Story

Miss Brill’s return to the real is quick and devastating. Since her life seems to be comprised of small rituals, skipping the baker’s is a consequential action. Of even more symbolic consequence is her taking off her fur and putting it back into the box, an act which concludes with her thinking she hears “something” crying. Thorpe notes that the fur has “virtually a one-to-one correspondence to all that Miss Brill aspires to, for it is male, it is adventuresome, and it provides some sort of sensual, if not sexual, satisfaction…the fur is a substitute for the society, the love, sympathy, and understanding which are absent from Miss Brill’s life.” The fur can also be seen as Miss Brill. It is shabby and old, it comes from a dark box, it goes out in the world only to be mocked. The “something” crying is not the fur, of course, but Miss Brill in her identification with the piece.