I thought it would be interesting as we are discussing the literary technique of the uncanny and The Hungry Woman,which partially stems from the Mexican urban legend of La Llorona, as a springboard to compare it to another American folklore legend of “Bloody Mary”. There are many similarities to both stories and their ultimate cultural admonition but what I found in each was their use of mirrors as a reflection of something supernaturally skewed from reality.

There are many different variations of the story of La Llorona but one in particular has become one that stands out above the rest. A young Indian woman becomes infatuated with a Spaniard who is a part of higher society. His opinion of her lower status becomes a reason he won’t marry her. She births three children by him but he still cuts all ties. In order to win his affection, she drowns the three children one by one in the lake but he still refuses her. Her actions lead her to madness and her spirit is said to represent “death and misfortune”.

The most popular version of the legend of “Bloody Mary” is said to have stemmed from Queen Mary I of England who was cursed from numerous miscarriages and false pregnancies. The legend says that people stand in front of a mirror and chant the name “Bloody Mary” numerous times until she appears behind covered in blood.

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One of the main things I took from both legends is the identity of women in both stories. They are represented as destructible, vengeful, and temperamental women who should be feared and avoided. With the discussion of doubling in the uncanny in literature, I found it noteworthy that this author made the connection between mirrors in connection to Bloody Mary, and the reflective nature of the lake to La Llorona. Both have the supernatural feeling of gloom and perpetual dread. They also both share a connection with eyes, which are also a form of reflection. La Llorona’s eyes, in some versions of the legend are deformed because of all the crying she has endured over the loss of her children and the loss of her lover. In the case of Bloody Mary, she has been said to scratch the eyes out of anyone who dares look directly at her.

In The Hungry Woman, we are first introduced to the character of Medea in a psychiatric ward. She is driven to madness after her exile for being a lesbian and an ex Revolutionary in a dystopian society. The very first introduction has the stage directions including a mirror: “MEDEA is downstage, looking directly into a one-way mirror through which all activities in the psychiatric ward can be observed” (Moraga 10). The mirror represents a glimpse into her soul and as a literal representation of the actions she has taken and the consequences of those choices. Mirrors are described again as a mediatory of her past and present: “She abandons the breakfast, crosses back to the wall of mirror, examines her face” (Moraga 11). Mirrors are in the middle of her present conditions in the ward and her past reflections in Arizona. These stage directions are pivotal and can be easily passed over if not examined closely. Medea is in a state of self-reflection in her time in the ward. She has nothing to do except sit with her choices in life and deal with them in her own way. That’s why a mirror literally and figuratively separates her past and her present situation: “(At the mirror) My chin is dropping … One morning I’ll open my eyes and the shades will be drawn permanently” (Moraga 12). Mirrors offer her a glimpse into the woman she has become.

All of these women act out of pure emotion and suffer the consequences of their actions. The reflective nature of a mirror plays a huge part in all their stories and add an uncanny element of distortion.

Works Cited:

“Bloody Mary and La Llorona”. California Folklore. N.p. 1 Aug. 2007. Web. 23 Feb. 2014.

Moraga, Cherrie L. The Hungry Woman. Albuquerque: West End Press, 2001. Print.

Picture:

The Hungry Woman Cherrie Moraga Pdf Free Full

From her website, http://www.cherriemoraga.com:

Cherríe L. Moraga is playwright, poet, and essayist whose plays and publications have received national recognition, including a TCG Theatre Artist Residency Grant in 1996, the NEA’s Theatre Playwrights’ Fellowship in 1993, and two Fund for New American Plays Awards. In 2007, she was awarded the United States Artist Rockefeller Fellowship for Literature; in 2008, a Creative Work Fund Award, and in 2009, a Gerbode-Hewlett Foundation Grant for Playwiting.

Creative Non-fiction/Poetry/Essays . . .

Moraga is the co-editor of This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color, which won the Before Columbus American Book Award in 1986. She is the author of the now classic Loving in the War Years: Lo Que Nunca Pasó Por Sus Labios (1983/2003) andThe Last Generation (1993), published by South End Press of Cambridge, MA. In 1997, she published a memoir on motherhood entitled Waiting in the Wings (Firebrand Books) and is completing a memoir on the subject of Mexican American cultural amnesia entitled Send Them Flying Home: A Geography of Remembrance. This year Moraga also completed a new collection of writings — A Xicana Codex of Changing Consciousness: Writings 2000-2010, published by Duke University Press in 2011.

The Hungry Woman Cherrie Moraga Pdf Free Pdf

Plays/Theater

Moraga has also published three volumes of drama through West End Press of Albuquerque, NM. They include: Heroes and Saints and Other Plays (1994),Watsonville/Circle in the Dirt (2002), and The Hungry Woman (2001). In 2010, WEP will publish a volume of Moraga’s children’s plays, entitled Warriors of the Spirit. A San Francisco Bay Area playwright, Moraga has premiered her work at Theatre Artaud, Theatre Rhinoceros, the Eureka Theatre, and Brava Theater Center. Brava’s production of “Heroes and Saints” in 1992 received numerous awards for best original script, including the Drama-logue and Critic Circles Awards and the Pen West Award. Her plays have been presented throughout the Southwest, as well as in Chicago, Seattle and New York. In 1995, “Heart of the Earth,” Moraga’s adaptation of the Popol Vuh, the Maya creation myth, opened at the Public Theatre and INTAR Theatre in New York City.

In 2005, “The Hungry Woman: A Mexican Medea” opened at The Pigott Theater at Stanford University, directed by Moraga and Adelina Anthony. In the years following, Moraga developed several new works, including: “Mathematics of Love,” “Digging Up the Dirt” and “La Semilla Caminante/The Traveling Seed.” “Semilla,” conceived and designed in collaboration with Alleluia Panis and Celia Herrera Rodriguez, opened in a workshop production with Campo Santo Theater of San Francisco on April 23-25, 2010. On July 30, 2010, Moraga’s “Digging Up the Dirt” opened to a sold-out audience five-week run at Breath of Fire Latina Theater in Orange County, CA, in a co-production with See-what (Cihuat) Productions. Her most recent play, New Fire — “To Put Things Right Again” was produced by cihuatl productions and Brava Theater in San Francisco in January 2011. A collaboration with Celia Herrera Rodriguez and the winner of the Gerbode-Hewlett Foundations Playwright’s Award, the play was witnessed by over 3,000 people over its 12-day run.

The Welder Cherrie Moraga

Day Job

For over ten years, Moraga has served as an Artist in Residence in the Department of Drama at Stanford University and currently also shares a joint appointment with Comparative Studies in Race & Ethnicity. She teaches Creative Writing, Xicana-Indigenous Performance, Latino/Queer Performance, Indigenous Identity in Diaspora in the Arts and Playwriting. She is proud to be a founding member of La Red Xicana Indígena, a network of Xicanas organizing in the area of social change through international exchange, indigenous political education, spiritual practice, and grass roots organizing.