Voudou and Vengeance: Marie Laveau's Evolution From Maternal Figure to Satanic Avenger in <i>American Horror Story: Coven</i>

Marie Laveau, a free Black woman in the pre-Civil War Southern United States, was a Voudou practitioner who purportedly blended Voudou and Catholicism, going so far as to call herself “the pope of Voudou,” according to some sources (Wirkus 1933). Creole culture in New Orleans blends elements of US Indigenous, French, Spanish, and African heritage with the mysticism of Catholicism, resulting in a unique form of New Orleans Voudou practice (Alvarado 2020; Clark 2020; Long 2007). New Orleans' Voudou blends with the legends and tales of Marie Laveau, who served as a mother figure to slaves and the Black community of New Orleans (Alvarado 2020). Historically, Laveau extended her maternal care beyond her biological children, taking in many community members, including the poor, ill, and enslaved, thus becoming a significant caretaker within New Orleans' African American community (Alvarado 2020, 33; Long 2007, xxiv). The enduring mythos of Marie Laveau as a maternal figure in New Orleans is perpetuated through various cultural texts, including stories, museums, ghost tours, and popular American media like television, film, novels, and songs, a legacy further depicted in works such as Jewel Parker Rhodes' Voudou novels. The pervasive mythos of Laveau has been one of a strong, maternal religious figure to her community amid historical terror and unspeakable evil inflicted on African slaves in the US (Long 2007, xxiv). However, in American Horror Story: Coven (AHS, 2013–2014), the depiction of Marie Leveau's (Angela Bassett) character is more ambiguous: here, she is a vengeful mother figure for her community of African Americans in New Orleans from the era of slavery to the present in the narrative with the African American community of the lower Ninth Ward. She acts at various times as caretaker, protector, and mother for her community. In Coven, Laveau is set in stark contrast to the predominantly white, middle-to-upper-class portrayals of women at Miss Robichaux's Academy and the coven. AHS's adaptation of Marie Laveau draws on the stories surrounding the historical figure and depicts some of her caretaking in New Orleans and mothering in her own community, but at the same time, it presents a white, sensationalized view of Voudou in New Orleans that is dark, primitive, and evil, often utilizing ritual sacrifice of animals and people. Therefore, while Coven may seem to be progressive with the character of Marie Laveau, in the juxtaposition of white witches as good and Black Voudou as Satanic, it punishes Marie Laveau for the retribution she enacts against white violence throughout her long life. This racial division is clear throughout the Coven season, but it ultimately capitulates to racist depictions of African-derived Voudou practices, thereby reinforcing a white, patriarchal supremacist view of Voudou and upholding the systems of oppression that devalue Black lives. Coven's depiction of Marie Laveau and racism in US society may seem progressive. However, through examining Coven as Southern Gothic television, the presentations of abject horror, the historical disparagement of Marie Laveau and Voudou, and representations of motherhood, a pattern emerges that demonstrates the show actually reinforces and condones historical white supremacist patriarchy in the US. The symbolic representation of Voudou and Laveau's character as abject other, aligned with Hell, satanic worship, and evil, emerges from historical systemic racism and misogyny in the US. Coven can be classified as a Southern Gothic text, exhibiting its primary genre characteristics. Helen Wheatley explains that gothic television not only has the gothic features of domesticity, focusing on “unspeakable family secrets and homely trauma” (2006, 1), but it also has the added feature of domestic viewership as viewers watch it on the small screens in their homes. The primary setting of Coven is Miss Robichaux's Academy, a boarding school for young, mostly white, witches. The house this academy occupies looks like an old plantation house with its big white columns framing the large front porch on this Southern home. Within this boarding school, there is a rhetoric of family, where the young women are “sisters.” Cordelia, the headmistress, frequently refers to the students as “my girls,” with a motherly rhetoric, even when referring to her peers. This rhetorical framing of a grand house and a familial structure renders the academy as home and as privileged, which is amplified throughout the season. In sharp contrast, the only home of “the Voodoos” is Cornrow City, the beauty parlor that Marie Laveau operates. This two-story building with a wrought-iron balcony is more reminiscent of the buildings along Bourbon Street and other business establishments in New Orleans. This early contrast is not only socioeconomic, highlighting Black characters as people who work and white characters as people who have others work for them, but it also underscores a troubled white home with family secrets, as opposed to the community of the Black neighborhood. Wheatley asserts that gothic television narratives have several key features in relation to mood, stereotyped characters and plots, implied or explicit representations of the supernatural, structures and images of the uncanny, and “perhaps most importantly, homes and families which are haunted, tortured or troubled in some way” (Wheatley 2006, 3). Coven has a dark, gothic mood that highlights dread and terror. The highly stereotyped characters and plots are revealed through the family secrets of both the Coven itself and the other white families depicted in the show. For the Black community that Laveau exists in, there are no family secrets; instead, the most horrific elements of the past are external to this community. Just as Wheatley feels the most important genre element of gothic television is troubled homes and family, Brigid Cherry agrees in her analysis of Southern gothic television that themes related to “the dark undercurrents, secrets, and taboos within the central family” are a regionally Southern trait of the American gothic tradition (Cherry 2016, 462). However, in Coven, these traits are shown within the academy and other white homes, and not in the Black community. In Coven, white mothers and motherhood are inextricably linked to familial horror, to mutilated and murdered children, as well as to horrors and dismemberment inflicted upon their own bodies, usually at the hands of mothers. Barbara Creed argues that “when woman is presented as monstrous it is almost always in relation to her mothering and reproductive Coven on a of white witches and their stark mothering and white women are to and familial of mother and In contrast to the character of Marie Laveau is as a who is a good caretaker for her community, but she is the of white witches and as well as white supremacist patriarchal Marie Laveau is not shown people within her own or community. the violence she is in to white supremacist patriarchal However, her acts are more her with Voudou as evil, of the violence the women in the show the of abject women in popular television, like Coven, are in cultural to this show both the past and the present in their and of both past and misogyny and racism in the US. and are in and gothic explains that a in which the of and even for the characters the 2020, In Coven, and for the white characters bodies, on of and and even is important to the of who women to the patriarchal and of and the of women in popular narratives and these depictions of women against and a patriarchal which is in the of and through the of women who in and on woman at of in US culture an to racism is depicted in Coven, as an and of the past as well as its the narratives surrounding the white witches in the to violence including this is presented in the to witches. violence upon and the Black community in this narrative racial violence as abject on of asserts that the and abject are from the there is a and and 2020, the depiction of Marie Laveau in Coven, of in of as well as important as the of and can the of the be it or or of to the where some may be to be important others or even as 2020, highlights here, it is also important to racial in the US when Coven's depiction of Laveau's violence and the abject of from the or only to are in to the abject horrors the of slavery and the the show the and their stories, there is a of past and present throughout the show. 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The added that the on Laveau is that she is in a white, depiction of Hell, which Laveau her of culture and community in and as a symbolic and of white are of abject on while Laveau's and the and of Black community their the show punishes against white Laveau for her and the with white supremacist violence against Black people. The depiction of Marie Laveau in Coven as both an and an adaptation of historical and surrounding Laveau, while also her character as a sensationalized ultimately reinforcing the patriarchal and depictions of in US stories Laveau's Coven draws on historical depictions of Marie Laveau to this highlighting her maternal work in the Black and of New Orleans. This maternal work is presented in stark contrast to the and abject portrayals of white biological mothers and their in the season. her own as well as her slaves and is depicted as a monstrous mother while the evil of white and who be in her care and even plots to her own biological to mothers thus a stark contrast to the depiction of The mothering Marie Laveau in, is caretaking for others in her community, including and even for community the depiction of Laveau in the is to the practice of which is presented through a white, of and to an of her Laveau's with the depiction of her biological motherhood, so she mothers her community mothers who have the to be biological mothers motherhood a monstrous of on the to their This the of patriarchal white of white families and children, secrets in the Southern gothic tradition of abject within the while the of abject inflicted on Black mothers and Black This juxtaposition the white and Black mothers to be a progressive of can the and horrors of a society that of people and them, as The stark contrast white mothers in the and Black mothers are and from their as highlights the of white patriarchal The that Black mothers are biological motherhood the past in the US of slavery and This juxtaposition Laveau's mothering of her community of and community in the Ninth of New an while this of Black women as community mothers to be progressive in a it is the racist and depictions of as a and The in the show with the white, of the historical figure of Laveau in and stories from her era in the slavery and of the US This analysis is to an of portrayals of as horror, of white biological mothers as monstrous in gothic horror, and of the violence and of violence on Black families in the US. while the character Laveau is shown as a mother figure in the New Orleans Black community, she is ultimately and she the Black that her to Laveau is both biological motherhood and mothering in a white, of as a of the white and her of her as a mother with an for in a that The representation of the horrors of racism is the of Black women and culture through these of to white violence on Black Laveau is for the and of her community at the hands of white supremacist the of not to this as no or the