Alienation and Old Age in "Miss Brill"

Katherine Mansfield was a New Zealand-born English writer and lived between the years 1888 and 1923. “Miss Brill” is one of her well-known short stories. This is the story of an old woman named Miss Brill who lives in France. She goes to a public park wearing her fur necklet and watches and listens to the people around her. She thinks of the park as a stage and the people in it as actors and actresses of a play. While she is thinking that she is an important part of the play, she realizes that it is not true after hearing the conversation between the young girl and boy who sits on the bench near her. Miss Brill is illustrated as lonely and unwanted by the others in the story. When the views of 1920s’ society is considered, it can be stated that Katherine Mansfield depicts the reasons of Miss Brill’s alienation and isolation from society as gender and age issues of 1920s through the characters in her story.

Firstly, the fact that gender is one of the reasons of alienation is demonstrated through the characters of Miss Brill and the woman in ermine toque who Miss Brill sees in the park and, as I will explain later, is the reflection of Miss Brill.

Miss Brill, the main character of the story, as it is understood from her name, is an unmarried woman in a time women stil could not fully get rid of their chains. In the 1920s, even though they gained some freedom and new rights, they were not completely free. There were still some roles that society expected them to play. According to Mary Louise Roberts’ article “Samson and Delilah Revisited: The Politics of Women's Fashion in 1920s France” “The modern woman signified a preoccupation with sex, marriage, career, and shopping rather than politics” (664) in those years. Old women who were not married were called “spinster” by others. Being single at an old age as a woman was a reason for people to get excluded from society. In a period this kind of notion existed, certain choice of name Mansfield made for her main character shows that this has a relation with her alienation. 

The woman in ermine toque is a character Miss Brill sees while watching the people passing by. This woman carries some similar aspects to Miss Brill. Firstly, she is described as an old woman like Miss Brill with these words: “Now everything, her hair, her face, even her eyes, was the same colour as the shabby ermine, and her hand, in its cleaned glove, lifted to dab her lips, was a tiny yellowish paw’’ (2). Also, her ermine toque is significant about this woman just the way her fur necklet is significant about Miss Brill. Just as Miss Brill tries to be a part of the crowd in the park in her way, this woman tries to talk to the man she runs across in the park and interact with him. These parallels show that this woman is some kind of reflection of Miss Brill. More specifically, she is the reflection of her place in society based on her gender. The man this woman encounters with is descripted as “tall, stiff, dignified” (2). His composure carries a sense of superiority and his attitude towards the woman underlines this aspect of him. While the woman tries to communicate with him, the man acts rudely towards her. Miss Brill describes his actions like this: “But he shook his head, lighted a cigarette, slowly breathed a great deep puff into her face, and even while she was still talking and laughing, flicked the match away and walked on” (2). Genders of these characters who involve in this kind of interaction reveal the contradiction between opposite genders. Katherine Mansfield demonstrates that Miss Brill’s alienation derives from her being a woman by portraying the man with a composure that hints his sense of superiority and making him treat the woman who is a reflection of Miss Brill as his inferior.

The second reason of Miss Brill’s alienation is the contradiction between the young and the old in 1920s. In the book Negotiating Identities in 19th and 20th Century Montreal, this contradiction is explained with these words: “[…] The ‘holders,’ who also happen to be the older group biologically, dismiss the ‘seekers’ because of their ‘youth’ and associate a collection of undesirable characteristics with ‘youth’… Conversely, in those battles which involve succession, those who are biologically younger dismiss the ‘holders’ because of their age, associating them with ‘senility’, being ‘finished’ or ‘washed up’ or ‘behind the times’” (216). In the story, the young’s view on older people is depicted through the young couple and Miss Brill herself and this view is the other reason of Miss Brill’s alienation which causes her to isolate herself. 

To begin with, Miss Brill displays the young people’s view at the beginning and during the flow of the story by making comments on the people who are old. While mentioning the man to whom she reads newspaper every week, Miss Brill uses a sentence that indicates her indifference to the man’s existence. She says ‘‘She had got quite used to the frail head on the cotton pillow, the hollowed eyes, the open mouth and the high pinched nose. If he'd been dead she mightn't have noticed for weeks; she wouldn't have minded’’ (3). Miss Brill does not care whether the man is alive or not. Similarly, the young couple does not care about Miss Brill. When the boy starts to talk about her he calls her “stupid old thing” (3). He sees her as a thing rather than a human. He acts indifferent to the fact that Miss Brill is a human because she is old. When the young couple’s and Miss Brill’s views unite, they illustrate the ignorance in society towards the old.

In addition to the boy’s and Miss Brill’s nonchalance there is also tendency of excluding and humiliating the old. The young couple humiliates Miss Brill by insulting her fur which is an object indicating that she is a part of old generation. “‘It's her fu-ur which is so funny,’ giggled the girl. ‘It's exactly like a fried whiting’” (3). Miss Brill uses the same word, “funny”, to describe the people who are sitting in the park and mostly old. Her thoughts on them are expressed with the words: “[…]there was something funny about nearly all of them. They were odd, silent, nearly all old, and from the way they stared they looked as though they'd just come from dark little rooms or even—even cupboards!” (2) Both the young couple and Miss Brill finds something funny about the old people. They humiliate them because of their age. 

As it comes to the matter of excluding, both the young couple and Miss Brill want old people to leave the park. When Miss Brill first arrives the park, she sees that on the bench near her an old couple sits. Because the old couple is uninteresting for her, she wishes them to leave. This wish of hers is understood from these words from the story: “She glanced, sideways, at the old couple. Perhaps they would go soon” (1). Similarly, the young couple wants Miss Brill to leave. The boy says: ‘‘‘Why does she come here at all—who wants her? Why doesn't she keep her silly old mug at home?’” (3) Both the boy and Miss Brill are not interested in old people and they do not want them around. Since this is how the young people approach the old, old people get alienated in society. Miss Brill, too, becomes an alien because of this and isolates herself from the society in the end. She goes to her “little dark room” which is like a “cupboard”. 

To sum up all, Miss Brill gets dismissed and abstracted in this short story written by Katherine Mansfield, because in 1920s women were still considered to be inferior by many people, marriage was seen necessary for women and young people tended to ignore, insult, and remove the old people from society.

Cover Picture: Sara Tyson, http://www.saratyson.com/figurative/miss-brill