The Hungry Woman

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of substance use.

The prison guard takes Medea to the hospital room, then returns to playing dominoes with the nurse. Medea pumps milk from her breasts, tasting the milk as she does so. She speaks to the audience about Jasón, admitting that she was not faithful to her husband. It was her son, Chac-Mool, who won her love. A memory of Jasón appears on the stage, muttering to himself about this betrayal. The nurse throws nursing pads to Medea to mop up spilled milk. Medea remembers that she never really weaned Chac-Mool; he simply stopped wanting to be breastfed one day. She attributes this to peer pressure at age three, as he was embarrassed to be offered his mother’s breast in front of a friend. Medea could not help but take this personally, she tells the nurse. Medea accuses the nurse of being “childless, a dull mule who can’t reproduce” (32). This, Medea believes, means that Medea will always be more of a woman than the nurse. The nurse confirms that she was deliberately sterilized in Puerto Rico in 1965.