The New Mother

"The New Mother" is a short story written by Lucy Clifford and first published in her collection of children's stories, The Anyhow Stories, Moral and Otherwise in 1882. The story has been reprinted in anthologies including The Dark Descent and rewritten at least once, in Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark.

Summary

The story concerns two well-behaved children, living with their mother and their baby sibling in the forest while their father is far away at sea. One day the children meet a strange little girl, who tells them that she has a tiny man and woman in a box, and will only show them to naughty children. The children return home, and do their best to be naughty despite their love for their mother. The mother, despondent, tells the children that if they don't behave she will have to go away with the baby, and be replaced by a "new mother" with "glass eyes and a wooden tail". When the children next meet the girl, she tells them they haven't been nearly naughty enough, and suggests ways for them to be more naughty. This cycle repeats three times, at the end of which the girl tells the children that they will never be naughty enough to see the little people and that their mother and baby have gone away to be with the father and that they will never return and that the new mother is coming and disappears. At this point, the children's mother and the baby have also left. The children do not believe the girl and clean up the house and await their mother's return. The new mother shows up but the children try not to let her in. They see that she has glass eyes and a wooden tail. The children flee into the woods and live on berries. Their real mother never returns and the new mother lives at the house instead.

Neil Gaiman has acknowledged "The New Mother" as one of two major influences on his 2002 novella Coraline.^[1]

See also

• The Father-thing
• Coraline

References

External links

• "The New Mother" at WeirdFictionReview.com.