by Walter De LA Mare

This fictional account of Miss M., a Victorian woman who is also a little person, offers a highly personalized narrative about being different in a world where such distinctiveness is viewed as a freakish handicap. With a ladylike sensibility, Miss M. conveys her feelings about being unable to participate in the activities of her friends and being treated as a curiosity. Concluding that she can either tolerate her difference or grow callous to it, Miss M. resolves to be independent by offering herself up as a spectacle for money. Unsettling and vivid, this allegory of difference offers readers an interior perspective on coping with diversity in a society wrought with expectation that a certain size is (normal' and all others are deviant.