"Luella Miller" is a Short Story by Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman that belongs to the Horror and Magic Realism genres. It was first printed in the December 1902 issue of Everybody's Magazine in anticipation of the publication of The Wind in the Rose Bush and Other Stories of the Supernatural, a sixfold collection, in March 1903 by Doubleday, Page & Company. "Luella Miller" is generally considered the highlight of The Wind in the Rose Bush and Other Stories of the Supernatural and overall is one of Wilkins-Freeman's most lauded works.
What makes "Luella Miller" so intriguing and a tough one for literary analysis is that the story's monster, Luella Miller herself, is Wilkins-Freeman's own invention, so there's no extratextual context to make sense of her. In short, Luella is a beautiful woman who passively attracts people towards her to take care of her. She is (increasingly) incapable of anything herself; making coffee, sewing, sweeping, using stairs or walking for more than a few minutes are all beyond her and without care she withers away. But people who take care of her devote themselves to the task with an addiction-like intensity that guarantees they waste away within a year. If Luella withers for any period of time, the moment a new caretaker steps in her health is instantly restored. Within the story, her effect is compared to witchcraft. Literary circles commonly list her as a (psychic) vampire because of the exchange of vitality and an in-text comparison to consumption. Meanwhile, her otherworldly attributes, her difficult behavior, and her cuckoo modus operandi make Luella akin to a changeling.
Overarching all of that is an understanding that Luella Miller is a horror-coated critique of the upper class that raises its women to be pretty and agreeable and good for nothing else, a lifestyle that does not actually benefit them and can only be maintained by the toil of servants. Wilkins-Freeman's own mother died in 1880 after nearly a decade of hard work as a housekeeper for a wealthy family. The anger over this injustice and the guilt for rejecting any part in domestic work herself that Wilkins-Freeman experienced impacted the themes and subjects in her oeuvre.
Luella Hill comes to a New England village to be its schoolteacher. She leaves the actual work to one of the older girls, Lottie Henderson, who voluntarily does it all for her. After a year of that, Lottie perishes from overexertion. Another student, an unnamed boy, takes over from Lottie. The boy survives because Luella quits her job to marry Erastus Miller, but goes mad within a year. Erastus expires within a year providing for Luella, who never lifts a finger herself. His sister Lily subsequently moves in to look after Luella. Through Erastus, another also enters Luella's life: his friend Lydia Anderson, who is unaffected by Luella's allure. When over six months later Lily dies, the Millers' aunt, Abby Mixter, takes over care for Luella. At the same pace as Lily, Abby works herself to death despite pleas from her daughter, Sam Abbot, to stop. Sam and Lydia confront Luella together, but Doctor Malcom, fresh from college, protects her. One Maria Brown takes Abby's place and expires some six weeks later. Lydia accuses Luella of murder to her face and a distraught Luella initially isolates herself at the cost of her own health. She does not resist when Malcom hires Sarah Jones to be her housekeeper. When Malcolm and Sarah die tending her, the village is well-warned to avoid Luella. She wastes away within a month, breathing her last under a full moon. Lydia is at her bedside and as such witnesses the ghosts of Luella's victims return to help Luella through the dying process. Lydia herself lives to the age of 87, becoming the last to have known Luella, and dies when she sees something peculiar at Luella's house and goes over. The house is burned down a night later.
In 2005, "Luella Miller" was loosely adapted (modernized, relocated, eroticized) into a film by the same name.
"Luella Miller" provides examples of the following tropes:
- Ambiguously Human: Luella Miller looks and behaves like a human, but one that's just not right. For one, she looks like an adult but her behavior is more akin to a young child. Lydia, as the narrator, is regularly occasioned to compare Luella to a baby. Something about Luella increasingly incapacitates her until even walking requires assistance because it saps too much energy from her. Something about Luella also attracts people to devote themselves to her comfort, inevitably leading to their deaths at increasingly faster rates. The most peculiar element ascribed to Luella, and Lydia acknowledges that this is something her audience might refuse to take her word on, is that when she dies, her victims since marrying Erastus return as ghosts to ease the strain of dying. While they all shine white in the moonlight, Luella doesn't, even though she is no more corporal than them.
- Antagonist Title: The eponymous Luella Miller is a being who can't survive without others taking care for her. But everyone who takes care of her becomes addicted and will work themself to death for her before a year passes.
- Asshole Victim: By the time Maria Brown dies, the village is well-aware that giving any help to Luella does something to your mind that makes you work yourself to death for her. Doctor Malcom, who's only been around for a year and therefore more skeptical of the death rate, ignores the warnings given to him. His life, his choice, but he also hires a housekeeper for Luella from out of town. This woman picks up the job with even less knowledge of the danger that working for Luella poses. She and Malcom die a week apart. Malcom is the only one of Luella's victims who actively recruited another victim.
- The Beautiful Elite: Luella isn't factually upper class, but she has all the traits of belonging to it. Among the rural folk of New England, her beauty stands out for its finesse and elegance. Both in her lithe form and the graceful sway of her every movement, Lydia compares Luella to a willow. Luella naturally sits with a grace others would have to study for. Her eyes are blue, her hair long and blond, her face pink and white like blossom, and her hands are slender. Although she isn't rich, there's always someone who goes beyond themself to make her life as if she had money. These people cook her hearty meals, clean her house daily, sew her the finest of clothes, and all-around ensure she doesn't have to lift a finger.
- Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: For the most part, Luella's charm is passive and her behavior is just her behavior and not meant to affect the charm. But when she gets competition from Abby's daughter over Abby's attention, she specifically acts up with rolling tears and uncontrolled laughter to ensure that Abby sees her as the one more in need of care.
- Brown Note Being: People that in any way open up to Luella become devoted, if not addicted, to taking care of her until they die from exhaustion. This effect she has on others is passive and the deaths are neither her intent nor something she truly registers. She can behave in ways that enhance or counter the effect, but that requires effort on her part. Furthermore, Luella is incapable of anything, so her choice is to let her ability do its thing and live, or go against it and perish.
- Descent into Addiction: This may be a two-way street for Luella and her victims. When Luella first arrives in the village, it appears she lives alone for a full year with no problems and she embroiders while Lottie takes over her job as a teacher. After marrying Erastus, Luella goes into a descent where she can do less and less on her own as one person after another steps into her life to take care of her. Eventually, she can barely walk on her own. Concurrently, her victims gradually die sooner. The first few last a year before they die from overexertion while the last few last a month. For her victims, taking care of Luella is like an addiction. It starts with doing her one favor and unless cut off there, the need to do things for Luella rapidly grows and inevitably leads to death from exhaustion. Or, if one is forcibly cut off from taking care of Luella, madness.
- Duty That Transcends Death: The effect that Luella has that makes people work themselves to death for her extends beyond death. When Luella dies, her helplessness continues so that the spirits of all six people that died for her in the Miller house return to assist her in passing on.
- Force Feeding: Abby's health is in its final stretch and still her main concern is Luella's wellbeing, who is going all out with the theatrics to keep Abby's attention on her. Lydia realizes she can't do anything for Abby before dealing with Luella and goes home to mix catnip tea and valerian into a sleep medicine. In what is the most violence committed to Luella, Lydia grabs her chin and forces the medicine down her throat. Luella is put to bed and asleep within half an hour, giving Lydia an opening to help Abby.
- Framing Device: The bulk of the story is narrated by Lydia Anderson and recounts the years that Luella lived in the village half a century ago. The first three and final four paragraphs are narrated by someone else and explain why Luella's house is considered haunted, who Lydia is, and what eventually became of Lydia and Luella's house.
- Frequently Full Moon: Luella dies on a night when the sky is clear and the moon full, which is an implicit argument that Lydia had enough light to not be mistaken about seeing ghosts. Lydia's own death half a century later may also have happened on a full moon, although it's only described as a "bright moonlight evening".
- Glamour: Lydia is upfront that Luella was a looker as rarely encountered in New England, but in her retelling she notes that Erastus wasn't bad on the eyes either and when comparing him and Luella, she admits that sometimes it occurred to her that Luella wasn't actually as pretty as she was seen as.
- Greater Need Than Mine: Luella's victims always believe that Luella's suffering is greater than theirs and their other loved ones. Erastus works himself into the grave believing in his end days that he has to give it his all so that he leaves Luella just that much more. The same is true for Malcom, though he fails to marry Luella before he dies. When neighbors give Lily food in her dying days in hopes of her recovery, Lily gives it to Luella so she won't go hungry. Abby lets her relation with her daughter deteriorate because she believes that Luella needs her more and when Abby grows lethally weak, she insists that if any doctor is to be called they should forget about her and make sure that Luella is well.
- Haunted House: Luella dies without beneficiaries and so her house ends up without owner. Because of the rumors of witchcraft, no one cares to claim it either. Luella's reputation is so bad that new generations who've never even known her avoid going near the house, leaving it to suffer age but no vandalism. Only one person ever lived there after Luella: an elderly but healthy woman who had nowhere else to go in the immediate vicinity. A week after she took up residence in Luella's house, she was found dead on her bed with an expression of pure terror on her face. Years later, something in the house lures Lydia towards it in her dying minutes and she's found dead before the front door. The house is burned down the next day, implicitly by the villagers who want to be rid of the last that remains of Luella. No one ever builds on the former house's grounds again either.
- Mirror Character: Protagonist Lydia Anderson and antagonist Luella Miller have a binding commonality in that they're both useless women. Luella is a deadly version of the kind of women the upper class liked to raise: pretty and entertaining, but dissuaded from any personal development, thus leaving them dependent on husbands and servants. On the other hand, Lydia is a self-sufficient loner. She is an appreciated member of the community, but never develops household ties with anyone. This may be part of why Luella's influence on her is weak, but also why Lydia ends up attending Luella in her dying days: someone has to and if anything were to happen to Lydia, there will be no dependents to miss her. Both women's vigour is also tied to their uselessness: Luella is at her healthiest when she has someone fresh to leech from, while Lydia's "[marvelous] vitality and unextinct youth" until the age of 87 is mentioned in one go with her status as an unmarried woman.
- Mysterious Past: Not only is nothing provided about Luella's past, a notable omission in light of her peculiar nature, but Luella notes that she has never made coffee "in all [her] life" and elaborates that first Erastus made it for her, then Lily, and then Abby. It raises the question what her life was like before coming to the village and if she even existed at all.
- Not So Above It All: Lydia prides herself on being able to resist Luella's charm when no one else is capable of the same feat, but she mistakes it for immunity, which isn't the case. When Luella is left with no caretaker after Sarah's death, she angles for Babbit's help. Both to protect Babbit and to do right by Erastus, Luella's dead husband, Lydia helps out with one task without engaging Luella. That evening, Lydia catches a cold that keeps her in bed for two weeks, which opens up the possibility that without the disease holding her back, Lydia would have been ensnared by Luella. Luella dies a day after Lydia gets better and Lydia goes on to reach the age of 87 in full health until the last two weeks of her life. This may or may not be a coincidence, but in any case, in her final minutes Lydia still has some spring to her. Then she sees something in or at Luella's long-abandoned house and runs off to it, being found dead by a neighbor in front of Luella's door.
- The One That Got Away: Lydia regularly brings up her respect and affection for Erastus and, while she doesn't appear to have been romantically interested, in-between the lines it does seem she would've married him had he proposed. She loses Erastus first to Luella then to death. She lives out her life unmarried and for as long as Luella lives tells herself that the only reason she occasionally helps the other woman out is for Erastus's sake, who died providing for Luella.
- Psychopathic Manchild: If things don't go exactly as she wants them to go, Luella becomes desperate, recalcitrant, erratic, and overall unpleasant and illogical. Her behavior makes sense, though, if Luella is viewed as a child instead of an adult. It is not that she means to hurt anyone, but she has no capacity to imagine the world from a perspective other than her own. To her, it is right that others sacrifice themselves for her comfort and her passive influence ensures that they do.
- Rule of Symbolism: Luella is frequently associated with willow trees (and not in the Algernon Blackwood sense)... but also with pretty-yet-parasitic bindweed vines. The analysis
of the story in Tor's "Lovecraft Reread" series goes into some detail on this. - Second Love: Erastus almost certainly had romantic feelings for Lydia since their childhood days, which at that time she either didn't pick up on or didn't want to. Whatever potential they had together ended when Luella came to the village and became Erastus's new love. The two of them married a little over a year later.
- Tortured Monster: Lydia compares Luella to a "baby with scissors in its hand cuttin' everybody without knowin' what it was doin'," proposing that Luella never had the necessary empathic qualities to consider the world outside of her own comfort. Indeed, when Lydia accuses Luella of killing everyone that ever cared about her, Luella becomes very distraught and denies that any of that was her doing. She appears truthful because hereafter she goes out of her way to keep Doctor Malcom away from her. This, however, is at the cost of her own health and she's in bad shape when Malcom finally gets to see her again, proposes, and hires her a new housekeeper. Luella instantly recovers and stops resisting, which, as the entire village sees coming, leads to the deaths of the doctor and the housekeeper. No one is foolish enough to offer Luella help after that and without anyone to waste away for her, Luella wastes away in about a month.
- Went Crazy When They Left: Luella has three victims that don't die from working for her: Lydia, who can resist her, Maria Babbit, who at no point is Luella's primary caretaker, and an unnamed boy who's a student at the school where Luella is supposed to teach. She doesn't have to because the boy does it for her. Before him, a girl did so, but she worked herself to death. The boy doesn't reach that point because Luella marries Erastus and gives up teaching. Instead he goes slowly insane over the course of a year.
- Workaholic: People who do even one thing for Luella open themselves up to becoming enslaved to her helplessness. This means that they become devoted to coddling Luella at the cost of their health, the work in their own household, and their relations with anyone other than Luella. They push themselves to do unsustainable amounts of work and to produce an impractically high quality of output. If there is a way to free Luella's devotees from her influence, it isn't discovered in the story. Attempts to talk with them are met with either desperation that they're at the limit of what they can do for Luella or hostility that anyone dares talk bad about Luella. Eventually, they work themselves to death.
- You Wouldn't Believe Me If I Told You: The most unbelievable part of Lydia's retelling of her history with Luella is the blatantly supernatural occasion of Luella's death, before which Lydia takes a moment to assert the following: "I saw what I saw, and I know I saw it, and I will swear on my death bed that I saw it."
