这是关于大学《英语短篇小说鉴赏》的PPT

About the author

Story presentation

"Miss Brill," Katherine Mansfield's short story about a woman's Sunday outing to a park, was published in her 1922 collection of stories entitled The Garden Party. The story's enduring popularity is due in part to its use of a stream-of-consciousness narrative in which Miss Brill's character is revealed through her thoughts about others as she watches a crowd from a park bench. Mansfield's talent as a writer is illustrated by the fact that she at no point tells what Miss Brill is thinking about her own life, yet the story draws one of the most succinct, complete character portraits in twentieth-century short fiction. "Miss Brill" has become one of Mansfield's most popular stories, and has been reprinted in numerous anthologies and collections. The story is typical of Mansfield's style; she often employed stream-of-consciousness narration in order to show the psychological complexity of everyday experience in her characters' lives.

About stream-of-consciousness

Plot summary

The story is about Miss Brill, a middle-aged English teacher in an unnamed French vacation town. It follows her on a regular Sunday afternoon in the park, which she spends walking and sitting in the park, wearing an old but beloved fur. She sees the world as if it was a stage, and enjoys watching the people around her, often judging them condescendingly（谦逊的）. However, she then overhears a young couple's cruel remark about herself, and the story ends with her realizing that she is not really needed in the busy world, and she thinks that she heard the fur crying. Mansfield's personification（化身） throughout the passage reveals a sense of loneliness belonging to Miss Brill for she not only fabricates（构成） a connection with the other park passers-by, but also personifies（使人格化） her inanimate（死气沉沉的） piece of clothing by conversing（谈话） with it as well as feeling for it.