Persephone’s First Descent: The Theological Origins of a Female Developmental Narrative

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size AcknowledgmentsMy thanks to Anthony Uhlmann, Di Dickenson, Diego Bubbio, Elizabeth Hale, and Helen Young for their helpful feedback on this article. This work was funded through an Australian Government Research Training Program Scholarship.Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1 See, for example, Ingelow’s Persephone, whose matured face now bears the shadow of Hades. Also, Shakespeare’s Proserpina, whose spring flowers have all fallen from Dis’s wagon.2 See, for example, Hardy’s Tess who gives birth to Sorrow after her encounter with the Hades figure Alec d’Urberville. Also – less straightforwardly – the experiences of the protagonist in Margaret Atwood’s “Surfacing.”3 See, for example, Claudian’s Proserpine, for whom the matrons of Elysium “place the wedding-veil upon her head to hide her troubled blushes” (ln 324–5). See also the separation of mother and married daughter in Greenwell’s “Demeter and Cora.”4 For an excellent analysis of female development in versions of the myth, see Blackford, who identifies this theme in works as diverse as E. T. A. Hoffmann’s Nutcracker and Mouse King, Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women, Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, J. M. Barrie’s Peter and Wendy, Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden, E. B. White’s Charlotte’s Web, J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight, and Neil Gaiman’s Coraline.5 From this perspective, the myth has been linked to the rites of the Haloa (Skov), the Thesmophoria (Prytz Johansen) and the Eleusinian Mysteries (Lincoln). See Suter (73–85) for a detailed examination of theories connecting the Persephone myth to various initiation/coming-of-age rites.6 The Underworld theme may have become connected to the theme of fertility through a conflation of these two realms beneath the earth: the realm in which seeds are planted and from which vegetation springs, and the realm where mortals go after death (Suter 141). The dread goddess can in this way be conflated and merged with the spring goddess. This explains how the sacred marriage to ensure fertility comes to be located paradoxically in the land of the dead.7 All line references to the Hymn are from Foley’s translation (Foley 2–27).8 The transformation of the divine order which occurs through the narrative of the Hymn takes place within the context of a shifting theological perspective. As Suter has argued (2002), tensions within the Hymn indicate that an earlier goddess-centered story of a hieros gamos is here being incorporated into the Olympian frame.9 See, for example, Claudian’s Rape of Proserpine.10 By later introducing these goddesses when she tells her own story, Persephone may be suggesting that she takes a different view of her situation from the narrator of the Hymn: rather than presenting herself as ready for marriage, she aligns herself with those divinities who have rejected it.11 Another notable detail is that these flowers do not naturally bloom at the same time. This suggests that the cycle of the seasons has not yet been established at the beginning of the Hymn (Foley 34).12 The reference to a “toy” could be linked to the rites of young Greek girls who, marrying young, would often dedicate their toys to Artemis upon their marriages (Foley 127; see also Suter 56).13 This is the second longest speech in the Hymn, shorter than Persephone’s later speech by only two lines. Length of speech correlates to relative status in poetry of this kind (Suter 30), so the fact that Persephone and Demeter are given such long speeches emphasizes their importance at the expense of Zeus. This undermines the assertion of his authority which is stated at the beginning of the Hymn, providing further evidence that the balance of power is unstable in the poem.14 Many symbols related to the Eleusinian Mysteries are introduced at this point: Demeter sits on a fleece-covered stool, refuses wine, asks for a drink made of barley water and mint (similar to the kykeōn), and indulges in lewd humor with Iambe.15 Yet, as we will see, her angry demand for a temple in fact leads to her granting the Mysteries to mortals, which will assuage the pain of their mortality. Her anger here is then perhaps better interpreted as being directed toward mortality itself, rather than the mortals who must bear it.16 See, for example, Rich’s Demeter whose love and anger are able “to undo rape and bring [Persephone] back from death” (240).17 Excepting one instance at line 56, where Hekate calls her Persephone when she asks Demeter what has become of her.18 They were also ambiguously sexed: “the womblike shape and bloodlike liquid that flowed from it associated it with the female; its seeds were a male feature” (Arthur 237).19 See, for example, “The Myth of Innocence” in Glück’s Averno. Also, Malcolm’s “Persephone.”20 For an example of a willing Persephone, see Rosenblatt’s “A Last Game of Childhood.” For a more ambivalently willing Persephone, see Dove’s “Persephone in Hell,” in which Persephone, surrounded by men, is “drowning in flowers” (26).21 This decree does not originate with Zeus – it seems to be a fact Demeter knows about the world. Her admission of it here perhaps shows that Demeter now recognizes the limits of her own power, learned through her failure to immortalize Demophoön. The survival of mortals relies on the goddess surrendering any claim to omnipotence: “It is Demeter’s acceptance of her daughter’s intermittent residence in the Underworld … that assures cosmic stability and predictability” (Felson-Rubin and Deal 197) in the form of a regular cycle of seasonal fertility.22 See, for example, Dove’s “The Narcissus Flower,” in which Persephone learns that “you can live beyond dying” (12). Also, Malcolm’s “Demeter” in which Persephone comes to hate her mother for allowing her sacred body to be “defiled” (158).23 The precise details and significance of the rites remain contested, but evidence for the Mysteries presents us with a rich array of symbolism linking life, death, fertility, and the natural world. We know, for instance, that “the garments of initiates were later used as swaddling clothes for newborn babies” (Foley 69), and the uninitiated were “pictured as women carrying water in broken pots” (Foley 71). About the moment of revelation, Euripides writes, “One buries children, one gains new children, one dies oneself; and this men take heavily, carrying earth to earth. But it is necessary to harvest life like a fruit-bearing ear of grain, and that one be, the other not” (Foley 69). For a fuller discussion of the Mysteries, see Kerényi.24 We learn more about the effect of the Mysteries from other sources. Cicero tells us that “the initiate at Eleusis learns ‘how to live in joy, and how to die with better hopes’” (Foley 71). A funereal inscription of a high priest of the Mysteries of the Imperial Age states that “he had shown the mystai [initiates] ‘that death is not an evil but something good’” (Foley 71).25 Foley (38–9) identifies the frequent references to seeing and hearing in the text. For example, the narcissus is “awesome for all to see” (ln 10), Persephone’s cry (ln 20) is heard by Demeter and Hekate alone, and Persephone’s hope (ln 35) lasts only so long as she can see the sky.26 This is the only reference in archaic literature that locates Demeter and Persephone on Olympus. Placing them beside Zeus is a way in which the author of the Hymn attempts to incorporate their story into the Olympian frame (Suter 37).27 The Mysteries gave mortals some control over this: by propitiating Demeter in her sacred rites, mortals helped ensure the return of Persephone. Propitiating Demeter in the Mysteries also gave mortals greater control over the seasonal cycle which has been instituted through Demeter’s actions in the Hymn, and thus greater control over their agricultural prosperity (Rudhardt 208).Additional informationFundingThis work was supported by the Western Sydney University.