ABSTRACT
The legend of a wife and mother seeking revenge on an unfaithful or abusive husband by murdering her children is one that crosses oceans and centuries, challenging spatial and temporal boundaries. It seems to portray an ill-fated episode common to many cultures showing a pattern of social organization based on patriarchal hierarchies, in which women are relegated to the role of mere reproducers of the structures that ensure successful narratives of progress and civilization. These stories about filicidal women frequently unveil different forms of subalternity that are not entirely reduced to gender. Race, foreignness, social class, and (post)colonial relations intersect in many of the representations of this great crime perpetrated by murderous mothers. The character in the “Western World” that has perhaps best embodied this crisis is that of Medea, the barbaric sorceress and cruel slayer of her children; the foreigner who both assisted and undermined Jason’s heroic endeavors and challenged the “great Greek civilization”.
