John Wyndham’s The Midwich Cuckoos (1957) tells the tale of the sudden, overnight, and otherworldly impregnation of virtually all the women in a quiet British village. The villagers name this uncanny incident the "Dayout." The Midwich mothers give birth to children with unusual characteristics and powers. The novel's protagonists eventually discover the frightening nature of the children's capabilities, just as the children, as they grow and mature, realize they are not only alien to but also enemies of humanity. The confrontation between Homo sapiens and Homo superiors leads to a literally explosive finale.

How We Define Human Identity

By their very nature, the Children (as the Midwich villagers come to call them) turn the idea of human identity on its ear. Once born, their differences are immediately noted. They all share the same blonde hair and glowing golden eyes. They stare at one another with an intense, almost smug familiarity. They are called strangers by their own families, who innately and uneasily sense their otherness.

One of the Dayout mothers goes to another town to give birth. She unexpectedly arrives back in Midwich with her cuckoo baby, and when asked why, she says:

"Nobody had any idea I was coming—not even me. I didn't intend to come." She looked down at the baby in the carry-cot on the passenger seat beside her. "He made me come," she said.

Reports of more cases of mental compulsion from the Children accumulate but are at first dismissed as imagination or coincidence. The families and villagers are eager to deny the evidence of inhuman activity from the Children. Then, first by coincidence and later by experiment, it is discovered that each gender group of the Children—30 males and 28 females—share a hive mind. Whatever is experienced by one of the individual Children—whether the taste of candy or pain from a burn—is experienced by all of them. This is clearly not human, and it cannot be denied.

These strangers who go against the usual norms are viewed by the townspeople with growing bemusement, suspicion, alarm, hatred, prejudice, and sometimes even love. Wyndham's complex characterizations distinctly embody the theme of human identity. The Children confront Midwich—and us—with contrary notions of what it means to be human.

The Various Nature of Motherhood

Soon after the Dayout, the women of Midwich gather in a group meeting and admit to one another that they are all impossibly pregnant and carrying alien babies. They agree to cooperate and protect themselves, their families, and their babies by keeping the situation as quiet as possible, away from the prying eyes of the press and the outside world.

Wyndham presents various portraits of motherhood as the mothers are tested by the inhumanness of their brethren. Some respond with a mix of maternal tenderness and sensible grit, such as Angela Zellaby, who leads the mothers with plans and policies, social activity programs, and neighborly help. (Ironically, her baby is actually human. She and her husband Gordon conceived the child just before the Dayout, so she was passed over that night, but she won't know that for nine months.)

Mrs. Leebody, the vicar's wife, feels they are all being visited by biblical punishment, calling up shades of the Egyptian plagues and Sodom and Gomorrah. She ends up going a little crazy and wildly preaches in the town square, barefoot, her forehead smudged with ash. The town doctor puts her in a nursing home for the duration of her pregnancy. The other mothers are sympathetic.

June and July arrive. The babies are born. Families appear together, walking in the town square with their sweet, blonde, golden-eyed...