The Rhythms of Character in Katherine Mansfield’s ‘Miss Brill’

Abstract

This chapter investigates the ways that Katherine Mansfield’s ‘Miss Brill’ is constructed through textual rhythms. Specifically, it argues that the story is distinguished by an arrhythmic duality created largely by the way that Miss Brill’s resolutely cheerful voice, which reaches us via free indirect discourse, is repeatedly undercut by a discordant undertone of melancholy. This contributes to a pattern of self-deception repeated at multiple levels of the story, culminating in a fantasy about her everyday life being part of a theatrical production. Mansfield’s mimetic use of rhythm serves a profoundly ethical purpose, using rhythm to sympathetically portray the depth of its subject’s loneliness and to expose the social structures that lead to it. The story also shows the influence on modern prose style of the relatively new field of psychology in its exploration of consciousness, emotion, and the relation between the self and the world. Beyond its ethical concerns, Mansfield’s experiment with rhythms for mimetic purposes also aims to deepen our understanding of the subtle cadences and confluences of inner and outer experience. In this, she contributes to the broader ontological and aesthetic conversations surrounding rhythm in her time.

Drill Hall or Ball Hall? On Pedagogical Implications of the Old Age Motif in Katherine Mansfield’s Short Story “Her First Ball”

“…The dichotomy between the old and the young constitutes the central axis of several of Mansfield's short stories. Such a contrast could be detected in "Little Governess" (1915) where innocent naivety is opposed to cynical experience (Kwiatkowska, 2018) or in "Miss Brill" (1920 where oldness connotes isolation and loneliness, while youth stands for boldness and inclusion (Rydstrand, 2017).…”