The Aging Process in Katherine Mansfields Miss Brill Essay -- Miss Bri

Katherine Mansfields Miss Brill perfectly captures the phases ones mind goes through when faced with becoming old. Elderly people tend to be nostalgic, even sentimental more or less their youth. In later years, the nostalgia can develop into senility or fantasy. The ermine fur in Miss Brill is the catalyst of her nostalgia and symbolizes the passing of time in three stages an expectant youth, a vital adulthood, and finally, a development into old age and fantasy.The story opens with Miss Brills excitement that the season has arrived for social engagements perhaps it is the touring car season when the ladies debut their latest fashions. With all the expectancy of a young girl looking forward to courtship, Miss Brill unpacks her prized and most fashionable possession, the ermine fur. While unpacking the fur, the reader is aware that Miss Brill is lapsing into elderly nostalgia because she speaks to the fur in such delighted tones. Miss Brill refers to her ermine fur as her Little Ro gue(182). We learn that the ermine fur is fragile and in disrepair we sense that Miss Brill is, to...