Romanticism In Miss Brill

Superior Essays
To what extent are modernist works more interested in the inner world of the imagination and subjective perception than the outer world of social life? Discuss with reference to two texts.
The works of ‘Miss Brill’ by Katherine Mansfield (1920) and Tonio Kroger by Thomas Mann (1903) include fundamental modernist characteristics, such as a fragmented structure, free indirect discourse and an epiphany. These literary techniques help shape the struggle both authors present between the inner world of the imagination and the outer world of social life. Narrative control identifies the focus of subjective perspective through free indirect thought. Whilst the representation of the imagination highlights the interest of the authors to protect the inner
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Even though the narrative focalizes through the perspective of the protagonist, it is not her direct voice: ‘Miss Brill put up her hand and touched her fur’ (Mansfield 2007: 331). We never find out Miss Brill’s first name, which could arguably represent that we never find the true her, only the version constructed by the narrator. ‘Just as Miss Brill’s imagery reveals her personality to us, so does the narrative discourse reveal the distance and attitude appropriate for the reader’ (Mandel 1989: 477). The purpose of the 3rd person narrative in Miss Brill is to distance the reader enough that there is a noticeable movement between discourses. Mansfield constructs the narrative to control this distance, showing the manipulation of Miss Brill’s inner world of the imagination, by the outer world of the narrative. Similarly, in Tonio Kroger, the narrator uses the protagonist’s full name when describing his thoughts: ‘it was whom Tonio Kroger loved at the ages of sixteen’ (Mann 1998: 147). However, throughout the narration, there is also the reference to just ‘Tonio’ (144). The narrator’s choice to use just a first name helps familiarize the reader with the protagonist, implying that we get a closer insight into Tonio Kroger’s life than we do to Miss Brill. Also, there are more dialogue passages in Tonio Kroger, displaying an obvious …show more content…
Through an epiphany, both protagonists realize that they are outcasts from society, by the end of the story. In Tonio Kroger, the protagonist takes himself out of society, displaying Mann’s use of alienation to condemn the outer world of social life. Tonio recognizes that his role of an artist does not fit into the bourgeois society, in which he is seen to belong, ‘“I stand between two worlds, I am at home in neither, and this makes things a little difficult for me.”’ (Mann 1998: 194). The ‘two worlds’ Mann writes of symbolizes the inner world of imagination and the outer world of social life. ‘Thomas Mann … relates the alienation of the artist from society to his function as its mirror or seismograph.’ (Pascall 1966: 119). This argument claims that Tonio’s alienation from society is a consequence of his role as an artist, mirroring the two worlds against each other. Confirmed by the protagonist’s notion that, ‘a real artist is not one who has taken art up as his profession, but a man predestined and foredoomed to it.’ (Mann 1998: 160). Presenting the function of his role as the artist as the reason for his alienation. However, Tonio’s inability to fit into either world could stand as Mann’s impression that modernist works are neither more interested in the inner or outer world. But is constructed to show that protagonist’s blur between both or, like Tonio Kroger, fit into

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