Perception vs. Reality in Miss

Perception vs. Reality in "Miss Brill"

Our perceptions of reality may differ from the actual world that surrounds us, as demonstrated in the short story, "Miss Brill," by Katherine Mansfield. Miss Brill is completely happy with her perception of reality until it is shattered by the words of a stranger's perception of his reality. Worlds do more than collide when Miss Brill must face the fact that not all are like her and perhaps the play in which she believes everyone to be an actor is nothing more than a cold, cruel world. Perception and reality become at odds when Miss Brill must face the fact that the world in the park does not belong to her and the only brilliance and fascination associated with it existed only in her mind. The harsh reality is that the real world could have lived without her without much regret at all.

Perception in this story must be devastated because Miss Brill is not living in the real world but one in which she has contrived; one that does not exist. While she has designed a nice little world to visit, it is false. Miss Brill believes that the scenes at the park are "exactly like a play" (Mansfield 213) and everyone she watched was "acting" (213). She is also under the impression that "somebody would have noticed if she hadn't been there; she was a part of the performance after all" (213). Everything up until this point has been nothing but a false reality. Peter Thorpe maintains that Miss Brill's perception must be changed through a series of "unrealities" (661) that "Miss Brill's mind moves higher and higher up the hierarchy of unrealities, until she has reached a point from which she can only fall with a thump back to the hard ground of the real world of her humdrum life" (Thorpe). Miss Brill's tragic fall occurs when the young man at the end of the story puts her character into the reality in which it belongs. When he asks who would want her, followed by "why doesn't she keep her silly old mug at home" (Mansfield 214), Miss Brill has no choice but change her perception.

There are two perceptions that have changed in this story; one is the perception of herself being an active player in this drama onstage and the second perception is that the activities are indeed a drama acted out on a stage. What Miss Brill must learn and cry over at the end of the story is that life is not a play and she has essentially wasted her life by investing in and watching and listening to other people instead of living her own life. The truth devastates her not only because of its brutality but also because of how it comes to her. The truth of her value might have been taken easier had the messenger been more sympathetic. Gayatri Devi observes that the death of Mansfield's brother in World War I contributed to her "general feeling of the cruelty of life" (Devi) and her "ingrained skepticism and the burden of hopelessness, obsession with death, and a form of hysterical gaiety that surrounds the lives of her ordinary characters" (Devi). "Mansfield's characters share the topical hopelessness that characterized much of early Modernist writing. Characters like Miss Brill seem to be living on the brink of personal disaster; the sense of community has vanished; they are largely alone" (Devi). Miss Brill must face the dreadful truth that the community she felt so much a part of could easily go on without her. By the time she reaches her dark room, she is already gone. Robert Peltier maintains, that she "has now withdrawn so far from the world that has hurt her, that she does not realize that it is she who is crying" (Peltier). Finally, Miss Brill has the right, albeit, the most painful perception of the world.