No Woman Born, by C.L. Moore

First, incongruously, he remembered a curious inhuman figure he had once glimpsed leaning over the fence rail outside a farmhouse. For an instant the shape had stood up integrated, ungainly, impossibly human, before the glancing eye resolved it into an arrangement of brooms and buckets. [p. 26]

This imagery, of mistaking non-animate objects to being human, gave me the chills as I was reading them over. The quotation acts like a foreshadow as Deirdre, the heroine of the story, interacts with people other than Maltzer, the man who created her body, for the first time since her body was consumed in fire. Harris, her former manager, briefly thinks of this memory as he is meeting Deirdre for the first time since the accident. He initially thinks that Deirdre is exactly as she was before the fire before he realizes that her face is but a mask with no expression. On the surface, the imagery seems to be of no significance when Deirdre shines with human actions as she talks, acts, and laughs just as she did before her transformation. She is still the epitome of gracefulness just as Harris remembers her and she is determined to go back to her life as a performer.

As Harris contemplates the possible reaction of Deirdre’s audience when she returns on stage, he compares his view of Deirdre with Maltzer’s. When he thought about Maltzer’s fear of everyone seeing Deirdre as nothing but an assembly of metal Harris thought, “[Maltzer] was too close to Deirdre to see her. And Harris, in a way, was too far.” [p. 35] The use of distance in relations to Deirdre brings back the image that the quote invokes. Perhaps Maltzer has a more correct depiction of what Deirdre is, a jumble of things, while Harris sees what she might represent, a likeness to human. It concerns Harris whenever he sees glimpses of Deirdre’s robotic nature. Perhaps Maltzer is correct in assuming that everyone would one day realize that she is not human, just as Harris realized that what looked like the human figure were just brooms and buckets when he took a closer look.

But Deirdre was cleverer than these two men. Despite Maltzer’s infinite knowledge of how her body works, she was able to fool him into believing in her humanity. She showed that she can fool everyone and that she won’t lose contact with the human race[,] never will, unless [she] wants to.” [p. 62] It brought me to think that maybe she was human despite what her body is made of due to her brain. Harris’ observation of her went back and forth until this point, thinking she is exactly the same as before or fearful of her inhumane aspects. Because of her success in fooling even her creator, the last sentence of the story, “’I wonder,’ she repeated, the distant taint of metal already in her voice.” [p. 64] reminds, yet again, that no matter how well the illusion is made, she is still not human, like the assembly of brooms and buckets will still be brooms and buckets even when people mistake them for being human.