Katherine Mansfield's Miss Brill: A Literary Analysis

Literature is writings in which expression and form, about ideas of permanent and universal interest, are characteristic or essential features, as poetry, novels, history, biography, and essays (“literature”). In literature, there are always literary terms included in the readings. Literary Terms are structures, writers use them in their work to convey their message in a way the readers can understand. There are many different literary terms, like setting, conflict, climax resolution, etc.… Conflict is a literary term that occurs in all stories after the problem. Conflict is a struggle between two opposing forces (“conflict”). There are many different forms of conflict, there is man vs man, man vs self, man vs society, man vs nature and man vs supernatural. “Miss Brill” by Katherine Mansfield is a very good short story that helps the readers understand the conflicts beyond our emotions. In “Miss Brill”, the main character struggles with herself, society, and the supernatural. …show more content…
“The air was motionless, but when you opened your mouth there was just a faint chill, like a chill from a glass of iced water before you sip, and now and again a leaf came drifting” (Mansfield). This part of the short story helped us to see the big picture. Miss Brill is a depressed old woman who put on a fur coat every Sunday to bring the life back out of herself. She is so depressed she had to make up things to feel better by herself. In the end, it did not turn out how she expected, she was still a crazy, lonely, old lady. There is always a conflict in real life situations, movies, plays, stories, etc.…. There are typically bad conflicts, but some stories do have good conflicts. The conflicts that appeared in “Miss Brill”, were all bad conflicts. Because the character could not tell who she was herself it called all else to fail. As we can tell, in “Miss Brill”, the main character struggles with herself, society, and the