"An Endless Variety in Language": The New Mother

A student asked me just after class whether I liked Lucy Clifford's story, "The New Mother." I replied briskly that I did, and when the student wanted to know why I should like such a dismal little story, I replied once again briskly that it was thought-provoking. I meant, of course, that the story is shocking and that its very shock-value prompts us to ask questions about the story. But leaving class, I was troubled that I had not answered the question in a satisfactory way. Sure, it is possible to "like" that which is not pleasant; this is one of the nifty things about art: we can like that which in real life would not be likeable at all. But does this accurately account for liking a story such as "The New Mother," and what is there about the story to like.

I'll begin with the negative: the story contains much for any reader to dislike. First, the obvious message about good behaviour, obeying parents, and accepting duty is rather heavy-handed. Second, the message that bad behaviour may be a result of peer pressure and the desire for the satisfaction of curiosity takes a downright unpleasant form. The little gypsy girl taunts Blue-eyes and Turkey and nudges them deeper and deeper into bad behaviour, and then she never does allow them to see the little peasant man and woman. Indeed, perhaps the little man and woman never existed in the first place, and the gypsy child is a small female version of Mephistopheles or Lucifer. The departure of the mother is disturbing, and so too is the "new mother" that appears to take her place. The end is stark and bleak and unforgiving. These children are babes in the woods at the end, and we know what happened to the babes in the woods. Should we conclude that this is an example of the kind of brutal didacticism popular in the heyday of the so-called Moral Tale? Is this story quite simply a warning to young girls to behave themselves or suffer the consequences? If it is, then for me it would be a particularly unlikable and even unsavoury story.

But I do like it. So what is there about this story to like? I'll approach a couple of things here: 1) the psychological story of absences, and 2) the initiation this story offers readers into the complexity of reading itself. This second point, simply stated, is: the story is about how we read, how we interpret. Interpretation depends upon what the little gypsy girl in the story refers to as "an endless variety in language" (205).

First things first, and so I''ll begin with absences. The first thing I notice about this story is its insistence on things absent. The two girls, Blue-eyes and Turkey, have names that derive from absence, Blue-eyes for her father who is absent at sea and Turkey for the wild turkey that is absent in the forest. The fair in the village takes place the day before the girls arrive and so it too is absent. They find no letter waiting for them at the post office, and this absence underlines the absence of the father. When they tell their mother that they aspire to be naughty--to absent goodness from their lives, she replies that if they do this, then she will absent herself and leave a substitute mother in her place. The plot turns on precisely these absences. The story is replete with absences of one kind and another. The little man and woman in the peardrum are always absent. I connect this absence with the psychic life, and to do so is to raise the spectre of desire. Desire, by its very nature, seeks that which it does not have, what is absent. What the little girls have in the beginning of the story is comfort and security, a loving mother and protective home; they are sheltered and cut off from the dngerous world beyond their ken. Yet their father is absent, at sea. Desire on the part of the mother and her two older daughters to receive communication from the father sets the story in motion. Then desire for the things the fair offers, for sight of the little man and woman, for the sound of the peardrum, for the little woman's secret, for the knowledge whether they have been naughty enough to satisfy the gypsy girl dominates the girls' lives. They desire that which they cannot have. And what they cannot have is that which they desire.

The story is a small Lacanian drama. Here two young girls living in harmony with their mother reach a stage in their lives when desire for that which is beyond the parameters of mother and home initiates a fall from unity with that mother. The little village girl is dark and mysterious, seeming to appear and disappear as if by magic. She is the 'other,' a person who, by virtue of her very otherness is both sinister and attractive. And she harbours two little people who dance and comport themselves suggestively. Whatever these little people represent, they clearly suggest the transgressive, that which the children's mother disapproves of, and that which the two young girls desire. The behaviour called for by the gypsy child subverts the calm of early connection with the mother. It disconnects the girls from their mother. The gypsy child convinces the girls that they lack something, that their lives are without fulfillment. Having been convinced of this, the girls set about trying to fill that lack, to accomplish fulfillment. What the story reveals, however, is that the thing the girls think is necessary for their fulfillment is non-existent in the first place. That which they desire is an absence, and therefore desire can never find satisfaction. What's more, once the acceptance of desire as something devoutly to be wished is set in motion, once the children leave the mirror stage as it were (remember that they throw the mirror out the window and it crashes on the ground), they lose contact with the mother they had known. They find only separation. The girls are doomed to a life of separation and frustration and fear. An absent father and an absent mother means a wilderness future for these girls. All they can do is "long and long, with a longing that is greater than words can say, to see their own dear mother again" (213). This is a longing that is doomed to remain frustrate.

Before I leave this Lacanian longing, I note the relative absence of males in this story. The father is at sea; a little man with a wide-brimmed hat proves absent; and the man with the dancing dogs lurks in the background, appearing before the girls meet the gypsy child and then later playing a flute as his two dogs slowly watlz round and round. What do we make of this grotesquerie? One thing seems likely: the absence of the girls' father makes the whole series of events possible. Their desire is to reach out to the father, and the little man accompanied by a little woman in the peardrum box is a reminder of male-female relationship. This couple compels the young girls's interest. Then we learn that the man with the dogs is somehow connected to the gypsy girl. The question that occurs to me is: does this man represent the master of the revels, the power in the background, the one who controls things? This is a parodic father and his two dogs are parodic children under his control. Perhaps the story is even more darkly pessimistic than I at first thought: disaster can happen when fathers are absent (I think too of Sendak's OUTSIDE OVER THERE), and disaster results when fathers control children. The Law of the Father ensures desire's dance will keep us unhappy and isolated from that which has kept us safe: the mother. The "new mother," after all, is a decidedly phallic mother with her long and wooden and powerful tail. In this story fathers win the day, but the result for women is dire.

So far, this shapes up to be a dreary story about the inevitable tragedy of human existence. But another reading is possible. The story delivers one surprise after another, most often linguistic surprise. This is a story of reversals. And the reversals more often than not derive from misunderstanding, from misinterpretation if you will. Examples are numerous: the peardrum has strings, but it is actually played by turning a handle, not strumming or plucking the strings; the gypsy girl appears to be crying, but she is cheerful; she says she is rich, but she looks poor; shabbiness is respectable; unkindness is being naughty without including your sister in the naughtiness; goodness is akin to a crime; and of course the most dramatic reversal is the "new mother" herself because she reverses (perhaps "inverts" is more precise) the good mother. Each of these reversals has something to do with a failure of interpretation on the part of the girls, a failure which is deeply related to language itself and the failure of language to be transparent.

The dark stranger the girls meet in town is vague and ill-defined; at first they think "it was someone asleep," then they think it is a poor sick woman in need of food, and finally they see that it is a "wild-looking girl" who seems "very unhappy" (195). They are wrong on all counts, except for the apparent fact that this is a female. Their interpretation fails; they misread what they see. The reason for this misinterpretation has something to do with a failure of precise connection between signifier and signified. The gypsy girl as signifier does not offer a clear and transparent signified. I keep calling her a "gypsy," but the story no where states this. The girl remains vague and mysterious, like language. As a signifier, she may point to many signifieds: child, gypsy, peasant, urban street arab, disenfranchised poor person, demonic force, daughter of the devil, Mephistopheles, absence itself, tempter, enemy, and so on.

Like language in its infinite variety, I might add. Note several instances of slippage between signifier and signified. "A little shabbiness is very respectable," says the gypsy child (197). If this is so, then what do the words "shabbiness" and "respectability" mean? Are respectable people shabby? And what constitutes a "little shabbiness," as opposed to a lot of shabbiness? Such questions remain open. Or what do we make of the gypsy child's assertion that her shabbiness is "quite lucky"? Just what does "lucky" mean here? Is shabbiness a matter of luck? At another point in the story, the two girls claim that they "are very fond of crying" (199). Is this true? And if it is, then why should crying be something they like? If this is not true, then the girls deliberately use language to obscure a truth. A simple and clear example occurs when the two girls urge the gypsy child to "go on" singing, and she replies "I'm going," as she walks away (202). Clearly the connection between signifier and signified is arbitrary, unpredictable, and slippery.

Twice in the story, the narrator alerts us to the failure of understanding. When the mother explains to her daughters just how love works to dispel unkindness, the girls reply: "We don't know what you mean" (200). A little later, the gypsy child tells the girls that language has an infinite variety, and the narrator informs us that "the children did not understand" (205). What the two girls cannot do is interpret; their grasp of language remains rudimentary and simple. Why can't we be naughty and still love mother, they think. Why can't naughtiness be something simple--like words. But words are not simple, the story indicates, and the girls are left at the end on the outside looking in. The darkness has drawn down and become impenetrable; this is inevitable in a world in which words are beyond human understanding. But the story as I conceive it here is not simply dreary and pessimistic; it is an object lesson in reading. The reader has the opportunity of understanding how language can work to isolate and obfuscate. Readers learn yet another Lacanian lesson: everything depends upon the letter.