Dec 19, 2009

Henne Fire | Introduction

Isaac Bashevis Singer’s short story ‘‘Henne Fire’’ first appeared in the magazine Playboy and then in his 1968 collection entitled The Séance. Singer wrote this story, as he did his other works, in Yiddish, despite being fluent in English; the author and Dorothea Straus translated the story into English. Many critics and readers considered Singer a master of the short story form; among his numerous awards, he received the 1978 Nobel Prize in literature.

‘‘Henne Fire’’ takes place in a small Polish village sometime before World War I but after the middle of the nineteenth century. The story is filled with supernatural and magical elements, and is told by one of Henne’s neighbors in a familiar and intimate style. Henne Fire is a woman whose erratic and frightening behavior prompts the tale’s narrator to refer to her as ‘‘not a human being but a fire from Gehenna,’’ an ancient word for hell. In the story, Henne’s family flees her home, unable to tolerate the sting of her venomous words and physical abuse. Many of Henne’s neighbors are afraid of her, as well, having witnessed her violence and paranoia, and simply want her to move to another town. Other villagers, including the local rabbi, try to make Henne’s life bearable while striving to protect the townspeople from her wrath and her strange propensity to ignite nearly everything around her.

Henne Fire Summary

Singer’s short story is told in the past tense by one of her neighbors as a collection of memories about Henne Fire, and what eventually became of her.

Part One
The neighbor narrator begins by introducing Henne Fire as a demon or evil spirit and not a human female. Henne was an emaciated creature, all skin and bones, who screamed and behaved in crazy ways when she was angered. The neighbor considers Henne’s husband, Berl Chazkeles, a saint; Henne threw dishes at him so often that he had to buy a new set nearly every week, and when he left for work as a sieve-maker each morning, Henne yelled insults at him.

Henne has four daughters, and the neighbor remembers that each one devised a way to escape Henne as soon as possible. One was a servant in Lublin, one moved to America, one married an old man, and another died of scarlet fever. ‘‘Anything was better than living with Henne,’’ notes the neighbor.

Berl finally ran away from Henne, provoking her to become even more out of control. ‘‘She knocked her head on the stones, hissed like a snake, and foamed at the mouth,’’ according to the narrator. Traditionally, the narrator explains, when a woman’s husband abandoned her, she would work in someone’s home to make a living. Henne, though, frightened everyone in the... » Complete Henne Fire Summary