Saving Persephone
© 2007 Judatha Temple Kline
and used with permission

A girl's passage to womanhood is full of danger. Forces of patriarchal culture conspire to rob her of her very self, her truth, her strength. Women's bodies are used to sell things and feed the economy. Media images glorify emaciated women for whom hair, clothes, make-up and attracting men are priorities. The cost to girls is great. Peers who strive to imitate the images of women in the media pressure their friends to follow suit. Fitting in is paramount for girls in puberty. They may sacrifice their authentic self to achieve it.

Brown and Gilligan in their 1992 work Meeting at the Crossroads: Women's Psychology and Girls' Development describe an adolescent girl's developmental crisis as relational. The girls they studied "were sometimes making, sometimes resisting a series of disconnections that seem at once adaptive and psychologically wounding: between psyche and body, voice and desire, thoughts and feelings, self and relationship" (p. 7). What can be done to support a young girl through a transition so harrowing that she could lose herself? Can a girl find a place and a role in patriarchal culture and still maintain an authentic self?

The myth of Artemis offers insight into the fate of young girls. Once upon a time, young girls were actually sacrificed to this goddess. We see late reference to this in Homer's Iliad. Iphigenia, on the verge of womanhood, was offered up by her father as a sacrifice to Artemis so that the wind would blow and the Greek fleet of fighting men could set sail for doomed Troy. The young virgin was killed for the good of the state.

Iphigenia would never become a woman, never take on the domesticated female role in patriarchal Greece. One can imagine her undefiled soul taken by Artemis away from the world of men and into the wild where she is forever young and fierce and free. Artemis reigns over a wild wood, a place beyond civilization, beyond patriarchy. This is the realm the young girl loses when she puts down her bow and arrow, her skates and sticks, and offers up her wild life force to become domesticated, to fit in. She represses her strength and desires, sacrifices them to the goddess who buries them deep within the woman's psyche where no man, and not even she who has betrayed herself, can find them.

The suffering of the young woman who has been fooled by the patriarchy into giving herself away is depicted in the story of Callisto. Callisto was Artemis's best friend whom the goddess mercilessly rejected after Callisto was duped and made pregnant by Zeus. Zeus took the form of Artemis in order to get close to Callisto and then he raped her. Artemis rejected Callisto because Callisto was seduced. The unhappy nymph saw her own face and the promise of her own desires in the face of patriarchy. After giving herself away and losing Artemis, Callisto suffered abandonment by Zeus and revenge by Hera. She had no protection, no access to Artemis or her own power.

Young women are routinely seduced by imagery of patriarchy. Many see the promise of their own fulfillment through appearance, restraint and relationships with men and other women who similarly sacrifice their true selves in order to fit it. Many are abandoned without protection. Eating disorders reveal the strength of the seduction. Anorexia nervosa and bulimia are predominantly disorders of adolescent girls desperate to control their bodies and be thin at the cost of their health and very lives (Butcher, Mineka & Hooley, 2004).

The figures of Hecate, the wise and wild old crone, and Baubo, the ribald old hag, reveal that in the life of a woman, wildness may return. Hecate is a goddess associated with the moon. She is an old witch who sees all, knows all, and is utterly unapologetic for her wild and raucous being. Baubo is the woman who exposed herself to Demeter when the mother goddess was grieving for her lost child. By her rash impropriety Baubo made Demeter laugh in spite of her misery. These old female characters know their own power and live free within the patriarchy.

After a woman fulfills her role as wife and mother, she may find herself empowered or shattered by her own re-emerging power. Menopause is a powerful rite through which a woman may come face to face with Artemis, with her repressed wildness. She may run from her own face, stay busy and distracted or become depressed, or she may shed the skin of a domesticated life and sense her own raw power for the first time since puberty.

The myth of Demeter and Persephone offers another scenario for the young girl who is transitioning into womanhood. Persephone was stolen by Hades when she was 12 years old. Her mother went wild with grief. With Hecate's help, Demeter discovered the whereabouts of her daughter and the identity of the perpetrator. Demeter turned to Zeus for help only to find the he had conspired with Hades to allow him to take the girl. Demeter was furious. She refused to join the gods and goddesses on Olympus and roamed the earth as a mortal. She refused to perform her duties and exercise her power to make crops grow. The people of the earth were starving. Zeus began to take notice because if all of the people died, then the gods would also perish. He sent Iris the messenger goddess of the rainbow to persuade Demeter to relent in her abdication of her role. Demeter refused. Next Zeus sent Hermes, the master negotiator, the archetype of thieves and liars, orator extraordinaire. Demeter remained unmoved. Eventually, a bargain had to be struck. Hermes was sent to Hades to negotiate. In the end, Persephone, who had taken her place as Hades' wife and Queen of the Underworld, returned to her mother every spring and lived with her for half of each year. Their reunion was a cause for joy and celebration.

The story of Demeter and Persephone offers a compromise for the young girl in transition. Persephone, through the strong intercessions of her mother, remains in touch with her genuine feminine identity, her 12-year old self. At the same time she accepts her role within the patriarchal structure. Young girls who are transitioning into womanhood require the help of a strong feminine force to counteract the formidable power of the patriarchy to seduce. A girl's mother through her example may encourage a young daughter to stubbornly hold on to her precious uniqueness and nurture her true self. Mothers, grandmothers, teachers, aunties or friends may guide daughters through the perilous rite of passage that is puberty so that girls become women who stay connected with their powerful and authentic life force.

The story of Demeter and Persephone may be seen as a story of a mother saving her daughter. It is a story of a mother saving herself. A mother who would encourage her daughter to nurture a steadfast belief in her own power, strength and image must have preserved or resurrected the ability to do this for herself. If she has not, she is likely to conspire with the forces that would steal her daughter away. She is likely to put her faith in the patriarchy and encourage her daughter to do the same thing.

Demeter came into contact with Hecate and Baubo when her daughter was lost. She found her wild non-compliant nature and used it to influence the patriarchy, to save her daughter and herself. Like Persephone, Demeter went on to fulfill her feminine role within the patriarchal context. She is the Mother to all and the Goddess of Agriculture. At the same time, she has what she wants, connection with her daughter and her own precious and powerful feminine self.

References:

• Butcher, J. N., Mineka, S. & Hooley, J. M. (2004). Abormal Psychology. Boston: Pearson.
• Brown, L. M. & Gilligan, C. (1992). Meeting at the Crossroads: Women's Psychology and Girls' Development. New York: Ballantine.

Judatha Temple Kline earned a doctorate in Mythological Studies from Pacifica Graduate Institute. She works as an instructor and counselor in southern California. Her daughter, Madeline, is 13.

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