Miss Brill Summary - short story analyzing PDF

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Tiara Berden Talmeez Burney ENGL 1302-63013 24 January 2017 “Miss Brill” Summary “Miss Brill” written by author Katherine Mansfield is about a woman that lives in France and teaches the English language to the French children and reads daily to an elderly man. Sunday afternoon at the public gardens in a French village, folks can find Miss Brill enjoying the brisk air of early fall by showing off her fur stole as protection against the lenient chill. The selftitled protagonist fades the lines between what is reality and fantasy. The protagonists only freedom from her dull, wearisome life is the weekly concert that she attends in the park. She goes to these concerts and sits in her “special seat” to feel as if she is participating in the lives of other people around her. However, it becomes evident at one of these concerts that she's the subject of humiliation and returns back to her shabby apartment. The portrayal of romanticized illusions and depictions of others as what they are not, is the constant battle that Miss Brill faces as each day she steers away from reality just to catch a bit of hope from her troglodytic life. And so, Miss Brill sits quietly, fascinated by the various dramas playing out before her. As she leers upon the scene, she begins to ponder about the students who learn English from her and then to the elderly gentleman who listens as she reads articles from the newspapers to him. Miss Brill’s imagination is set into motion as she pictures her part in the scenes playing out before her from the viewpoint of being an actor in a stage play. The park becomes the stage and Miss Brill becomes another character in it. She begins to wonder whether her weekly absence would be noticed like the absence of a familiar character from a

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performance of an important play.

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Works Cited Last Name, First. “Name of Cited Article”. Name of Article’s Source. City of publication: Name of publisher, date of publication. Web/Print. Date of Access (if web). Next entry here....