Today’s story is the 1882 tale ‘The New Mother’ by Lucy Clifford (the publication was under the name Mrs. W. K. Clifford). You can read it or listen to it here. ‘The New Mother’ was part of a collection she wrote for her children called The Anyhow Stories, Moral and Otherwise. The collection was illustrated by Dorothy Tenant and there are two illustrations of ‘The New Mother’
The preface tells us briefly that: ‘These stories were not written for very little children, but those of the middling size; and for the big folk who are not above reading about the little folk.’ Despite this claim to a mixed audience though the rest of the stories and poems in the volume are clearly targeted at a young audience. There’s a great deal of twee little children running around learning lessons and dying pathetic deaths which teach other children (and adults) lessons about life. There is, overall, a distinctly tragic bent to the stories, including the recurring characters from the first story about a cobbler and his children who all seem to die in penury while managing to teach those around them about the value of hard work. ‘The New Mother’, with its mix of morality tale and creepy Gothic effect, is arguably the only one to really seem to be written for both an adult and a child audience.
The story is about the consequences of naughtiness to some extent but these are not simply naughty children. They are tempted children. They are promised the reward of music for their extreme naughtiness, told what to do and how to be naughty by the young musician, and ultimately betrayed by impossible standards. There is something of the fae about the girl they meet and something of the devil met at the crossroads. The exact nature of the quasi-fairytale world which the characters inhabit is unclear. The mysterious girl’s relationship to the ‘new mother’ is equally unsure. Is her role to tempt the children and the unintended consequence (from her perspective) is the new mother, or was the replacement mother her aim all along? If so, what is the connection between the two? Am I trying to impose logic on a story which deliberately defies that desire – possibly! But I find the unanswered questions the most intriguing part of the tale. When the new mother arrives I have expect it to be the girl in another form. If not her, I almost in reading suspected the mother of imposture. The glass eyes mundanely rendered as spectacles and that inexplicable wooden tale the effect of a dragged brush or stick. There was a part of my brain asking whether this wasn’t just a practical yet whimsical (and highly upsetting) way of attempting to force obedience by making supernatural threats ‘come true’.
I enjoyed this story but in quite a mild and detached way. I found the nicknames given to the children (‘Blue eyes’ and ‘Turkey’) off-putting and often (probably inappropriately) comic. Meanwhile, my mind, rather than focusing on being creeped out, was mostly occupied in half questions and cavils like the pedant I secretly (not so secretly) am at heart. I also to admit, I was mostly struck by the thought that if all naughty children got ‘new mothers’, there must be an almost limitless supply.
Romancing the Gothic 