name) as deluded woman whose flimsy veil of self-delusion is lifted by the harsh words of two young lovers in the park. Mansfiled's short work packs points for analysis so tightly that even our dear Arlene the Sardine would be pleased. The fox fur, the orchestra, Miss Brill herself all seem symbolic. When I look at Miss Brill, I see my worst fears about aging - that I will will become inept and infantile - realized.

I see connections to Marquesta in The Poet Slave of Cuba (the dichotomy of the inner view of self with what other people actually see).

I would use this with late middle and high school ( )

Pride comes before a fall, or so the saying goes and as Miss Brill, the pompous and condescending old lady finds out when she is seen as one of those weirdo eccentrics who sit in the park and talk to herself and she suddenly realises her place in the world.

Good story, well told, very sad. I hope it doesn't happen to me. ( )