Title: The Eggshell Curtain

Author: Romie Stott

Date of First Publication: Fall 2013

Place of Publication: Lit #24

Type: Short Story

Characters: No Character

Themes: MAD SCIENTISTS/MONSTERS; WOMEN WRITING MONSTERS; RACE/POLITICS; ANDROID

Critical Summary: “The Eggshell Curtain” takes place during the Bolshevik revolution. The protagonist, Koshka, isn’t a mad scientist interestingly enough. She’s more the victim of mad science: her father imprisons her in a Faberge egg, having miniaturized her and frozen her in time. He sees her simply as a successful experiment; any feelings of fatherhood or of family are gone, if they were ever truly there in the first place. She spends countless days sitting alone in a room, with her father working while all she can do is observe. She doesn’t age, so she eventually becomes the voice of historical continuity for the future. She would receive “visitors,” but they were only there to marvel at the scientific accomplishment of the experiments her father performed on her, rather than to actually meet and talk to her. She is given as a gift to the Empress, and it is during this isolation that she nurtures a newfound hatred for her father. While in the palace, she befriends the princess and grows closer to her. She decides to sabotage her father’s work. One night, after the Princess falls asleep, Koshka crawls into her ear canal. She is forcibly removed by tweezers, but not before her aural journey causes the princess immense pain. Her father is put on trial and, to Koshka’s dismay, not sentenced to death, but sentenced to a work camp. After the Bolshevik Revolution, Koshka is praised as a hero of Communism by Vladimir Lenin. She is eventually put up for display, and after a few decades, some university students worked out a way to communicate two ways with Koshka. She finally is able to talk to the world again. Ultimately, she is prized not for her contributions to Communism or for her small size, but simply for the length of time that she can remember. People and experts come to her every day with various questions about the world from Koshka’s perspective. The story is a bit of a meandering piece, but Stott’s representation of her protagonist’s simple but concrete worldview is engaging. Koshka’s relationship with her father can certainly be compared to that of the monster’s relationship with Victor in Frankenstein. Her father treats her only as an experiment, and not as a daughter. Victor treated the monster in a similar fashion, though arguably to a more extreme degree, as he almost immediately wanted to kill his creation as soon as he had created it. In Koshka’s case, he shrinks her down and completely disregards her as a daughter, which she later exacted revenge on him for using the size that he had bestowed upon her in the first place.

Administrative Notes: Ryan Peters, CSUF; Annette Morrison, CSUF (editing)