Stone Mattress by Molly Ferguson

Bri, Gray, Georgia

2025-11-17 14:39:15 UTC

"That line, so filled with promises of phallic renewal, had been effective in helping to secure her second husband. To her third husband she’d said that her mother had been influenced by the eighteenth-century Scottish poet James Thomson and his vernal breezes, which was a preposterous but enjoyable lie: she had, in fact, been named after a lumpy, bun-faced dead aunt. As for her mother, she’d been a strict Presbyterian with a mouth like a vise grip, who despised poetry and was unlikely to have been influenced by anything softer than a granite wall."

Ella and Amelia

2025-11-17 14:39:40 UTC

"Her face is what it is, and certainly the best that money can buy at this stage: with a little bronzer and pale eyeshadow and mascara and glimmer powder and low lighting, she can finesse ten years."

Verna uses makeup to hide her age, performing a younger woman to the men around her.

Bri, Gray, Georgia

2025-11-17 14:40:40 UTC

Older women are typically not viewed as sexual or have sexual desires. The sexual self has died while the palatable older Verna lives on.

kayden, chelsea

2025-11-17 14:41:14 UTC

Verna's transformation was reminiscent of Ada's in Freshwater, as both characters endured significant sexual trauma as children that affected them for the rest of their lives. Verna differs in the way in which she physicalizes her trauma (seeking revenge, status, and financial gain), and Ada gains more educational freedom while transforming into a somewhat more authentic version of themself. Both characters are still heavily traumatized, but coped differently.

Savannah, Olivia, & Kendall

kunger2005 — 2025-11-17 14:41:56 UTC

"She finds the young geologist--he's still on the second ridge, along with his coterie of admirers--and produces the stromatolite.

'May I take it back to the ship?' [Verna] asks sweetly. 'For the rock table?'" (Atwood 17)

Elyse,CC,Lilly,Jaxsin

2025-11-17 14:42:07 UTC

"She makes her entrance slightly late, smiling a detached but cheerful smile-it doesnt do for an unaccompanied woman to appear too eager-accepts a glass of the passable white wine they're doling out, and drifts among the assemble nibblers and sippers."

Bri, Gray, Georgia

2025-11-17 14:42:31 UTC

A reclamation of her sexuality and wielding its power after her sexual assault + public humiliation/shaming from her childhood.

Chloe x2, Ruby June

2025-11-17 14:42:36 UTC

"Now she says, 'and you're... Bob.' It's taken her years to perfect the small breathy intake, a certified knee-melter." (pg 4)

Amelia and Ella

2025-11-17 14:42:38 UTC

Verna's transformation was similar to Lexie/Cassie's in our opinion. In the way Lexie pretends to be Cassie to gain information with the friends, Verna does a similar thing to get closer to Bob before revealing that they had some level of a relationship in high school.

Ashe

2025-11-17 14:42:40 UTC

"She gives the word "mattress" the tiniest hint of suggestiveness, and gets an approving twinkle out of Bob the second. Really, they're never too old to flirt." (14)

Just as much as her appearance, the way she uses her voice is a part of her performance. She uses it to exaggerate her gendered self in order to exert power.

Lilly, Cecilia, Jaxsin, Elyse

2025-11-17 14:43:04 UTC

The first comparison that comes to my mind is Ada from Freshwater. Both women transform after they are sexually assaulted. Ada displays physical violence toward herself, while Verna displays violence toward men.

Another comparison is with the speaker in "On Becoming a Tiger." In our class discussion, many of us believed that the speaker was sexually assaulted and became a powerful, fearsome beast to protect herself.

Lilly, CC, Jaxsin, Elyse

lillylemonade12 — 2025-11-17 14:43:12 UTC

Verna had an initial transformation after her assault into a vengeful being, though it did not originally present itself as murderous tendencies. Through the murder of her husbands and of Bob, she transforms into someone concerned with vengeance and power, which she gains from these killings.

Alexis

2025-11-17 14:43:13 UTC

“She selects one of the thinner but still substantial Bobs, glides close to him, raises her eyelids, and lowers them again.”

Jo and Daniela

2025-11-17 14:43:19 UTC

"During the preliminary stages of netting her fourth husband, whom she'd flagged as a kink addict, Verna had gone even further. She's told him she been named for "The Rite of Spring," a highly sexual ballet that ended with torture and human sacrifice. He'd laughed, but he's also wriggled: a sign of the hook going in." (4 Atwood)

Jaxsin, Elyse, CC, Lilly

2025-11-17 14:43:19 UTC

Women in general are seen as more frail and weaker than men. But Verna has shown with her past husbands and now Bob that she is stronger physically and mentally than most men. She uses her looks as an older woman to seem approachable and unassuming.

Savannah, Olivia, & Kendall

kunger2005 — 2025-11-17 14:43:50 UTC

Verna plays the role of kindly old woman by asking the geologist about her stromatolite sample. This is in direct juxtaposition to the murder she just committed.

Ashe

2025-11-17 14:43:57 UTC

As an older woman, she is very flirtatious and sexual which is not expected of older women. She uses her performance to take men off guard.

Liz and Jack

2025-11-17 14:45:06 UTC

So out the door went Verna, starry-eyed with hero worship, wobbling on her first high heels. (Atwood, 5)

Chloe x2, Ruby June

2025-11-17 14:45:07 UTC

Older women are naturally seen as frail and not as beautiful or strong as a younger woman. Verna remains confident and uses her beauty, even if she has aged, as a tool within her predator mindset and shapes how she presents herself.

Ashe

2025-11-17 14:45:20 UTC

Verna's transformation occurs as a result of her trauma. She uses the same name for each husband she kills, but her story is different for each one. She transforms many times while keeping the same name. Her transformations are a way of taking power.

Amelia and Ella

2025-11-17 14:45:26 UTC

People assume older women would not have the power or the seductive skills to be able pull something like this off. Verna keeps up her appearance to be able to do it. She uses the expectations of older women as sweet and frail to avoid suspicion.

kayden, chelsea

2025-11-17 14:45:32 UTC

Verna transforms into a more confident, but traumatized version of herself, and arguably spends her life trying to seek revenge on the traumas she faced through class and physical appearance. She is a murderer, but arguably her murders represent the rebirth of her life when her respective husband passes away. She is given a fresh start on her own terms.

Bri, Gray, Georgia

2025-11-17 14:46:08 UTC

Verna and the narrator from The Yellow Wallpaper juxtapose each other in their development as women being smothered and shamed by the people, particularly men, around them. The narrator goes insane while Verna flourishes in her reclaimed power. The narrator worries incessantly about her child while Verna desperately tries to forget about hers.

Alexis

2025-11-17 14:46:09 UTC

Verna fools each of her husbands/victims into believing she is exactly what they want. Because they believe Verna to be exactly what they want, they don’t realize the power that Verna holds and the way she wields that power against them.

Savannah, Olivia, & Kendall

kunger2005 — 2025-11-17 14:46:12 UTC

Verna transformation could be compared to the transformation of Lib that we see in "The Wonder." This is because she rejects the patriarchal society that failed her and takes justice into her own hands (by killing Bob), like how Lib fakes Nan's death to remove her from an unsafe environment.

Ashe

2025-11-17 14:46:23 UTC

Verna's different transformations between husbands reminds me of the girl from The Likeness. She changes form to better control her surroundings, and she never stays in place for too long.

Jo and Daniela

2025-11-17 14:46:49 UTC

The way in which she commits the murders are viewed as more violent and masculine, which is not what you would expect from a woman, much less some who is older.

Chloe x2, Ruby June

2025-11-17 14:47:08 UTC

Both Lib and Verna transform into some sort of a criminal by way of trauma by the end of their respective stories. For Verna this through her own trauma via her rape, but for Lib this is through Anna's trauma via Anna's rape. While these are different in terms of who exactly has been traumatized, what connects these two ideas is that both of these transformations happen due to wanting to provide some sort of justice or vengeance. Lib's justice and vengeance comes from giving Anna the life that she didn't get to have with her family, and Verna's is through giving herself her own sense of justice through the punishment of her rapist.

Jo and Daniela

2025-11-17 14:47:32 UTC

Verna was so innocent and naive in more ways than one during her adolescence, which is the exact opposite of who she is now, near the end of her life. We see she's calculating and will do anything (including murder) not to get the rug pulled out from under her.

kayden & chelsea

2025-11-17 14:47:48 UTC

"Bob looks ridiculous, with his eyes open and fixed and hhis forehead mashed in and blood running down both sides of his face. 'You're a mess.'"

Women are expected to be gentle caretakers and in this case she makes a mockery of such a bloody incident going outside the expectations of gender and how it is performed for a woman.

Chloe 2x and Ruby June

2025-11-17 14:48:02 UTC

The nature of her transformation is tied to the lack of support she faced after her assault. Verna was stripped not only of her bodily autonomy via the assault, but also of basic freedoms when she was forced into what was essentially indentured servitude within the Unwed Mothers Home. This home would also strip her of the baby, again, taking an asset of her freedom and autonomy away from her.

Additionally, after she is freed from the home, we see her transform into becoming obsessed with this autonomy via hypersexuality and murdering men. This reclaimation of her body makes her calculated, but at what cost? Is it a detriment to her in actuality? Or is it just focused on revenge?

Amelia and Ella

2025-11-17 14:48:34 UTC

Verna's become a version of herself that is twisted and warped. Especially having a child and having it ripped away from her, she lost so much of herself.

Kendall, Olivia, Savannah

2025-11-17 14:49:10 UTC

Through experiences she learns to rely on only herself and morph into what she needs. This quote is the thought between her wiping running mascara off her face and going back out to Bob.

"She will not be chased away, not this time. She'll tough it out; she's more than a match for five Bobs now." -- "But the real difference is in the attitude-- the confident way that she carries herself. It would be hard for Bob to see through that facade to the she, mousy haired sniveling idiot she'd been at fourteen."

Alexis

2025-11-17 14:50:24 UTC

Verna goes from being an unsure, scared, and defenseless girl (she was only 14 when Bob assaulted her) to a dangerous and confident woman. She prays on older men, using them for money and protection and then kills them before they can do her any harm. Presently, Verna always has an “out” for any situation, specifically with men—a murder staged as an accident where as with Bob (originally) she had no out, no way to defend or protect herself.

kayden and chelsea

2025-11-17 14:50:33 UTC

"She looks down through its eyes, sees an old woman- because, face it, she is an old woman now- on the verge of murdering an even older man."

Gender performs itself as Verna discovers who is she as a woman, and an older woman who has undergone trauma and now shes herself as an out of body character and watching herself become in a way out of her body.

Jo and Daniela

2025-11-17 14:51:15 UTC

I feel like her transformation could be compared to the woman from The Yellow Wallpaper. Verna changes so much from her trauma and she becomes this calculates person throughout the story after her rape. We can see the same thing happening with the woman in The Yellow Wallpaper and how she transforms throughout the story.

Liz and Jack

2025-11-17 14:51:24 UTC

Verna becomes more twisted as she kills Bob, as she slowly moves away from his childlike self, because of what Bob does to her. There is a sense of control over her life, but not in a humane way.

Alexis

2025-11-17 14:54:06 UTC

Verna’s transformation centers around a reclamation of power and control. This is similar to the transformation that Lib undergoes in The Wonder. While Lib only fakes a murder and commits a kidnapping, the motives for this transformation are remarkably similar—a loss of power and control that would have changed the original circumstance had either woman had the power or control.

Liz and Jack

2025-11-17 16:57:27 UTC

Anna's social groups in "The Wonder" have a different reaction to her assault than Verna in "Stone Mattress." Their revenge against their assaulters differs from their age. With Anna, what she can do is limited by her knowledge and what her communities tell her. It is Lib, the adult in her life, that takes actions. Verna, on the other hand, is more aware and capable of taking that direct action.

Liz and Jack

2025-11-17 22:00:49 UTC

In our quote from page 5, Verna is described almost like an innocent fawn first entering the world. She plays on the idea of women, no matter the age, being innocent, to undermine others. When that innocence is taken away, she replays a sense of innocence in every relationship--such as her claiming not to have sex before marriage for religious reasons or feigning innocence when her previous husbands died. Her acts of innocence leave others unsuspecting of her predatory mindset.