Prehistory

In the narrator's account of her daily life, Prehistory functions not as a distant academic epoch but as a living, intimate dimension of her present. She invokes it while describing her habitual killing of flies, which she says have been following humans around "since prehistoric times" and that "it's about time they died out." This offhand remark transforms her mundane act of trapping flies in a jar of quince jelly into a gesture of cosmic reckoning, as if she were settling an ancient score on behalf of all humanity. The reference to Prehistory thus becomes a lens through which she perceives her own violence as both natural and justified, a continuation of a struggle that predates civilization itself.

The Prehistoric Frame of Domestic Violence

The narrator's invocation of Prehistory is embedded in a broader catalog of small-scale killings that she performs around the house. She drowns spiders in the sink, electrocutes bees on the swing, teaches a wasp a lesson, and stamps on worms and grasshoppers. Her son joins her in stuffing clusters of ants into matchboxes and setting them on fire, an act she observes with detached curiosity. The prehistoric reference specifically attaches to the flies, marking them as the oldest adversaries, but the entire sequence shares a common logic: these creatures are not merely pests but representatives of a primordial world that must be subdued. By framing her actions in this way, the narrator elevates her domestic chores into a ritual of species dominance, aligning herself with a lineage of hunters and exterminators that stretches back to the dawn of time.

The Son as Inheritor of the Prehistoric Impulse

The narrator's son is drawn into this prehistoric economy of killing. When they set fire to the matchboxes full of ants, the boy takes a deep breath in, apparently savoring the smell, while the narrator smells nothing. This moment suggests that the prehistoric instinct is being transmitted to the next generation, not through explicit teaching but through shared participation in the ritual. The son's sensory engagement with the burning ants—his inhalation of the smoke—marks him as a willing participant in the ancient cycle, even as the narrator remains oddly detached, observing his reaction without sharing it. This generational handoff implies that the prehistoric impulse is not a personal quirk but a species-wide inheritance, passed down through the simple act of living and killing together.

The Irony of Prehistoric Continuity

The narrator's use of Prehistory carries a sharp irony. She speaks of the flies' long association with humans as a reason for their extinction, yet her own behavior—sitting on the swing, electrocuting bees, leaving cups of beer for drunken slugs—mirrors the very persistence she condemns. The prehistoric past is not something she has escaped but something she embodies, and her attempts to exterminate these creatures only reinforce her own place within the same ancient order. The reference thus becomes a self-reflexive commentary on the futility of her violence: she is fighting a war that has no end, because she herself is a product of the same prehistoric forces she seeks to overcome. This irony deepens the novel's broader meditation on the failure of language and the limits of rational control, as the narrator's prehistoric framing reveals the inescapable animality that underlies her domestic routines.