I found the word play of “Maria Concepcion” interesting. Before reading this story the title brought to mind the immaculate conception of Mary. As the story progressed I was losing the connection between the title and my original thought considering that Maria Concepcion has a child by her own husband. After the story was over however, I realized that there was somewhat of an ‘immaculate’ conception. Maria Concepcion takes Maria Rosa’s baby as her own after she has killed her. Maria Conception did not conceive this baby, it just happen to come upon her. (I may be stretching a little bit, but I feel as if there is some connection between the title of this short story and biblical references.) She says, “He is mine” and takes the child with her (Porter 20). She raises a child whom she did not conceive, so, to me that appears as if it could be considered an immaculate conception.
There are also times when Maria Concepcion is referred to in such a way as the Virgin Mary would be. When the police are questioning the townspeople, they defend Maria Concepcion saying, “She is a woman of good reputation among us, and Maria Rosa was not” (Porter 19). Maria Concepcion, just like Mary, had a good reputation because she was a virgin and had not sinned, unlike Maria Rosa.
Maria Concepcion is robbed of her husband and her child and therefore she takes Maria Rosa’s life and her child as her own. Does she take Maria Rosa’s child simply because she was deprived of her own? Why does she not kill the child along with his mother, since he was conceived by her husband and another woman?
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I also found this play on words interesting. I also think that the concepcion in this title is a play on a sort of immaculate conception, but I wondered if concepcion could also mean a plan, like how Maria C. had a plan to kill Maria R. Also, I am not sure she was a virgin before she was married, because after she sees Maria R. and Juan, she says that she resisted less than Maria R. did, but it was okay for her because afterwards she got married in a church. There is only one sentence that lets us know that Maria C.'s biological child has died, so we are not sure what kind of grief she is going through, but at the end of the story she sure seems to be trying to pretend the baby is her own.
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