Diverse Position Science Fiction

For this week I read the short story I Live With You by Carol Emschwiller. The story is from the view of a woman/creature who shadows a woman and secretly lives with her and manipulates her life. We never really get to know much about the protagonist, except that no one really notices her(?) and that they firmly decide to never steal.

            The story seems to focus on how the protagonist enjoys manipulating and almost living vicariously through this woman. The protagonist does mention that it is female, and says that it is the same size and shape as the woman it shadows. However, other than that we can’t really even say that it is human, as it seems more like a ghost in several scenes where it talks about how it walks right up to people and no one notices. She decides to follow a woman that it relates to, someone she thinks is almost like her (except for the fact that she’s human?/can be seen).  She doesn’t mention ever following someone else like this before, instead mentioning how she secretly lived in public places, like a department store and a bookshop. This seems to imply that she was waiting for someone that fit, and that her ability to go unseen has strengthened over time. She at first tries to live like this woman, wearing her clothes and eating and watching the same things. However, after awhile, she begins to find this woman’s life boring, and decides to make her life more interesting by changing her clothes and forcefully introducing romance. Living vicariously through this woman no longer satisfies her when this woman’s life seems bland. When she finally starts to find this woman’s life more interesting, she gets bolder and starts to show herself more, even trying to take her place at the height of the romance, and speculating how she could replace this woman and take over her life. She abandons this mode of thought when the woman shows some spirit and displays how she will take a stand against the protagonist. The protagonist takes pride in how she has made the woman grow and start really living. Maybe in part this is because she feels like she is really living, that she vicariously has gained a life.

            In the end, she leaves this woman and her new life, not stealing her identity as she had earlier contemplated, reaffirming her one trait that she sticks to: she never steals. The protagonist can be viewed as something close to either a guardian angel or a haunting demon in the end, depending on how you look at it. She watches over this woman and manipulates her life, but in the end leaves once the woman gains the one thing the protagonist does not: a presence and a life. The morality of the situation is debatable, but in the end, one moral is clear: don’t steal.