Weekly Reader: Weep, Woman, Weep by Maria DeBlassie; Female Driven Dark Fantasy Takes on La Llorona
By Julie Sara Porter
Bookworm Reviews
Spoilers: The legend of La Llorona is one that is frequently recounted in Mexico and the American Southwest. The legend is about an indigenous Mexican woman, usually named Maria, who fell in love with a Spanish conquistador or vaquero. They became lovers, married, and she gave birth to two children. One day, Maria caught him with another woman and in a rage drowned her children. Consumed with guilt, she drowned herself. She is then cursed to roam the Earth forever to find her children. Her ghost is usually heard wailing from grief and is seen dressed in a wedding gown and veil. The story goes that if she is seen and heard by water, someone, usually a child or a young single woman, will later drown.
La Llorona's story has been told in art, books, movies, music, and various tv series. She is one of those fantastic characters from American myth and legend that has entered the national lexicon like Bigfoot, the Ghostly Hitchhiker, the Jersey Devil, Champ the Lake Champlain's monster, The Bell Witch and others.
Some have interpreted her story as a criticism of colonialism with the Spanish conquistador controlling the indigenous La Llorona and leading to her death. Others have interpreted it to be a feminist tale of a woman drowning by the patriarchy around her. It is an interesting story and opens up many possibilities of what it means and says a lot about the culture that it comes from and the people telling it.
Weep, Woman, Weep by Maria DeBlassie gives her interpretation of the legend from the point of view of two Mexican-American women who are afraid of but at the same time drawn to this mysterious ghost.
Two women, Mercy and Sherry, live in a small desert town in New Mexico near Esperanza. They are dealing with the challenges of puberty and exploring their sexuality while discussing the legend that haunts them.
In this version of the legend, the women who La Llorona drowned don't die. Instead, they become shells of themselves, docile, obedient, God fearing, and submissive women. Mercy thinks of it not as a "drowning but a baptism." Things get worse when as an adult, Sherry is the next woman to go through this odd transformation. Could Mercy be next?
Mercy is the first person narrator and it's clear that she is a woman in great pain and filled with anger. She is surrounded by poverty, domestic violence, and a strict patriarchal society. Sherry has no idea who her father is and often keeps away from her alcoholic mother and her pedophiliac boyfriends. Mercy's father abused and walked out on her and mother, causing her mother to retreat into depression. It's a sad existence in which Mercy and Sherry just survive and dream of better things like marrying rich and wealthy men, traveling, having great careers, and living in big beautiful houses.
They live such dysfunctional lives that when they see Sherry's aunt and her boyfriend, they are surprised that he doesn't beat her. Instead, he kisses her. They have never seen an adult couple act loving and affectionate towards each other in public, even rarely at home.
Mercy tells her story with a dry cynicism that displays a world weary humor. She describes Esperanza as a place "where you went when you want to be forgotten by the place you came from." Her interpretation of the La Llorona story is that the spirit "regretted giving up her power to a man. And she regretted being bested by him….Instead all he brought her was more shame."
Of the women who had been transformed by La Llorona, Mercy describes them as "Jesus loving self-righteous prigs who called themselves Spanish-the closest thing to white they could be ... .Their eyes were forever red rimmed like they'd been crying though they never did. That's because their hearts stopped once they were baptized, and feelings were left at the bottom of the river along with their souls."
Mercy and Sherry try to avoid being seen or taken by La Llorona, but constantly talk about her. Mercy does everything that she can to not transform like the other women around her do. She makes a blood pact with Sherry that they won't be like the other women. Mercy works on a farm because she is a hard worker and also to take on seemingly "masculine" work to make herself less likely to become one of La Llorona's victims.
It's significant in this version that those that are taken by La Llorona do not die. Instead, this is more interpreted as a living death, the death of the women's personalities and individuality.
La Llorona is a metaphor for the patriarchal society in which Mercy and Sherry live. The women's transformation causes them to be willing participants in the system around them. They are like Stepford clones deprived of their thoughts and independence.
There's a possibility that La Llorona isn't real and is the product of a developing mind filled with PTSD from her abused past and anxiety about womanhood in such a restricted situation. After all, since the women's transformation is described as a baptism, it could be a reflection of Mercy's feelings towards religion, particularly Christianity, and the limitations towards women when they follow such dogma. They go to church, get baptized, and conform to the patriarchal society surrounding them.
As she matures, Mercy has few options: allow La Llorona to take her and conform, retreat into depression, alcoholism, and defeat like hers and Sherry's mother, or live an independent life. In retaliation against the spirit and the patriarchy around her, Mercy opts for independence.
Mercy lives on a farm outside of town that she runs herself. She makes herbal and homeopathic medicines and health and beauty aids. The price that she has to pay for rebelling against the society around her is to live outside of it. She is referred to by the locals as a "spinster, "whore," and "witch" (which she wonders how someone can be described as both a whore and a spinster). Mercy lives a lifetime of solitude knowing that La Llorona (or her fears and anxieties) is out there waiting for her to drown. She also tries to maintain her friendship with Sherry even though they have emotionally grown apart and Sherry is in an unhappy marriage with an abusive philanderer. She leaves gifts and words of strength and encouragement.
In trying to live her life to spite La Llorona, Mercy ends up living her life more authentically than most other women around her.
Weep, Woman, Weep transforms the legend of La Llorona into a feminist novel of women who are given the option of falling into the patriarchy or turning away from it and be themselves.
