Not Mommy’s Little Girl Anymore

I learned as a child that the Persephone myth is meant to explain the seasons, but as an adult I think it’s about sex, seduction, death, and losing your innocence--and how crazy it will drive your mother when you discover all of this. 

The story goes that one day, while Persephone is out picking flowers, the earth opens and Hades, god of the underworld, rises up, abducts her, and takes her down to the underworld to be his wife. Persephone’s mother, Demeter, loses her mind with grief, throwing the world into winter. She goes to retrieve her daughter, and in some versions gets an assist from Zeus, who is upset by human complaints about the barren state of the world. Hades agrees to release Persephone, but because she has swallowed six pomegranate seeds, he has to keep her for half of each year. 

In my most recent reading, I noticed that there’s a lot of sexual imagery in the story. I’ve seen a lot of romance-novel orgasms described as “earth-shattering,” and I now picture Hades’ appearance rocking Persephone’s world in a metaphoric rather than literal way. Those seeds she swallows--especially when I remember the juicy, sensual burst of a pomegranate seed in the mouth--sound erotic, too. Perhaps they seal Persephone’s destiny in the underworld because they represent the sexual enjoyment that she has found with Hades.  

Persephone spends time in the daylight being a good girl for Mommy. But she also continues to withdraw to the underworld to be with her husband. There, she is Queen, a mature woman who presumably possesses some autonomy, and the secrets of life and death are open to her. Demeter knows about Persephone’s other life, but she tries to go on as if it doesn’t exist, going into mourning each time her daughter descends.

Demeter desperately wants to turn back the clock, to regain her daughter as a child, but Persephone can’t unlearn what her experience with Hades teaches her. As the wife of Hades, she’s learned about both sex and death, which are pretty universally acknowledged as part of the transition to adulthood.

This story beautifully illustrates the difficulty of adult female sexuality. Even if a woman has “lost her innocence”--i.e., become an adult--she’s often asked to pretend she still has it. The compartmentalization of Persephone’s life--six months above, six months below--makes me wish for better ways to blend that dark, private world with the public persona that lives in the light--for her, for myself, and for all. 

Hat tip to Senior Editor Rylan Hunter’s post on double lives, for getting me thinking about the subject.