toward her own life. As Miss Brill travels from her isolated existence into self-awareness, the reader is also taken on the same trip. The reader’s perceptions of Miss Brill during the story mirror and shift along with Miss Brill’s perceptions about herself. The reader is given no real clues about Miss Brill other than her profession, a teacher, and that she goes to the park every Sunday. Her age is unidentified and hard to guess; the reader is given no connection between Miss Brill and others her age. In fact, Miss Brill comes across as much younger than she is, mainly due to her disdain toward older people. She finds them “odd [and] silent . . . from the way they stared they looked as though they’d just come from dark little rooms or even – even cupboards!” (259). Just as she only focuses on other people, the reader is only told about the people surrounding her at the park. When she decides that she is an actress, the reader gains a similar insight about Miss Brill; she sees her world as an intricate show that can be thrown out of balance by one absence. At the climax of the story, when the two young lovers comment on her appearance, the reader is suddenly aware of how old Miss Brill really is and how unaware she was about that fact. Miss Brill and the reader experience the shattering of her self image at the same time. For the first time during the story, both the reader and she see how other people see her. At the end of the story, when she puts the fur in its box and “[thinks] she hear[s] someone crying” (261), the reader is finally shown an emotion belonging to Miss Brill. Mansfield’s use of third person point of view in this story allowed her to keep Miss Brill’s fears and realities hidden from the reader. If the reader had been aware of everything from the beginning, there would have been no point at all to the story. Carefully revealing pieces of Miss Br...
