Miss Brill

Mansfield employs similes throughout the story to demonstrate Miss Brill’s vivid imagination and habitual turn to positive thinking. Where one person might regard this particular Sunday in the park as an ordinary day, Miss Brill perceives luxe grandeur in the “the blue sky powdered with gold and great spots of light like white wine splashed over the Jardins Publiques” (Paragraph 1). The repeated use of simile allows readers to share Miss Brill’s perspective of the world: the band conductor flaps “his arms like a rooster about to crow” (Paragraph 2), the old couple on the bench sit “still as statues” (Paragraph 5), and a nearby mother chastises her child “like a young hen” (Paragraph 5).

The crux of Miss Brill’s perception of the world rests in a simile: “Oh, how fascinating it was! How she enjoyed it! How she loved sitting here, watching it all! It was like a play. It was exactly like a play” (Paragraph 9). Even she has a role in the performance, but she is reticent to share her Sunday outings with her students: “she had quite a queer, shy feeling at telling her English pupils how she spent her Sunday afternoons. No wonder! Miss Brill nearly laughed out loud. She was on the stage” (Paragraph 9). She is aware of her loneliness and somewhat self-conscious of her method of alleviating it; perhaps exposing the performance would dispel its magic. However, it is no matter—so long as she fulfills her role, then she achieves some degree of connection, purpose, and belonging.