Short Fiction · Chapter
The Mother of Monsters explained
The narrator recounts a visit to a rural town where a local friend shows him a woman known as the 'She-Devil,' who deliberately deforms her unborn children by tight-lacing during pregnancy and sells them as freaks to showmen.
What happens
The narrator recounts a visit to a rural town where a local friend shows him a woman known as the 'She-Devil,' who deliberately deforms her unborn children by tight-lacing during pregnancy and sells them as freaks to showmen. The story contrasts this peasant monster-factory with a fashionable lady at a seaside resort who similarly risks her children's health by wearing corsets to preserve her figure, highlighting the cruelty and vanity behind both cases.
Themes in this chapter
Cruelty and Suffering
The mother deliberately inflicts horrific deformities on her children for financial gain, and the fashionable lady risks her children's health for vanity, both causing immense suffering.
Gender and Power
Women use their bodies as instruments of economic or social power—the peasant woman sells her deformed children, while the elegant lady sacrifices her children's well-being to maintain her beauty and social standing.
Social Class and Money
The peasant woman's monstrous trade is driven by poverty and the desire for a fixed income, while the wealthy lady's actions stem from the pressures of high society to remain attractive.
Characters to notice
- Guy de Maupassant
The narrator who visits the mother of monsters and later reflects on a similar case at a fashionable watering-place.
- Mouche
The local friend who introduces the narrator to the mother of monsters and explains her history.
Key passages
“The more the growing child swelled her body, the more she tightened the instrument of torture, suffering agony, but bearing her pain with courage, always smiling and active, letting no one see or suspect anything.”
As her pregnancy advanced, she cinched the cruel corset ever tighter, enduring terrible pain while hiding her condition behind a cheerful and industrious demeanor.
Describes the peasant woman's method of deforming her unborn child through self-inflicted compression.
“She crippled the little creature inside her, held tightly in that terrible machine; she crushed him, deformed him, made a monster of him.”
The tight contraption she wore crushed and twisted the baby inside her, turning it into a grotesque being.
Summarizes the physical effect of her corset on the fetus.
“Those monsters are manufactured by corsets. She knows perfectly well that she's risking her life at that game. What does she care, so long as she remains pretty and seductive?”
The doctor explains that the deformed children are caused by the mother's corset-wearing, and that she knowingly endangers her offspring to stay attractive.
Reveals the parallel between the peasant woman and the fashionable lady.