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

Forced Assimilation in Russell’s “St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves”
“St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves” is a short story written by Karen Russell and published in 2006 as part of an anthology. Much analysis on this short story presents it as a demonstration of opposites, for instance, “Girls and wolves don't make sense [together] because they belong to different realms” (Malin 172). Some say that this short story is a commentary on humanity’s “civilized existence [and] primitive warfare,” however, a more in depth reading of this story remains (Malin 172). The story is broken into five parts labeled as stages; each stage demonstrates the progression of the girls moving from a werewolf culture to a human culture within a Catholic boarding school, starting with wearing clothes, eating cooked foods, changing language and

behavior, and properly interacting with the opposite sex and other types of people.

The wolf girls struggle to reconcile this new way of life with the way they were raised and push back against this forced assimilation. While this story is fantasy based it can be interpreted as historical criticism in regards to the wars between European settlers and American Indians. Aliken to the wolves, Native Americans have a unique culture that is carefully intertwined with nature. In the late 19th and 20th centuries Native American children were forcibly taken from their homes and forced to assimilate to a white American world within Catholic schools. “St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves” is symbolic with the assimilation of the werewolf girls into human culture of how Catholic boarding schools and the American Government forced

assimilation of Native American children in to white American culture in the 1870s onward.
The wolf children and the Native American children were taken away from their parents and culture, forced to change their appearance, and compelled to change their cultural identity. “St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves” puts a fanciful spin on forced assimilation. The story first addresses how these werewolf pups are taken away from their parents and how their parents are ostracized in society, unable to connect with the wolves or people. In history, Native American children were removed from their homes, as well. Adult Native Americans who are not pure blood or were raised without strict adherence to Indian culture and language are unaccepted by their own people, and they are unacceptable to the white culture because of their skin color. The same fate of not being accepted into either society as adults awaits the werewolf girls and the Native American children upon leaving the boarding school(s). Secoundy, upon the werewolf children’s arrival at the Catholic boarding school, they are given clothes, new names, and new haircuts, effectively changing their appearance. Correspondingly, the Native American children, upon arrival at the boarding school, were given new clothes, Christian names, and their hair was cut off and replaced with short styles, altering their appearance. The first step in assimilation, into the human culture and the white culture, was changing their physical appearance. Lastly, the forced assimilation of the werewolves continues in later stages by forcing the use of human language, religion, and etiquette. Equivalently, the Native American children were forced to use English, worship the Christian God, and use white cultural etiquette, all of which goes against their own religion, language, and cultural identities. Overall, both groups, the werewolf girls and the Native American children, are forced to abandon their own culture and assimilate to a new one.
The parents in the story and in history demonstrate the devastation of losing their children to a different culture and how the children of wolves and Native Americans can and will never be accepted in either their original society or their new society.
[Their] mothers and fathers [are] werewolves. They live an outsiders existence at the edge of the forest, threatened by frost and pitchforks. They [have] been ostracized by the local farmers for eating their silled fruit pies and terrorizing the heifers. They ostracize the local wolves by having sometimes-thumbs, regrets, and human children (their condition skips a generation)...when the nuns showed up, [the pups’] parents couldn’t refuse [the nuns’] offer…[to make the children] naturalized citizens of human society (Russell 268).
The werewolf parents are not accepted in either society and are forced to form their own. They think that sending their children off to become “fully bilingual” and to assimilate with humanity will help them, but in reality, they are “sending [their children] away for good” (Russell 268). As seen in the fifth and final stage of assimilation into human society upon Claudette’s return to her wolf family, she is no longer like them. Her own “mother recoil[s] from [her], like [she is] a stranger” (Russell 278). Similarly, Native Americans lost their children to a different culture and once the children grew up they were not accepted into either white society or Native American society. The Native Americans of mixed race or lacking proficiency in their native language are ostracized from their native tribes. In addition,their skin color and accent prevented them from joining the white community. Mary Crow Dog says in her memoir, Lakota Woman, “it is not the big, dramatic things so much that get us down, but just being Indian, trying to hang on to our way of life, language, and values are being surrounded by an alien, more powerful culture. It is being an iyska, a half-blood, looked down upon by whites and full-bloods alike” (Crow Dog 5). The American Indian children and the wolf children cannot be accepted into either world, they can only adapt to their surroundings.
The wolf children, as part of the initial stage(s), are forced to change their appearance to better fit into the human culture; similarly, the Native American children were also forced to change their appearance upon arriving at the boarding schools to better assimilate to the white culture. The wolf girls “ran along the shore [of a muddy lake], tearing at [their] new jumpers” trying to get rid of their new clothes, accustomed to running naked in the woods as a part of their lupine identity (Russell 268). Furthermore, the nuns gave the girls new names upon being informed that the children only responded to wolfish, “inarticulate...howls” (Russell 269). The nuns “slapped on name tag[s]: HELLO, MY NAME IS _______” and selected a human name (Russell 269). A name, at its core, is part of human identity, and changing a name is like changing an integral part of one’s existence. In addition, the nuns had a “traveling barber cut [their] pelt[s] into bangs,”a human, orderly style, taking yet another part of their lupine identity (Russell 271). Claudette, the protagonist, has even started “to snarl at [her] own reflexion as if it were a stranger” (Russell 271). The Native American children also experienced an identity crisis as they entered the Catholic boarding schools. In order to Christianize them, “they were given haircuts, uniforms, non-Indian names” (Magagnini). In her time at St. Francis boarding school, Mary Crow Dog recounts “the kids were taken away from their villages and pueblos, in their blankets and moccasins [and], as long as ten years later, coming back [with] short hair, necks stiff with collars [and] starched white blouses” (Crow Dog 30). Furthermore, Andrew Windyboy, a Chippewa Cree Indian, recounts in the documentary, Our Spirits Don’t Speak English, that he was in two boarding schools during the 1960s and 1970s where “they cut off [his] hair” and made fun of him for the hair cut. Also, a young participant in a study of Native American boarding schools said that in 1957 “they put in that DDT stuff in our hair. [DDT was used] probably for farm animals. [It] made our hair all white and they treated us like animals….not one kid was seen without the white hair” (Charbonneau-Dahlen 607). Overall, the collective identity of the wolf children and American Indians was forcibly stripped from them in name and appearance.
The wolf girls lose their cultural identity in the boarding school just as the young Native Americans lost their native tongue and and forgot their ancient practices. The wolf girls are constantly “dismayed to find [that] all trace of the pack musk had vanished. Someone [is] coming in and erasing [them]...It [makes them] feel invisible” (Russell 270). The more advanced girls in the program would “pretend like [they] couldn’t smell a thing” and try to “growl out a demonic-sounding precursor to ‘pleased to meet you’...to visitors,” attempting to abandon keen sense of smell and their old lupine language (Russell 271). An example of how religion was forced upon the wolf girls is that on occasion, the nuns would send the wolf girls out to practice not eating living creatures, by saying “go feed the ducks...go practice compassion for all God’s creatures.” On Sundays “[the girls] understood this [chapel] was the humans’ moon, the place for howling beyond purpose… and [the wolf children would] howl along with the choir” (Russell 272 and 275). The Native American children were forced to make cultural changes as well. They were forced to speak English, Andrew Windyboy says that he was not “allowed to talk [his] native tongue or practice [his] native ways….whenever [he spoke in his native language he was] hit, hit so much that [he eventually] lost his native tongue” (Rich-Heape Films Inc.). As a result of this loss of their native tongue they felt that “when [they tried to] talk to [their] spirits [they could not because their spirits] don't understand English” (Rich-Heape Films Inc.). As a result of how they were forced to bow and worship a God in which they did not believe, the American Indians feel great “bitterness toward the Catholic Church” (Charbonneau-Dahlen 610). Finally, both the wolf children and the Native American children lost their original cultural identity.
The forced assimilation of the wolf girls into human culture in “St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves” is representative of when the American Government forced assimilation of Native American children in to white American culture in Catholic school during the 1870s through the late 1970s. The fate of not being accepted into either society as adults as demonstrated by the lives of the werewolf parents awaits the werewolf girls and the Native American children upon leaving the boarding school. Upon arrival at the Catholic boarding school(s) the children, wolf and American Indian, are forced to change their appearance to better assimilate to the culture they are meant to be adapting by changing their name, clothes, and hair. Both the American Indians and the wolf children gradually lose their old culture and adapt to a poor representation of the culture they are meant to be assimilating by being forced to abandon their old language, religion, and etiquette. The wolf girls, particularly Claudette, found that unlike in the wild with the wolves, “different sorts of calculations were required to survive” in this strange, new world (Russell 271). In conclusion, “St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves” and the historical story of the forced assimilation of the Native American children shows that people must learn from the past, accept everyone’s cultures and identities, and not try to strip diversity away.