"The Devil Baby at Hull-House" by Jane Addams

In this essay, Ms. Addams talks about how a fictitious tale about a son of Satan was spread around Chicago. She says that the story places this child of the devil in the Hull-House, which she founded, and that as the story gained momentum more and more people were calling this place and showing up at this settlement inquiring upon the whereabouts of the child. The story goes that a baby was born to a woman whose husband had sinned in some sort of way, and because of this it was born a devil. As soon as the devil was born, the parents rushed it to the Hull-House (which was a settlement for poor immigrants at the time), supposedly. The main story that comes out of these events comes from the stories that Ms. Addams hears from the old women that come to the house in search of the baby. She tells of the wide variety of horrid stories coming from these women, including: a woman whose daughters sold themselves to prostitution, a woman whose son was in jail for life and who wanted to die just so that she could see her son again, and many other women with stories of marital brutality and great loss. The main point that she makes of all these women is that they all come to the Hull-House in search of this Devil baby because they connect with the story and see how it tells the story of their own pitiful situations.

Jane Addams was a feminist reformer who founded this Hull settlement House in Chicago as a haven for poor immigrants. At this house she would take care of the immigrants and teach them English, along with finding them jobs. As a result she would receive votes for her cause, which was feminism. Keeping this in mind, I thought that this story was extremely successful toward her cause of an increase in women's rights. The stories of the women that she meets at this house as a result of the fictitious story are so horrid that it must have struck a chord with the majority of her readers. Finally, I thought that besides being effective in this way, it was also very well-written.