A Feminist Stylistic Analysis of Katherine Mansfield ’ s “ Miss Brill

There has always been a belief that women in general are treated oppressively, viewed as inferior to men and subject to personal and institutional discrimination. Since literature reflects the way people think and shows the relationship between linguistic choices and socially construed meanings, this paper tackles Katherine Mansfield’s “Miss Brill” through a feminist stylistic approach to find out how female characters are represented. It also aims to explore whether the writer of the text under investigation reinforces or challenges the stereotypical image of women by viewing them as inferior or equal to men. Conducting a feminist stylistic analysis, by utilizing Sara Mills’ (1995) model of analysis involves the employment of a three-tiered level of analysis i.e. the level of the word, the level of the clause and the level of discourse. From the analysis of the short story under investigation, it has been concluded that the way women are represented is socially influenced by the prevailing held beliefs that women are passive, submissive, dependent on men, inferior to and unequal to men.

tried to reduce differences of class, race, sexuality and location between women so as to promote political and personal solidarity and identify the specificity of women's writing and a female aesthetic (Plain and Sellers, 2007:283). There have been two groups of feminist supporters during this period namely, sameness feminists and difference feminists. Sameness feminists have attempted to demonstrate that "women had the same intellectual, physical, and moral capacities as men, and that if women have been given the same educational and occupational opportunities men had, women could be men's full equals". They claim that women could be chief executive officers, army generals, neurosurgeons, and football players just like men. Sameness feminists are against sexism i.e. the view that women cannot do what men are able to do and that their role is limited to domestic issues. Difference feminists, believe that it is a mistake for women to try to be like men, because women's ways of knowing, doing, and being are just as good as, if not better than men's. Difference feminists are against androcentrism i.e. the view that men are the norm for all human beings and that women are not fully humans because they are not equal to men. The debate between sameness and difference feminists has never reached resolution. Thus, by the mid-1980s, feminists have switched their attention to other issues like marginalized women, women of color, poor, uneducated, and immigrant women. (Tong, 2009: 201-202) Third wave feminism has evolved from the early 1980s to the present. Hammer and Kellner (2009:7-8) state that the main concerns of this wave are: Contemporary issues related to immigration, class conflicts, multiculturalism, globalization and coalition politics as well as environmental matters, social activisms for national and global human rights underlie much of their feminist theory and practice. Furthermore, radical notions of gender and sexuality have become a significant dimension of this kind of resistant feminisms. The incorporation and advancement of "queer theory" (which argues that sexual identities are not fixed, and 8 questions the social construction of heterosexuality as the norm) has also become an important part of much of these kinds of critical feminist thought.

Feminist Stylistics
Feminist stylistics is a theory and a method introduced by Mills (1995) who has provided a foundation for the examination of texts from a feminist perspective. She highlights such issues as sexism, the way that women are represented or described and the representation of gender relations. Feminist stylistics is defined as "a form of politically motivated stylistics whose aim is to develop an awareness of the way 80 gender is handled in texts." (ibid.:165). It is designed as a toolkit; that enables the reader to understand the underlying messages of the text (ibid.:2). It is further concerned with the reasons why authors choose certain ways to express themselves rather than others, and how certain effects are achieved through language (ibid.: 4).
Furthermore, feminist stylistics can serve to analyse the writer's ideology. Mcrae and Clark, cited in Davies and Elder (2004: 332), state that feminist stylistics is "an approach to the explorations of authority, power, and inequality feature as part of the stylistic analysis, which pays attention to the formal features of the text and its reception within a reading community in relation to ideology".

Sara Mills' (1995) Model
This section concerns itself with the presentation of Sara Mills (1995) feminist stylistics model of analysis which comprises the following three levels of analysis:

Level of the Word
A word is defined as "a unit of expression which has a universal intuitive recognition by native speakers, in both spoken and written languages" (Crystal, 2003:500). Words are used differently to describe and refer to women in different ways and some of these ways display sexism. Bragging (1981:2, as cited in Mills, 1995 believes that "A statement is sexist if its use constitutes, promotes or exploits an unfair or irrelevant or impertinent distinction between the sexes". He adds that "a statement is sexist if it contributes to, encourages or causes or results in the oppression of women" (ibid.:2). Hence, sexism in language is expressed through the use of generic nouns, generic pronouns, naming practices and the use of titles.
Generic forms have been defined as "those elements in language which perpetuate a view of the male as a norm or universal and the female as deviant or individual. The linguistic forms present the male as unmarked and the female as a marked form" (Mills, 1995:65). The pronoun he is the most well-known example of generic pronouns. It is not only used to refer to a singular male but rather to refer to both males and females in general. In that case it has a sexist meaning (ibid.) For example: -"When the student has finished his exam, he should hand in his paper to the invigilator." The use of the generic pronouns in the above sentence affirms the markedness of the female character and makes that female invisible within the language and within the society as a whole and hence creates sexism (Mills, 2008:47).
Another example of generic forms is the use of the terms man and mankind. These terms are used gender-specifically to refer to males and generically to refer to males and females. Supporters of a 81 gender-free language suggest the use of the term person instead of the term man as in the following examples (Mills, 1995:66): Sexist language use  gender free language use  Policeman  policeperson  Fireman  firefighter  Postman  postie  Spokesman  spokesperson  Chairman chairperson According to (ibid.: 70) affixation is another syntactic tool that makes a statement sexist since the use of some affixes leads to viewing the man as the norm and women as deviant from the norm. Some affixes that can be attached to words referring to women have a negative connotation and a sense of lacking seriousness, for example, mistress, actress, authoress, hostess, stewardess, poetess, comedienne, aviatrix and words ending with -ette used to refer to women such as usherette, which means smaller than or less than. She (2008:59) also emphasizes that the aforementioned words have a negative connotation because of their diminutive nature. Thus, they never denote the female counterpart of the male.
Naming is of a major role when conducting of feminist stylistic analysis at the level of the word. In the process of using names, addressing people with their first name denotes that the speakers are so intimate or friends or of the same age. However, different naming patterns are used by those in an asymmetrical power relation for example in schools, teachers use the first names of their students but they are addressed by their title and surname. Women are more often addressed by their names while men are generally referred to by their surname. Likewise, in literature, it is very common, to refer to female authors by their first name only ('Virginia' or 'Virginia Woolf' when referring to Woolf) and for male authors to be called by their surname only ('Dickens' when referring to Charles Dickens). Mills attributes the reason behind using a woman's first name more than her surname to the fact that women lose their surnames after marriage and become referred to by their husbands' surname (ibid.: 1995:83) Concerning the use of addressing titles, the marital status of a woman is marked through the use of such terms as Miss and Mrs. while the addressing term of a man, Mr. does not reveal his marital status. Even though the term Ms. refers to all women whether married or unmarried, it has gained some negative connotation since some people think that it is used to refer only to young women, feminists, and divorced women (ibid.: 2008:64).

Level of the Clause
Finch (2005: 83) defines a clause as "a grammatical unit intermediate between phrase and sentence. The distinctive feature of 82 clauses is that they have a subject-predicate structure". Mills 1995 analyses a clause in terms of the ready-made phrases it contains, the transitivity choices the writer makes, the metaphors it comprises and the inferences and presuppositions made by the writer.
In her feminist stylistics 1995, Mills argues that there are some preconstructed phrases that convey sexist meaning and degrade women by presenting them in a negative way. Such ready-made phrases or proverbs have sexist messages undelaying them. For example, "a woman's work is never done" "a woman preaching is like a dog walking on his hinder legs". She (1995:98-99) also points out that in the use of binary terms, there is often a tendency to place the terms that refer to males before the terms that refer to females.
Concerning metaphor, Cuddon (1999:507) defines it as "a figure of speech in which one thing is described in terms of another". Mills (1995:106) also believes that metaphor plays a crucial role in a feminist stylistic analysis as long as it often works to reinforce stereotypical knowledge or influence us to think in stereotyped ways. For example, a metaphorical interpretation of the phrase the battle of the sexes leads the listener to assume that females and males are in a state of battle and warfare.
In regard to inference and presupposition, Cuddon (ibid.:101) focuses on information of an ideological nature and "the background knowledge which is presupposed when texts address a female audience or when gender issues are discussed". She (ibid.:102-103) gives an example of an advertisement of cosmetic surgeries. In this advertisement, a beautiful woman is pictured and the following question appears on the advertisement: "are you happy with your looks?" The question is based on the ideological knowledge about women in presupposing that their looks and beauty is a constant need for improvement. Accordingly, the following presuppositions can be derived: -That the addressee is not happy with her looks -That the woman in the advertisement is happy with her looks.
-That the woman in the advertisement had had a surgery.
The inference that can be derived is that if a woman wants to be happy with her looks she will need a surgery.
With respect to transitivity analysis which was first introduced by Michael Halliday, Halliday (1971:359) defines it as "the set of options whereby the speaker encodes his experience of the process of the external world, and of the internal world of his consciousness, together with the participants in these processes and their attendant circumstances". Halliday is concerned with "who acts (the agent) and who is acted upon (who is affected by the action of others)".
As language users, our words can never be neutral, they always reflect the power and ideologies of those who write or say them. A writer's ideology is expressed in language through his linguistic choices. This view is confirmed by Knowles and Malmkjaer (1996: 68) who maintain that "a writer's linguistic choices can aid the creation and maintenance of relations of power. This is so whether the writer intends his/her linguistic choices to function ideologically or whether they merely reflect implicit ideology. Furthermore, linguistic choices have to be made, whether or not the writer gives vent to intended, surface ideology". Fowler (1991:71) adds that "transitivity is the foundation of representation: it is the way the clause is used to analyse events and situations as being of certain types." Transitivity, therefore, is used to describe an event and could be indicative of different ideological viewpoints.
Six types of processes of transitivity are recognized by (Halliday 1985) and (Halliday and Matthiessen 2004). The first one is the material process which is a process of doing and happening. It expresses the notion that some entity does something which may affect some other entity (Halliday, 1985: 103). Second, mental processes are processes of thinking, feeling, and perceiving. Mental clauses are concerned with our experience of the world of our consciousness (ibid.:107). Third, Halliday and Matthiessen (2004:197) state that relational processes are processes of being and having and that they serve to characterize and identify. For example, Sarah is wise and Tom is a leader. Behavioural processes "are processes of typically human of physiological and psychological behavior like breathing, coughing, smiling, dreaming, and staring." (ibid.:248). Verbal processes are processes of saying. For example, "what did you say? I said it's noisy in here". Existential processes are processes of presence or existence. The construction there +be is crucial even though the word there that comes in every existential clause has no representational function but it is required as long as it denotes the existence of something for example, "there was a picture on the wall" (Halliday, 1985:130).

Level of Discourse
Analysis at the level of discourse concerns itself with the construction of characters in texts and tackles how female and male characters are described. According to the feminist stylistic theory, it is argued that stereotypical notions influence the language choices which are made when describing and presenting information about characters. Analysis at the level of discourse focuses on the description of characters in terms of their appearance, relationship to others, professions and fragmentation (Mills, 1995: 123-124).
Mills argues that the description of characters is quite different for male and female characters. She maintains that female characters are described in terms of their emotional and physical characteristics, for example they are described as being romantic, attractive, charming, not young, not slim, brunette …. etc. The case is different with male characters since little attention is given to their bodies and appearance; they are often described with respect to their personality, trustworthiness and strength (ibid.:126).
Concerning relationships, women are often referred to in terms of their relationship to other people, for example a woman is often referred to as a wife, daughter, grandmother, mother of three, Mrs. Smith……. etc. while the status of males in terms of their relationship to others is not given (ibid.) With respect to professions, Mills argues that when representing male and female characters in a work situation, stereotypical jobs seem to be associated to females. Women are often housewives, mothers, nurses, secretaries, receptionists while men are pilots, cameramen, directors and business men …... etc (ibid.: 128-129).
The last point to be analysed within the level of discourse is fragmentation. Fragmentation is "the process whereby characters in texts are described in terms of their body -parts instead of as people to refer to starkly juxtaposed bits and pieces" (ibid.:166). It is argued that there is a tendency to fragment female bodies more than males' and this is considered a linguistic sexism since males and females are not viewed in the same way.

Model of Analysis
The model of analysis that is followed in this paper is Mills' approach (1995) of feminist stylistics. This model can be directed at any text to discover how gender is represented and to detect the occurrence of linguistic sexism. This toolkit can be also used to tackle the way language is used to convey attitudes towards people, situations, ideologies so as to understand the cultural and social representation of women in the selected text. 1.6 Procedures of Analysis 1. Before the process of analysis takes place; a brief introduction about the writer is provided coupled with a short overview and explanation of the selected short story in question. 2. The selected text is analysed at the level of the word by examining the occurrences of sex specific and generic forms, the tiles used, naming practices and affixation. 3. Analysis at the level of the clause is carried out by examining the transitivity choices that appear in the text and ready-made phrases. Analysis of transitivity choices takes the form of a table in which 85 the text is divided to simple clauses and for each of these clauses the process, its type and participants are mentioned. 4. Analysis at the level of the discourse investigates the description of male and female characters with respect to their appearance, relationship to others, professions and fragmentation.

Sample of the Study
The sample that is selected for the current study, is Katherine Mansfield's short story Miss Brill. The reasons behind the selection of this short story are: first, the personal interest of the researcher in women issues in different cultures; Second, the importance of applying the feminist stylistic approach to a literary text to detect the sexist language use since literary texts are reflections of society.

Introduction about the Writer
Katherine Mansfield (1888-1923) is a New Zealand's celebrated short story writer who has made a great contribution to British literature by writing a lot of short stories. She has been known as a feminist forerunner who has contributed to the development of feminism in the whole world. Her best works were created in the early 1920s, and her collection of short stories Bliss (1920) secured her fame. She has reached the height of her fame with her 1922 collection The Garden Party. In her works, Katherine Mansfield's focuses on women issues, female experience in a society where women are still marginalized, estranged or isolated by society in addition to issues like women's suffrage, political equality and female identity. The characters she has presented live in a world where options for women are limited in the sense that they have typical roles as wives and daughters only.

Analysis of Katherine Mansfield's 'Miss Brill' 2.1 Synopsis
The whole story is about a lonely middle-aged woman, Miss Brill, who spends her time teaching pupils and reading stories to an old man who seldom notices her existence. Every Sunday she wears her shabby fur coat and goes to the Jardins publiques, public gardens in a French town, and sits to listen to a band and to watch and overhear what people are doing and saying to one another. On her way home she buys a slice of honey cake and tries to guess if it contains an almond or not.
She is interested in everything she sees and overhears. First, she sees a fine old man and an old woman who sit near her but they do not speak. Next, she notices a gentleman in grey and a woman who wears an ermine torque. She tries to overhear their little talk but they part so quickly before saying anything that could be interesting for her. Then, she sees an old man who is knocked down by four girls. Suddenly, she realizes that everyone she sees and overhears on the stage is an actor.

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She even thinks of herself as an actress who does nothing except reading stories to an old man.
Finally, a boy and a girl come to sit on the stands. While, the wealthy couple are having an argument, they notice Miss Brill who is looking at them. They make fun at her and wonder if anyone in the park likes her presence. Miss Brill hears what they say and feels a kind of deep sadness which leads her to leave the park immediately even without going to the baker's to buy her usual slice of honey cake on her way back home.

Analysis at the Level of the Word
To start with generic forms, analysis of the data has revealed no occurrence of generic words. The words men and he in the story are not used generically, i.e. to refer to both men and women. They are rather used to refer to men only i.e. sex specifically. However, the generic use of the words with the affix -man is found three times in the words bandsmen, Englishman and gentleman. Reading the text does not reveal whether the people addressed in bandsmen are men or women while the people referred to by the words Englishman and gentleman are sex-specific, i.e. referring to men since they are followed by the pronouns he and his as illustrated below: -"The bandsmen sitting in the green rotunda blew out their cheeks and glared at the music. Now there came a little 'flutey' bit -very pretty! -a little chain of bright drops. She was sure it would be repeated. It was; she lifted her head and smiled". -"An Englishman and his wife, he wearing a dreadful Panama hat and she button boots." -"Miss Brill nearly laughed out loud. She was on the stage. She thought of the old invalid gentleman to whom she read the newspaper four afternoons a week while he slept in the garden." Furthermore, the word women as in two peasant women is used to mark the gender of the female. Mills argues that this use contributes to linguistic sexism since the male is not marked and referred to as peasant only while the female is referred to as a peasant woman.
-"Two peasant women with funny straw hats passed, gravely, leading beautiful smoke-coloured donkeys." Some words associated with men have a positive meaning while their equivalent words that refer to women have a negative meaning. For example, the term rooster which is used in the text under investigation to refer to the conductor of the band is a symbol of strength and leadership while the term hen is a symbol of stupidity, fussiness, weakness and domesticity. Accordingly, such a use contributes to linguistic sexism against women.

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-"Wasn't the conductor wearing a new coat, too? She was sure it was new. He scraped with his foot and flapped his arms like a rooster about to crow." -"And sometimes a tiny staggerer came suddenly rocking into the open from under the trees, stopped, stared, as suddenly sat down 'flop' until its small high-stepping mother, like a young hen, rushed scolding to its rescue." Concerning affixation, affixes that distinguish males form females are used twice in the text. The first affix -ess is attached to the word actress which shows linguistic sexism since the man is shown as the norm (actor) and the woman as a deviant form the norm. The second affix is -ine which is attached to the word heroine.
-"The hero and heroine, of course, just arrived from his father's yacht." -"But suddenly he knew he was having the paper read to him by an actress! 'An actress!' The old head lifted; two points of light quivered in the old eyes. 'An actress -are ye?' And Miss Brill smoothed the newspaper as though it were the manuscript of her part and said gently; Yes, I have been an actress for a long time." The only title used in the story is Miss which refers to the main character of the story. This title shows her marital status which is of great importance for the author who emphasizes her loneliness and the society's rejection to her because she is not married. Hence, it creates linguistic sexism since the title used to refer to a man does not reveal his marital status.

Analysis at the level of the Clause 2.3.1 Ready-made phrases
In her analysis of feminist stylistics, Mills points out that, in the use of binary terms, there is often a tendency to place the terms that refer to males before the terms that refer to females. Her point is demonstrated in the following two occurrences since the terms boy and hero precede the terms girl and heroine: -"Just at that moment a boy and girl came and sat down where the old couple had been. They were beautifully dressed; they were in love." -"The hero and heroine, of course, just arrived from his father's yacht."

Transitivity Analysis
Conducting a transitivity analysis requires breaking the complex clauses to simple ones. The analysis of transitivity choices takes the form of a table in which each clause is given a number and analysed in terms of the participant, the process, and the type of process it presents.

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Then, the number of occurrences of transitivity processes performed by the main character, the secondary characters, and the objects that appear in the story are calculated and their percentages are arranged in the following table. The above table demonstrates that the total number of clauses is 249. (71) clauses concern the main character (Miss Brill), (135) clause are performed by other minor characters in the story and (43) clauses are related to objects that appear in the story. The table demonstrates a prevalence of material process with a frequency of (76) occurrences performed by minor characters which stand for (32.12%) of the total number in comparison to (32) occurrences performed by Miss Brill constituting a percentage of (23.98%) of the total number of processes and (16) material processes done by objects. This number indicates that the other minor characters who appear in the story are active and involved in the world since material process are processes of doing and happening unlike Miss Brill who is very passive and seems not to be alive.
Mental and relational processes come next in frequency with (50) instances for both. With respect to the mental process in the story, (26) occurrences that constitute the percentage of (10.4%) are attributed to Miss Brill, (21) instances of mental processes with a percentage of (8.4%) are ascribed to the minor characters and (2) occurrences only are related to objects which amount to the percentage of (0.80%). These numbers prove that Miss Brill is a sensor more than an actor 89 since she is concerned with describing her inner feelings and thoughts. The above table also shows that there is a high number of occurrences of relational processes for minor characters with a number of (22) instances and a percentage of (8.8%). The high percentage of relational processes is normal because the detailed description of minor character requires such a high frequency and percentage.
The verbal, behavioral and existential processes come last in frequency with numbers of (13-9-6) occurrences. The minor characters in the story have the highest number and percentage of verbal and behavioral processes with numbers and percentages of (8, 3.21%) and (6, 2.40%). In the story, Miss Brill is passive, lonely and isolated form people. She is a listener more than a speaker this is why she holds only two verbal processes when she talks to herself while the other minor characters are not isolated and perform a higher number of verbal processes with (8) occurrences amounting to a percentage of (3.21%).

Analysis at the Level of Discourse 2.4.1 Appearance
Table no.
(2) and table no. (3) show how female and male characters in the story are described. Linguistic sexism is reflected in the description of male and female characters since all the female characters in the analysed text are described in terms of their appearance, clothes, and emotional characteristics for example they are described as beautiful, dressed up in velvet and lace, two young girls in red. The analysis of the text under investigation includes the description of male characters, some of those male characters are described with respect to their appearance and clothes while others are described in terms of their personality as being patient, dignified, brave, stiff and resolute. The conductor "Wasn't the conductor wearing a new coat, too? She was sure it was new." 2.
A fine old man "a fine old man in a velvet coat" 3. An Englishman "An Englishman and his wife, he wearing a dreadful Panama hat ………… And he'd been so patient." 4.
Little boys "little boys with big white silk bows under their chins" 5.
Two young soldiers "two young soldiers in blue" 90 6. A gentleman in gray "And now an ermine toque and a gentleman in gray met just in front of her. He was tall, stiff, dignified," 7. A funny old man "a funny old man with long whiskers hobbled along in time to the music and was nearly knocked over by four girls walking abreast." 8. Old invalid gentleman "old invalid gentleman to whom she read the newspaper four afternoons a week while he slept in the garden. She had got quite used to the frail head on the cotton pillow, the hollowed eyes, the open mouth and the high pinched nose. If he'd been dead she mightn't have noticed for weeks; she wouldn't have minded." ………… "The old head lifted; two points of light quivered in the old eyes. An actress-are ye?" 9. The young ones "The young ones, the laughing ones who were moving together, they would begin and the men's voices, very resolute and brave, would join them." 10.
A boy "Just at that moment a boy and girl came and sat down where the old couple had been. They were beautifully dressed; they were in love." Table (3) Description of Female Characters in Terms of their Appearance No. Female characters Description 1.
A big old woman "a big old woman, sitting upright, with a roll of knitting on her embroidered apron." 2.
An Englishman "An Englishman and his wife, he wearing a dreadful Panama hat and she button boots." 3.
little girls "little girls, little French dolls, dressed up in velvet and lace." 4.
Two young girls "Two young girls in red came by and two young soldiers in blue met them, and they laughed and paired and went off arm-inarm." 5.
Two peasant women "Two peasant women with funny straw hats passed, gravely, leading beautiful smoke-coloured donkeys." 91 6. A nun "A cold, pale nun hurried by." 7. A beautiful woman "A beautiful woman came along and dropped her bunch of violets, and a little boy ran after to hand them to her, and she took them and threw them away as if they'd been poisoned." 8.
An ermine toque "And now an ermine toque and a gentleman in gray met just in front of her. He was tall, stiff, dignified, and she was wearing the ermine toque she'd bought when her hair was yellow. Now everything, her hair, her face, even her eyes, was the same colour as the shabby ermine, and her hand, in its cleaned glove, lifted to dab her lips, was a tiny yellowish paw. Oh, she was so pleased to see himdelighted! …………...…... The ermine toque was alone; she smiled more brightly than ever."

Relationships
Mills claims that women are often referred to in terms of their relationship to men. This claim is demonstrated in this short story since there are two references to women in terms of their relationship to others as wife and mother while there is only one reference to a man in terms of his relationship to others as being a father: -"An Englishman and his wife, he wearing a dreadful Panama hat and she button boots." -"And sometimes a tiny staggerer came suddenly rocking into the open from under the trees, stopped, stared, as suddenly sat down 'flop' until its small high-stepping mother, like a young hen, rushed scolding to its rescue." -"The hero and heroine, of course, just arrived from his father's yacht. And still soundlessly singing, still with that trembling smile, Miss Brill prepared to listen."

Professions
Mills maintains that stereotypical beliefs are often associated with the description of male and female characters. Such stereotypical beliefs are visible when describing female and male characters in the analysed text with respect to their professions. Being a conductor of a band and a soldier is male dominated professions on the one hand, On the other hand, female characters in the story are described as a teacher, a nun and a peasant woman. This use displays linguistic sexism as far as men are described as leaders and strong while women are shown as inferior to men and capable only of doing simple stereotypical jobs.
-"Wasn't the conductor wearing a new coat, too? She was sure it was new. He scraped with his foot and flapped his arms like a rooster about to crow, and the bandsmen sitting in the green rotunda blew out their cheeks and glared at the music." -"Two young girls in red came by and two young soldiers in blue met them, and they laughed and paired and went off arm-in-arm." -"Two peasant women with funny straw hats passed, gravely, leading beautiful smoke-coloured donkeys." -"A cold, pale nun hurried by." -"Shy feeling at telling her English pupils how she spent her Sunday afternoons. No wonder! Miss Brill nearly laughed out loud. She was on the stage. She thought of the old invalid gentleman to whom she read the newspaper four afternoons a week while he slept in the garden."

Fragmentation
In the analysed text female and male bodies are fragmented equally as shown in the following extracts: -"She could have taken it off and laid it on her lap and stroked it. She felt a tingling in her hands and arms, but that came from walking, she supposed. And when she breathed, something light and sad -no, not sad, exactly -something gentle seemed to move in her bosom………….... And Miss Brill's eyes filled with tears and she looked smiling at all the other members of the company." (Miss Brill) -"He scraped with his foot and flapped his arms like a rooster about to crow, and the bandsmen sitting in the green rotunda blew out their cheeks and glared at the music." (The conductor) -"Now everything, her hair, her face, even her eyes, was the same colour as the shabby ermine, and her hand, in its cleaned glove, lifted to dab her lips, was a tiny yellowish paw." (the ermine toque) -"She thought of the old invalid gentleman to whom she read the newspaper ……………" "the frail head on the cotton pillow, the hollowed eyes, the open mouth and the high pinched nose. …………………" "The old head lifted; two points of light quivered in the old eyes. An actress -are ye?" (an old gentleman)

Results
At the level of the word, the analysis reveals no use of generic nouns and pronouns. Titles are analysed in terms of naming and the analysis shows that there is an asymmetric relationship in how titles are used for women and men. The term "Miss" is used in the story to refer to the main character and no other titles are used to refer to other characters to emphasize that the main character is not married and the rejection of society towards her because of that. According to the 93 feminist stylistic theory this could be considered sexist since it might be perceived as establishing unequal relationships between women and men. Linguistic sexism could be further noticed because the analysis of the text shows that words of positive meaning are associated to men rather than women and that the sex of women is marked rather than the sex of man.
The analysis at the level of the clause investigates the use of ready-made phrases and transitivity choices. The analysis of transitivity choices proves that linguistic sexism is evident in the selected text since the main character of the story is represented as passive, submissive and marginalized. Concerning ready-made phrases, there is a tendency to place all male terms before the terms that refer to females. According to feminist linguistic theory this could be considered sexist since it signifies the superiority of males over females and establishes unequal relationships between men and women.
At the level of discourse, some linguistic sexism could be detected since some stereotypical beliefs are enforced rather than challenged as far as women are concerned. The analysis suggests that women are referred to by their appearance and relationship to others more often than men. Concerning professions, stereotypical jobs are associated to female characters which again constitutes sexist language use. In terms of fragmentation, male and female bodies are fragmented equally which implies linguistic sexism is not very explicit as far as fragmentation is concerned.

Conclusions
Based on the results, the following conclusions can be arrived at: 1. At the level of the word, linguistic sexism could be noticed due to the use of words of positive meaning to refer to men rather than women and the markedness of women rather than men. 2. Analysis at the level of the clause, proves that linguistic sexism is evident in the selected text since the female character in the story is represented as passive, submissive and marginalized. 3. At the level of discourse, linguistic sexism is detected since women are referred to by their appearance, relationship to men, and the fact that stereotypical jobs are associated to female characters. 4. Finally, this paper comes to the conclusion that Mills feminist stylistics is a useful toolkit to detect sexism in texts and that linguistic sexism seems to exist in Katherine Mansfield's 'Miss Brill' to some extent. The stylistic analysis also demonstrates that literary texts are reflections of the culture and ideologies of its society.