I'm about to teach this story to my ESL
class. Until I read those comments I had
not imagined the story could be
misunderstood. The 'baby' description is
so overstated that by the time I got to
"staring greedily at her breasts" I knew
exactly what would happen. The "you're a
man and that's what men do" is the
denouement, and if you didn't get it the
first time, the comments about
bachelor's parties reconfirms it. I
actually thought the point was laboured
a little - if the story had finished as
soon as we find out her 'baby' is her
partner, around paragraph 5, it wouldn't
have dragged on so painfully. Perhaps
this is due to familiarity with feminist
texts. My boyfriend hated the story so
it's probably the case. Let's just hope
my non-English speaking students handle
it better than some of the other
reviewers have..