Jane Addams’s Devil
Baby at the Hull-House is much more than an account of an old wives tale.
It tells the story of a group of women who related to the pain in the tale. In
the passage, Addams recounts the numerous variations of the devil baby story
and the consequent visitors.
The story evolved differently among varying ethnicities, but
they all had the same major theme. The devil baby was a product of the father’s
error. This singly feminist tone is inherent in the rest of Addams writing as
well. She talks of how it is standard in their society for the man to bring his
paycheck home to his wife to open. If a man opened his paycheck before going
home it was a negative sign—generally, it meant he was drinking.
This apparent power to the women is harshly contradictory to
the stories of abuse that women tell when they visit. Addams notes that most of
the women visiting are older and are further distanced from their pain. They
recount horrors and tragedies so terrible that she questions how they have
gotten over them. The women come, though, because the devil baby story seems to
be a generalization of all of their own stories. There is a piece of their own
pain in the woman who left her own kin, the devil baby, at the Hull-House.
