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Summary Of St Lucy's Home For Girls Raised By Wolf

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Throughout “St Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves” by Karen Russell, the members of the pack go from wild, degenerate wolf girls to [mostly] proper girls of human society. One pack member in particular, the main character Claudette, undergoes major transformations throughout the story. Her development, as with the development of the other girls, varies between rapid and a slower, more placid speed. How fast, and how much, she develops depends on the stage and the events that happen therein. There is much evidence to this point, Claudette’s directly relates to the stage that she is in, but despite her adaptations in the end Claudette cannot fully adapt to human culture. For example, looking at stage one, in which the new culture is at its …show more content…

The stage two epigraph is entirely correct about how wolf girls, or Claudette in this instance, react to being forced to adapt in this stage of the culture shock. True to its words, Claudette indeed becomes moody and homesick, and spends a lot of time daydreaming, as shown in the thoughts of Claudette: “Keep your shoes on your feet. Mouth shut, shoes on feet” [Russell 240] and “We spent a lot of time daydreaming during this period” [Russell 242], Claudette said in stage two, finding it difficult to adapt and change. These feelings, however, are more evidence to her development in this stage, showing that her mind has begun to leave the wolf mentality behind, and is now missing what it is losing. Her ability to be more or less bipedal in this stage is a forward development, and despite her troubles with eradicating many of her wolf mannerisms, she mostly moves forward in this …show more content…

For example, one of her steps forward in terms of development is her denial of help to Mirabella, a younger sister. By restraining her wild instincts, she makes one step forward, as she does in the church by learning to channel her feelings and emotions into singing. However, one sign that she hasn’t fully adapted yet is her frustration, impatience, and inability to hold her temper with the purebred girls, she says as much “’King me,’ I growled, out of turn. ‘I SAY KING ME!’” [Russell 245]. The real test of her ability to be human will come at the ball in stage

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