Transatlantic Lloronas: Infanticide and Gender in Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and Alexandros Papadiamantis

This chapter analyzes Freeman’s representation of infanticide from a transatlantic perspective. Through a comparative reading of Freeman’s short story “Old Woman Magoun” and the turn-of-the-century Greek novella A Murderess by Alexandros Papadiamantis, the chapter argues that the murder of female infants or (infantilized) female children is an act of resistance against a patriarchal system that commodifies women on the marriage market. Both texts weave a gender critique that conveys women’s restorative power and evokes a transgressive genealogy of monstrous motherhood epitomized by La Llorona, the wailing or weeping woman in Meso-American mythology. In this sense, Freeman’s fiction can be read not only as New England or US literature but also as world literature, a broader nexus of literary and mythic texts, which retell old myths in new contexts of global historical relevance.