Summary

“Crazy Old Lady” is author Michael Cunningham’s twist on the classic “Hansel and Gretel” and is related from the second-person perspective by the “witch” from that tale. In the opening of this story, the "Crazy Old Lady" first states how solitary her existence has become. She tells how she grew up very fast, started hanging out in taverns, and experimenting with random men. She'd had three husbands, all of whom served to further lower her expectations, and decided to pre-emptively forego husband number four and embark upon "a career of harshly jovial sluttishness" (15) while her friends were all married off to "tolerable" (15) men, gradually losing touch with her friends through the inevitability of married life.

She began to realize that she had maybe ended up lucky, not being tied down by the mundane nature of life tending to a husband and...