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Maria abandons her husband and his world and immigrates to the United States, where she works
and raises her son by herself.
Maria, hence, despite all obstacles, secures her independence and motherhood, providing a
positive model for Greek women. She fulfills Parren’s image of the rebellious woman, who will not
simply overturn long‐standing prejudices but she will also construct a whole new reality for women,
far away from what Eleni experienced or represented. Furthermore, motherhood will grant the New
Woman with a new messianic role, which will place her at the heart of social and national progress as
Maria Anastasopoulou suggests in her study on Parren’s novels. 9
In 1901, Parren, when announcing in The Ladies’ Newspaper (23 December 1901)the publication
of The Witch in book form, explicates:
The Witch is a continuation of The Emancipated. It depicts the perfect model for the
New Woman, a woman through whom not only family and society but the whole world
expects its regeneration.
The New Woman does not enchant, does not stir up the emotions, nor does she
seduce souls by her provocative beauty, her affectation, or her fake, slavish submission.
The witch of this century is a woman strong in soul, mind, and character who, because of
hereditary progress, her nurture and her environment, has become the oasis in life’s
struggle, a light that dispels the darkness that has shrouded humanity’s mind and spirit for
centuries. The witch embodies truth and virtue, and, at the same time, beauty and charm
and youth that, strong and thriving, bring to life great races of people and wonderful
nations. 10
Maria, Anna (the name of principal character in The Witch) or simply the New Woman, Parren
deems as ideal for Greece of the time, echoes Eleni’s victories and steps on her groundbreaking
deeds but rewrites her story. She takes her out of the darkness, she hides her resignation and
vulnerability, she resumes her traditional roles and claims her citizenship on the grounds of her
morality and offer. In other words, she places her triumphantly at the dawn of a new era, which
should be sealed by a new contract: a contract, that, especially after the War of 1897 and a bitter
defeat for Greeks, as Efi Avdela and Angelica Psarra have argued, links motherhood with nationalism,
underestimates sexuality and helps women “to be included in their imagined nation without
disturbing the existing configuration of the gender system”. 11
Almost forty five years later, during the interwar years, in 1934, another woman, painter herself
and frequent contributor to The Ladies’ Newpaper, Athina Tarsouli (1884‐1975), wrote a biographical
account of Altamura’s days and experiences, embellished with her pictures, drawings and paintings.
Tarsouli’s work is a short monograph (43 pages) written in association with Eleni’s family. Although
quite selective (even inaccurate) concerning specific events, it is still a valuable source for it records
the oral tradition of the time and transcribes fragments from Eleni’s notebooks. Tarsouli was equally
interested in women’s history as well as in folklore and oral tradition. Her formative period, as a
writer and a painter, coincided with the emergence of modernism in Greece and its particular
attraction to folk culture.
Tarsouli, in her depiction of Eleni, endorsed Parren’s input. She pronounces, in the subtitle of her
book, Eleni as the first Greek woman painter after 1821, stressing also the connection to the War of
Independence. She, moreover, announces the same date as the year of Eleni’s birth, giving an
emblematic quality to the correlation. She also gives a detail account of her father’s action during the
war, praising his adventurous spirit, patriotic zeal and trade skills. Eleni, in many respects, is thus
presented as her father’s daughter who needs to perform her national identity while abroad: “My
child, do not forget that you are a Greekwoman”; the father’s advice will escort Eleni all the way to
Galanaki’s novel. 12