Article 9 – Same Lonely Ideology Presented in Different Ways
by Elizabeth Tritthart
At any given point in life, one can assume that every individual has experienced feelings of loneliness or depression. Loneliness may be defined as an unpleasant response to the absence of camaraderie and isolation, and typically includes anxieties about a lack of connectedness (Burton). Katherine Mansfield’s “Miss Brill,” D. H. Lawrence’s “The Horse Dealer’s Daughter,” and Samuel Beckett’s “Krapp’s Last Tape” centre their themes around loneliness and write heart-wrenching works that resonate with their readers. There are three main subcategories to discuss under lonely ideologies displayed in each of the works: first, loneliness and how it relates to neuroses; secondly, how extreme depression and darkness leads to a lack of life where characters remain stuck in time; and finally, how the protagonist in each of the texts demonstrates suicidal and self-destructive behaviours in unique ways.
Those who experience loneliness can attest that it is prevalent and detrimental to one’s health. It is a condition that has been associated with mortality and morbidity. Loneliness may reflect one’s thinking, reaction, and behavioral patterns, which, in turn, may hinder and influence their perceptions of coping mechanisms (Wang and Dong 1). Some of these unhealthy coping mechanisms may result in erratic behaviors of individuals as displayed in the works of “Miss Brill,” “The Horse Dealer’s Daughter,” and “Krapp’s Last Tape.”
The character of Miss Brill exhibits neurotic behaviors throughout her ritualistic people watching. “Only two people shared her ‘special’ seat: a fine old man … and a big old woman …. They did not speak. This was disappointing, for Miss Brill always looked forward to the conversation” (Mansfield 251). The ‘conversation’ that Miss Brill so looks forward to is not a conversation that would typically include her. It is a conversation that she would eavesdrop in, as she did countless times before. Enjoying it is a neurotic tick, making her feel less lonely and hiding those emotions due to a lack of human communication. She also exhibits these behaviors when she personifies the fur coat; “Dear little thing” and “little rogue” (Mansfield 251)! An additional example of Miss Brill’s neurosis appears when she snaps; she has found solace in her loneliness, which has caused delusions of being an actress to help her come to terms with her life. “They were all on stage …Even she had a part every Sunday…it also explained why she had quite a queer, shy feeling at telling her English pupils how she spent her Sunday afternoons. No wonder! She was on the stage” (Mansfield 252).
“The Horse Dealer’s Daughter,” however, has Mabel’s loneliness-induced neurotic behaviors displayed slightly differently. The third-person omniscient narrator shows Mabel, before attempting to end her life, clipping the grass from her mother’s grave, arranging the flowers, and scrubbing the marble headstone meticulously. This is one of the last things in life that gives Mabel great satisfaction, as it makes her feel as though she is in contact with her mother. This task has become almost habituation, and according to “Psychology Today,” “neurotic habits are automatic or ritualized patterns of overt behavior that people engage in to alleviate anxiety and provide a sense of familiar security. …Ritualistic ordering or cleaning … [is a] common [example] of neurotic, maladaptive habits” (Henriques). Additionally, Mabel’s neuroses are shown most appropriately in her non-existent self-esteem. “‘And I’m so awful, I’m so awful. Oh, no, I’m too awful.’ And she broke into bitter, heart-broken sobbing. ‘You can’t want to love me. I’m horrible’” (Lawrence 505).
Like Mabel, Krapp exhibits obsessive and ritualistic behaviors in “Krapp’s Last Tape.” Krapp’s loneliness, however, is due to his own decisions and past choices to value work over life. Krapp takes care to have meticulous records between ledgers and spools of tapes. His obsession with reviewing and re-reviewing previous tapes and ledgers appears to indicate that Krapp has been so busy documenting the past and the present that he has completely forgotten to live his present life. “Just been listening to an old year, passages at random” (Beckett 2) proves his obsessive behavior, as this particular tape has been recorded thirty years before. At the beginning of the play, Krapp also obsesses over specific words, ‘spool’ in particular and behaves neurotically (Beckett 1), but this may be due to his alcoholism in addition to his obsessive behaviors.
Untreated depression can be a worrying problem that can lead to an increase in risky behaviors, ruin relationships, and cause other severe problems in one’s life. According to WebMD, “clinical depression … is an illness that involves the body, mood, and thoughts. … [it] affects the way you eat and sleep. It affects the way you feel about yourself and those around you. It even affects your thoughts” (1). It is safe to say that this loneliness-induced depression causes the protagonists to lose the will to live.
Miss Brill exhibits her strained will to live differently from Mabel and Krapp. Mansfield writes Miss Brill to exist within her own world rather than live fully in the real world. “She had become really quite expert, she thought, at listening as though she didn’t listen, at sitting in other people’s lives just for a minute while they talked around her” (Mansfield 251). Mansfield portrays symbolism throughout the short story in Miss Brill’s ‘actress’ idea for her audience, which is a way to call attention from the audience. The idea of her being an actress symbolizes her sheer loneliness and the ways that she attempts to come to terms with it. Mansfield also shows the environment as a way to symbolize Miss Brill’s hidden depression: “…now and again a leaf came drifting –from nowhere, from the sky” (Mansfield 251). This image opens the short story and foreshadows the coldness and loneliness that one can come to expect, as well as how the truth and loneliness hit Miss Brill in the end, from nowhere every now and again.
In contrast, Lawrence has articulated Mabel to be apathetic towards her life. She has become so consumed by loneliness and depression that she no longer has a will to continue her life after her father’s death. “The girl was alone, a rather short, sullen-looking young woman of twenty-seven. She did not share the same life as her brothers” (Lawrence 495). Mabel has been unable to cope with her mother’s death as if she has died along with her:
Mabel had no associates of her own sex, after her sister went away. But she did not mind. She went regularly to church, she attended to her father. And she lived in the memory of her mother, who had died when she was fourteen, and whom she had loved. (Lawrence 499)
In the end, Mabel’s will to die outweighs her will to live, and she attempts suicide. “There she stood on the bank for a moment. She never raised her head. Then she waded slowly into the water…. gradually moving deeper into the motionless water, … moving forward … Then he could see her no more in the dusk of the dead afternoon” (Lawrence 501).
As previously mentioned, Krapp seems to be stuck in time. Beckett writes “Krapp’s Last Tape” as a protagonist who does not take care of himself: “White face. Purple nose. Disordered grey hair” (Beckett 1). Between his alcoholism and years of being a shut-in dealing with extreme loneliness, Krapp has stopped taking care of himself. The setting of the play shows Krapp constantly reviewing previous tapes and ledgers of his life, critiquing them as he goes, and in particular, one tape shows the darkness and depression that he lives with. “Thirty-nine today … Celebrated the awful occasion, as in recent years, quietly at the wine house. Not a soul” (Beckett 2). This tape that Krapp is reviewing has been recorded thirty years before shows that he has celebrated his birthday alone. Does Krapp feel this is an awful occasion from previous letdowns that he has come to hate his birthday automatically? Is he projecting past negative emotions towards the future and always expecting the worst in all situations? This setting also shows Krapp in his office at his desk under a single light with blackness all around him: the stage light highlights the theme of loneliness and depression, and as the play progresses, so does Krapp’s insights into his depression. “Good to be back in my den in my old rags” (Beckett 2) showing that he has become a recluse and grown accustomed to the loneliness, going as far as to welcome it. “With all this darkness around me I feel less alone” (Beckett 2) indicating Krapp has given up and found solace in depression. “Past midnight. Never knew such silence. The earth must be uninhabited” (Beckett 5).
It is a well-known fact that some behaviors displayed by humans bring around both positive and beneficial effects upon themselves. Many of these behaviors, however, may lead to harmful consequences for one’s mental, physical, and social condition. These behaviors have come to be known as ‘self-destructive’ behaviors (Tsirigotis and Luczak 377-378). According to Tsirigotis and Luczak, the two basic forms of self-destructive behaviors can be identified as direct and indirect (378). Miss Brill participates in self-destructive behaviors indirectly, whereas Mabel and Krapp tend to exhibit direct tendencies.
In “Miss Brill,” the namesake character tortures herself weekly to ‘people watch’ and takes her place as an ‘actress’ on the stage, after a brief incident with the ‘hero and heroine’ of the story, Miss Brill quickly leaves and returns home. “She sat there for a long time. The box that the fur came out of was on the bed. She unclasps the necklet quickly; quickly, without looking, laid it inside. But when she put the lid on, she thought she heard something crying” (Mansfield 253). Miss Brill has been alone for so long that she carries on in her fantasy world without realizing the effects of indirect self-destruction.
Lawrence writes Mabel’s character with her attempt for suicide to exhibit a more blatant and noticeable self-destructive behavior in “The Horse Dealer’s Daughter.” Following the short story, we see an apathetic Mabel with no plans for the future, but we learn why afterwards. “Now, for Mabel, the end had come. … She would always hold the keys of her own situation. Mindless and persistent, she endured from day to day. Why should she think? … It was enough that this was the end, and there was no way out” (Lawrence 499). Before the act, Mabel becomes calm knowing that the end is near, which helps her to power through. “She thought of nobody, not even of herself. Mindless and persistent, she seemed in a sort of ecstasy to be coming nearer to her fulfillment, her own glorification, approaching her dead mother, who was glorified” (Lawrence 499). In the end, Mabel feels that she has no one, not even her own mind to find solace in.
Krapp also behaves in a direct self-destructive behavior, but unlike Mabel, he slowly poisons himself with alcohol and oddly enough, bananas while he waits to die. Beckett shows Krapp’s self-destructive behaviors in symbols, particularly in bananas. The potassium-filled, long yellow fruit indicates Krapp’s lack of self-control, which in itself may be symbolic for his alcohol addiction. “…have just eaten I regret to say three bananas and only with difficulty restrained a fourth. Fatal thing for a man with my condition” (Beckett 2). Krapp has wasted his life slowly drinking himself to death while he lives in the past with a chronic older-self-disgust.
Feeling lonely can plague many individuals with symptoms and feelings such as isolation, sadness, and withdrawal (Vann), and fictional characters are not exempt from these feelings. As explored, the major themes in “Miss Brill,” “The Horse Dealer’s Daughter,” and “Krapp’s Last Tape” centre around loneliness and the effects it may have upon individuals. Left unsolved, feelings of loneliness may lead to neurotic behaviors, a lack of a will to live, and suicidal and self-destructive behaviors which has been proved by those characters in fictional stories.
Works Cited
Beckett, Samuel. “Krapp’s Last Tape.” msu.edu, n.d., msu.edu/~sullivan/BeckettKrapp.html.
Burton, Neel. “The Perils and Privileges of Loneliness.” Psychology Today, 20 Oct 2014,
www.psychologytoday.com/ca/blog/hide-and-seek/201410/the-perils-and-privileges-loneliness. Accessed 10 Mar. 2019.
Henriques, Gregg. “(When) Are You Neurotic?” Psychology Today, 23 Nov 2012,
www.psychologytoday.com/ca/blog/theory-knowledge/201211/when-are-you-neurotic. Accessed 12 Mar. 2019.
Lawrence, D. H. “The Horse Dealer’s Daughter.” The Compact Bedford Introduction to Literature, Eleventh Edition. Ed.
Michael Meyer. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2017. 495-505. Print.
Mansfield, Katherine. “Miss Brill.” The Compact Bedford Introduction to Literature, Eleventh Edition. Ed. Michael Meyer.
Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2017. 251-253.
Tsirigotis, Konstantinos and Joanna Luczak. “Manifestations of Indirect Self-Destructiveness and Dimensions of
Emotional Intelligence.” Psychiatric Quarterly 87.3 (2016): 377-386.
Vann, Madeline. “Dealing with Depression and Loneliness.” Everyday Health, 6 Aug 2012,
www.everydayhealth.com/hs/major-depression/depression-feeling-lonely/. Accessed 10 Mar. 2019.
Wang, Bei and XinQi Dong. “The Association Between Personality and Loneliness: Findings From a Community-Dwelling
Chinese Aging Population.” Gerontology and Geriatic Medicine 4 (2018): 1-9.
WebMD. “Untreated Depression.” WebMD, 2015, www.webmd.com/depression/guide/untreated-depression-effects#1.
Accessed 13 Mar. 2019.
About the Author: Elizabeth (Lyz) Tritthart was born in Medicine Hat, Alberta, and raised in Regina, Saskatchewan. She moved to The Pas with her husband in November 2017 to attend UCN, and is in her second year of a Bachelor of Arts degree. Lyz is passionate about her education, litter removal, and plastic pollution. She hopes to inspire others to pursue their dreams no matter what their age or circumstances are.
Instructor’s Remarks: Elizabeth Tritthart was in my class of Major Works and Authors of the 20th Century. She took this course through distance education. But she enjoys the recorded lectures where she could see the real classroom setting of this course in another campus. Educational technology has an impact in her learning experience. She watched most of the recorded lectures by herself during weekends. Thus, she is interested in discussing the loneliness issues reflected in three texts covered in this course. As an instructor, I visited her twice during this course. I am impressed by the discussion we had on literature. I wish that her peers in the classroom setting would have a chance to share her research on the loneliness in the works of “Miss Brill,” “The Horse Dealer’s Daughter,” and “Krapp’s Last Tape.” – Dr. Ying Kong