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Image courtesy of: truefresco.net: fantasma de la llorona

I explored different versions of La Llorona stories in my first blog and provided contextual analysis in my second blog, especially as it relates to reinterpreting La Llorona as a feminist figure who subverts patriarchal authority. In this final entry I will offer my analysis of La Llorona as an abject figure and as a gothic staple in many of the books that we read this semester.

Several recent scholars have analyzed La Llorona, La Malinche and Cihuacoatl stories through a feminist lens, but it problematic to frame these narratives exclusively from this angle. Chicana/o scholars in particular have focused on questioning the forces, “such as male power and the male dominated Catholic worldview, that contribute to the weeping woman’s fate…Historically, Chicana poets have incorporated such traditional cultural figures as the Virgen de Guadalupe, La Malinche, and La Llorona to reflect a particularly women-centered aesthetic and set of cultural concerns (Perez).”  However, if we are to use the most commonly understood definition of feminism, which is the belief that men and women should have equal rights and opportunities, it fails. Not only do the women not have equal social and political standing, but the subjugated position they find themselves in cause them to cause further harm to themselves and others, especially in the case of Lamia, and La Llorona. In the cases of La Malinche and Cihuacoatl, both figures are demonized for political reasons associated with the conquest of the indigenous people of Mexico. In Rachel’s case, she is a martyr. She weeps over her own children and the children of Israel, but is also powerless.

Therefore a more appropriate framing is that of those figures as an abject and certainly gothic, figure. La Llorona serves as a bogeywoman figure to children, for example. She is depicted as scary and someone lurking outside, in the dark. Cihuacoatl is painted as a fearsome figure, too. Lamia has gouged out her eyes. All of these figures are abject as defined by Kristeva, in both the sense of repulsion we feel towards them , but more significantly because she argues that the abject is “where meaning collapses, especially in the severing of the maternal. Because the abject disturbs identity, system, order…does not respect borders, positions, rules, it represents the dangerous underside of order (Kristeva).”  Meaning does collapse as it relates to the maternal, typically associated with nurturing, protection and maternal sacrifice. A vengeful, homicidal mother and/or a mother who puts desire before that of her children is an inversion of societal expectations, especially in Chicana/o culture. Here the conflict between Madonna/whore comes up again. Though by nature, physically a mother is not a virgin, she is supposed to embody purity, plus the other attributes listed above.

When these figures don’t conform to rather narrow role expectations, then is subsequently othered and punished for it, she becomes not just an outlier but also becomes a figure of horror, fear and disgust. Though these women are abject figures partially due to their own actions, it would be reductive to merely categorize these women as abject without taking into consideration the larger patriarchal forces that got them in the positions they find themselves in. In fact, feminist theory scholars have uncovered how the scripts of the patriarchy preserves privilege in the hands of the masculine. Benigno Trigo writes, “Feminist criticism successfully showed how the natural was deployed as a mask for the fictions, master-narratives, plots, discourses, and sociological scripts of authoritarian and patriarchal systems of life and government (Trigo).” Taking even a cursory look at how men are depicted in these narratives and it becomes clear that they avoid the punishment of becoming the abject. Zeus is all powerful, so he goes unpunished for his affair with Lamia.  Jason suffers by losing his children but because it is at the hands of Medea, he is the victim of the abject and therefore not regarded with revulsion. The same is true of the nobleman in La Llorona stories.  Though the men commit moral crimes (adultery), their behavior is normalized.

One interesting aspect of the abject that Kristeva touches upon, which is relevant to the narratives of La Llorona, La Malinche, Medea in “The Hungry Woman, and the homeless mother in “Their Dogs Came with Them” is “the one by whom the abject exists is thus a deject who places (himself), separates (himself), situates (himself), and therefore strays instead of getting his bearings, desiring, belonging, or refusing..he divides, excludes, and without, properly speaking, wishing to know his abjections is not at all unaware of them. Often, moreover, he includes himself among them. Instead of sounding himself as to his ‘being’, he does so concerning his place: ‘Where am I?’ instead of ‘Who am I?’ (Kristeva).” That place is often the hinterlands, socially, physically or politically.  That sense of distance keeps us safe from the abject. We are both repulsed and attracted by horror and the abject.  These figures also embody the gothic in ways besides being abject figures, though it is central to their identity. The unifying elements that La Malinche, Cihuacoatl, La Llorona, Medea, Lamia and Die Weisee Frau share is that they are feared outsiders, possibly dangerous and used as a device to convey warnings about behavioral expectations. The landscapes that these figures inhabit may differ in details and geography, but each one contains gothic elements: poverty in “The Hungry Woman” and “Their Dogs Came with Them”, the watery, dark places that La Llorona inhabits, and unstable, violent environments where La Malinche and Lamia inhabit and the most readily identifiable feature of gothic imagery, the old castle where Die Weisee lurks. The defining characteristic of all of these women is despair, which is a cornerstone of both the abject and gothic. It is important to remember that patriarchal elements have had a hand in facilitating these characterizations, however. Because of this, it is useful to view these figures not just as abject, but as I wrote in my introductory post, as powerless women who subvert the existing power structure in devastating ways.

Works Cited

Kristeva, Julia. Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection. New York: Columbia, 1982.

Perez, Domino Renee. There Was a Woman: La Llorona from Folklore to Popular Culture. U of Texas Press, 2008.

Trigo, Benigno. Remembering Maternal Bodies: Meloncholy in Latina and Latin American Women’s Writing. Palgrave Macmillan, 2006.