Unnamed narrator - Mantis

The unnamed narrator of "Mantis" is a 14-year-old girl morphing into a praying mantis, a metaphor for puberty and the idea that a woman in control of her own sexuality is potentially dangerous. The narrator lives with her mother, and she learns through observation and deduction that both her mother and grandmother were also mantises. (The story begins with the narrator remarking, "I have my grandmother's skin" (1).) Her transformation begins with this problematic skin condition, but as the story progresses, she loses her teeth and hair as well. At the end of the story she sheds the last vestiges of her human form while at a boy/girl party and, it is implied, eats the boy that has expressed romantic interest in her. Though the narrator is aware that she is undergoing "an adolescence quite unlike" (17) what her peers are experiencing, she is never distraught...