Title: “Born of Man and Woman”
Author: Richard Matheson
Date of First Publication: July 1950
Place of Publication: Fantasy and Science Fiction, Eds. Anthony Boucher and J. Francis McComas (Summer)
Bibliographic Reference: isfdb
Type: Short story
Keywords: ANDROID; FRANKENSTEIN MONSTER; POSTHUMAN; SYMPATHETIC MONSTER
Critical Summary: “Born of Man and Woman” is written as a series of journal entries penned by a child-like Creature of indeterminate gender who is kept chained in the cellar of its parents’ suburban home. Due to the laconic nature of the entries and the child’s broken, labored English, the true story unfolds incrementally.
From the beginning, it is clear that the protagonist is severely physically deformed. Its parents frequently comment with horror and disgust upon its grotesque appearance and shudder away from its touch. The child also possesses immense physical strength, demonstrating an ability to pull its chain out of the cellar wall multiple times. Through the child’s various attempts to escape the cellar so it may look out the window, the story reveals that the parents have gone to great lengths to conceal their offspring’s existence. The protagonist is forbidden to show itself to others, including its physically normal and unsuspecting younger sister, and is beaten severely each time it is almost discovered. It is also revealed through these incidents of abuse that the child’s body continuously oozes a kind of viscous green fluid, particularly when it is struck.
The climactic moment of the story occurs when the protagonist’s sister, unaware of her deformed sibling’s presence, goes down into the cellar. The child hides in the coal bin to avoid discovery, but is discovered by the sister’s pet kitten, which hisses and then delivers a painful bite. In fear, the protagonist kills the kitten by crushing it, and the sister, hearing the sounds of the struggle, runs out of the cellar to get her mother. The deformed child hides the kitten’s corpse underneath its pillow. The next day, the protagonist’s father starts to beat it with a stick as punishment for this incident, but finally it retaliates, hitting the stick out of his hands. Frightened, the man runs out of the cellar and locks the door. The child resolves that if its parents try to beat it again, it will hurt them, recalling a previous incident in which it frightened them by running on the walls with its multiple legs and dripping its green fluid from the ceiling.
“Born of Man and Woman” reverses Frankenstein’s formula in that while Mary Shelley’s novel first gives us an account of the Creature’s monstrous birth and then reveals it to be a sovereign, thinking being capable of speaking back, Matheson presents his child protagonist’s undeniable humanity first. The reader is first forced to acknowledge the terrible pathos of the child’s abusive situation, and only little by little is its physically monstrous nature revealed. The final journal entry is an eerie echo of the Creature’s dark realization of its own destructive powers; the child decides that if it cannot be loved despite its monstrous form, it will instead utilize it to inflict pain upon its creators. The apparently suburban setting of the story and the complete lack of explanation for the child’s monstrousness also serve to bring the tale uncomfortably close to home. The offspring’s hideous appearance perhaps only reflects the hideousness of its parents’ souls, or the darker, unacknowledged aspects of parenthood itself.
Administrative Notes: Entry author: Adriana Lora, CSUF.