Persephone & Demeter: how ‘feminist’ retellings actually fail women
Warning: Discussions of sexual abuse
During my fourth semester in uni I got to read the poem Helen by H. D. for my American Poetry class. The poem talks about the hatred the Greek people feel towards Helen whom they consider the sole person responsible for the Trojan war. Maybe, saying they considered her the ‘person’ responsible isn’t correct because they don’t act as if she’s human at all; Helen is a symbol, the symbol of all the misfortune and death that plagued the Greeks, responsible for the decisions every man in her story made, responsible for even her probable abduction (it is not clear in the poem whether Helen followed Paris willingly or not). Her existence alone is a fault and the Greeks “could love indeed the maid,/ only if she were laid,/ white ash amid funereal cypresses.”.
This is what we call a ‘feminist retelling’ of the story of Helen of Troy (or The Beautiful Helen as we call her in Greece), a poem talking about the dehumanization women face, the responsibility we supposedly bare even for the actions of our attackers and the use of our looks as a mean to control us. As a myth the Helen of Troy is one of the first candidates one might consider when wanting to discuss feminist issues and indeed many have—the possibilities are there, waiting to be taken advantage of. And same goes for other women figures present in Greek and Roman mythology like Medusa who in the roman version of the myth told by Ovid was raped by Neptune (Poseidon) in the temple of Minerva (Athena) and was turned into a gorgon and has today become a symbol for sexual abuse survivors through feminist writings.
Alongside these mythical figures there’s Persephone, daughter of Demeter and Queen of the Underworld; but unlike Helen and Medusa, Persephone is treated very differently in comparison; where we take the stories of the first two women and rewrite them in order to uplift their voices and condemn their oppressors/abusers, in the case of Persephone we actually do the opposite.
The Abduction of Persephone or The Rape of Persephone is a myth found both in Greek and Roman mythology and there are many different versions of it (a few but famous examples of works where you can read about the myth include Hysiod’s Theogonia [it’s briefly mentioned there], the Homeric hymn To Demeter and Ovid’s Metamorphoses and Fasti) but they all go something like this; Hades, King of the Underworld falls in love with Persephone, daughter of Demeter, the Goddess of agriculture, and abducts her, taking her to his Kingdom and making her his wife (this means he rapes her). Demeter searches the earth for her daughter but is unable to find her and due to her rage and pain she stops the earth from producing crops. Zeus, the ruler of Gods, who has prior given his blessing to Hades’ plan, pressured by starving humans and the other Gods, orders Hades to let Persephone go and the latter agrees. Before setting her free though, Hades tricks the young Goddess into eating pomegranate seeds to ensure that she will have to come back to him, thusly never truly freeing her from his grip. From that point onward Persephone splits her year in half, spending six months on Earth with her mother and six months in the Underworld with Hades.
The purpose of the myth was to explain the origin of the seasons; when Persephone is with her mother everything flourishes, we have spring and summer and when she leaves to stay with Hades, everything dies and autumn and winter take over. Besides this there is the symbolism of a mother grieving the loss of her child (death literally taking her daughter), further emphasized by the fact that seasons are symbols of life stages (birth-maturing-death-decay) and the circle of life as a whole. But what’s essentially being told loud and clear as day is the story of a victim of sexual abuse and the struggles her mother faces trying to help her. Persephone is a young girl who was out in the meadows playing with her friends and she’s abducted and abused by a powerful man (Hades is one of the three most powerful Gods) and her mother, who despite being one of the most powerful Goddesses is unable to help her because no one is at her side,—not even Zeus, her brother and father of her daughter and ruler of Gods, who instead supports the perpetrator and even assists him in the abduction of his daughter by her uncle. Not only that but by the end when Zeus does do something, it’s only to avoid further conflict with the other Gods and what’s worse, Persephone is unable to fully escape her abuser and has to spend half of each of her years with him. It is a heartbreaking and disgusting story that could be used to talk about sexual abuse, sexual abuse by family members, abuse of power, about the struggles victims and the families of victims go through under the Patriarchy, the corrupt political system they live under and the corrupted justice system that cares more about the abuser’s well-being than the victim’s and ultimately explore the very intricate relationship between mother and daughter.
In contrast to that, we most often come across a complete reconstruction of Persephone’s story, including the identity of her defender and her abuser. The consensus in today’s pop culture is that Persephone and Hades have this wonderful relationship based on mutual respect and love, ‘especially for a Greek mythology couple’ (oh, how much I hate this)—I don’t know about you but I wouldn’t call a relationship based on abduction and rape to be a mutually respectful and loving one. In the modern retellings of the myth which play off of this misrepresentation of the myth of Persephone and Demeter rather than being backed by actual interest, love and research in Greek Mythology, it is Demeter who is the abuser and Hades Persephone’s saviour. Long gone are the days of the heartbroken mother, trying desperately to find her daughter all alone and falling into depression when failing; now we have the overbearing, controlling mother, stifling her daughter who is desperate to get away while Hades, the rapist, is the tall, dark and handsome, misunderstood love interest who offers her the escape she needs and with whom she ends up having a romantic relationship with.
The narrative in this modern version of the story wants to focus on women’s sexual liberation; Demeter is the representation of purity culture and the general stigma surrounding women’s desires while Hades is providing a way for Persephone to fight these harmful ideas by being the object of her desire and the man she has sex with—or Demeter is simply turned into a caricature of a horrible mother (how feminist of the writer to use clichéd misogynistic stereotypes) and Hades is a sexy man whom Persephone meets and gets the chance to have sex with; I like giving the benefit of the doubt and I’m hopeful that at least one of the people writing these retellings wanted to talk about something important, even if I don’t agree with the execution.
There is no doubt we should be fighting for the sexual freedom of all women and feminine presenting people and against the shame surrounding their sexual desires or the lack thereof; but what good does it do to vilify the figure of a woman fighting for her child and grieving for them because she couldn’t save them? It is a tragicomedy, really, to try and portray Persephone as a liberated woman at the side of her abuser. I would also argue that having sex doesn’t automatically make the woman at the centre of the story a feminist icon—a point that I feel many books, including these types of retellings, don’t understand. There is nothing liberating or feminist about a woman being taught what bodily autonomy and human rights is by the penis of a man, let alone an abusive man. But that’s a topic for another day. Be it misogynistic comments, slut-shaming, taking away our rights to education and bodily autonomy, domestic abuse, rape, femicides and so much more, abuse against women continues to plague our world and sharing the point of view of the victims and their families should be what we seek to do, especially when we take the word ‘feminist’ and put it all over our work.
There’s two things I’m fully aware of; feminism has many different branches and one of them, liberal feminism, is the mainstream. By mainstream, I, of course, mean that which is supported by capitalist corporations and right-wing politicians and shoved down our throats on a regular base because it ignores the issues of women who are part of minorities and doesn’t actually strive for any kind of real change in our societies—it is a form of conservative feminism that supports (even indirectly) the patriarchal system that it proclaims going against and capitalism, which, being fundamentally connected to patriarchy, is not a system of equality either. It operates a lot more like today’s Patriarchy than Feminism; having accepted to a very certain extend the changes that the feminist movement brought about, the most privileged (white, cis, heterosexual, able-bodied women in this case) reproduce the lie that there’s no need for any kind of fundamental change anymore and that they too can make their dreams come true and hope for a better tomorrow, all the while ignoring the issues of marginalized groups and perpetuating the hate and prejudice against them. It is that branch of feminism that thinks wearing a t-shirt with ‘girl-boss’ printed on it and screaming ‘girl power!’ or, in this case, having sexual relations with and romanticising an abusive man because it is ‘your choice’, is advocating for equality. This is the feminism that most people in our societies get familiar with and blindly follow because they do not do the necessary research and critical engagement resulting to, amongst many other things, so many of the stories we get in our hands.
So many Persephones and Demeters live among us on this planet and instead of using their story to talk about them, we betray them by romanticising the men who abuse them. If the name of the myth isn’t telling enough and if one’s not interested in respecting Ancient Greek culture by doing the proper reading and research, a Wikipedia visit will be enough to let anyone know what the myth of The Abduction of Persephone is actually about and hopefully, it will deter writers, and artists in general, in the future from drowning what could be a very powerful story about abuse, trauma, survival and familial bonds.