“Match Girl” by Anne Bishop Essay

Anne Bishop bases her story, â€Å"Match Girl, off of Hans Christian Andersen’s â€Å"Little Match Girl†, but she adds a disturbing twist. Bishop uses so much torture and violence that as a reader you want no more. â€Å"Little Match Girl† was a story based on an innocent little girl having to face the cold heart of society. On the other hand, â€Å"Match Girl† was a story based on a young girl that has to face a disgusting and cruel world. The misery and cruelty that Bishop adds to her story is too much for this story to gain credibility. The story starts off with Phoenix already having to suffer from her owner’s cruelty. Just like the little girl in Andersen’s story Phoenix is suffering from cold and torn boots, but in Bishop’s story we get to meet her owners. In this tale we have characters that we can hate. Thanks to all of the characters that Bishop’s uses we are able to get a background story, a setting, and are able to have other feelings besides sadness. To start off with her owners were too cruel. Da had no voice throughout the story and the only action he had that was seen was when he hit Moll. Moll is a cold-hearted woman that treats Phoenix badly probably because she is also living a miserable life. She is forced to live in a man’s world. The men in her life control her and at the first chance she gets to show power and control she takes it. At first it seems like she is the only cruel character but that title is removed once we meet the rest of the characters. Moll and Da’s son does not fall too far from the tree. William is a disgusting creature that should have never been given life. He is absolutely good for nothing and does nothing besides shove his penis into innocent and defenseless Phoenix. He gets away with so much and no one says or does anything, not even Phoenix. But William is only a fraction of all the disgusting males in this story. The worst scene in this story is the one when all the men take a turn on raping Phoenix. She has a spoon that is violently hurting her mouth, meanwhile she has men violently rape her one right after the other. These men are completely heartless and time and again Bishop includes scenes of other women being punished by the men when they don’t do what they are told. Bishop only shows the men in the story as being drunk, violent, and horny. It’s as if she is trying to make a greater argument besides the cruel society that Phoenix lives in. All the men in this story are completely useless and do not have any actions besides violence and sex. This violence and sex is what leads critics to say that the cruelty takes credibility away. It is just too much for one girl to stand. There is too much misery for one story too hold. Anne Bishop said, â€Å"While I embellished or modified details to fit the fictional place, I didn’t make up the instruments of torture. They all existed† (Pg 247). I seem to disagree with Bishop. These â€Å"modified details† did not fit this fictional place. It was too much torture for one story, for one specific character to endure. Although Phoenix saw other women being hurt in different ways, she still had to endure watching them suffer. Phoenix when through too much and although in real life humans also have to endure torture and cruelty, I don’t believe anyone will ever go through all that Phoenix went through. I understand that the methods of torture used are real and were used; I just wish Bishop had cut done a bit on all the horrible things that happened to Phoenix. Phoenix didn’t deserve anything that happened to her, but she continued to be kicked around in more misery until the end. This story was really hard to read and accept. The imm ense cruelty took away from the credibility of the tale.