Babies Switched at Birth - As A Literary Plot Device

As A Literary Plot Device

The plot device of babies who are switched at birth, or in their cradles, has been a common one in American fiction since the 18th century. It is one of the several identifiable characteristics of melodrama that are plot devices dealing with situations that are highly improbable in real life.

The use of this common theme has continued ever since. The device was used a number of times by W. S. Gilbert, including in the Gilbert and Sullivan comic operas H.M.S. Pinafore and The Gondoliers. In both cases, well-born babies were switched with commoners. Mark Twain later used this plot device in The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson (1893), where two babies, one white and one black, are switched at birth, resulting in both passing for races that they are not. It is one of the themes that made for TV movies regularly exploited in the 1970s and 1980s. It continues to be a popular theme in the 1990s and 21st century with (for examples) it being employed as a plot device in Veronica Mars (the characters Cindy "Mac" Mackenzie and Madison Sinclair), in Neighbours (the characters Bree Timmins and Anne Baxter), Night and Day (the characters Jane Harper and Della Wells) and in The Young and the Restless (several times, including the characters Cane Ashby and Phillip Chancellor III, and the children of Lauren Fenmore Baldwin and Sheila Carter). A non-human example occurs in the Planet of the Apes movie genre, when the son of intelligent apes Zira and Cornelius is swapped with a 20th Century circus ape's infant, in order to assure the survival of the offspring that can become sentient. In Desperate Housewives the characters Juanita Solis and Grace Sanchez were switched at birth by a nurse named Teresa Pruitt. In the Philippine television series, Mara Clara, the characters Mara Davis/David and Clara del Valle were switched at birth by Gary for revenge after his former lover was married to another man. On the ABC Family series Switched at Birth, the characters Bay and Daphne were switched at birth.

Baby switching storylines are a staple of daytime drama, as in the case of The Young and the Restless mentioned above. Other notable switched-at-birth storylines on American soaps include One Life To Live's story, begun in 1979, in which prostitute Katrina Karr, who'd planned to put her child up for adoption as soon as it was born, and former nun Jenny Vernon both gave birth to girls at the same hospital, at the same time. Jenny's baby died in the maternity ward as Karen Wolek and Marco Dane (posing as a doctor) visited the child. As they knew Katrina had planned to give up her baby girl, Karen and Marco switched the newborns. It wasn't until 1982 that the truth came out and Jenny tearfully gave baby Mary back to Katrina.

In 2008, another One Life To live storyline saw Starr Manning pregnant with Cole Thornhart's baby. Her cousin Jessica Brennan was also pregnant with her late husband's baby. Starr went into labor as her father Todd Manning (later revealed to be his twin brother Victor) planned to kidnap his grandchild and raise the baby secretly with Cole's amnesiac mother Marty Saybrooke. Tess, one of Jessica's alter personalities, had taken control of Jessica's life and went into premature labor. Starr, with the help of the baby's adoptive mother Marcie McBain and Starr's mother Blair Manning, gave birth to a healthy girl, whom she named Hope. Tess's child, named Chloe, was stillborn. The trauma of Chloe's death resulted in the emergence of another alter, Bess, who took Jessica's deceased baby to the hospital and switched her with Starr's healthy child. Seven months later, Jessica realized what had happened and told the truth to her cousin.

Possibly the most complex storyline involving the switched-at-birth plot device ran simultaneously on All My Children and One Life To Live. Involved were All My Children's Bianca Montgomery and Babe Chandler, and One Life To Live's Kelly Cramer Buchanan, as well as many other characters.