The Murderess - Grade: A PDF

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Loriana Donovan Professor Hadj GRKMD 41W 05/03/2019 The Murderess by Alexandros Papadiamantis is a novel about an old woman named Hadoula from the island of Skiathos. Hadoula’s island of Skiathos is a microcosm of Greece during that time which shows the societal issues that Greece faced coming out of Ottoman rule after the War of Independence in 1821 and how these problems would impact the society for many years to come. Hadoula’s experiences in life and the view of those on Skiathos lead her to view having a young girl rather than a young boy as bad luck. These views escalate to the point that Hadoula murders five young girls, one of which being her own granddaughter. Old Hadoula is seen as an exaggerated fictitious example that showcases the inherent problems of her society through the view of young girls as bad luck, the concept of the dowry, and lack of education in the village. “All little girls, her bad luck, all little girls!” (Papadiamantis, 100). This was the thought that Hadoula had when she choked Lyringos’ baby. The view that having girls rather than bad luck partly comes from the issue of the dowry; the more girls you have, the more you have to worry about marrying them off. However, in those days, there were more pressing concerns than just marriage. Boys were the ones to be educated and the ones to be strong enough to work all day in the field. The bias for boys was not a purely Skiathos concept, nor was it a purely Greek concept but rather a patriarchal worldwide concept. Hadoula uses this excuse to kill the girls because to her she is helping the family. She thinks, “ What a consolation it would be for him

now, and his unhappy wife, if the Almighty took her straight away! While she’s small and leaves no great sorrow behind her!” (Papadiamantis, 100). Hadoula only sees the bad luck side that the birth of Lyringos’ baby brings, not the side that parents will love their children because they’re their children despite the fact the she has children and loves them. But this love does not reach to her children’s child as she chose to silence her grandchild for good by choking her to death. “And every family in the neighborhood, every family in the district, every family in the town had two or three girls. Some had four, some had five...So all these parents...faced the absolute necessity, the implacable need, to marry off all those daughters. They must…’set up’ all those daughters, and give them...their dowries” (Papadiamantis, 20-21). The pressures of having girls resulted in a lot of stress when these girls reached the age to be married. These girls were already seen as bad luck to their families and to their society but the dowry caused such stress to be had by the parents. There were so many girls competing to be married off because their parents’ generation had had so many girls which made it harder to find a boy. The dowry became complicated because when you have five girls parents offering their child to you for marriage, you want to choose the one that gives you the best bang for your buck. The parents of these girls have so much pressure to save money and acquire land and so on for this dowry that the society of the time viewed girls as this negative creature that ultimately doesn’t bring any good. However, a lot of these problems ultimately stem from the lack of education. While this isn’t directly brought up by Papadiamantis’ character of Hadoula it is shown indirectly through many of the problems presented. For example, the lack of doctors in the village allow Hadoula to get away with choking her granddaughter because there simply wasn’t enough knowledge to look and see the marks left by Hadoula’s hand. Further, this lack of doctors and lack of knowledge of medicine allows Hadoula to become popular as a nurse with her potion making.

This potion making allows her to become trusted by those in the village which ultimately ends up in the demise of two children, one intentionally for Maruso and one unintentionally for Lyringos’ family. In addition, the introduction of education is what ultimately turns the tables on the grim look for girls because when both boys and girls are being educated, they are both looked at to be useful rather than it just being the boy. The introduction of modern standard education in today’s society revolutionizes this stereotype that girls are only good to be mothers and allows them to start pursuing other fields which proves to be vital for the world and their family. This lack of education also allows for societal concepts to be ingrained in people without allowing them to make a conscious choice for themselves. This is clearly seen in Hadoula as she chokes her granddaughter, Papadiamantis writes, “But she was now out of her mind. She did not know clearly what she was doing” (38). Through Papdiamantis’ character of Hadoula in The Murderess, he encapsulates the internal societal issues within Skiathos that represent many societal issues that presented themselves in Greece during this time. The idea of girls as bad luck stemmed from many reasons including the idea of the dowry that provided much stress to parents of girls, however with the introduction of the modern and standard educational systems these biases towards girls have changed greatly....