Miss Brill

George Szirtes article “Formal Wear: Notes on Rhyme, Meter, Stanza, and Pattern” from the Poetry Foundation opens with opinions which focus on limitations of poetic form. As a counter to these common arguments, Szirtes claims, “Verse is not decoration: it is structural. It is a forming principle and words at depth” ("Formal Wear: Notes” 2). He then develops an argument explaining, “the constraints of form are spurs of the imagination: that they are in fact the chief producers of imagination” ("Formal Wear: Notes” 2). Taking these ideas into consideration Szirtes incorporates the idea of language explaining how language connects to memory and imagination which come together to form poetic images. Additionally, when poets use form it develops

In the Bedford Introduction to Literature, Characterization is defined as "... the process by which a writer makes that character seem real to the reader"(2126). In order to do this a writer has multiple tools at their disposal that add to the depth of a character and simplify roles in a story. This includes the use of Protagonists and Antagonists, static and dynamic characters, showing and telling, and motivated and plausible action, as well as many others. The short story "Miss Brill" by Katherine Mansfield is no exception to this and displays the main character of Miss Brill as the protagonist, who is confronted with the reality of her existence.

Graff then goes on to establish his ethos in the first few paragraphs while continuing to expand the thoughts and ideas on pathos throughout his essay. He begins to build his community and trust by recognizing his own credentials and sharing his personal background in writing. One of the first things noticed from the footnote about Gerald Graff’s professional career is that he has vast experience in the writing department. He is an English professor at a prestigious university, a past president of the Modern Language Association, and part of the professional association of scholars and teachers of English and other languages (198). But, since his background only assists his argument and does not define it, it is crucial to also look at his word choice, mood, language, and ideology in order to fully claim Graff a credible author.

1. Foster refers to “language of reading” as the set of rules readers used to analyze the piece of writing. He believes that readers must be alert of the real intentions of the writing by following three important items: memory, symbol, and pattern. As the word suggests memory means remembering information, for instance, professors have the ability to associate the reading to a previous work they had read. In the same way, readers have to be aware of a symbol in which they can “predispose to see things presented how they are but also simultaneously they can represent something completely different.” In the chapters devoted to the symbol, he selected motives such as food in the sense of communion or drowning, to train the reader to forecast by the appearance of these and other elements with the idea of encouraging their “symbolic imagination.” On the other hand, a pattern is a phenomenon that permits us to predict what will happen in the story by comparing it to other pieces of work. This last item, it is strictly related to “symbolic imagination”, because from this ability to detach of the story “and look beyond” the next pages it results pattern recognition. Overall, we can say that memory, symbol, and pattern are significant for the “language of reading” due to the increase these items caused for a better

The protagonists of "Miss Brill" and "You're Ugly Too" share common occurrences related to their isolation. Both women are educators that are displaced from their place of origin: Miss Brill teaches English in France but is originally from New Zealand, and Zoe Hendricks is a history teacher in rural Illinois originally from the Northeast United States. Neither Miss Brill nor Zoe are able to build any kind of meaningful relationships with their students or peers. It is ambiguously illustrated in "Miss Brill" that Miss Brill does not relate to her students: "...She had a queer, shy feeling at telling her English pupils how she spent her Sunday afternoons" . It is more directly stated how Zoe relates to her students. "Once she had pampered

According to Victor Erlich a formalist interpretive critical lens seeks to, in its simplest form, extract the meaning of the language used and omit any reference to the author or historical setting. Formalist literary criticism was formed to focus on symbolism, tone, structure, . I have chosen to use a formalist approach of interpretive criticism analyzing the following: Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, George Saunders’ “Jon”, and Walt Whitman’s poem “A NOISELESS patient spider” to

Katherine Mansfield's "Miss Brill" is a woman self-contained, not pessimistic but settled, content. She is not a victim of her circumstances, but the satisfied creator of them. You could say she has her ducks lined up the way she wants them. Through the character of Miss Brill, Katherine Mansfield reveals a woman who has the ability to enjoy a simple world of her own elaborate creation.

Any literary work is unique. It is created by the author in accordance with his vision and is permeated with his idea of the world. The reader’s interpretation is also highly individual and depends to a great extent on his knowledge and personal experience. That’s why one cannot lay down a fixed “model” for a piece of critical appreciation. Nevertheless, one can give information and suggestions that may prove helpful.

In “Miss Brill,” Katherine Mansfield utilizes Miss Brill’s thoughts and actions and the surroundings to characterize Miss Brill as a lonely character. Mansfield immediately introduces Miss Brill with a very odd scene that shows her conversation with the fur coat. This quickly and effectively establishes the type of person Miss Brill is. As a result, Mansfield suggests that Miss Brill is a lonely and an “abnormal” person to illustrate to the audience how society treats those who are not considered “normal” through the later actions of a young couple.

Katherine Mansfield’s short story, Miss Brill, is a well-written story of an elderly, unmarried woman in Europe. In Miss Brill, Katherine Mansfield uses stream-of-consciousness point of view to show alienation and loneliness, appearances and reality, and Miss Brill’s perceptions as she attempts to make herself fit in with the park goers. Miss Brill is an older lady who makes a living teaching English to school children and reading newspapers to an “old invalid gentleman” (Wilson 2: 139). Her joy in life comes in her visits to the park on Sunday where she is notorious for “sitting in on other people’s lives” (Wilson 2: 140). It is there that her ritualistic, monotonous journey that Miss Brill refers to as a “play” takes place.

To understand the novel’s play with predictability, we must have recourse to the post modernist discourse about it. Aristotle primarily argued in “Poetics” that:

“If personality is an unbroken series of successful gestures, then there was something gorgeous about him, some heightened sensitivity to the promises of life, as if he were related to one of those intricate machines that register earthquakes ten thousand miles away.” (FCF 4).

Modernism, in literature, can be seen as a shift in focus to the unassociated introspective reflection of characters in such texts as Go Tell It On The Mountain, by James Baldwin, Miss Lonelyhearts, by Nathanael West and The Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger. This is a revision from the previous focal point of exterior events and places in correlation with the character’s reflections. Emphasis is placed on review upon feelings and thoughts, and even conversations with oneself, as opposed to the more directly event-driven reflections in texts of the pre-modernist era.

Mansfield created the story with the intention of allowing it to be open for various interpretations; though she includes specific detail concerning the characters Mansfield does not elucidate them in a manner that clearly defines their personalities. The story, like the budding rose, is one that never peaks to maturity, but rather remains in the developing stage because of its ambiguities which cause it to be discussed and interpreted in many varying ways.

From Enheduanna to Jane Austen to Charlotte Bronte to J.K. Rowling. Woman have proved over and over again that the role of author and/or writer can suit females just as much as any man. Mansfield encouraged women to write and used herself as an example with her own writing to try to attract more female authors. Often, women are pictures as just people who birth babies, cook, clean, shopped and stayed around as house wives. Sometimes, they did not have a wide span of education. Even in the early 1900’s women didn’t often go to college, it wasn’t until the 1980’s that women began to attend college in equal numbers to men. Poet laureate Robert Southey said “Literature cannot be the business of a women’s life.” One of the key assumptions that Mansfield and other women modernists faced was the habit of presenting narrative fiction through male eyes and according to male values. Mansfield herself strived for everyone (not limited to just women) to do whatever they wanted. She encouraged people to break rules and branch out.