Katherine Mansfield, born Kathleen Mansfield Beauchamp in 1888 in Wellington, New Zealand, lived a short life, but she established a literary reputation at a young age. Her first published book, In a German Pension, was published in 1911, when she was only twenty-two years old. She became friends with some of the great literary figures…
Tag: Short Stories
Miss Brill – Setting
Europe between the Wars In the 1920s, Europe was rebuilding after World War I, the most destructive and deadly war in history. As the economy grew, spurred on by the advances in medicine and technology gained during the war, a newfound era of wealth and cultural growth permeated many Western European countries. France, especially, became…
Miss Brill – Setting, Symbolism & Narration
Katherine Mansfield’s “Miss Brill” presents the interior monologue of a woman on a Sunday trip to the park whose pleasant illusions are shattered when reality infringes on her thoughts. Setting “Miss Brill” is set in the “JardinsPubliques,” the French term for “public garden,” or park. Miss Brill, through her name and the indication that she…
Miss Brill – Themes
Katherine Mansfield’s “Miss Brill” presents an afternoon in the life of a middle-aged spinster. On her usual Sunday visit to the park, she imagines the she and the people in the park are characters in a play. Contributing to her good mood is the fact that she is wearing her prized fur stole. Anticipating the…
Miss Brill – Characters
Miss Brill Miss Brill is a middle-aged, unmarried English woman who lives alone in a small apartment in France. She teaches English to students and reads the newspaper to an elderly man several times a week. One of her prized possessions is a fur necklet that she wears on a Sunday visit to the town’s…
Miss Brill: Summary
The Jardins Publiques (Public Gardens) in a French town on an early autumn Sunday afternoon is the setting for ‘ ‘Miss Brill.” The air is still, but there is a “faint chill, like a chill from a glass of iced water before you sip,” so Miss Brill is happy to have worn her fur stole….
In The Cemetery Where Al Jolson Is Buried: Analysis
What is most striking about “In the Cemetery Where Al Jolson Is Buried,” widely considered one of Amy Hempel’s finest and most moving stories, is its compression and its pain. The writing here is terse; much is left out. The parts left out are what give the story its emotional power. This same minimalist style…
In The Cemetery Where Al Jolson Is Buried: Setting
California in the 1980s Hempel’s writing, particularly her stories in Reasons to Live, evoke a lifestyle that is Californian in nature. Despite the fact that they were written in New York, most of her stories take place on the West coast, including “In the Cemetery Where Al Jolson Is Buried.” Hempel frequently uses cultural references…
In The Cemetery Where Al Jolson Is Buried: Literary Devices
Narrative Voice Amy Hempel’s “In the Cemetery Where Al Jolson Is Buried” is told in the first-person point of view by an unidentified female narrator. At times the voice telling this story seems to move into a narrative technique known as stream-of consciousness—the literary attempt to reproduce the pattern of a mind in unchecked thought,…
In The Cemetery Where Al Jolson Is Buried: Themes
“In the Cemetery Where Al Jolson Is Buried” begins with the narrator’s reluctant visit to a dying friend but evolves into an elegy for the terminally ill woman and a confession of the narrator’s own fear of dying. Fear of Death Readers never know exactly what illness the sick friend dies of or precisely what…