Parenting & Family Quote by Beryl Bainbridge

Domestic life gets romantic lighting so often that Bainbridge opts for a more honest prop: bad shoes. The simile is funny in that wince-inducing way her novels specialize in, where the punchline lands right on a bruise. Children, in this framing, are not little angels or little tyrants; they are an expensive commitment that pinches. You keep wearing them because you paid for them, because you chose them, because throwing them out is unthinkable. The pain is continuous, mundane, and socially unspeakable, which is precisely why the image works.

The intent isn’t to demonize motherhood so much as to puncture the tyranny of the “natural” maternal instinct. Bainbridge finds the sharp edge in a taboo admission: you can love what harms you, and you can be harmed by what you’re obligated to love. The subtext is guilt sharpened into self-awareness. “Expensive” hints at sunk cost and status - the way family can operate as proof of having done adulthood correctly - while “too small” suggests a life that no longer fits, an identity constrained by expectations rather than biology.

Contextually, Bainbridge’s fiction often sits in cramped rooms with people trying to behave properly while their private feelings turn feral. This line belongs to that tradition: the domestic sphere as a site of slow abrasion. Blisters are not a single catastrophe; they’re damage accumulated by daily repetition. It’s a neat, brutal way of saying that devotion can coexist with resentment, and that the most respectable arrangements can still hurt with every step.