In Clifford’s The New Mother the “shabby girl” creature manages to transfix her victims in a way that bends them to her wim. Instead of making these children feel completely at ease like the fairies in Le Fanu’s story did, she gets the children to do her bidding simply by lying to them. She draws the children in with deception rather than a distraction. She promises the children that she will play them a song and “a little man dressed as a peasant” and “a little woman dressed to match” will jump out of the lid of her “peardrum” and “dance most beautifully” for them (Clifford, 4). This trickery is far off from the kind of trickery that was employed by the fairies. The fairies kept their words to few and dazzled the children with a grand spectacle,
