I Am Edith Wragge Analysis

On my birth certificate, I am Edith Wragge. That was the name given to me by my first parents, back when we lived in a pokey tenement in a house with several other families. I was the youngest of twelve children, and was born right at the end of the war. Daddy was home with us because he’d been injured the year before; this was wonderful for us, because we got to have him around, and we knew he was safe, but it meant that he struggled to stay in work.

Our mother took in washing, and did cleaning work, for some of the richer families in our neighbourhood. She struggled too, though – she was earning small change, and it just wasn’t enough to support such a big family. They tried their best to make sure us kids didn’t notice, and for the most …show more content…
The clothes she gave me were neat and tidy and warm, and she made sure that not only her own children were well fed – but provided soup for the other children in the neighbourhood, too – as long as they helped deliver leaflets. I even got to have some of my own toys, on the condition that they were educational.

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I knew that he was different. Credence was good at hiding things, but I was good at seeing them anyway. Only really crafty people can hide things from me, and I had gotten to know my big brother too well. He never meant to do it, but sometimes he couldn’t help it. Things in our house would move, or break, without anyone touching them.

At first, I thought maybe our house had ghosts in it. We did live in an old Church after all, and that seems like the sort of place that would be haunted – even if ours didn’t have a cemetery outside. A lot of life had walked through there, and I couldn’t help but think that some of it might have stuck around.

His face gave it away, though. Poor Credence – he looked so scared, and angry with himself. If Ma had caught him then, she would have killed him. I’d have been scared, too. But he wouldn’t have hurt anyone; he wasn’t the type of person who would hurt people. After all, he could have hit her, if he had wanted, for what she had done, but he never did. …show more content…
When I went out leafleting, there was a man who whittled them on a street corner. He said it was like the ones they had – the witches who had broken up the streets – and I wondered if I could get it to work. Maybe I could have been like him. I thought I could learn, in secret, and then surprise him, and show him he didn’t have to feel like a monster.

Although having my own room could be lonely, it meant that I had more privacy than before, and so I knew I could hide the wand right under the bed, where no-one could find it. Of course, I never did get it to work, anyway – I’ve learnt now that magic doesn’t work like that, but for a short while it had been fun to pretend, and fun to have a naughty secret to myself. I didn’t know she’d see it. It was like she had superpowers herself – coming in just as Credence was holding it like that. I’d seen Ma angry, but I’d never seen her like that before. She looked at us like she didn’t even know who we were. It was because she was scared; because she thought it was his, and she thought he’d want revenge. We were more scared of her, though. Credence had never hurt anyone, but when Ma got angry she knew exactly how best to punish people.

I couldn’t let him take the blame for it – she’d have scarred him for life. At least I had the excuse of being a stupid kid; stupid was better than