In Katherine Mansfield's short story "Miss Brill" and James Joyce's short story "Eveline," both protagonists are heartbroken by their present circumstances. In contrast, Eveline has a chance to shed her present and embrace a better future but fails to accept the chance because she is too afraid, whereas Miss Brill is simply forced to accept the fact that her future looks bleak due to circumstances beyond her control.
In Mansfield's short story, Miss Brill was once wealthy but is now struggling through financially difficult times in her old age. Evidence she was once wealthy in her younger days is seen in the fact that she owns a fox fur she adores and a red eiderdown duvet. For example, early in the story, she is described as taking the fox fur out of its storage box, setting it down on her "red eiderdown" and cleaning the fur up. The narrator specifically describes the fur lying on the eiderdown-covered bed and looking up Miss Brill:
Oh, how sweet it was to see them snap at her again from the red eiderdown!
Eiderdown comes from the eider duck and is generally much rarer than other down harvested, making eiderdown duvets extremely expensive. Hence, the fact that Miss Brill owns a red eiderdown duvet is a significant clue that she was once wealthy. Yet, when she comes home from her disheartening outing to the park, she is described as going "into the little dark room—her room like a cupboard," which tells us she has fallen very far into poverty since her younger, wealthier days.
Despite this fall into poverty, Miss Brill has done her best to keep her spirits up by spending time in the park, people-watching. She had a belief that all people there, including herself, belonged in the park, that they were all putting on a "performance" for each other to enjoy. Most importantly, she believed her own "performance" would be missed if she was one day absent. However, cruel remarks made by a young couple about how nobody wants Miss Brill in the park and how she looks funny in her "fu-ur" awaken Miss Brill to a very sad reality—not only is she now poor, she is now old, unwanted, and lonely. By the end of the story, although she had tried to keep up her spirits, she is forced to accept her broken heart and look towards her very bleak future.
In contrast to Miss Brill, in Joyce's short story, Eveline has led a very bleak life since her mother passed away. Her family lives in poverty; her father was always known for his cruel temper though she believed him to be "not so bad" when her mother was still alive; and since her mother's death, he has become a very abusive alcoholic. Also unlike Miss Brill, we learn towards the beginning of the story that Eveline has been offered the prospect of a potentially much more positive future: she has been proposed to by a sailor who wants her to leave with him overseas that day. She contemplates how much better and safer she would be away from her father's presence, yet she also feels too afraid, too insecure to leave the home she has known all her life. She reflects that "in her home anyway she had shelter and food; she had those whom she had known all her life about her." She further reflects that she promised her deceased mother that she would continue to raise her two youngest siblings. By the end of the story, unlike Miss Brill, she turns away from the prospect of a promising future in order to hold onto the bleak life that has been her past and will continue to be her present. Also, unlike Miss Brill, Eveline's lack of courage and sense of duty leads her to cling to her bleak present, whereas Miss Brill is in her bleak present simply due to external circumstances beyond her control.
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