St. Lucy's Home For Girls Raised By Wolves Analysis

Karen Russel’s short story, St.Lucy’s Home For Girls Raised By Wolves, follows three sisters, whose parents are lycanthropes, who are trying to incorporate themselves into society. One of these girls, TRR!, who is renamed at the school to Claudette, adapted rather well to human culture. Throughout the story, Claudette makes many advances toward becoming a civilized young woman. Despite her eventual success, her journey is not without its struggles. For example, in the beginning of the story, Claudette and her sisters feel like their entire being is stripped away by the nuns at St.Lucy’s; “In the beginning, we drank gallons of bathwater as part of a collaborative effort to mark our territory. We puddled up the yellow carpet of old newspapers.

Imagine the dismay when the only way one knows to feel more comfortable is destroyed as soon as he or she creates it. Furthermore, the lessons the nuns teach are very difficult for Claudette, such as “how disorienting it was to look down and see two square-toed shoes instead of [her] own four feet. Keep your mouth shut, [she] repeated during our walking drills, staring straight ahead. Keep your shoes on your feet. Mouth shut, shoes on feet. Do not chew on your new penny loafers. Do not. [She] stumbled around in a daze, [her] mouth black with shoe polish,” (Russel 230). After having been quadrupedal and bare her entire life, Claudette has a hard time adjusting to wearing shoes and walking bipedally. However, she eventually adapts to this. In addition to these, Claudette struggles to grasp the intricacies of human culture, but is making connections to her own. At the church, “[the girls] sang at the chapel annexed to the home every morning. [They] understood that this was the humans’ moon, the place for howling beyond purpose. Not for mating, not for hunting, not for fighting, not for anything but the sound itself. And [they’d] howl along with the choir,

For example, Claudette “ha[s] an ear for languages, and [she] could read before [she] could adequately wash [herself]. [She] probably could have vied with Jeanette for the number one spot,” (Russel 233). Claudette’s skill in English would allow her to equal Jeanette or even surpass her, but Claudette does not want the top spot. She has managed to retain her mediocrity for this long, Why give that up? In addition to her natural aptitudes, Claudette spends time on her own to improve. She “slunk into the closet and practiced the Sausalito two-step in secret,” after dark some nights, because she was jealous that Jeanette could do the dance already (Russel 239). This shows Claudette’s determination to become a better, more proper human girl. If she can master this dance, she will feel like she can eventually master anything. Claudette also learns human speech rather well. At the ball, she says “My stars!’... ‘What lovely weather we’ve been having!” (Russel 242). Although this is a practiced line, it is impressive that Claudette is capable of speaking it clearly and intelligibly. She is well on her way to, with more practice, becoming fluent in English. Claudette achieves some amazing things throughout her time with the nuns, more than a significant amount of other wolf-girls have been able