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REDUCTIVE IMACERYIN "MISS BRILL"

by MIRIAM B. MANDEL

Katherine Mansfield's story "Miss Brill" has evoked a curious douhleresponse. Critics generally feel sympathy for the character,' hu t reject thestory.^ The most positive statements ahout the story emphasize its carefulstructure and its compression.' Buteven these admiring critics have failedto notice its most impressive technical achievement: a highly functionalapplication of figurative anguage which enahlesthe reader to understandand evaluate the character.

"Miss Brill" has less action and more figurative anguage than anyofthe other stories inThe Garden Party, figurative anguage which marks adeparture hoth of kind and of purpose: "Miss Brill" relies on sense imag-ery, and not on the "trees, flowers, hirds, insects, mice,rats, cats and dogs,the sun andmoon, and the sea"* with which Mansfield regularly expoundsthe familiar themes of helplessness and ofpreying.Most fully developed

are the images of sight and sound. But the senses of taste ("a faint chill.

1 Eudora Welty w rites tha t "Miss Brill was from he first defenseless,"("Katherine Mans-field's 'Miss Brill,' " rpt. inStory and C ritic, ed. Myron Matlaw and Leonard Lief[New York:Harper and Row,1963],p. 19). Robert L. Hull finds hat "Miss Mansfield gives in this story asignificant look... alook short and startling and atonce full of pity, at the world tha tthe lonelywoman inhabits . . . . She is left, as she began, in her pathetic solitude"("Aleination in 'MissBrill,' " Studies in ShortFiction, 5, No. 1 [1967],74,76). The most direct statement of sympathcomes from Saralyn R. Daly, who claims that "Miss Bri ll . . . engages the reader's affection"(Katherine Mansfield[New York: Twayne, 1965],p. 90).

2 Although widely anthologized, the storyhas not always faredwell with the critics. SylviaBerkmancondemns both the character and the story:"Miss Brill, hyperconscious, semihysteri-cal, through feverish examination herself emphasizes the meaning of each trivial happening inher afternoon,so that the very instrum ent of implicationthe running stream of feelingheregives rise to the obvious,or at least the m echanical"(Katherine Mansfield: A Critical Study[NeHaven: Yiile Univ. Press, 1951], p. 163). Berkman also finds ha t the symbolism is flawed: "theassociation of emotion withthe external object [the fox fur] has been pushedto an identity whichMiss Brill herself points out, andwe are conscious of excess"(p. 175). In the special Mansfieldissue of Modem Fiction Studies (1978-79), "Miss Brill" comes in for much neglect and somdecidedly rough treatment. RichardF.Paterson,in "The Circle of Truth: The Stories of KatherineMansfield and MaryLavin," reports tha t "Mary Lav in ... agrees with Woolf that'Bliss' as well as'Mi B l ' f ll f h f h h h d l h h b Mi B ill h h

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474 STUDIES IN SHORT FICTION

like a ch ill from a g lass of iced water before you sip")^ an d tou ch ("She fa tin gling in her h an ds an d a rm s" [182]) are also represented in the stoAnd thi s concrete sense imagery is, ra th er siuprisingly, tran sm itted to thro ug h th e perception of a woman rem arka bly out of touch with th e wo

around her. 'Miss Brill, an aging spinster, a foreigner (in xenophobic France) wit

out friends or relatives , is almost a parody of th e isolated ex pa triate . Honly relationships are with her students, in whom she naturally caconfide, and w ith an old invalid ge ntle m an w ho is practically dead. No oelse figures in her life. She maintains only the most tenuous of contaw ith th e outside world: once a week she observes and eavesdrops on s tragers. It is a story, as David M adden poin ts out, of a wom an's forced re tre

from the world.' What is the function, then, of the vivid sense imagerDon't the very profusion and immediacy of the imagery contradict tthe m e of isolation?

A careful look at Miss Brill's imagery reveals that all of it sharessing ular characteristic: all of it is reductive. The ima ges which brin g tscene to life simultaneously reduce it: we see not only what Miss Brsees, but we see how she sees what she sees, as it is reported in her owlanguage (free indirect discourse). This is obvious, of course, in terms

characters and action: she transforms the real, human scene in the painto a set scene from a play ("It was exactly like a p la y .. .. They were all th e stage . . . . they were actin g" [186-87]). But it is operative also in timagery, by m ean s of which she reduces th e r ea l world (lively, br igh t ajoyful on a spring afternoon) to fit her own limited perspectives.

Critics have noted tha t Miss Brill transforms th e band im agery evas she reports it." But critics have not noticed th a t th e m ea ns by wh ich stransforms it are encoded in the sense imagery. Wh at is impo rtant to understanding of Miss Brill is not the fact of transformation but tm an ner of transformation.Tb give an exam ple: music produced by a b raba nd p laying outdoors is inevitably loud; on this Sunday, th e first Sundof th e new season, it was even "louder and gay er" th a n usu al. But filterthro ug h M iss Brill 's perception, the large brass y soun ds become " a lit'flutey' bit very pretty!a little c ha in of br ight drop s" (183). For pa rtth e story. M iss Brill doesn't even he ar th e loud band; and th en "Tum -tu

6 "Miss B rill," in The Garden Ar ty (New York: M od em Library, 1950), p. 18 2. All furthercitations are in the text.

6 In his No te " Alienation in 'Miss Brill' " (Studies in Short Fiction, 5, No. 1 [1967], 74-76)R b L H ll h d h d " " d " li d " i ddi i " li

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REDUCTIVE IMAGERY IN "MISS BRILL" 475

tu m tiddle-um! tiddle-um! tu m tiddley-um tu m ta! " (185)she has reducesa b ras s ban d to a few h um m ing, tapp ing sounds. Th e reductive and subjec-tive quality of the sound imagery becomes even more obvious when MissBrill projects onto th e ban d h er in terpreta tion of Einother character 's emo-

tions: "th e ban d seemed to know w ha t she [the woman wearing the erm inetoqu e] w as feeling an d played more softly, played ten de rly . . ." (186). Theimagery presents not the real sounds the band makes, but Miss Brill 'ssubjective transfo rm ation and u ltim ate reduction of these sound s.

M iss B rill cons istently reduces th e world in wh ich she lives. In W elty'sterm s. M iss Brill tries to mak e the world "cozy" and "safe" for h e r s e l fTDmake them fit into her diminished world. Miss Brill attempts to reducethe people in the Jardins Publiques by imaging them as small animals

the band director "scraped his foot and flapped his arms like a roosterabou t to crow" (183); th e m other is "like a young h e n . . . " (184). The oldewoman is reduced even further by metonymyshe is the "erminetoque" and she dabs he r lips w ith " a tiny yellowish paw " (185) and th en"p atte red aw ay" (186). And th e centra l ima ge of th e fox is also reduced insize: Miss Brill attaches the adjective "little" to it six times in the firstpa rag rap h: th e fox is a "d ear little thi n g " an d (twice) a "L ittle rogue"; ithas "dim little eyes," "sad little eyes," and needs "a little dab of blacksealing-wax" (182) on its (presumably little) nose. We hear Miss Brills'voice an d diction h er e. "

As Miss Brill catalogues w ha t she sees, she reduces and dehum anizesit: children are "little French dolls" (184); the people on the benches are"still as statues" (184). Faces are not described; Miss Brill prefers to seepeople in ter m s of single item s of clothing: " a fine old man in a velvet coa. . . a big old woman . . . w ith a roll of kn ittin g on her embroidered apron "(183); "An Englishman and his wife, he wearing a dreadful Panama hatand she bu tton boo ts" (184). Som etimes several charac ters are reduced tothe sam e single item of clothing "little boys w ith big w hite silk bows . .little gir ls . . . dressed u p in velvet an d lace" (184); "Two pe asan t womenw ith funny straw h a ts " (185). Or they are seen in ter m s of a single color"a gen tlem an in grey," "Two young girls in r e d . . . with two young soldiersin blue"; describing th e w oman w ho is th e erm ine toqu e. M iss Brill seessomewhat improbably, that "everything, her hair, her face, even her eyes,was the sa m e colour as th e shabby ermine . . . " (185). W hatever Miss Brilsees, she redu ces to the p ara m ete rs of he r own constricted world.

The text does not provide an objective reason for the emptiness of herlife. The usual Mansfield problems do not restrict Miss Brill. Money,

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476 STUDIES IN SHO RT FICTION

tho ug h no t plentiful, doesn 't seem to worry her. She is in good he al th ; hsenses a re ale rt. No fights or ange rs poison her outlook; no cruel, overbeing men establish limits for her. And yet, her condition of isolation is extreme that one thoughtless bit of cruelty is capable of wrecking ever

thin g. By giving us Miss Brill 's own imagery (instead of th e narra tor'and by investing it with the quality of reductivity, Katherine Mansfieh a s transpo sed the psychological aspects of cause a nd effect. Ins tead , th eof presenting the story from the outside, and showing that a chanre m ar k seem s to ma ke Miss Brill disproportionately unhap py, Mansfieshows us the ch arac ter from th e inside, in order to disclose why she coube made so unhappy by such a rem ark. T hat is tosay. Miss Brill's m isery icaused not by the cruelty of the unfeeling external world, represented

th e y oung couple, bu t by the m anip ulative, restrictive, and fineilly destrutive p erson ality of M iss Brillherself. Her reductive imagery suggests thaM iss Brill ha s never perm itted other hu m an being s a full an d independereality. Like Em m aWoodhouse,she ha s seen the m only as raw m ateria l tbe shaped and managed byherself. And as Emma is humiliated whethose upon whom she attempted to impose her will turned out to haindep end ent wills of the ir own, so Miss Brill is severely shocked wh en tromantic young couple"the hero and heroine, of course, just arrivfrom his father's yacht"turn out to be real individuals intent on theown needs and given to rath er ineleg ant m ean s of expression. The propresponse to M iss Brill, then , involves no t only pity for her c ur ren t misebut also blame for having brought that misery onherself. Reading theimag ery carefully reveals th at the th em e of the story is not destruction bself-destruction.

Katherine Mansfield does not often require us to judge her characteso severely. But in th is story she encodes a negative respo nse into th e teby attaching imflattering images to her main character. Although Sarlyn D aly claim s th a t "No d istancing of emotion is allowed as th e readfollows her train of thought and feeling,"" several clear markers obviaemotional identification with the character. First, by choosing to preseM iss Brill in the act of eavesdropping (instead of teach ing h er studentsreading to the old gentleman), Mansfield emphasizes an unattractiaspect of her character. Mansfield also distances Miss Brill from us giving her the name of a fish." The fox fur, with which Miss Brill identified both a t the be ginning and the end of th e story," is not only debu t continues to decay even after dea th. And on the sam e na rrativ e lev

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REDUC TIVE IMAG ERY IN "MISS BRILL" 477

the girl at the end of the story reduces the value of the fox fur (and thusofMiss Brill) even further by comparing it to "a fried whiting" (189).Although we tend to respond sympathetically to Mansfield's troubledwomen, I think that in this story such a response is inappropriate.A moredispassionate examination of Miss Brill is demanded.'

Just as Miss Brill's imagery reveals her personality to us,so does thenarrative discourse reveal the distance and attitude appropriate for thereader. Disassociation works on two levels: the character practices thetechnique on the world around her and thus reveals the causes for herisolation, and the author practices the technique on the reader and thusmanipulates our response to the character. A careful reading, then,requires both a dispassionate attitudeto the character andclose attentionto her imagery. That imagery reveals her method of dealing with theworld: Miss Brill tries to control her environmentby reducing it. But herfinal defeat or isolation or alienation (depending on which critic's lan-guage you use) is not the main issue of the story. The imagery draws ourattention not to the defeat but to the process that has made it inevitable.The reductive imagery reveals that the defeat is caused notby the world,but by Miss Brill's attempt to work her will on it. The imagery is apowerful tool by means of which Mansfield encourages and enables us to

discover how her character gotto where she is: in no small measure. MissBrill herself created the smallness of her life.

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