Connection With Surrounding Society in A Rose for Emily and Miss Brill - Essay Example

Emily and Miss Brill The short stories “A Rose for Emily” by William Faulkner and “Miss Brill” by Katherine Mansfield are in some ways very similar. Both stories are about older women who do not realize that they seem strange or ridiculous to others. Both depict women who have difficulty truly interacting with their communities. They are also both written in a similar tone, with an eye to detail and imagery. However, the two stories are quite different in the portrait they create of the main characters. “Miss Brill” portrays a woman who wants to connect with others, who is good and believes others are good, too. “A Rose for Emily” portrays a woman who is afraid of the world, and wants to control it. She is a killer who believes that others are out to hurt her. These two stories each portray a woman who is out of touch with the world around her. They were both once wealthy, as described in detail in “A Rose for Emily” and hinted at in “Miss Brill” by the fact that she owns a fur. Both have become outdated and ridiculous. Emily lives in a house that is “decorated with cupolas and spires and scrolled balconies in the heavily lightsome style of the seventies, set on what had once been our most select street” (Faulkner 2). The imagery used to describe the house also shows how the house and Emily are set apart from the world. The house is different from everything else around it. The house can be viewed as a symbol for Emily herself: A husk of its former self, once grand and imposing but now pitiable and strange, a leftover relic of a bygone era. Of all the old mansions in the neighborhood, “only Miss Emily's house was left, lifting its stubborn and coquettish decay above the cotton wagons and the gasoline pumps—an eyesore among eyesores” (Faulkner 2). The words “lifting its stubborn and coquettish head” personifies the house and makes it sound like a woman. The language used here reminds the reader of a Southern Belle, the kind of woman Emily must have been once. The house has a personality, almost like a living thing, like an extension of Emily. Emily’s way of adapting to her environment is by shutting herself off from the rest of her town. The house represents this. Likewise, Miss Brill’s old fur must have been an expensive status symbol once, but is now old and outdated, a “little rogue biting its tail just by her left ear” (Mansfield 1). This bit of imagery has a double purpose. It shows that Miss Brill loves the fur and thinks of it kind of like a pet with a personality. It also comes across to the audience as somewhat gruesome. The language used to talk about Miss Brill’s view of the dead animal is lighthearted. It shows that Miss Brill might be a bit mentally unbalanced. Like Emily’s house, Miss Brill’s fur is an extension of her, almost like a living thing, but really just a reflection of Miss Brill’s feelings. When she imagines it asks “What has been happening to me?” (1) it foreshadows her own sadness and confusion at the end of the story. When she puts the fur away at the end, “when she put the lid on she thought she heard something crying” (4). Although the narrative makes it seem that it’s the fur that’s crying, the reader knows that it’s actually Miss Brill. There is a big difference between Emily and Miss Brill, however. Miss Brill longs to be around people and be in touch with her community. When she watches the crowd, her thoughts are described as “Oh, how fascinating it was! How she enjoyed it! How she loved sitting here, watching it all!” (Mansfield 4). She cares very much about the feelings of the people around her, and feels a great deal of affection for them, even though they don’t know her. When she watches the people in the park, she imagines stories for them and engages with their lives. This shows that she is adapting to her environment by creating a fantasy world as a buffer zone between herself and reality. This allows Miss Brill to go out among people and still maintain a safe distance from them. Emily, on the other hand, has shut herself off from all contact with other people, with the exception of one servant. When the officials go to collect her taxes, they enter through “the door through which no visitor had passed since she ceased giving china-painting lessons eight or ten years earlier” (Faulkner 5). Few people have even seen her in many years. Emily demands that the town officials go to Colonel Sartoris, unaware that he had died nearly a decade ago. She is so shut off from the town that she doesn’t even know when people she knew have died. Like Miss brill, Emily is creating her own reality. Neither woman has a firm grip on reality. In the case of Miss Brill, she believes herself to be a woman of distinction, a fine-looking woman strutting in her fur. She has no idea how ridiculous she appears to others until the teenagers make their remarks. She believes she can tell what is happening in the lives of the people she watches. In this, she may be right, or she may not. Emily’s world is even further removed from the real world. Not only does she refuse to allow the reality of the taxes she owes to sink in, but she doesn’t even recognize death. Emily is also stuck in time. Both women’s stories have a tragic ending. We are told that Emily “fell ill in the house filled with dust and shadows, with only a doddering Negro man to wait on her. [The townspeople] did not even know she was sick” (Faulkner 52). Emily’s downfall was sad, but she proves to have deserved it, because she murdered a man. Miss Brill’s ending is not quite so dramatic. She is merely hurt and disillusioned. Two young people call her a “stupid old thing” and say her fur “looks exactly like a fried whiting” (Mansfield 4). The cruel words hurt her deeply. It’s all the more tragic because Miss Brill is kind and not at all deserving of the teenagers’ scorn. These two stories do convey a similar feeling and idea. The two women seem alike in many ways. Where they differ most is in what is hiding behind the strange façades. Behind the forbidding façade of Emily, inside the spooky old house, is a murderer. Behind the façade of the silly old woman wrapped in a funny-looking fur is just a kind woman who wanted to be a part of something. Though they seem very similar, these two women actually adapt to their environments very differently. Emily ultimately fails to adapt to her environment. She is a killer who dies miserable and alone. Miss Brill is more successful. She will probably bounce back, rebuild her fantasy world, and go back out among the people she loves to watch again, although probably with a heavier heart than she did before. Works Cited Faulkner, William. “A Rose For Emily.” Kennedy, X. J., and Gioia, Dana, eds. Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, and Drama. 6 ed. New York: Harper Collins, 1995. Web. 3 March 2011. Mansfield, Katherine. “Miss Brill.” East of the Web. Web. 3 March 2011. Read More