monster

   One would expect this vocative to be used only in great contempt, expressing the speaker’s views on someone’s inhuman behaviour. A multiple murderer might well be referred to as a monster, but in normal life such people rarely have to be addressed by ordinary citizens. ‘Monster’ has certainly been used vocatively since at least the sixteenth century, and in Shakespeare it can have its full force. Addressed to Caliban, the savage and deformed slave in The Tempest, its use is rather special, but in Timon of Athens, when Timandra says ‘Hang thee, monster!’ to Timon, she means it to indicate her view of his wickedness.

   Laurie Lee, in Cider with Rosie, recounts how, as a young child, he experimentally hit a girl in the playground on her wiry black hair ‘without spite or passion’. He was amazed when those around said ‘Horrid boy! Little monster!’ But ‘monster’ is used fairly frequently in modern times as a covert endearment. Parents can be heard asking of their children: ‘What are you doing now, you little monsters? In Absolute Beginners, by Colin MacInnes, ‘you poor old prehistoric monster’ is merely an expression of friendship. With this one may compare ‘you droll monster’ addressed to Festus Derriman, in Thomas Hardy’s The Trumpet Major, which is said with a smile and is not really disapproving. Dawn Powell has a short story, Every Day is Ladies’ Day, in which an American woman playfully calls a man ‘you monster’.

   Used of children, then, the term often means little more than ‘mischievous scamps’. Used of adult men - never, it seems, of women - ‘monster’ is often the equivalent of ‘you wicked man’, said in such a way as to show that the wickedness is not unattractive. That it can be more forceful is shown in Blue Dreams, by William Hanley, where ‘Fuck off, monster!’ is several times addressed to an American television director by an actress.