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The narrator tells the story using a third-person limited point of view. The story follows Miss Brill’s actions, sharing only her thoughts and feelings. Mansfield experiments with the perspective, though, by using stream of consciousness at times to blur the line between the narrator and the protagonist. For example, the narrator takes the traditional, objective perspective when saying, “Miss Brill put up her hand and touched her fur.” But she follows this objective description by having the narrator report Miss Brill’s subjective thought: “Dear little thing!”
Readers see and hear only what Miss Brill sees and hears. At times, the narrator paraphrases the conversations Miss Brills hears. The narrator rarely quotes the speaker’s words directly, which should signal to readers that when characters’ words are reported directly, they are of particular significance. The longest use of direct quotation is the young lovers’ dialogue. Rather than paraphrase their words and describe their effect on Miss Brill, the narrator presents the dialogue exactly as Miss Brill hears it. This narratorial decision allows readers to hear the conversation unfiltered, creating maximum impact, inviting them to feel the cruel sting of the agist comments and to react, to some extent, as Miss Brill reacts.
