In her essay “The Gothic Gift of Death in Cherríe Moraga’s The Hungry Woman: AMexican Medea”, Tanya Gonzalez constructs a case in favor of sympathy towards the version  of Madea Moraga has constructed in her play. Gonzales argues that Moraga takes the “gothicness” inherent in the La Llorona legends and employs it in a manner that can allow the reader to be sympathetic towards the horrible actions taken by Madea. According to Gonzalez, the “gothicness” of Chac-mool’s ghostly figure appearing to Madea to subsequently “take her home” has a redemptive quality for this classic character. The final scene of the play depicts Madea dead in the arms of the apparition of her diseased son. The cyclical nature these two characters’ relationship in their deaths allows for a somewhat cathartic ending, in that Madea’s monstrous actions against her son did not dissolve without some sort of moment of closure. Had Chac-mool’s ghost not returned to “bring his mother home”, it would have been much easier for the reader to see Madea’s actions as strictly manifested from jealousy and madness. The implementation of this scene taken straight from the handbook of the gothic genre, however, allows for a reading of this play that portrays Madea as a woman combatting the patriarchal construction of it means to be a mother.

The notion introduced by Gonzalez that historically, the gothic genre provides an aesthetic space for social commentary was an aspect of this essay that I found most intriguing. Having done extensive research on Shelley’s Frankenstein, the notion of the gothic providing a space for controversial critiques is also a substantial aspect of the novel. The motifs of the gothic and the sublime are interwoven throughout the novel and it is in the presence of these two motifs that the monster and Dr. Frankenstein are most able to interact and the bulk the religious and scientific commentaries can be found. Whether it be the sublime terrain of the Swiss Alps or the gothic environment of a thunderstorm, an aesthetic space is created where both characters are on level ground and the two conflicting forces of slave and master come to the fore. I found this element of freedom found in the gothic present in Moraga’s The Hungry Woman because it is through Chac-mool’s ghostly reappearance that the reader can finally begin to identify with the selfless intentions behind Madea’s horrific acts; attempting to preserve her son’s innocence to the patriarchal society constructed in Aztlan, and, more generally, make a stance against the male dominated definition of what it means to be a mother.