 Although Addams dismissed the “gawkers” who came to see the Devil Baby as a sensationalist-seeking mob, she wanted to understand the older women who had perpetuated the myth: “Whenever I heard the high eager voices of old women, I was irresistibly interested and left anything I might be doing in order to listen to them” (LRW 9). She found women who were solemn and highly animated about the Devil Baby. They used the appearance of the Devil Baby and the excitement it created as an opportunity to discuss important and troubling matters of their life. Addams, who never sought simple answers to complex issues, found a convergence of class, race, and gender dynamics fueling the Devil Baby phenomenon. These immigrant women were in unfamiliar surroundings and had to adjust to foreign ideas and practices. They had been alienated by their children, who adapted to the new country more quickly, keeping the old ways at arm’s length. Many of these women also had been victims of domestic abuse long before such acts had a distinct label. One woman tells Addams, “My face has this queer twist for now nearly sixty years; I was ten when it got that way, the night after I saw my father do my mother to death with his knife” (LRW 11). For these forgotten and beaten women, the Devil Baby represented a connection to a past that made more sense to them: one that had clear moral imperatives. Another woman tells Addams, “You might say it’s a disgrace to have your son beat you up for the sake of a bit of money you’ve earned by scrubbing—your own man is different—but I haven’t the heart to blame the boy for doing what he’s seen all his life, his father forever went wild when the drink was in him and struck me to the very day of his death. The ugliness was born in the boy as the marks of the Devil was born in the poor child up-stairs” (LRW 11). Addams’ recounting of tale after tale of violence provides a depressing view of immigrant women’s lives at the turn of the century. For women who had lived such a hard life, the Devil Baby provided a momentary opportunity for resistance. Husbands and children would listen to them and temporarily forsake beating them for fear of divine retribution as evinced by the Devil Baby. Addams describes memory as serving to “make life palatable and at rare moments even beautiful” (LRW 28). Although this is a specific explanatory analysis, it demonstrates how Addams sought connections among the personal stories: “When these reminiscences, based upon the diverse experiences of my people unknown to each other, point to one inevitable conclusion, they accumulate into a social protest …” (LRW 29). Addams proceeds to view the Devil Baby in light of the women’s movement and the fight against oppression. Given the position of the old women, the Devil Baby was the vehicle of resistance and an opportunity for Addams to interject feminist analysis.