crooked house

Babies in Literature: Karl Ove Knausgard in A Death in the Family

 

Karl Ove Knausgaard is a 46-year-old Norwegian writer who has written an unusual six-volume autobiography called My Struggle. It's getting a lot of attention -- apparently one in 10 Norwegians have read at least some of it and he is both adored in that country and abhorred (for revealing so much about the private lives of his friends and family). Critic James Wood has written admiringly about his work and apparently Zadie Smith said, on twitter, that it was "like crack." (That offhand remark is quoted on the Amazon pages for the kindle books. No wonder people as famous and as "serious" as Zadie Smith tend not to use twitter.) The books are weirdly compelling (at the least the two I've read so far) -- they contain long, unadorned yet extremely detailed descriptions of Knausgaard's everyday life that, somehow, still have relentless narrative drive. You want to keep reading to find out what happens next, even though what generally happens next is just more of the same. I enjoy the second book, A Man in Love, more than the first, and this is probably because Knausgaard devotes a large part of it to his family life with three small children, and he happens to be an active parent, like a lot of men of his generation in Europe and North America (although some part of me wonders if his wife Linda would agree with his assessment of his involvement). I also wonder if Knausgaard's work would get as much attention if he looked like, say, Rush Limbaugh, instead of a brooding rock star. Yet that's probably unfair -- it's difficult to put your finger on just why, but his work is really good. Here is an example of his writing about his children, from the first book, A Death in the Family :

As I write, I am filled with tenderness for her. But this is on paper. In reality, when it really counts, and she is standing there in front of me, so early in the morning that the streets outside are still and not a sound can be heard in the house, she, raring to start a new day, I, summoning the will to get to my feet, putting on yesterday's clothes and following her into the kitchen where the promised blueberry-flavoured milk and the sugar-free muesli await her, it is not tenderness I feel, and if she goes beyond my limits, such as when she pesters and pesters me for a film, or tries to get into the room where John is sleeping -- in short, every time she refuses to take no for an answer but drags things out ad infinitum -- it is not uncommon for my irritation to mutate into anger, and when then I speak harshly to her, and her tears flow, and she bows her head and slinks off with slumped shoulders, I feel it serves her right. Not until the evening when they are asleep and I am sitting wondering what I am really doing is there any room for the insight that she is only two years old. But by then I am on the outside looking in. Inside, I don't have a chance. Inside, it is a question of getting through the morning, the three hours of nappies that have to be changed, clothes that have to be put on, breakfast that has to be served, faces that have to be washed, hair that has to be combed and pinned up, teeth that have to be brushed, squabbles that have to be nipped in the bud, slaps that have to be averted, rompers and boots that have to be wriggled into, before I, with the collapsible double pushchair in one hand and nudging the two small girls forward with the other, step into the lift, which as often as not resounds to the noise of shoving and shouting on its descent, and into the hall, where I ease them into the pushchair, put on their hats and mittens and emerge into the street already crowded with people heading for work and deliver them to the nursery ten minutes later, whereupon I have the next five hours for writing until the mandatory routines for the children resume.

I have always had a great need for solitude. I require huge swaths of loneliness, and when I do not have it, which has been the case for the last five years, my frustration can sometimes become almost paniched, or aggressive. And when what has kept me going for the whole of my adult life, the ambition to write something exceptional one day, is threatened in this way my one thought, which gnaws at me like a rat, is that I have to escape. Time is slipping away from me, running through my fingers like sand while I... do what? Clean floors, wash clothes, make dinner, wash up, go shopping, play with the children in the play areas, bring them home, undress them, bath them, look after them until it is bedtime, tuck them in, hang some clothes to dry, fold others and put them away, tidy up, wipe tables, chairs and cupboards. It is a struggle, and even though it is not heroic, I am up against a superior force, for no matter how much housework I do the rooms are littered with mess and junk, and the children, who are taken care of every waking minute, are more stubborn than I have ever known children to be; at times it is nothing less than bedlam here, perhaps we have never managed to find the necessary balance between distance and intimacy, which of course becomes increasingly important the more personality there is involved. And there is quite a bit of that here. When Vanja was around eight months old she began to have violent outbursts, like fits at times, and for a while it was impossible to reach her, she just screamed and screamed. All we could do was hold her until it had subsided. It is not easy to say what caused it, but it often occurred when she had had a great many impressions to absorb, such as when we had driven to her grandmother's in the country outside Stockholm, when she had spent too much time with other children, or we had been in town all day. Then, inconsolable and completely beside herself, she could scream at the top of her voice. Sensitivity and strength of will are not a simple combination. And these matters were not made any easier when Heidi was born. I wish I could say I took everything in my stride but sad to say such was not the case because my anger and my feelings too were aroused in these situations, which then escalated, frequently in full public view: it was not unknown for me in my fury to snatch her up from the floor in one of the Stockholm malls, sling her over my shoulder like a sack of potatoes and carry her through town kicking and punching and howling as if possessed.

And so on and so on and so on. Sound familiar?

Babies in Literature Series: Amy Shearn's The Mermaid of Brooklyn

This excerpt really should count as a both a post in the Babies in Literature series and the Parents in Literature series, as it provides perfect snapshots of a baby, a toddler, and their mother. Amy Shearn has written a terrific novel called The Mermaid of Brooklyn, based on her own grandmother's life, in which a woman's husband disappears and, as a result, she is possessed by a rusalka. (According to Slavic folklore, a rusalka is mermaid formed from the soul of a wronged woman.) I laughed in recognition many, many, many times as I read it. Not because my husband has disappeared or I am possessed by a rusalka (although I do love a nice hot bath), but because this particular protagonist has two small children and exists in a state of perpetual exhaustion as a result. Amy, whose breezy style I really envy, is both insightful and hilarious. Here is a description of life with small children that didn't just ring a bell for me, it practically set off the fire alarm:

When I awoke at three a.m., Rose howling wolfishly at a blackout-curtain-defying streetlamp, Betty standing in the hallway with her hands over her ears, and Harry still wasn't there, it occurred to me to worry.

"Rosie, Rosie." I launched myself from bed, the sheets wrapped around my legs, only to step squarely on the dog. Oh. The dog. I was perpetually forgetting about the existence of Junpier, Harry's scraggly, immortal mutt. Our mutt now, of course. Had I taken her down to pee before bed? There were too many creatures' bodies to keep track of. The dog looked up at me mournfully. I apologized, stumbled into our nubbin of a hallway. My legs were stiff, Frankensteiny. I couldn't remember the last time I'd exercised in any way more significant than a walk pushing the stroller around the park, which I hoped counted for something. Every day I promised myself I'd at least stretch out before bed, and every night I was at least twelve times too tired to even consider it. Anyway, "going to bed" was more like waiting for Rose to relent and then immediately applying myself to my mattress.

Rose had hiked her swaddle up around her neck in a sort of haute couture cowl and was inching across the crib like a demented caterpillar. She stopped howling when she saw me, grinned toothlessly. "All right," I said. "You're very charming." I pulled the swaddling blanket off of her and lifted her out. Betty followed us back into my bed. I didn't even try to stop her. I nestled Rose down in the center of the mattress, and she immediately started snorting with the pre-meal enthusiasm of a true Lipkin. I lay down beside her and offered her the boob with the less destroyed nipple. Betty lay down on the other side of Rose.

"Mommy, where Daddy?"

Rose popped off and craned her neck curiously toward Betty.

"Sweetheart, please don't distract the baby," I said as dread gripped the top knob of my spine. Right. Where was Daddy? "Daddy's, um, at work."

Betty considered this. "Aren't the lights off?"

Rose latched back on. I closed my eyes and allowed the pull of sleep to drag me under the surface. Sleep was like water, my brain thought, unoriginally. And as with a river, you never stepped into the same sleep twice, it was always a different texture somehow, there was a different current tonight, something roiling in the distance. What was this dream that I --

"Mommy."

Without really waking up, I said, "Yes, honey, the lights are off. He has a flashlight."

"Oh."

Rose stopped nursing to stare up at Betty again. "Please, no talking, Betty," I said, already mostly asleep. I was so tired that it hurt to wake up and fall back asleep. It was like how it used more energy to turn something off and on than it did to -- but the thought stopped making sense as I thought it, breaking apart like bread dropped in water. I was dimly aware of Juniper jumping onto the bed and coiling up behind me. Being sandwiched between little bodies this way seemed cozy for about thirty seconds, until my leg wanted to stretch and couldn't. It was another hot night, the mugginess unfazed by the air-conditioning unit lodged in the window, and here we were glued together by sweat and spit-up and dog hair. It was all very glamorous.

When I awoke again -- five minutes later? an hour later? -- Rose was snoozing with her mouth slightly open around my nipple, milked pooled on her tiny tongue. Betty and Juniper were curled together at the foot of the bed. The room was shadowy, lit by the streetlamp, the lights of night-owl neighbors, the lights of early-rising neighbors, the hazy undark of the city at night. And really, now, where was Harry? Alarm rang through my limbs. I tried to temper it with some Vulcan logic, a technique I'd had to teach myself over and over, every night of my anxiety-ridden first night of motherhood. No, no, he wasn't dead in a ditch, that wouldn't make any sense -- He had said something. He was going to stop and buy cigarettes. (...)

I was drifting back to sleep, so tired that my joints felt jumpy, my skin prickly. I couldn't process whether I'd fallen asleep or else had slept for hours when there was Betty, patting my cheek.

I opened an eye. Rose sprawled out on her back, taking up more room than seemed geometrically possible for a person who weighed twelve pounds. (...)

"Mommy? Cookies?" Betty said experimentally. When I opened both eyes, I saw Juniper behind her, wagging her tail. When Juniper diagnosed me as awake-ish, she leaped up and started pacing around. "No and no," I said to both of them. I probably fell back asleep. "MOMMY," Betty said, patting my cheek harder. Okay, hitting. Smacking my face. Her hand was sticky, somehow, already. It wasn't even light out yet. So four forty-five, maybe? Juniper jumped up onto the bed, and Rose's eyes popped open.

"Oh, God," I said. Every morning I lay in bed thinking, I cannot possibly do this for one more day. Then I got up and did it for one more day. All parents did, I told myself. My exhaustion was nothing special. And likewise, the moments in which I managed to cope in a halfway-decent way where not exactly the triumphs of maternal spirit I liked to pretend they were -- more like basic competence. "Tell Daddy to take out Juniper," I said.

Betty shook her head. "It's too far."

"What?" I lifted Rose, who belched loudly, looking surprised and pleased, a diminutive frat boy. I hadn't burped her after her last dozy feeding. Another habit Harry hated.

"It's too far. Daddy at work."

Oh God.

Thirty seconds later, I was wearing the same T-shirt and shorts I had worn the day before; Rose and her diaper, transformed into an anvil of pee, were tucked into the sling; Betty was dressed in her pajamas, a tutu, and pink Crocs her grandmother had gotten her expressly against our wishes; Juniper was harnessed into her leash. The whole happy family clambered out on the street. (...)

It was garbage day, and stinking boulders of trash punctuated the sidewalk, which reminded me that I hadn't taken down our recycling, a thought that filled me with despair. Betty toddled over to a rank pile, lifted up a diseased-looking teddy bear.

"No!" My voice startled Rose, who started to cry. It was easier to have sympathy for her, I found, than her sister, the toddler terror. Rosie couldn't help it. She was a baby. Her crying was uncomplicated. When Betty turned on the waterworks about one of her big-girl issues, like not getting an eighth Dora Band-Aid with which to decorate the dog, my skin curdled in irritation. But the baby I could deal with. I wasn't that heartless. "Shhh," I swayed back and forth, extracted a pacifier from my pocket, and plugged her mouth. "Betty," I said in the creepy-calm voice of fake parental patience. "Put that down right this second. Haven't you ever read The Velveteen Rabbit? Scarlet fever! Bedbugs! Death!"

Betty knitted her brow.

"Drop it!" I said. "Juniper stopped walking and looked at me. "Not you."

Betty released her treasure and poutily stuck her thumb in her mouth, the same thumb that, moments before, had been caressing the grimy toy's eyeless socket. I closed my eyes. I'd been awake for two minutes and already felt overwhelmed by the length of the day ahead of me.

Yes, yes, yes, and yes. I apologize for the length of the excerpt but I just love it so much and want everyone to read it, especially those contemplating having children.

And be sure to check out the Mermaid of Brooklyn pinterest board. (Such a good idea, these pinterest boards devoted to a particular book.)

Not Now, Bernard Or Parents: Do Not Ignore Your Children

I've been feeling very busy and distracted lately and Not Now, Bernard has been on my mind a lot, sort of playing in the background as a warning. It's one of those children's books that seems to be more for the parents than the children, although both my kids get a kick out of this one. (Sylvie is definitely a bit concerned about the monster no one seems to notice, however.)

That's a whole subcategory of children's books, isn't it? Books that pretend they're for children but really they're for the parents. A teacher friend of mine always gets annoyed whenever Love You Forever is mentioned. She insists that it is only of mild interest to children, yet their parents are weeping and swooning away as it's read. I have to agree with her about the effect it has on parents -- it affects me that way -- and she's probably right about its general lack of appeal for kids. I don't think a child would ever pick it as a favourite. Guess How Much I Love You is a bit like that, too. Not that it's always a bad thing, for a picture book to appeal to the parents as much or more than the kids. It's just a bit of a trick. (A trick that often leads to enormous sales, as in the case of both Love You Forever and Guess How Much.) Can you think of any more?

Are You My Mother? Maud Interviews Alison Bechdel

Can't wait to get my hands on a copy of Are You My Mother?: A Comic Drama, Alison Bechdel's graphic memoir (is that a thing?) about her relationship with her mother. Maud Newton talks to her about it in this really intriguing interview.

AB: One of my earliest, most powerful memories of my mother is playing this game where I would be a crippled child like the kids I would see at the orthopedic wing of the hospital when I would go to get my fallen arches checked up on. I was just fascinated with these children, with their external signs of disability, their crutches and braces and big shoes. There was something about that that I needed to reenact, and my mother entered into that imaginary space so willingly with me and in such an encouraging way. Even though I knew there was something weird about having this fantasy about disabled children, she didn't sensor it. She encouraged me to go with it, and I feel like she probably did that with me in lots of imaginary games as a kid but for some reason this is the one that I remember the most vividly. And I speculate in the book that it's because it was a fantasy that she shared to a certain extent as well.

 

BNR: And when your OCD was making it really difficult to keep the diary, your mom would write down your entries. I remember that from Fun Home, too, and both times it gave me chills. The devotion implicit in it.

 

AB: Oh my God, that was another pivotal moment. She would sit there and write down everything I said. It was amazing. It also becomes weirdly this template for my relationship later with therapists, other women who would sit there and take down notes on what I was saying.

This Life is In Your Hands. And A Spoiler Alert.

 This Life Is in Your Hands: One Dream, Sixty Acres, and a Family Undone is a memoir by Melissa Coleman that got a lot of attention last year when it first came out. Coleman's parents, Eliot and Sue, were among the first back-to-the-landers of the late 60s and 70s. They moved to a plot of land in rural Maine that adjoined the farm of Helen and Scott Nearing, the couple who wrote Living the Good Life: How to Live Sanely and Simply in a Troubled World, which is the book credited with inspiring the movement. Eliot and Sue built their own home, grew their own food, and Sue gave birth to two little girls while they did it. It sounds Edenic, particularly for children, and partly, it was.  (This NYT review of the book does a good job of describing the basic events of This Life is In Your Hands and also the sort of see-sawing the book does between the poetry of the family's life, rooted as it was in nature, and an increasing sense of ominousness.)

It's easy for people who have never attempted to be self-sufficient through farming to romanticize the idea (witness the current resurgence of what Emily Matchar calls the New Domesticity, which admittedly doesn't seem as hard-core a movement) but the fact is that it makes for a very hard life. (I am guilty of romanticizing it myself -- in  high school I gave a speech on my version of "the good life" in which I would retreat with my little family to a cabin in the woods, where I would homeschool my children and we would all survive, I guess, on nuts and berries.) Coleman, who is now a nationally recognized expert on organic gardening, actually had a thyroid disorder, largely untreated, that spurred him on to ceaseless physical labour. And if I were going to try to accomplish what he did, I think I'd want one, too. From Melissa Coleman's descriptions of her mother, Sue, it seems to me that she  suffered terribly from post-partum depression and that this was horribly compounded by the relentless, back-breaking work that homesteading actually entailed, not to mention possible malnutrition.

Now here is where the spoiler comes in. Consider yourself warned. One day, busy preparing a feast for some visitors (as if she doesn't have enough to do), Sue shoos Melissa's little sister Heidi, who is around three at the time I think, out of the cabin, telling her to go float her toy boat on the pond. Heidi actually comes back once or twice, begging for attention, and Sue turns her away. You can guess what happened to Heidi down at the pond. She drowned.

Melissa Coleman doesn't blame her mother for this in the book, but she doesn't exactly absolve her, either. After reading it I was left feeling absolutely bereft for the poor woman, whom I was unable to track down via google, hoping to learn she has found some sort of peace. And I must admit I was also left feeling a bit pissed off about Eliot Coleman's (and the Nearings') subsequent success as  folk heroes.

Now of course children die. They die in car accidents in suburbia and of childhood cancers and all kinds of things. But all it takes is a short stroll through a pioneer-era graveyard to see how many children died when there was no choice for anyone but a  "lifestyle" of relentless physical labour in order to put food on the table. A lot of those deaths were from childhood diseases we can now vaccinate against (if we aren't against vaccinating) but many of them were from accidents that happened when parents didn't have the time and the energy to hover over their kids.

Not Entirely Lost

From Dana Spiotta's intriguing Stone Arabia,a novel partly about a very intense sibling relationship, this excerpt describes a memory of the narrator's father, who died when she was seven or eight years old:

I don't remember a single conversation I had with my father. I do remember, however, walking behind him on the street. He reached his hand back and opened it, then closed it and opened it without looking around for me. I ran up and pressed my palm into his palm. He closed his hand gently over mine, squeezed it. I remember how large his hand was, and how warm and heavy it felt.

...

Occasionally -- maybe three times it happened -- I get a sense of my father from other men. When I walk behind a certain kind of man in the street. It happened to me in New York City once. I was in a crowd and a man moved right in front of me. He brushed past me. He was wearing an overcoat. And because of his height, or maybe the way he carried himself, the way he walked, or the way his hair met the back of his collar. Or how his hand looked as he held his briefcase -- something brought back my father. A deep, intimate body memory came over me; I could see him -- somewhat -- but I could feel him, or recall feeling him, completely. I glimpsed this stranger through the crowd and I startled. A flood of recognition and longing. I hurried after him, even tried to catch up. And then he turned slightly and I saw his face. I felt, ridiculously, real disappointment when I realized he was not my father. He did not look at all like my father. The incident didn't make me feel sad, though, it made me remember my father in ways a picture never could. I felt the memory of my father on my body, the way you feel a breeze or the heat of the sun. He did not feel -- and so was not -- entirely lost to me.

Rocking the Cradle

Gorgeous rocker cradle by fine woodworker Scott Morrison.

The copy I borrowed of  Babies: An Unsentimental Anthology, edited by Iona and Peter Opie, is long overdue at the library. A computer somewhere is totting up my fine as I type. And that is a shame, as I've been meaning to post number of excerpts from this delicious collection of amusing, unflattering, and often realistic snippets from literature about babies. Here is one of my favourites:

If you rock an empty cradle, you will rock a new baby into it. This is a superstition in viridi observantia, and it is quite curious to see the face of alarm with which a poor woman, with her tenth baby in her arms, will dash across the room to prevent the 'baby-but-one' from engaging in such a dangerous amusement as rocking the empty cradle.

                      The Book of Days, Robert Chambers, 1864, II, 9 July

I've been collecting lots of  photos of beautiful rocker cradles and rocking chairs on pinterest.

Babies in Literature: Pat Barker's The Ghost Road

I've recently been riveted by Pat Barker's highly acclaimed Regeneration trilogy about the first world war, which I somehow missed when the books were first published in the 90s -- I'd majored in History at university, mostly of the world wars and, having moved on to teaching small children, I suppose I was all warred out. (You don't know conflict until you have tried to get twenty five-year-olds to sit down and be quiet all at the same time.) I imagine these texts, which are a blend of fiction and non-fiction, are used widely in college history classes today. If they aren't, they should be. They center on William Rivers, a real person -- a noted anthropologist and psychiatrist who treated soldiers, including poet Siegfried Sassoon, for shell-shock. Many of them suffered from fascinating hysterical illnesses such as muteness and paralysis, brought on by prolonged terror.

There aren't many babies in Regeneration and The Ghost Road, the first and last in the series and the two books I've read so far -- they focus mainly on the experiences of men. Interestingly, Barker wrote many books about working class women before turning to this topic and it was only then that she began to receive accolades. I'm planning to search out these earlier books immediately as I'm guessing they may be just as good, if not as appealing to the usual male book critic.

The following description is taken from one of Rivers's memories of his time before the war studying headhunters in Melanesia:

A thread-like wail from the baby Njiru held in his hands, one palm cradling the head, the other the buttocks, a morself of black-eyed misery squirming in between.

Her name was Kwini and her mother was dead. Worse than that, she'd died in childbirth, which made her an evil spirit, likely to attempt to reclaim her child. The body had been dumped at sea, a bundle of rags strapped between the breasts to fool the mother into thinking she had her baby with her but still ... Kwini's failure to thrive was attributed to her mother's attempts to get her back.

She certainly wasn't thriving: skin hung in loose folds from her thighs. Rivers looked round the circle at her grandmother's wrinkled dugs, the flat chest of her nine-year-old sister, the highly developed pectoral muscles of her father. He asked what she was being fed on. Mashed up yams softened by spit was the answer. The tiny hands clawed the air as if she would wring life out of it.

Njiru passed the leaves he was holding several times between his legs and then, stretching to his full height, attached them to the rafters at the gable end, where the scare ghost shivered in the draught. "Come down and depart, you ghost, her mother; do not haunt this child and let her live."

"Will she live?" Rivers asked.

He had his own opinion, but wanted to know what Njiru would say. Njiru spread his hands.

On their way back to Narovo, Rivers questioned him about the ghosts of women who died in childbirth. This was not a rare form of death, since the custom was for women to give birth alone, and there was no tradition of midwifery. Such ghosts could not be named, he already knew that. In the genealogy they were referred to as evil spirits. It had startled him at first to be told quite casually that such and such a man had married "an evil spirit."

They were called tomate pa na savo --the ghosts of the confining house -- Njiru explained, and they were dreaded, since their chief aim was to ensure that as many other women as possible should die in that same way.

 

Babies in Literature: Jane Gardam's God on the Rocks

Just discovered Jane Gardam, via something Kerry Clare said on facebook, and am really enjoying her. Particularly this hilarious, unsentimental description, from her novel God on the Rocks of a new baby and his eight-year-old sister's reaction to him:

Mrs Marsh, dazed about times of day, detached herself from the baby, drawing herself back and mopping about with a cloth. She lifted the baby up on her shoulder where a huge towelling nappy lay, hanging a little way down her back for the baby to be sick on. She massaged its back which was like the back of a duck, oven-ready. The baby's unsteady head and swivelling eyes rolled on her shoulder, its round mouth slightly open, wet and red. It seemed, filmily, to be trying to take in Margaret who was fiddling with things on the mantelpiece behind her mother. She looked down at it with a realistic glare. The baby under the massage let air come out of its mouth in a long explosion and pale milk ran out and over its chin.

"Filthy," said Margaret.

"There's my little lovekin," said Mrs Marsh. She lifted the baby into the air before her, both hands under the armpits, and let it hang like dough about to drop. "What did you say, dear? It's your treat-day with Lydia, isn't it?"

"This afternoon," said Margaret, dropping the baby's bottle of gripe water and smashing it to bits on the mottled cream tiles of the fireplace. Glass flew everywhere in splinters and the baby after jerking as if it had received an electric shock began to cry like a new lamb. "Lair, lair, lair," it went, scarlet in the face and flushing quickly to purple all over its bald head, its eyes in two directions.

Mrs Marsh was not upset, though she had jumped as violently as her son. Margaret saw her take the decision to be understanding rather than annoyed. "There now," she said. Placing the lamenting child over her other, nappiless, shoulder she drew Margaret to her to lean upon the other one. "Never mind , dear. Just an accident."

Margaret -- her mother smelled of milk and baby powder -- pulled away and made a face. "It's like a pig," she said.

Mrs Marsh looked yet more understanding. "Darling, you do know we love you, don't you? He's your baby, too, you know, just as much as ours. Look -- you hold him. You're such a big girl. He's going to love you so much."

"What's so marvellous?"

"Marvellous?"

"About that? Why do I have to be pleased that he's going to love me? I don't need him."

"He will need you."

"No he won't. If I wasn't here he wouldn't know anything about me."

"But you are here."

"I'm not here for him. I managed without me. Nobody was here for me when I was born and I was all right."

Mrs Marsh, trying very slowly to digest this empirical point, wrapped the child very tight in a cloth with its arms crossed over its chest tight beneath it, then put it on its face in the flounced organdy of the crib.

It did not look up to its surroundings. More like a trussed duck than ever.

"It can't be good for it, bound up like that," said Margaret, and Mrs Marsh brightened at a sign of possible concern. "Oh yes it is, dear. It says so in Truby King. They like to feel safe."

"I don't see why you feel safe if you're tied up."

[...]

[Mrs Marsh] looked at the trussed baby, face down, its red head like a tilted orange rearing up and down on the undersheet as if desperately trying to escape. Giving up, it let its head drop into suffocation position and there was another explosion followed by a long, liquid spluttering from further down the cot: and a smell. "Oh dear," said Mrs Marsh contented, "now I'll have to start all over again with a new nappy. Could you hand me the bucket, darling?"

"His own image," said Margaret, watching the horrible unwrapping. "If God looks like us... What's the point?"

 

Babies in Literature: Angela Carter's Book of Fairy Tales

This is  a painting of Kakuarshuk, an Inuit woman who is digging for babies -- that's where they come from, didn't you know? It's by the artist Rima Staines who talks about the folktale that inspired her, which was collected in Angela Carter's Book of Fairy Tales, over here at her blog, The Hermitage. The painting is for sale.