Stuck on the Shoulder of the Road of Life (p 186, Question 8)

Katherine Mansfield's "Miss Brill" observes the eponymous Miss Brill as she experiences a realization about her state of life. Throughout the initial majority of the story, Miss Brill relishes in her weekly Sunday afternoon ventures to simply watch people. She even goes so far as to compare her act of people-watching as "like a play. It was exactly like a play." She becomes rather excited and imaginative at this idea, imagining that the people, herself included, "were all on stage."

Yet right as she is caught up in this romantic train of thought, that train's brakes are slammed down by a young man speaking to his lover. Unbeknownst to him, Miss Brill is able to hear him as he calls her a "stupid old thing" and asks his lover, "Why does she come here at all--who wants her? Why doesn't she keep her silly old mug at home?" Though Miss Brill's initial reaction to this rather scathing insult is not given, it is made clear that she is deeply affected by it as she changes her habits, hurrying home, doing nothing "for a long time," and then suddenly and quickly removing her fur necklet and putting it away "without looking" at it. She has suddenly come to the realization that she is not simply an observer of her surroundings, but an outsider to them. She discovers that she is not, in fact, "part of the performance [of life] after all," but is instead letting life pass her by.