Both Virginia Woolf’s Kew Gardens and Katherine Mansfield’s Miss Brill use various techniques in their texts to explore the existential experience of individuals. Kew Gardens is centered around a series of small but significant moments in the magnificent botanical London garden called Kew Gardens. Woolf explores the themes of passion, desire, love, and regret by introducing the reader to four families as they wander around the garden and stop to admire the flowerbed. Aside from the flowerbed, the narration does not unify the characters in the story. It is a collection of snapshots and insights into the usually hidden lives of a married couple, an elderly man accompanied by a younger gentleman, two elderly women, and a young couple. In comparison, Miss Brill follows the life of only one character, an elderly woman, who visits her local park every Sunday and from her regular sitting place in the stands, attempts to glimpse other people’s lives as a means to avoid her own life. The techniques used to explore the existential experiences of these characters by both Woolf and Mansfield throughout the texts include the setting; the explicit detail of the environments that are used within both texts, as well as the visual imagery and symbolism that represent the themes explored by the authors.
Both short story writers use symbolism to explore either the character’s loneliness or regret about specific decisions in the texts. One significant symbol in Kew Gardens is the snail with a shell of ‘brown circular veins’ which symbolizes isolation and the continuity of humanity in a busy world. Throughout the story, the narrator draws the reader’s attention to the snail crawling determinedly through the dirt. It has a mission to get around, in the same way, life plods forward for each character, who each has their obstacles to traverse, much like the snail has with the leaf. Although an individual may be surrounded by others, as is the snail with the 'high stepping angular green insect' life's journey is ultimately an insular, isolated event. This symbol becomes clearer as it shows there is a lack of communication between all four of the groups that stop near the flowerbed. Whilst each character has others around them in the garden, they are in fact like the snail, as each of them is isolated and lost in their world. The characters in Woolf’s story who feel the regret of past decisions and actions are shown mainly through Simon the husband: he reminisces about asking a former girlfriend to marry him as he walks just in front of his family. When Simon tells Eleanor about his reflection, asking if she minds him thinking about the past, his wife responds that she doesn’t and asks, “[d]oesn’t one always think of the past… [a]ren’t they one’s past… one’s happiness, one’s reality?”. Other symbols in Kew Gardens represent male dominance in a patriarchal society, Trissie’s parasol and the young man’s coin. From a first look, they represent gender roles, as the parasol is an accessory that is there to protect Trissie, the 'fairer sex', and her youthful beauty from the harsh sun. The coin is a physical symbol of the young man's power. He touches it repeatedly whilst convincing himself that the coin and his new power of commanding a woman's attention are real: the young man would pay for the tea with a real two shilling pieces... it was real, all real, he assured himself.' When the couple first come into the story, they converse in an equally awkward and inexperienced manner which leaves both characters unsure of what to do next. The equality is illustrated with both of their hands pushing the parasol into the earth with 'his hand rest[ing] on the top of hers.' As their scene comes to an end, the young man remembers the power his coin symbolizes, and he is eager to show his dominance. He pulls the parasol 'out of the earth with a jerk and [is] impatient to find ... where one had tea.' Similarly, the symbols in Miss Brill are the ermine coat that the old lady wears, the orchestra, and the fried whiting. Miss Brill’s fur symbolizes her interior landscape as it is similar to her in the way that it is ragged and worn down. She begins the story by speaking to the fur as if it were a living thing. Miss Brill hears “[w]hat has been happening to me?” as she takes her fur out of its box. This reveals to the reader her loneliness and isolation but also demonstrates her capacity for imagination. Miss Brill is entirely focused on her world and because of this, imagines actions that aren’t happening.
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After she is rejected in the park, Miss Brill returns the fur to its small, dark box, which is symbolic of her returning to her apartment and locking herself in it. She cannot look at her fur when she puts it away as she only sees its sad and rugged nature. The fur symbolizes Miss Brill herself by the conclusion of the story as she returns to her apartment and recognizes that she is shabby and old. Along with her imagination of the “crying” coming from the box, it could be interpreted as Miss Brill crying herself. Another symbol in Miss Brill is the orchestra which represents Miss Brill’s emotions as it plays; she feels more connected to the people around her. Whilst not in the story, the young girl refers to and uses an image of a dead, fried fish when talking about Miss Brill’s fur. The relevance of this is that the fish has no purpose and lacks relevance much like Miss Brill. The symbols in both Miss Brill and Kew Gardens can portray the character’s loneliness or regret about decisions that occur within the duration of the texts.
The authors of both short stories use the setting to explore the existential experiences of the characters in the stories. The two settings in Miss Brill are the apartment and the Jardins Publiques a public garden, where she seems to live the life she wants; she can listen in on others' conversations. An example of this is when the author states 'sitting in [their] lives just for a minute while they talked around her.' Whilst she is eavesdropping, she imagines that she is a part of these people’s lives and that her Sundays there is a theatre performance. In this way, she can believe that 'somebody would have noticed if she hadn't been there.' As she convinces herself that she comes here each week at the same time, to listen. The settings in the short story are contrasting each other as in her apartment Miss Brill is alone and isolated, whereas in the gardens she is surrounded by other people, although she is surrounded by people she is still isolated from the world. The impact that this has on the reader is to feel sympathetic to Miss Brill. In the gardens, the action in the story takes place mainly around a single oval flowerbed (this is where the snail labors) on the path beside the flowerbed (that the characters of the story walk past). The setting is exceptionally narrow considering the intricacy and variety of life that Woolf portrays. The noises, colors, movements, people, and creatures are examples of the complex details created by Woolf at any given moment. The public gardens are a communal place where the reader encounters a variety of English life; the young and old, the working class and well-to-do, the reasonable and absent-minded, the married and unmarried, and then the human and the animal. Yet despite their extensive differences, they all find pleasure in a summer walk through the gardens.
The imagery in Mansfield’s and Woolf’s stories gives the reader the chance to visualize the experiences that the characters have and are going through. The imagery associated with Miss Brill's fox fur is suggestive on several levels. First of all, it tells the reader a lot about her character, and what kind of person she is. This is someone who attaches a good deal of importance to how she looks. Such an attitude is extended to the people she observes at the park every Sunday, each of whom plays a crucial part in her little drama. Each of the characters that Miss Brill sees at the park she assigns certain traits based on their outward appearance, for example, what they are wearing, how they hold themselves, etc. With the personification of her fox fur, further highlights the blurring of imagination and reality that Miss Brill often switches between. Even further on the personification she talks to the fur as if it were a human being. The image of her engaged in conversation with the fur of a dead animal indicates what kind of sad and lonely life she leads and how fragile her tenuous grip on reality is. The description of the flowerbed in the first paragraph with references to the “heart-shaped or tongue-shaped leaves” and the “throats” of the flowers, connects both the human and natural worlds. In the latter, there is an active aggression of an apparent human type, with conditioning influences of a summer breeze, with the sun and light shining onto petals. The snail similarly is colored from the setting and operates in the natural world from the fact of the problems it faces from lateral and linear choices of movement.
The authors of two short stories explore the existential experiences of individuals by using techniques emphasizing the setting, visual imagery, and symbols. Kew Gardens is a short story centred around a series of small significant moments in the gardens. The story of Miss Brill is the life of an elderly woman, who visits a local park on Sundays, sitting in her regular place and attempting to grab glimpses into other people’s lives to try to avoid her own life. The use of setting, visual imagery, and symbols in Woolf’s story convey the experiences of the characters and how they have existential results on them. From the techniques used in Mansfield’s story, they convey to the reader that Miss Brill is affected by her existential experiences.
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