The rising action is always important in a short story; in
Katherine Mansfield's "Miss Brill," the rising action literally sets the stage for the
tremendous crash (fall) which is to come. We meet Miss Brill at her home, where she
puts on her funny little fur and makes her way, as always, to the park--which is where
it really all begins. It's a beautiful Sunday, with all kinds of things happening
because it is a Sunday at the beginning of Season, when all social activities are at
their peak. And Miss Brill notices all of it: the band playing, the
conductor
who scraped with his foot and flapped his arms
like a rooster about to
crow,
the two old people who
always shared the bench with her and on whom she usually eavesdropped. Today they were
silent, though she recounts in her head a very specific conversation between a couple
she listened to last Sunday. Then there are the children playing,
couples meandering, a beggar selling flowers, toddlers taking their wobbly steps, and
the beautiful trees with their drooping yellow leaves. An incident occurs in which a
woman tries to exchange pleasantries (with the intent, obviously, of exchanging more
than that), and the women is left, according to Miss Brill, broken-hearted. All of this
"living" takes place around her.
Her mental wanderings
bring her to a place of understanding that this entire scenario is one which is played
out in front of her, week after week, much like a play--a play in which
she is an actor. She even imagines how she will explain this
exciting revelation to the English pupils she tutors or the old man to whom she reads
the paper. It's a thrilling prospect for her to think that she has a role in this
weekly drama.
Even she had a part and came every Sunday. No
doubt somebody would have noticed if she hadn't been there; she was part of the
performance after all. How strange she'd never thought of it like that
before!
This series of images
and thoughts and even revelations--rising action--help endear us to her as we see this
sweet, quirky woman for what she really is. She is a lonely soul, a creature of habit,
who is one of the "statues" or fixtures of this
routine.
When a young couple join her on the bench and
force Miss Brill to face the reality of her stark existence, her world crashes. That
kind of a fall is only possible through the effective use of details and exposition in
the rising action.
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