In “The Hungry Woman”, author Cherrie Moraga daringly explores the classical story of Medea through the devastating experiences of a Chicana activist. Although set in different scenarios, the chicana version borrows greatly from Euripides’ play and manages to truthfully depict the feelings of otherness, isolation and almost justifiable revenge that inhabit this famous myth. Through Medea’s unfortunate journey, the author addresses issues that are inherent to Chicana culture by utilizing characteristic elements of the Gothic literary tradition.
Moreover, Moraga allows the masculine anxiety and need for control to emerge naturally through Medea’s sad story. In this way, the author creates a strong connection between the gothic and the suppression of women which places “The Hungry Woman” in the company of other celebrated gothic narratives like Frankenstein, where abhorrence and dread for the mysteriously powerful feminine realm inspires men to commit devilish acts, worthy of the genre. Our Mexican Medea becomes the target of the despotic male quest for unquestioned sovereignty, however, she responds in a violent fashion which defies the expectations of her gender. Moraga’s Medea fights her victimization fiercely. Although her actions grant her a place in an asylum, her attack on the patriarchy, symbolized by Jason, gives her momentary independence and lasting dignity. By examining Medea’s rebellion, I would argue that this haunting play can also be interpreted as a feminist work that shows the desperate attempts of women to reclaim their rightful freedom.
Moraga’s protagonists inhabits a post-apocalypse wasteland, “where yerbas grow bitter for a lack of water”. The aridness of her home mirrors the hopelessness of her situation. Medea tries to survive in a world severely governed by patriarchical notions of righteousness and decorum. This asphyxiating societal control clashes with Medea, especially after this independent intellectual expresses romantic feelings for another woman. Morega shows us the perversity of this system through the persecution of this affair; Medea is not even allow to exercise her selfhood within the confinements of her intimate life.
Medea’s love for Luna culminates in a forced, humiliating exile from his native town of Aztlan. Her divorce renders her useless and homeless in the city she bravely fought to establish; it prevents her from living in a place she created based on principles of liberty and acceptance. Medea feels like a “huerfana abandonada” in her exile, deprived of her deserved role as a successful activist. As Medea explains to her son, once the women were no longer needed for the revolutionary effort, they were forced back into their “natural” state of subjection. Although land was an important factor inspiring this suppression of female agency, the masculine obsession with power definitely played a decisive part in this political move. Through this unnecessary omission of female civic participation, the men forced women to lurk in the shadows of their domesticity, creating a distinctive line between the male and female worlds. This separation established women as the tamed but still feared other and made their independence an always menacing monster, waiting to emerge.
Medea’s involuntary migration cements her otherness , which had been already establish through her lesbian relationship. It is important to notice that “The Hungry Woman” is set in a futuristic time and therefore, one would expect such a relationship to be viewed with kinder eyes. However, Medea and Luna’s love threatens the traditional role of women as vigilant and submissive beings who live in permanent accordance with their dominant men. The “joteria” is viewed as a toxic and essential aspect of otherness, which defies normalcy and deserves to be suppressed. This is one of the instances when the overwhelming authority of men disrupts Medea’s serenity and the possibility of a happy life.
In the classical version, Medea is feared and despised for her foreignness-which makes her an unworthy, brutish outsider in the xenophobic eyes of the Greeks-and her known supernatural powers. The full extent of her might is only seen at the end, when she flies off in a golden chariot. This hated foreigner is deft in the way of politics and magic and her potential scandalizes the Greek elite who were accustomed to more conventional, less threatening women.
In Moraga’s play, Medea’s efforts to strengthen her supernatural powers possess a distinctive feminine quality. The characters speak of a Madre Coaticue,a great source of power, capable of creating deities. Similarly to Bless Me, Ultima, Medea’s temporal world is populated by strong males but the supernatural realm can be accessed through feminine figures. This element of female power links the play with the traditional gothic treatment of the fantastical- witches working in the darkness and the like- and also further emphasizes the subtly feminist character of this work. Unable to use her political skills, Medea finds an unorthodox, mighty and strongly feminine way of regaining her authority by making use of the ancestral magic of indigenous people.
The moment when Jason becomes interested in his long forgotten son is also essential to understand the gender conflict of this play. Medea’s son is thirteen, an age where childhood and adolescence coexist within the developing boy. He is far from being a man but he begins to learn the ways of the world and consequently, the ways of his father and the patriarchy. Medea teaches her son about the reality of life and the treacherous ways of his father. She bluntly tells him of the injustice of men and the cruelly exclusionary nature of normalcy. Through these lessons, Medea hopes that her son will become a better men than those she has known. However, when she sees that Jason is trying to interfere in this process by entering his life (with complete disregard for the child’s well-being), she can predict the kind of men Chac-Mool could potentially be. Moreover, Jason’s intrusion would also mean a return to the evil town that rejected her. Fearing for her son, Medea commits a grave crime. To save the integrity of her son’s soul, still uncorrupted and ignorant of the ways of men, she murders him. She stops her son’s journey to manhood, leaving him with an incomplete gender forever. With this tragic action, Medea prevents the patriarchy from taking the innocence of another young boy and turning them into agents of suppression and violence. Although unquestionably immoral, her decision to kill her son possesses a redemptive quality; she murdered to maintain her integrity and her son’s purity. The apparition of her son’s ghost strengthens the gothicness of the work and also blesses Medea with forgiveness and understanding. After so many tormenting memories and delirious scenes from her past, her actions become partially justifiable through his comforting presence.
This opinion on “The Hungry Woman” is incredibly insightful and I could not agree more. A feminist perspective is highly important to consider in this play. Up until I read this post, I did not know exactly what to do with the lesbian aspect. It’s so basic, but so true, much of Madea’s struggle is gendered. First she struggles as a feminine counterpart to her more masculine lover, then as the ex-wife to her ex-husband. She even struggles with it as Choc Mool’s mother. Her demise is simple, she has never been and never will be a man, nor will she ever be masculine. In her revolution efforts she acted, rebelled like a man, but in the end she was treated like a woman. Beside the fact that she was exiled, she couldn’t even gain land without going through her husband. Like a man, she became interested in women, or a woman, but even in the relationship she was still the “weaker.” In essence, Choc Moo’s murder makes so much sense. She killed him because she didn’t want him to become a man; but she also killed him because she knew he would become a man with out her. As a woman, she could not teach him or aid him in this. In the end, her femininity, or lack of masculinity rather, was the demise of all her relationships.
As I was reading this play whenever I read about the revolution, I would think about the Chicano movement of the 1960’s. Medea constantly reminds us that she did a lot for the revolution however, she was still exiled when it was known she was a lesbian. I remembered the Chicano movement because this movement was patriarchal. Later on in history, Chicanas had to start a movement of their own so they too, could be acknowledged. Chicanas might have felt like they were in exile when they were excluded from the movement due to patriarchy.
Yes, it seems women always have to force their way into social movements and demonstrate that whatever issues men are fighting against are also revenant for them. I think your idea that the author perhaps used Medea’s exile as a symbol for this initial exclusion of women from the Chicano movement is extremely insightful.
I agree that Medea is obviously very troubled when it comes to her identity and her role as a woman and I do think that this continual battle between her two sides affects her relationships greatly.