英语短篇小说鉴赏PPT
日历表-幼儿教师个人总结
About the author
Story
presentation
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. Brillhas 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.
Characters
Miss Brill, an
English professor
Many other passers-by,
including
Young couple
Major motifs
loneliness
illusion
versus（对（指诉讼、比赛等中），与…相对） reality
rejection
isolation（隔绝，孤立，隔离，绝缘，离析）
Theme
What this story is trying to illustrate is
that sometimes people can be happy through living
in an
illusion. However, this kind of
happiness is fragile and can be easily destroyed.
Unfortunately,
modern society does not provide
a place for everyone. Inevitably, there are those
people, often
elderly, who become
marginalized; they live alone, friendless and
mostly ignored. Miss Brill is
one of these
people, which becomes clear in her lack of
communication with the people around
her in
the park. “They did not speak
.
Literary significance
The text is written
in the modernist mode, third-person limited point
of
view, without a set structure
My understandings
The author is
very perceptive（有理解的）. She describes the
protagonist’s inner mind in
detail. Miss Brill
is an old, lonely woman (for she always goes to a
place where there are a lot of
old men and
women). She is single all through her years. She
has no child, no husband, and no
relatives. So
she has nobody to talk to when she feels lonely.
She is left alone. However, she
serves in a
community, whose aim is to help the poor people in
need. Sometimes she teaches
pupils English,
sometimes reads the newspaper to the old invalid
gentleman. After finishing her
work in the
community, she goes back home alone. No one shares
her joys and sorrows of life. So
she always
talks to her “little thing”, fur.