Loneliness is a painful feeling that no one in this world can bear. Some try to overcome that feeling, others try to find ways to escape from it. There are, for instance, many ways to escape from loneliness, such as escaping it by running away, trying to fit in a big crowd or by the popular method of suicide. In the short story Miss Brill, by Katherine Mansfield, Miss Brill tries to escape her loneliness by integrating herself into other people's lives. Her fantasy of being part of a big crowd, her attention towards the physical appearance of others and the symbolic meaning of the fur clearly indicates her attempt to escape loneliness through integrating herself into other people's lives. Miss Brill fantasizing of being part of a big crowd is definitely the key element to help her integrate into other's lives.
             Living other's lives is a way for Miss Brill to escape loneliness, and her fantasy of being part of a big crowd clearly shows this. Every Sunday, Miss Brill goes to the Garden. She watches, listens to everything that goes on around her at the Garden. "Just at that moment a boy and girl came and sat down where the old couple had been. [...] And still soundlessly singing, still with that trembling smile, Miss Brill prepared to listen." She even knows what goes on every Sunday at the Garden, like who's here at the same place last time and who wasn't, and she can tell a story about nearly all of them. "Other people sat on the benches and green chairs, but they were nearly always the same, Sunday after Sunday, and--Miss Brill had often noticed--there was something funny about nearly all of them." By watching what's going on, listening to other people's conversations, Miss Brill thinks she is part of this crowd. In reality, she is living other's lives, and this, in fact, is a way for her to escape loneliness. This is also shown through her notion that life ...