"Miss Brill"
...es. Then Mansfield establishes Miss Brill’s age again when it is stated that she reads to an elderly gentleman four times a week. This is another fact in the story that allows readers to know Miss Brill is middle age. And one last thing that indicates Miss Brill’s age is the description the Mansfield gives about the two young girls, and the two young sailors. With no one ever quite being Miss Brill’s age it is safe to say she is middle age. Miss Brill is also a lonely woman. Mansfield made this evident in the beginning when Miss Brill started treating her fur as if it were a companion. She calls it a, “Dear little thing!” and proceeds to brush it off and prepare it for wear. Mansfield also uses the ermine toque as a symbol of Miss Brill’s loneliness in the passage where she states, “…she [is] wearing the same ermine toque that she’d brought when her hair was yellow. Now everything, her hair, her face, even her eyes, [are] the same color as the shabby ermine, …” the ermine symbolizes loneliness because the lady wearing the ermine is like Miss Brill. She is out in her shabby ermine as Miss Brill is out in her shabby fur. Both ladies are looking for validation out in the public garden. Another sign of Miss Brill’s loneliness is when she is not proud to tell her pupils how she spends her Sunday afternoons. Mansfield stated it as, “…quite a queer, shy feeling …”, this referred to the people she criticized for being the same and she felt her students would do the same to her as she did to the people. Miss Brill is also an unhappy woman. When Miss Brill comes to the realization that she is no longer being entertained, but it is she who is doing the entertaining she becomes sad. She is so down that she doesn’t even stop for her, “…Sunday treat.” She starts to ignore all the things about Sunday that makes her happy. Turning on the kettle after she stopped at the bakery made her excited to see what she had gotten for herself in the slice of honey cake, but she did not do that on this Sunday. The reason she did not stop is because...