Story

The nature and temperament of the story is one of alienation and disconnect from reality. Miss Brill is a supremely alienated character. She is alienated from the world around her. She even seems to suffer from self-alienation as she does not appear to be fully in touch with the reality of her own appearance or the image that she presents to the world. She is literally a foreigner, teaching in France though she is English, and she does not seem to have any close intimates. Alienation was a common theme of the Modernists, who sought to depict individual lives like Miss Brill's or Eliot's Prufrock in order to comment on how modern life's fragmentary nature precluded deep connections and self-awareness.