Stepchild

“ The stepmother generally has all the maternal instinct that any healthy child needs, while she is not likely to be a victim of the delusion that her stepchildren are so much better than other people’s children that it is an impenetrable mystery why they do not die young. ”

“ Some time after the man married a widow, who had a daughter by her first husband, and she was both ugly and bad, like her mother. So from the day the new wife came into the house there was no peace for her stepchildren in any corner; and at last the lad thought he'd best go out into the world and try to earn his own bread. ”

“ There was once on a time a woman who was a real witch and had two daughters, one ugly and wicked, and this one she loved because she was her own daughter, and one beautiful and good, and this one she hated, because she was her step-daughter. The step-daughter once had a pretty apron, which the other fancied so much that she became envious, and told her mother that she must and would have that apron. “Be quiet, my child,” said the old woman, “and thou shalt have it. Thy step-sister has long deserved death, to-night when she is asleep I will come and cut her head off. ”

“ In a little time the father of the girl married a widow, who brought with her into the house her own daughter. [26] The stepmother immediately began to hate the stepdaughter, because the girl was incomparably more beautiful than her own daughter. She forbade her to wash herself, to comb her hair, or to change her clothes, and sought by every possible way to torment and scold her. One day she gave her a bag full of hemp, and said, “If you do not spin all this well and wind it, you need not return home, for if you do I shall kill you.” ”

“ And suddenly the door creaked and flew open, and a great heavy chest was pushed in, and behind it came the step-daughter, radiant and beautiful, in a dress all glittering with silver and gold. For a moment the step-mother’s eyes were dazzled. Then she called to her husband: ‘Old man, yoke the horses at once into the sledge, and take my daughter to the same field and leave her on the same spot exactly; ‘and so the old man took the girl and left her beneath the same tree where he had parted from his daughter. ”

“ When she looked at the scenery, she kept seeing at first only the family group at the station as she had left it: her father, tall, gray-bearded, with hollow eyes, a continually working mouth, a slouching gait, a worn hat and an old striped coat; her stepmother, short, stout, pretty, and unkempt, in a frayed and faded shirtwaist, and a skirt pinned with a large brass safety-pin dragging away from the belt; three barefooted children in nondescript attire beside her, and a curly-haired, brown-eyed boy of two holding her dress with one hand and throwing kisses with the other. ”

“ That's what I call a discriminating child, mamma. It isn't every boy of five who knows a possible stepmother when he sees her. I am proud of Jay. I wish I were as confident of his father's discretion. Poor man, how he will be cajoled! How he will learn to reverence the opinion of Mrs. Eustace, how he will dote on the airy graces of the daughter. I wish you could see them, mamma. They rather affect the attitude of sisters. ”

“ When the step-mother came home with her daughter, and they saw that they were both as black as coal and ugly, but that the step-daughter was white and beautiful, wickedness increased still more in their hearts, and they thought of nothing else but how they could do her an injury. ”

“ The stepmother was angry as angry, but she said nothing at all.
That very evening they heard something tap-tapping at the door low down, and a voice cried out:
"Open the door, my hinny, my heart,
Open the door, my own darling;
Remember the words that you and I spoke,
At the World's End Well but this morning."
"Whatever can that be?" cried out the stepmother.
Then the girl had to tell her all about it, and what she had promised the frog.
"Girls must keep their promises," said the stepmother, who was glad the girl would have to obey a nasty frog. "Go and open the door this instant." ”

“ BELINDA (pleadingly to DEVENISH) . Can't you stop him?
DEVENISH. Look here, Baxter, another word from you and you'll never get to sixty.
BAXTER. And then there's Miss—er—Delia. In the event of our marrying, Mrs. Tremayne, she, I take it, would be my step-daughter.
BELINDA. I don't think she would trouble us much, Mr. Baxter. I have an idea that she will be getting married before long. (She glances at DEVENISH, who returns her look gratefully.)
BAXTER. None the less, the fact would be disturbing. I have never yet considered myself seriously as a step-father. ”

“ We were only rebelling as grown-up daughters sometimes do against the introduction in their midst of a baby, and especially when that baby is the offspring of a stepmother. We had not wanted the stepmother, and we didn’t want the baby ”

“ The common hostility between stepmothers and step-daughters does not surprise me in the least: it is natural and even moral. A new member of the household, who usurps their mother’s place, provokes repulsion on the part of the children. ”

“ It was that of a young woman, perhaps twenty or twenty-two years of age. "You must not feel yourself alone, dear child," she said, smoothing my hair with one hand, from which she had drawn off the glove.
"Oh," said Mrs. Pierce, pushing her daughter behind her, "you will never believe, marm, what she is crying about,—leaving home, you think it is? Oh, no; Miss is just taking on about a snip of a doll which my little girl here smashed a trifle, not meaning any harm, for children will be children, you know." ”

“ He smiled pleasantly through the grey fringe of his whiskers and beard, and turning to the girls said, 'Now come forrard, and shake hands properly with your stepmother.'
Thus she made their acquaintance, and he went out, leaving them together. On examination the poor girls turned out to be not only plain-looking, which she could have forgiven, but to have such a lamentably meagre intellectual equipment as to be hopelessly inadequate as companions. Even the eldest, almost her own age, could only read with difficulty words of two syllables; and taste in dress was beyond their comprehension. ”

“ The next group most prolific in variety of incidents is that in which the stepmother represents the evil genius of the story; sometimes there is a daughter only, sometimes a daughter and a son, and sometimes, but less frequent, a son only. Allied to it is that in which the character devolves on two elder sisters, not specified to be stepsisters, and the incidents in these two branches are closely interwoven. ”

“ I have quite lost faith in the unkind stepmother of fairy-tale tradition. It is a step-daughter whom Mrs. Frederick, the Swiss woman, is caring for in the midst of her struggle. Three or four times I found a woman utterly uncomforted after the loss of a stepson. There was Conley, for instance, a car inspector who was killed in a wreck. A stepmother had brought him up since he was ten years old, loving him as few mothers love their own sons. ”

“ The child’s nerves were overstrung, I could tell that just by watching him with his stepmother; and to her, who could see nothing that was not directly before her eyes, his sensitiveness appeared deliberate perversity. Yet he was an attractive child in spite of his elfin ways. If he could only find the sympathy and understanding he needed so desperately, I felt that he might become very lovable. ”

“ Oh! how do you get on with the step-daughter. She seemed to me to be a young lady with a pretty stubborn will of her own. I put a letter for the post down somewhere, and I cannot think where; do help me to look for it, there's a good woman. ”

“ THE STEPMOTHER. (Kreutzwald.)
Here the two girls are half-sisters, not step-sisters; and the younger one is dressed up, and married, veiled, to the suitor of the other. When the husband discovers the deception, he throws the false bride under the ice of a river on the way, and takes his own bride instead. Next year, the mother, on her way to visit her supposed daughter and her child, gathers a water-lily, which tells her that [Pg 47] it is her own daughter. Then the mother and daughter are transformed into a black dog and a black cat, with the aid of a magician ”

“ They spend the night there, and the next morning the youth goes hunting; and as soon as he has departed a giant appears and solicits the step-mother's love, saying that if she will marry him, she will always be healthy and never lose her youth. But first it will be necessary to remove from her step-son's head a golden hair, and then he will become so weak that he can be killed by a blow. She was unwilling at first, because he had saved her life, but finally yielded. First she tried to get rid of him by pretending to be ill, and sending him for some water from a fountain near which was a lion. ”

“ The father, only too often swayed by the will of the stepmother, perhaps for his own peace and comfort sake, becomes gradually indifferent to the feelings and sufferings of his children, and at last entirely forgets his duties as a parent. ”

“ I suppose that it is inevitable that a daughter by a first wife should not agree thoroughly with her father's second choice; but, 'pon my soul, I can see no occasion for you to take up arms against your step-mother; she has been too forbearing with you. She is the kindest, most considerate and conscientious of women. ”

“ Grandma isn’t our real grandmother; she’s only a step, and steps are never any good. Even Aunt Kate isn’t our real aunt, because Grandpa was only her stepfather.”
“Steps are pretty bad,” remarked Dulcie, “but the worst of all is a stepmother, and, thank goodness, we haven’t got that. If I thought we were ever going to have a stepmother, I’d—I’d do something awful.”
“What would you do?” inquired Molly, eagerly. ”

“ The stepmother, on the other hand, endowed, as a rule, with the maternal affection that springs eternal in the woman’s breast, but unblinded by the other’s bias for the children of her flesh, more frequently approaches her often thankless task, governed by a sense of duty, rather than by affection merely, and many have there been as a result, both men and women, Vice-Chancellor Pitney’s dictum to the contrary notwithstanding, to rise up and call the stepmother blessed. ”

“ The stepmother was a rather coarse-grained piece of clay—an unsympathetic, unfeeling woman, who knew how to say and to do unpleasant things without any apparent temper or ill-will. The immortal clockmaker, when he was in a more quaintly sententious humor than common, once propounded the doctrine that the direct road to a mother's heart is through her child. ”

“ If the parties are afflicted with a stepfather or stepmother who refuses to consent to their marriage, the approval of the family council will suffice as these persons cannot always be presumed to have at heart the interests of their step-children. ”

“ Your step-mother is not good enough for you. I—your father—am not good enough for you. We are all too strait-laced, too tied hand and foot by the laces of respectability, to serve as guide or check on such a headstrong piece of goods as yourself. ”

“ Why here’s a brush not in its place, and there’s something put wrong, and she’s left the muck inside the house!” The girl held her peace, and wept; she tried in every way to accommodate herself to her stepmother, and to be of service to her stepsisters. ”

“ I said. “Remember that I am old enough to be your father; that I knew you when you were three years old. I may surely ask such questions. But you are right; one must do your mother justice. She was certainly thinking of her second marriage.”
“You have not forgiven her that!” said the Countess, very gravely.
“Have you?” I asked, more lightly.
“I don’t judge my mother. That is a mortal sin. My stepfather was very kind to me.”
“I remember him,” I said; “I saw him a great many times—your mother already received him.” ”

“ The cruel stepmother is universally reviled in fable, in fiction, and in real life; but truth to tell, the very fact that she is a bad stepmother shows how deep her mother’s instincts must be. I have known one or two such stepmothers, and have always found them the most excellent mothers. ”

“ You understand well that you and she as is to be your stepmother can't agree. As soon as you have cleared out, then in comes she; and as I powerfully want her in the house, the sooner you go the better. ”

“ The stepmother was that surprised when she found the young prince instead of the nasty frog, and she wasn't best pleased, you may be sure, when the prince told her that he was going to marry her stepdaughter because she had unspelled him. So they were married and went away to live in the castle of the king, his father, and all the stepmother had to console her was, that it was all through her that her stepdaughter was married to a prince.
MASTER OF ALL MASTERS
A girl once went to the fair to hire herself for servant. ”

“ He might marry again, and a stepmother would ill-treat or neglect the little ones. If she were to marry, it could be on one understanding only, that she brought the family with her to the husband's house—and to that no man would consent. ”

“ In society it has become a proverb: "Cruel as a step-mother." I am disposed, however, to think that, while there may be marked exceptions, step-mothers are the most self-sacrificing beings in all the world. They come into the family scrutinized by the household and the relatives of the one who used to occupy the motherly position. ”

“ Appearances were certainly against her; the young girl looked guilty, and the father thinking that perhaps after all what his wife had told him was true, spoke angrily:
"Then, is it really true that you are daily cursing your step-mother and praying for her death? Have you forgotten what I told you, that although she is your step-mother you must be obedient and loyal to her? What evil spirit has taken possession of your heart that you should be so wicked? You have certainly changed, my daughter! What has made you so disobedient and unfaithful?" ”