Wednesday, September 30, 2009

Why is The Baby Killed at the End of Sleepy?

The short story Sleepy is about a young girl forced to work to support her mother and herself after the death of her father. She is employed by a family and is forced to do common household work such as cleaning, setting up for a dinner party, and looking after the couple's baby. The girl is never allowed to take any breaks or get any sleep. At the end of the story she is so sleep deprived that she strangles the crying baby she is supposed to look after. At first I thought she killed the baby because she was so tired she started to go crazy and lashed out on the child. But after I thought about it I thought that maybe killing the baby was a kind of rebellious act because she had so many strict rules and restrictions placed on her by the family she works for. Or maybe she is envious of the baby because it gets to sleep and she doesn't. Also, since she is so young she might feel that she has had her childhood taken away from her by the family she is working for, so she might have killed the child out of spite or revenge to get back at the family.

(The above painting is titled Le berceau meaning the cradle and is by a french impressionist painter Berthe Morisot. Morisot painted Le berceau in 1873, around the same time the short story was written.)
Print this post

3 comments:

  1. i agree with you about the girl having her childhood taken away. i think she just got to the point of complete exhaustion that killing the baby was the last straw for her.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I agree with regarding the summary of the story. I think the 13 year old girl killed the baby because of the lack of sleep caused her to lose her conciousness. Also, she was jealous of the baby because it was able to sleep anytime while she stayed awake.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I never thought about her envying the baby because it sleeps all day, but thats interesting and does make sense.

    ReplyDelete