Miss Brill

Katherine Mansfield's short story Miss Brill literally made my heart hurt with its ending.  For one perfect Sunday afternoon, sweet old Miss Brill felt important, excited, happy to be alive.  "No doubt somebody would have noticed if she hadn't been there; she was part of the performance after all" (Mansfield, 185).  She felt needed, as though she were a part of something.  I was disgusted with the young couple who came up next to her.  They spoke of her as though she were a mangy animal; they never bothered to consider that she might be able to hear them.  After being lifted by Miss Brill's previously buoyant spirits, I felt just as crushed as she was when she realized what people really thought when they saw her.  She was an annoyance, a burden, a "stupid old thing".  She was absolutely devastated.  I found it cruelly ironic that, while she took the time and care to observe others and try to learn their stories so she could sympathize with them, the young couple who made the degrading comments had never spoken to her in their lives.  They did not know how dearly she loved her furs, how proud of them she was, how much she adored everyone she saw.  They superficially judged her, bringing an old woman to tears.