While Miss Brill is watching the families play in the park, she compares a young mother rushing after her child to a hen, using a simile:
"And sometimes a tiny staggerer came suddenly rocking into the open from under the trees, stopped, stared, as suddenly sat down ‘flop,’ until its small high-stepping mother, like a young hen, rushed scolding to its rescue."
This comparison isn't an altogether flattering one: The image of the hen conjures up ideas of frantic anxiety and even stupidity, casting the woman's actions in a negative light. Although Miss Brill doesn't criticize the young mother directly, she obliquely mocks her exaggerated anxiety for the child. The dismissive simile here pokes fun at the romanticized ideals of motherhood that would have been widespread in Mansfield's time, slyly suggesting that motherhood is not an inherently laudable or glamorous role. It also contextualizes Miss Brill's situation, reminding the reader of the stigma faced by women who did not become wives and mothers.
At the same time, Miss Brill makes this simile as she's watching families play in the park, a tableau from which she, as an unattached woman, is excluded. The comparison she makes here may reflect Miss Brill's bitterness at having no one to take care of, or be cared for by, herself.
