Flowering Judas

While reading “The Flowering of Judas,” I kept waiting for the theme of betrayal which I assumed would be obvious; however, betrayal seemed to be how Laura felt not an obvious act. To me it seemed as if Laura felt that she had betrayed her own beliefs in religion. I think her secretly doing “Hail Marys” shows her struggle with the catholic religion as well as the title of the story. It seems to me that Laura does not know what to do in her specific situation with Braggioni and it consumes her thoughts and isolates her from the world around her.
It also seems as if Laura believes she betrayed Eugenio, due to her dream where she asks for his hand and all he does is gives her the blossoms of the Judas Tree, and when she eats them and he then calls her a “Murderer” and states that it is his “body and his blood”. So Laura not only feels guilty as if she murdered Eugenio the only person she does not isolate herself from but also uses the Christian theme of taking the Eucharist as an expression of betrayal due to Judas’s actions during the last supper and his betrayal to Jesus.