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Mansfield sets “Miss Brill” on a pleasant Sunday at a park in an unnamed French town. It is autumn, with a chill in the air and yellowing leaves drifting “now and then” from the sky. The setting includes a green rotunda around which people—some of whom are wearing fine clothes befitting the “Season”—are gathered as a band plays. Some of them sit unmoving in their seats, like “statues,” while others parade by, passing flower beds, talking, buying flowers, coupling up, and chasing children. Miss Brill sits watching the activity of others within that setting, aware of the mysteries and drama unfolding around her. Peasants leading donkeys pass, a nun drifts by, a woman throws a bunch of flowers away, and a dignified man rejects the apparent advances of an aging, shabby woman. From her bench on the outskirts of this setting, Miss Brill enjoys the “performance” of the people she watches and overhears, as well as that of the band. Although she considers herself integral to the action unfolding around her, her only role in the “play” proves to be her unwitting interference with the boy’s romantic intentions when he and the girl join her on her “special” bench.
