Analysis: Black Widow's Wardrobe

         
\In Black Widow’s Wardrobe, Lucha Corpi explores the evolution of Latina stereotypes by introducing strong, intelligent, independent female characters who resist traditional roles to which they were born. Corpi employs rich imagery of Hispanic cultural events, folklore, and legends to add layers of intrigue to a modern-day mystery.

On a cold and misty November evening, the novel opens with the main character, Gloria Damasco, participating in a parade commemorating Día de Muertos, Day of the Dead, a celebration for Hispanics to remember their deceased loved ones. In a sea of celebrants wearing black, Gloria notices a woman in all white, she later learns is the Black Widow (Licia Lecuona), notorious for killing her husband 20 years before. Gloria later witnesses an attempt on Licia’s life and is further drawn into the mystery that surrounds her life and notoriety.

Gloria learns that Licia killed her husband after suffering years of abuse at his hand. In court, however, she did not defend her actions and was sentence to 20 years in prison. Many facets of Licia’s life parallel two Latina legends, La Llorona and La Malinche. La Malinche was the Nahua girl who was chosen by Hernán Cortés as a guide and translator when he arrived from Spain to conquer Mexico. She later became his lover and bore his son Martin. She “became a traitor in public memory due to her aiding and abetting of the conquest of Latin America and the genocide of its people—her own people” (Muñeca). La Llorona, the weeping woman, is the legend of a woman distraught by the loss of her children. The cause of the loss seems a bit unclear. In some versions of her story, she drowned her children, in others she was weeping for the lost children of the Aztecs amid the conquest. Another suggestion is that La Llorona is La Malinche, weeping after she was discarded by Cortés, and he took her son (Anderson). Both women appear frequently in Hispanic folklore.

Like La Llorona and La Malinche, Licia’s actions are judged harshly by her contemporaries, and she becomes a pseudo urban legend in her own rite. All three women are looked upon as being a little “mad” and emotionally unbalanced. They are all scorned for their life circumstances and blamed when they finally attempt to break free from their torment. They have all suffered greatly for love, losing their greatest love, their children, along the way. Licia’s story is complicated by the fact that thinks she is La Malinche reincarnated; this drives her actions and choices throughout the book. At the conclusion of the story, after Licia has apparently committed suicide, Gloria succinctly summarizes the parallels between Licia and La Malinche, they both “married a Spaniard, who not only didn’t love her, but mistreated her and was unfaithful to her. She had a son, named Martin, who hated her” (190).

Through vivid and inventive storytelling, Lucha Corpi has forever changed the status quo of American literature. Judy Maloof observes that Corpi “brings a new Chicana feminist aesthetic and culture perspective to the genre of detective fiction” (Maloof). This paradigm shift of the portrayal of Latinas in literature has brought to life a new archetype for young Latinas to aspire.

Works Cited

“Muñeca de La Llorona”. National Museum of American History. Smithsonian https://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/search/object/nmah_1170907

Anderson, Gracie. “Who was La Malinche?” Smithsonian Magazine. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/was-la-malinche-indigenous-interpreter-conquistador-hernan-cortes-traitor-survivor-or-icon-180978321/

Corpi, Lucia. Black Widow’s Wardrobe. 1972.

Maloof, Judy. The Chicana Detective as Clairvoyant in Lucha Corpi’s Eulogy for a Brown Angel (1992), Cactus Blood (1996), and Black Widow’s Wardrobe (1999). https://www.lehman.cuny.edu/ciberletras/v15/maloof.html