In one of Carrington’s earliest stories, “The Debutante,” a young woman who does not want to go to a ball switches places with a hyena. The débutante allows her maid to be killed and eaten by the hyena, save for her face, “which was nibbled very neatly all around,” in order to provide a human disguise. But the hyena cannot suppress her true nature for long. At the ball dinner, the hyena removes and then eats the maid’s face, which was the animal’s mask, and which was also meant to substitute for the débutante herself, who is tucked up in her bedroom, reading “Gulliver’s Travels.” “Well, I don’t eat cakes!” the hyena cries, before leaping out the window “with one great bound.” One cannot help but feel that the young woman’s spirit springs over the ledge as well.
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