The Illusory Red Color in “Miss Brill”

○ Zuo Huilian

(English Department, Beijing Language and Culture University, Beijing, 100083)



The Illusory Red Color in “Miss Brill”

○ Zuo Huilian

(EnglishDepartment,BeijingLanguageandCultureUniversity,Beijing, 100083)

As the text does not provide an objective description of Miss Brill’s life, or give us an explicit reason for her extreme emptiness, this essay will explore it through Katherine’s handling of the red colored imagery in “Miss Brill”, contending that she was experimenting with the symbolic potential of color rather than the purely pragmatic, descriptive uses.

Katherine Mansfield, Miss Brill, red, illusory

Katherine Mansfield’s story “Miss Brill” has evoked various responses among the critics. As the text does not provide an objective description of Miss Brill’s life, or give us an explicit reason for the extreme emptiness of Miss Brill’s life, many critics have attempted to evaluate the character from its most impressive technical achievement, or its careful structure. However, instead of study of its highly functional application of figurative language, I will explore Katherine’s handling of color imagery in “Miss Brill”, contending that she was experimenting with the symbolic potential of color rather than the purely pragmatic,

descriptive uses.

Katherine’s stories are generally full of details, small, but significant incidents in her characters’ lives. In an often-quoted letter published inTheLettersofKatherineMansfield, she says of “Miss Brill”: “I chose the rise and fall of every paragraph to fit her, and to fit her on that day at that moment” (190). While the surface of her stories often flash with sparkling detail, the underlying tones are somber, threatening, and register the danger in the most innocent seeming aspects of life. Therefore, in “Miss Brill”, Katherine surely experimented with a color theory by which her world view is more comprehensive and more compact. And the use of color imagery on a metaphorical level has become part of her irony as a distancing technique, a needed technique of restraint and indirection.

I. Red Color in “Miss Brill”

In “Miss Brill”, Katherine showed a preference for the primary colors of red, gold and yellow, which belongs to the warm colors, blue, grey, white and black, a group of cool colors. She most often uses the primary colors as symbols for the abstract,

illusory experiences. In this essay, I would focus on the exploration of the red color, applied in the “Miss Brill” to express her red romantic understanding of the society, which ultimately leads to an ironic misunderstanding of life’s grey realities, forcing her to shrink into her own diminished world alone.

Katherine’s favorite color seems to have been red, and it has appeared in “Miss Brill” for three times, with the first perception in the very beginning, “how sweet it was to see them snap at her again from the red eiderdown” (91); For the second time, Miss Brill brings a scathing portrait of “two young girls in red who came by and met two young soldiers in blue, and they laughed and paired and went off arm-in-arm” (92); And at the end of the story, in response to the first paragraph, where Katherine presents the red eiderdown to readers, Miss Brill again “passed the baker’s by, climbed the stairs, went into the little dark room - her room like a cupboard - and sat down on the red eiderdown” (96).

By contrast, we notice the passion as well as the pleasure she first associated with this red color gradually dims away, which gives a little clue of Katherine’s own understanding of the character that Miss Brill has partially aware of the danger hidden in the society. Since Katherine did not express herself explicitly in her letters about the functional association of red color to women, we would exploit it from several possible perspectives.

Ⅱ. Red, a Symbol of Romance

Historically, men view women wearing a lot of red as more attractive and more sexually desirable than women presented in other colors, and once that red ochre applied as face and body paint acted as a testimony of female fertility, which is one of the earliest rituals known to anthropologists. Traditionally, red, as an illusory symbol for love, passion and romance, a frequent marker on Valentine’s Day, most often associates with women stuffs. For example, through the close reading of other literary works, it is not hard to find such comparisons: Red is heart beat. Red rose. Red love. Red cheeks. Red lips. Red wine. Red lipstick. Red blushers, and etc. To conclude, all the red-colored images are inseparable with women’s romantic fantasies, thereby “Miss Brill” is not an exception that could be read from the character’s romantic “red” view.

The story begins with a harmonious picture that Miss Brill took the “little darling fur” (1) from a red eiderdown with care and taste. Later her gentle touch on the fur, her insistent calling of the fox to be “dear little thing”, her delicately comparing the fur’s eye to be “dim little eyes” (2), and also her aching feelings when the fox bit its tails near her neck, are all dedicated to the portrait of an elegant young lady. Seen from the vertical discourses she made, the gestures she performed, the romance she conjured, Miss Brill is seemingly a romantic and innocent woman, who aspirates for eternal youth and beauty, and directly refuses to admit the truth of her aging years.

Ⅲ. Red, an Illusory Symbol

However, when observing the world closely in her unique way, Miss Brill’s personality becomes less obscure, when she actively replied to the every change in band’s performance. For example, the music produced by a brass band playing outdoors is inevitably loud; on this Sunday in a new season, it was even “louder and gayer” than usual. But filtered through Miss Brill’s perception, the large brassy sounds become “a little ‘flutey’ bit — very pretty! — a little chain of bright drops”. The subjective and romantic quality of Miss Brill becomes even more obvious when she projects onto the band her interpretation of another character’s emotions: “the band seemed to know what she was feeling and played more softly, played tenderly …” (96). The music made by the band is not the real sound, but Miss Brill’s subjective transformation and ultimate romantic imagination of these sounds.

After a careful look at Miss Brill’s imagery, it reveals to the readers that Miss Brill reported everything involved in her own language, in a way more romantic. She transforms the real, human scene in the park into a set scene from a play where every one shows up at the exactly same time joyfully. The diminished illusory world created by Miss Brill to fit her own limited perspectives is a peaceful world, where the sadness, coldness, and chilling are all guised under her own romantic red protection.

Ⅳ. Conclusion

The colored imagery is a powerful tool by means of which Mansfield encourages and enables us to discover how her character retreated to a diminished world where the girl was in red, the man in blue, the fur in white, the leaf in yellow, the bench in green, the cupboard-like room in black. Therefore, when reading “Miss Brill”, the readers are required to share a dispassionate attitude to the character and close attention to Katherine’s functional color theories, which manipulates our responses to the character.

[1]Mansfield, Katherine. 1965. “Miss Brill “in Short stories of Katherine Mansfield[M].New York: Twayne.

[2] Mansfield, Katherine. 2001. The Letters of Katherine Mansfield[M].London: Greenwood Press.

在《布里尔小姐》这部短篇小说中，作者凯瑟琳巧妙地利用意识流手法描述了布里尔小姐内心的极度空虚，但布里尔小姐孤独的形象在文中却没有得到全面的解释。本文将从红色的象征意义入手，揭示凯瑟琳对于颜色的应用，不仅是对客观世界的描述，更是一种极具代表性的现代艺术表现手法。

《布里尔小姐》； 凯瑟琳·曼斯菲尔德； 红色； 幻影