The Story Collector

The concept of the changeling is a recurring motif that explores the intersection of supernatural horror and psychological trauma. In Irish folklore, a changeling is a fairy child left in place of a stolen human infant, and the novel uses this idea to explore human cruelty, alienation, and mental distress. For example, in the Prologue, Lady Hawley’s insistence that she doesn’t recognize her children and her attempts to prove that they are changelings is dismissed and punished by her husband as “hysteria,” pointing to the ways women’s postpartum depression and mental health have historically been pathologized, reinforcing the novel’s feminist lens.

The supernatural elements of Woods’s world-building add credence to Lady Hawley’s claims, pushing back against the assumption of “hysteria.” When Lady Hawley’s husband denies her the support she needs, she seeks out the seeress—a woman who exists on the margins of society. The seeress explains that the twins are “evil, sickly souls” intended to create “bitterness and hate” (2). This folkloric diagnosis haunts the Hawley twins, particularly George, whose violent and predatory nature is implicitly linked to this supernatural origin. During George’s assault, Anna interprets his monstrous transformation through this lens, seeing his true, inhuman nature emerge. By framing human cruelty as potentially supernatural, the changeling motif blurs the line between myth and reality, suggesting that the old stories provide a vocabulary for understanding the darkest aspects of the human psyche and the evil that lurks beneath a civilized exterior.