Miss Brill Study Guide

Katherine Mansfield was born in New Zealand to a socially prominent family and moved to England at the age of 19 to attend University, in her case Queen’s College. Though originally thinking she would be a cellist, she contributed to the school newspaper, eventually becoming its editor, and began writing fiction seriously in 1906, shortly after returning to New Zealand following a tour of continental Europe. She quickly grew tired of the provincialism of New Zealand, however, and returned to London in 1908. Her most famous work, a collection of short stories called The Garden Party – which includes “Miss Brill” – was published just one year before she died of tuberculosis in 1923.

“Miss Brill” takes place after the First World War in France. The ravages of the war had turned to a growing prosperity, as reflected by the boisterous band. But the toll had been heavy, and though the story brims with new love and young children, the older people in the story seem fatigued, possibly partially because of the difficult effects of the war.

The novels of the Russian Fyodor Dostoevsky, the English D. H. Lawrence, and especially the short stories of the Russian Anton Chekhov influenced Mansfield greatly. These writers all worked in the realist mode, which, while trying to portray the world as it is, also particularly values the idea that plot should arise from situation and character. The short, realistic, and lyrical short stories of the Irishman James Joyce in his 1914 volume Dubliners was probably also an influence, though Mansfield did not believe his work reached greatness.