Dehumanization Isn't Only for Wolves: A Reading of St.Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves

-Stage One-

Russell introduces the pack of wolf girls to us with a back story to their arrival in the home. They're a rowdy bunch, playing around, and scaring Sister Maria. "Our parents wanted something better for us; they wanted us to get braces, use towels, be fully bilingual. When the nuns showed up, our parents couldn't refuse their offer. The nuns, they said, would make us naturalized citizens of human society. We would go to St. Lucy's to study a better culture. We didn't know at that time that our parents were sending us away for good. Neither did they." (Russell, 238) is the reason as to why the girls have been brought to the nunnery. It echos something I learned closely in Schwartz's Anthropology class about the forced education the indigenous children of Australia were forced to participate in. Families had sometimes willingly sent their children to be educated by the white settlers, but had hoped only for the best of their children, and that one day they would in fact come back home. This of course didn't happen, these children were ostracized from their original tribal cultures and were forced into the conformity of the nuns - as we can also see here with the naming of the girls, "The oldest sister howled something awful and inarticulate, a distillate of hurt and panic, half-forgotten hunts and eclipsed moons. Sister Maria nodded and scribbled on a yellow legal pad. She slapped on a name tag 'HI MY NAME IS____!' Jeanette it is."(Russell, 239) 

Aboriginal Children (x)

-Stage Two-

Here we see that girls of the pack are already being trained. "The main commandment of wolf life is Know Your Place, and that translated perfectly. Being around other humans had awakened a slavish-dog affection in us. An abasing, belly-to-the-ground desire to please. As soon as we realized that someone higher up in the food-chain was watching, we wanted only to be pleasing in their sight." (Russell, 241). The girls are instructed to stand straight, and not to chew on their shoes. The narrator tries her best by repeating these words, acting on the animal and also perhaps prisoner instinct she has to please the people on top (in this situation the nuns) this also correlates with the teaching of Aboriginal students, some would try their utmost hardest to please the superiors (their captors? their owners?) in hopes of surviving and not earning punishment. But, interestingly enough the girls hate Jeanette- the one who becomes the most loyal to the nuns and they claim she has forgotten what makes her a "wolf".  But they also hate Mirabella, who is the youngest and the most still "wolf" out of them all. The disdain for those closest and farthest from their original selves are the subjects of the most ridicule by their own sisters. This brings up the conflict between nonconformity and conformity for not only the werewolf children, but the indigenous children who are kept in a 'Home' where "Different sorts of calculations were required to survive at the Home." (Russell, 242). 

"Do you want to end up shunned by both species?" (Russell, 243) really makes the clear problem arise of what should a wolf girl choose --> her natural instinct or her acceptance in the world where her parents aren't (LOOK BACK AT INDIGENOUS PEOPLE LIKE HELLO THE BRIDGES ARE ENDLESS) 

-Stage Three-

Here, the wolf pack girls are introduced to the purebreds. The purebreds apparently play stupid with the wolf girls and it absolutely pisses our narrator off that they are underestimated just because they aren't as select as the other girls. Is this a correlation with the phenomena of white-washed indigenous students vs. those who have been brought right from the land (in this case the woods?). Also, the nuns try to teach the girls to dance, but to no avail except for Jeanette, they also announce their will be a ball with the boys - which the narrator is not happy about because human interactions between boys and girls is harder then it is between wolves. Another problem faced by indigenous girls who are raised in seclusion from the boys. How do they mix? How would they procreate? 

-Stage Four- 

MARIBELLA SAVES HER SISTER AND GETS RIDICULED BY EVERYONE AT THE BALL WHILE JEANETTE IS ALL WOLF SMILES AT CLAUDETTE BECAUSE GUESS WHAT WOLVES STAY TRUE TO THEIR PACK BUT HUMANS DON'T. That is literally this whole stage.

-Stage Five- 

THIS IS SO SAD WHY IS IT SO SAD LIKE HER ENTIRE FAMILY DOESN'T UNDERSTAND WHAT SHE'S REALLY BECOME EXCEPT FOR HER PARENTS WHO ARE LIKE OK YOU'VE BECOME HUMAN ????? WE ARE PROUD BUT YOU CAN NEVER BE A WOLF AGAIN ?????? A LOT LIKE ABORIGINAL CHILDREN WHO BECOME WHITE WASHED AND FORGET ABOUT WHO THEY ARE AND WHERE THEY ARE FROM. ARE ALL WEREWOLVES ACTUALLY DEPICTIONS OF THE MINORITIES OF SOCIETY? A QUESTION TO DISCUSS IN CLASS.

Feet & Fairytales?: A Reading of Kelly Link's 'Travels with the Snow Queen'

"Ladies. Has it ever occurred to you that fairy tales aren't easy on the feet?"(Link) is perhaps a great way of starting off a fairy tale with a lesson, instead of having to dig around for it like you have to do in some of Link's other stories, it's safe to say that the moral of this story has everything to do with the obsession of feet. Now perhaps it's not exactly feet themselves Link is trying to point out to the reader, but instead what they are capable- especially what they are capable of when they are the feet of a woman. The protagonist is named Gerda (at least that's what I presume from the interaction the second-person narrator has with their stolen lover Kay) and she's been traveling a long way for reasons she at first thought had to do with a man she supposedly loved, but as the story progresses it's more than obvious that this objective isn't the case.

At the beginning, Gerda and Kay have some sort of fight where glass breaks and "Don't move," you said. You weren't wearing shoes."(Link) is the first mention of feet in correlation with Kay and Gerda's relationship.  After Kay doesn't come back, Gerda decides to go searching for him., "You were going to travel for love, without shoes, or cloak, or common sense. This is one of the things a woman can do when her lover leaves her. It's hard on the feet perhaps, but staying at home is hard on the heart, and you weren't quite ready to give him up yet."(Link). So, what's up with Gerda's feet? I think Link makes a connection between (maybe not so weirdly) a girls heart and her feet, after all in most fairy tails it's the young heroine who has to travel far and wide for a prince or run desperately through the woods from a wolf. Maybe Link is right, maybe it isn't all love and roses to be the main character of a fairy tale, let alone a woman in a fairy tale. "No, really, think about it. Think about the little mermaid, who traded in her tail for love, got two legs and two feet, and every step was like walking on knives.....The woodsman had to chop her feet off with an axe.....There are Cinderella's two stepsisters, who cut off their own toes, and Snow White's stepmother, who danced to death in red-hot iron slippers." (Link)

Travels with the Snow Queen (Source Unknown)

Is it possible that Travels with the Snow Queen is just a wholehearted satire on the romanticism of girls in fairy tales? Link really does a good job of throwing in her unique sense of humor and using classic plotlines, The Princess & The Frog, Sleeping Beauty, and The Princess & The Pea to name a few, to show just how unrealistic and probably quite painful and disgusting some of these stories really are. After all the requiring mention of bleeding feet, of hardship travels, and the fact that hey have you ever though the prince charming wasn't so charming anymore, kind of makes me feel as a reader that that is exactly what Link is doing here - mocking the classic fairy tale.

But what she does so well and what really makes such a close reading of this short story so fun is the mention of feet. In sake of interest, I googled the words 'feet' and 'femininity' and the first result to come up was female foot language? Like, apparently women can flirt through their feet now? And not to mention that we all know those horrifying tales of foot-binding in ancient China. It's safe to say that a woman's feet can really (for the record I never knew this but..) say a lot about her and the universal symbol of travel and hardships are the worn out soles of the workers shoes. "You tell the geese that your feet are maps and your feet are mirrors. But you tell them that you have to keep in mind that they are also useful for walking around on. They are perfectly good feet." (Link) So are feet used in this story for Links point about how tough a heroine in a fairy tale really is? That there is way more to her then just lithe beauty and mindless frolicking, that some of the things women go through for love is nothing to joke and romanticize about. Greda's bleeding feet, which only stop bleeding after a robber girl kindly gives her her old boots, symbolize the painful endeavors that women face everyday in relation to men and the perfection that they seek (in this case Greda and Kay's interest in the ever beautiful Snow Queen).

Plus, it's interesting to add as a side note that Kay finds Greda's shoes ugly, but the Snow Queen finds them pretty. The fact that the shoes are given to Greda by a female (a robber nonetheless) are all things to remember because maybe Link is saying that sometimes a heroines most supporting characters aren't prince charming or whatever, but the women who help her along the way?