As this post is being written, the jury in the case of The Commonwealth of Massachusetts versus Lindsay Clancy remains deadlocked. But by the time you read this, a verdict may have been delivered. Whatever its status, the case has riveted the nation’s attention and raised profound questions about human nature.
Filicide – the murder of children by their parents – strikes most people as a crime so perverse and bizarre that it can only be characterized as literally unhuman. After all, human beings are hard-wired to protect and nurture their offspring. We sacrifice our time and energy, and, in extreme circumstances, our very lives, for the survival and success of our progeny. Surely, then, a mother like Lindsay Clancy must be a freakish aberration, and her abnormality must be the reason the case has attracted such widespread attention.
But that is not quite true.
The temptation toward filicide is deeply rooted in the darkest regions of human nature. At the Clancy trial, the prosecution and defense both called expert witnesses to testify on the motives and passions that led to the deaths of the children. But the pervasive nature of this tendency is not to be found in the works of experts. Rather, it lurks in our folk tales, myths, and religious tracts – works widely read and absorbed by regular people.
Examples abound.
In the Bible, Abraham is commanded by God to sacrifice his beloved son Isaac. He does not argue, nor does he try to flee, as Jonah did, to avoid carrying out such an unwelcome command. Instead, Abraham meekly complies with God’s directive. His knife is raised above his son’s neck, and he is but a moment away from murder when an angel appears and stops him. The angel instructs him to sacrifice a ram instead.
Some see moral progress in the story. God’s people have now been taught that human sacrifice is wrong. But if killing one’s children is wrong, why did God test Abraham by measuring his willingness to carry out such an evil act? And when Abraham demonstrated a willingness to do so, why didn’t God reprimand him for harboring such diabolic propensities?
Was it perhaps because God, having created man, understood the dark depths of human nature?
In other stories, mythic mothers, uninterrupted by intervening angels, go farther and actually commit filicide.
In Euripides’ play Medea, the protagonist helps Jason steal the Golden Fleece. In return, Jason marries her. After ten years together, Jason abandons Medea to marry the daughter of King Creon of Corinth, a more advantageous match. In her revenge, Medea murders their two sons, along with Jason’s new bride, thus ensuring that he will have no heir and no legacy.
In Hispanic folklore, the story of La Llorona (the weeping woman) appears in many versions, some rooted in Mesoamerican legends, others modernized to follow the Spanish conquest. In the most popular version, La Llorona is an indigenous woman who falls in love with a conquistador. After she bears him children, he abandons her for a wealthier woman. In her grief and fury, she gains revenge by drowning their children. After the murders, she is consigned to wander the countryside, crying out for her lost children. Today, in some parts of Mexico, mothers still discourage juvenile naughtiness by warning their children that La Llorona will seize and drown them if they disobey.
Shakespeare’s Lady Macbeth admits her willingness to commit filicide in a gruesome speech in Act 1, Scene 7. She shames her equivocating husband into assassinating King Duncan by demonstrating what a true will to power entails:
I have given suck, and know / How tender ’tis to love the babe that milks me: / I would, while it was smiling in my face, / Have pluck’d my nipple from his boneless gums, / And dash’d the brains out, had I so sworn as you / Have done to this.”
Is Macbeth horrified to discover he is married to a woman with such terrible thoughts? No, instead he is persuaded to follow her course.
Fathers too are no strangers to filicide. But when they commit it, they often do so for cold-hearted contractual reasons, rather than under the influence of uncontrollable passions.
Agamemnon sacrifices his eldest daughter Iphigenia in return for favorable winds for the Greek fleet to sail to Troy. The Titan Cronus devours his children when he learns that they will grow up and overthrow him from his perch as king of the gods.
We see the same fatal conduct in modern entertainment. Many viewers consider the most heart-wrenching scene in The Game of Thrones to be the death of Shireen, the innocent daughter of Stannis Baratheon. At her father’s command, the little girl is burned alive to satisfy the priestess Milisandre and enhance his prospects of military victory.
In each case, the father sees filicide as part of a deal. It is a malevolent investment that will generate a beneficial return.
These stories of child murder come to us from many different cultures, geographic regions, and eras. Some involve murders by parents in thrall to unbearable passions. Some involve murders by parents engaged in heartless bargains.
But all lead us to an unsettling truth. Filicide, though unspeakably evil, is not alien. Child murder is deeply embedded in our myths and folktales. We are gripped by the case of Lindsay Clancy, not because she represents something foreign to our nature – but because she represents something that is not foreign.
And that is what makes the case truly frightening.
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