payment page
Loneliness
From the very beginning of the story, readers can sense Miss Brill’s loneliness. She is unmarried and lives by herself. Her only companion is her fur, which she treats like a pet. She talks to it, gives it affectionate names, and imagines what it might say to her. At the park, she sits on the bench alone, despite other people sharing the bench. She does not speak to them. Instead, she listens to their conversations, “sitting in on other people’s lives just for a minute.” Instead of talking to her, others talk around her.
Readers get the impression that the only human contact Miss Brill experiences outside of the park is with her English students, the old invalid she reads to, and the baker. Yet she doesn’t discuss her private life with her students, the invalid says nothing, and the baker merely sells her slices of honey-cake. They share spaces with Miss Brill, but their connection is not genuine, and, therefore, they do not alleviate her loneliness.
When Miss Brill looks around the park, she sees other lonely people—old, silent people who stare into space, looking like they’ve come from “dark little rooms.” Their loneliness is emphasized by the vitality and unity of others around them, such as the band that plays music together, the children that play games, and the couples and groups that parade around the park, greeting each other and stopping to talk. The woman referred to as the ermine toque parallels Miss Brill in her loneliness. She moves through the park solo, looking for someone, anyone, to talk to. Like Miss Brill, she fools herself into thinking that she can forge connections with others. In reality, she remains alone in the crowd.
Denial
Miss Brill lives in denial, denying her loneliness, age, and sorrow. Throughout the story, Miss Brill refuses to recognize her loneliness. As she sits in the park, she watches and listens in on others, feeling as if she joins their lives. She treats her fur as a friendly companion and the invalid gentleman as a potential admirer, with all evidence to the contrary.
Miss Brill also refuses to acknowledge and accept her age. When she feels “a tingling in her arms and legs,” she discounts it as an effect of her walking, not a sign of advancing age. She sees young people in a positive light but views older people in a negative light. The old couple that silently shares her seat disappoints her, and she hopes they will soon leave. She judges the people sitting on the other benches as “odd, silent, nearly all old,” but she does not see that she fits that same description.
The lonely Miss Brill also denies that she lives on the edges of community. In life’s drama, she is an audience member. However, she imagines herself as a crucial cast member, someone who would be missed if she were not there. When she feels “something light and sad” in her breathing, she denies the sadness, instead believing it’s something gentler stirring in her feelings.
However, Miss Brill’s crisis comes when the young lovers force her to face reality. The boy calls her an unwanted old person, and the girl mocks her fur. Miss Brill can no longer deny that she sits isolated on the margins of society. That realization makes her retreat to her “little dark room” alone. Even then, she thinks she hears “something crying,” denying that the tears are hers.
Alienation
Miss Brill lives her life as an outsider. She is an aging, unmarried woman, qualities which would surely have bestowed her with spinster status in the early 1900s. In the early 20th century, women were expected to marry young and have children. A woman who remained unmarried was labeled an “old maid” and seen as flawed and outside societal norms. Because Miss Brill is a “miss,” she is clearly unmarried, and the story’s details suggest she lives alone, a spinster teacher in a world of families.
Miss Brill is also old, or at least getting old. The boy near the story’s end calls her a “stupid old thing” and wonders why she doesn’t “keep her silly old mug at home.” Miss Brill could be in her 30s or 40s and still be considered old by the boy. Her society, too, would think of her as old if she were only 30 or 40 years old and unmarried. Like the other “old” people in the story, Miss Brill sits on a bench, apart from the younger people, looking in on the rest of society.
As an outsider, Miss Brill is alienated. She lives in society but is not a part of it. She is like an audience member observing the play, and she can only imagine herself to be a part of the company.
