Symbolism In Katherine Mansfield's Miss Brill

Though many want live in a world systematized like a play, reality always finds its way to shatter initial perceptions. The short story of “Miss Brill” by Katherine Mansfield expresses the isolation and exclusion of the protagonist, Miss Brill, through the symbol of her beloved fur scarf which later bears he frustration, and the change in her perception of interaction after her epiphany where her point of view draws sympathy and pathos.

Unbeknownst to herself, Miss Brill is quite peculiar, a fact that is first made clear to the reader when she introduces her fox fur, a loyal companion and aspiring conversationalist. Her scarf immediately singles her out to others as eccentric, but Miss Brill loves and personifies it, as she cannot communicate

She wears it on her walk where she continues to have little chats with it along the way. This behavior and other’s repulsion of it only increases her loneliness and social exclusion instead of rectifying it. The fur symbolizes her isolation, as it is starkly expressed by Mansfield that it is her only companion. The more people see her out with the fur and ignore her, the more attached she becomes to it, furthering her isolation until her moment of epiphany. The young lovers Miss Brill overhears gives her a sudden realization as they cruelly titter about her and Miss Brill arrives back home in a differing emotional state. The fur has become the bearer of consequence in her societal and emotional fragmentation. Though some may argue that the character of Miss Brill is not capable of disintegration because she was never fully integrated in society to begin with.

Though she may ponder how she is but an actor in the grand play of humanity, Miss Brill discovers she is only the butt of other’s jokes. Mansfield creates Miss Brill’s epiphany to both shatter the audience’s initial perceptions of the protagonist, develop sympathy, and give insight into the reality of solitude. Miss Brill never speaks to anyone in the