Post-feminist Impasses in Popular Heroine Television

The Persephone Complex

Alison Horbury

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781137511379
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Regional Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

Alison Horbury investigates the reprisal of the myth of Persephone - a mother-daughter plot of separation and initiation - in post-feminist television cultures where, she argues, it functions as a symptom expressing a complex around the question of sexual difference - what Lacan calls 'sexuation', where this question has been otherwise foreclosed.

1

The Myth of Persephone and the Hymn to Demeter

The myth of Persephone survives from at least 2000 BC and has informed art and storytelling in literature, poetry, dance, and theatre throughout the centuries (Foley 1999, 151–69). Though myth formed part of Greek theology, it was a religion with no formal ‘divine scripture’ nor ‘priestly class of interpreters’ and was instead lived through ritual and mythic storytelling (Foley 1999, 84). Linked to a significant ritual in ancient Greece – the Eleusinian mysteries – the Homeric Hymn to Demeter is an example of the way myths are ‘endlessly changed and reimagined for every generation by its artists and poets,’ where each successive generation ‘is left to fill in what we experience as the gaps and to explain the religious significance of the story in the context of his/her knowledge’ (Foley 1999, 84–5). Yet, as the myth appears in a range of cultural and political epochs, its original ‘meaning’ – intended or otherwise – remains contested. This malleability nevertheless makes it, as Hayes notes, a palimpsest, for each time it is retold it reveals ‘vital changes in the relationship between human beings and the natural world, as well as major shifts in the economy of social power over the millennia’ (1994a, 2).

I begin this chapter with a close reading of the myth and its symbolism, before showing how the Hymn to Demeter has functioned culturally and politically for feminists and feminist psychoanalysts such that the myth appears situated at the fault-line of a poststructuralist debate over the question ‘woman.’ To feminists the myth articulates discontent towards patriarchy, while also providing the means of overcoming this discontent through the distortion of mythic materials to reflect feminist fantasies. Psychoanalytic literature on the myth suggests a similar symptomatic usage, where the myth narrates a particular impasse: this time, the female triangular situation of Oedipal phases. We begin to see here the way that feminist and psychoanalytic discourses on Persephone replicate structuralist and poststructuralists debates about what of myth depicts the natural world and what is a cultural construction by this world. Moreover, the oppositions of these debates are reprised in debates between poststructuralist feminisms and post-feminist discourses on ‘woman’ (elaborated in Chapter 2). The work of Suter (2005) is significant here, for she argues the mother-daughter plot of the Hymn is a re-imagining of older mythic materials to ‘accommodate’ rival goddesses from different cultures and locations, and thus posits the Hymn to Demeter as a political compromise formation. I follow Suter’s argument by proposing that the Persephone myth in post-feminist television for women animates the confrontation between feminist and post-feminist politics of ‘woman,’ staging a new compromise formation that expresses a complex formed over questions of feminine sexuation.

The Homeric Hymn to Demeter

The Hymn to Demeter, dated from 650–550 BC (Foley 1999, 29) and written in the Homeric style of epic poetry, is the most detailed and commonly referred to rendering of the Persephone myth in the twentieth century.¹ Much classical scholarship draws from the myth’s depiction in archaeological artefacts (Bachofen 1967; Neumann 1974; Zuntz 1971) connected to the Eleusinian Mysteries – considered one of the most influential religious ceremonies in the ancient world (Rohde 1966; Kerényi 1967; Spaeth 1996). And the symbolism of these sources are read in combination with literary sources dating from later periods, notably, ‘The Rape of Proserpine’ in Ovid’s Metamorphoses (Ovid 2004, estimated between 2–8 AD), and the ‘Hymn to Proserpine’ in the Orphic Hymns (Taylor 1787, estimated between third century BC and second century AD). As the most complete version used by feminists and psychoanalysts in the twentieth century, however, I base my discussion on Foley’s well-cited translation (1999).²

The Hymn to Demeter opens on the scene of a nameless girl, Korê, daughter of Zeus and Demeter (or ‘Deo,’ grain goddess, and Zeus’ sister), picking flowers with ‘the deep breasted daughters of Ocean’ (line 5). Korê is particularly taken with a narcissus flower, a deliberately attractive ‘snare’ set for her by Hades (also known as Erebos or Aïdōneus – both her mother and father’s brother), ruler of the underworld (9), who has ‘by Zeus’ design’ been given permission to take Korê as his consort (9, 30). As Korê reaches out to pluck the flower, the earth opens and Hades ‘snatches’ her into his chariot, whisking her off to the underworld. Korê calls to her father, and Hekate (goddess of the night, associated with crossroads) hears her cry, while Helios (the ‘all seeing’ sun god) witnesses her abduction, and Korê thus becomes known as Persephone, Queen of the underworld.³ Demeter hears her daughter’s cry, and her heart is ‘seized’ with grief (40). She races to the scene, but no one will tell her where Persephone is, and for nine days and nights she roams the earth looking for her. Eventually Hekate tells Demeter that she heard but did not see the abduction, and the two go to Helios, who tells Demeter that Hades took Persephone to become his consort (see also, lines 9, 30, 79).

Furious, Demeter veils herself, disguising her divine status in the form of a mortal, leaves Olympus, and wanders until she reaches the royal house of Eleusis, Keleos. Demeter is misrecognized by the four daughters of Keleos as an old woman past sexual and reproductive prime (101–2). Demeter introduces herself as ‘Doso,’ telling them a fictional tale of arriving from Crete after being abducted and raped by pirates, before escaping to Eleusis. The sisters organize that Demeter becomes nurse to their baby brother Demophoön. Demeter follows but remains veiled, silent with grief, and refuses any food or drink. Iambe (sometimes known as Baubo), an old woman of the house, jokes and cheers Demeter.⁴ Demophoön flourishes under Demeter’s care as she anoints him with ambrosia and buries him in the fire at night to make him immortal. One night Demophoön’s mother, Metaneira, spies on Demeter and shrieks to see her baby in the fire. Angered by the interruption to her labour (for as a mortal Demophoön ‘cannot escape death’ line 262), Demeter reveals herself as the Goddess. She tells the people of Eleusis to build a temple in her honour and teaches them the rituals to perform there. They build the temple, but Demeter is still ‘wasting with desire for her deep-girt daughter’ (304), and ‘ordains’ that the ‘fertile earth’ not bring forth any produce (305–9). When brought to Zeus’ attention, Zeus sends Iris to tell Demeter to return to Olympus. Demeter is ‘unmoved’ (324) and for a year will not release the crops from the earth, maintaining she will continue to do so until she has seen her daughter. Finally, Zeus sends Hermes with a message for Hades to let Persephone return to her mother. Hades smiles and agrees, but first informs Persephone of her status as his consort and, as such, that she will ‘possess the greatest honors among the gods’ (266), and she leaps ‘for joy’ (371). Hades then informs Persephone that she may return to her mother and ‘stealthily’ slips a pomegranate seed into her mouth as she is leaving (371–2). Mother and child are blissfully reunited, but Demeter senses foul play, and asks Persephone if she has eaten while in the underworld. Persephone tells her mother – in an elaborate recounting of events – that Hades ‘stealthily/put in my mouth’ the pomegranate seed, and ‘compelled me against my will and by force to taste it’ (411–13). According to Zeus’ decree, Persephone must thus stay with Hades for a third of the year, and ‘when the earth blooms in spring’ will ‘rise again’ to be with her mother for the other two thirds (401–3). Zeus sends Rheia (Demeter’s mother) to inform Demeter, urging her to ‘not rage overmuch’ (467), and placate her with her choice of honours, entreating her to return to Olympus (461–3) and ‘make the grain grow fertile for human kind’ again (469).

Though depictions of Korê/Persephone and Demeter shift in different epochs, four themes are commonly read in the symbolism of the myth: agriculture, initiation, the establishment of a meaningful death, and ‘the feminine’ archetype. The agricultural theme of the myth is clear: Demeter is goddess of the grain and crops. In her grief she refuses to let the earth produce food, and repeats this every year when parted from her daughter, providing a meaningful explanation for the seasons and development of agriculture. Room traces ‘Persephone’ from the Greek phero ‘to bring’ and phone ‘to murder’ or ‘slaughter’ (1990, 239). Given her ‘contradictory’ relation to the themes of death and rebirth (particularly in relation to agriculture), Room suggests that Persephone’s name can also be traced in phero, ‘to bear’ – hinting at her role in bearing fruit – and phao or phaino, ‘to shine’ or ‘show,’ in her function of bringing forth agriculture, as the ‘fruit-shower’ (1990, 239). Equally, Persephone’s name has links with pertho, and ephapto, ‘to destroy’ and ‘to fix’ respectively, making her the ‘destruction-fixer’ (Room 1990, 240).

The agricultural significance of the myth links food with life, acknowledging the importance of death in the renewal of life in the Eleusinian mysteries. The scant information regarding the mysteries suggests that pigs were sacrificed one year during the ritual, and the rotting carcasses brought up the following year to fertilize the crops (Hayes 1994a, 6). When Persephone returns to Hades in the underworld, the crops die and nothing will grow, but with her return in spring, new life is created. Thus, by placing a living thing (Persephone) into the ground, the possibility of renewed life and growth is ensured. Moreover, as Rohde argues (1966, 219), by putting something living in the place of death, death takes on new significance, and the Eleusinian mysteries are thought to signify recognition of life and death as entwined – for though death cannot be avoided (as Demeter’s attempt to make Demophoön immortal illustrates), a more meaningful death and afterlife can be imagined by initiates of these mysteries after completing the rituals (Rohde 1966). The Hymn, in fact, closes on the scene of Demeter educating the people of Eleusis in the mysteries, where ‘blessed is the mortal on earth who has seen these rites, /but the uninitiate who has no share in them never/has the same lot once dead in the dreary darkness’ (480–2). Indeed, the Eleusinian mysteries show development of a religious practice that honours the psyche (‘soul’ in Greek) in death, evident in the use of the myth to decorate royal tombs in Vergina and Amphipolis, Greece. Not surprisingly then, Freud links Persephone to the story of Psyche (SE12, 291–301). Psyche is commanded by Aphrodite to go into the underworld and receive a ‘beauty box’ from Persephone that, for Lacan (SVIII) and Downing (1988, 47), completes Psyche’s transition to ‘consciousness.’ As Downing argues, Psyche’s story shares many similarities to Korê’s in the transition of a young girl toward a new identity (1988, 49) – a theme prominent in feminist and psychoanalytic approaches, as I will shortly discuss.⁵

The pomegranate, as a symbol of fertility, signifies both human and agricultural reproduction (Suter 2005, 98). Visually, it is connotative of womb, blood and menstruation, symbolizing female sexual maturity and fertility. Korê is literally translated as ‘maiden,’ and she becomes known as Persephone only once Hades has abducted her, marking her transition from virgin girl to sexually mature woman or wife (Neumann 1974, 308). The myth is thus often presumed to be the story of a young girl’s initiation (Shorter 1987), and Persephone’s eating of pomegranate seeds specifically interpreted as sexual initiation (Kulish and Holtzman 1998; Agha-Jaffar 2002; Suter 2005) – a dual metaphor for agricultural themes of regeneration. Persephone takes the seed inside (underground) so that new life might grow with her return, a theme ritually symbolized in the Eleusinian mysteries (Meyer 1987, 5). And though the mysteries were for male and female citizens, many interpretations of the myth strongly identify ‘the feminine’ archetypal structure – the story of female development and experience – as the most significant underlying theme. Yet, as ‘the feminine’ is a problematic category, studies of Persephone highlight the contingency of the epistemologies shaping each interpretation.

The feminine theme is evident in the myth’s story of mother and daughter: one a revered goddess, one a girl who transitions to the status of goddess by the end of the narrative. Scholars of anthropology, however, suggest the Hymn to Demeter depicts a transition from a gynocentric, matriarchal, or matrifocal system of culture, to patriarchal culture (Bachofen 1967; Graves 1948). Pre-Homeric versions of the myth, for example, prioritized the goddesses, while in newer (Hellenic) versions such as the Hymn, the narrative depicts ‘the displacing of the matriarchal worship of the Great Goddess in ancient Greece by the patriarchal worship of the Olympian Gods’ (Hayes 1994a, 2).⁶ That is, in the development of the Hellenic, Homeric version (somewhere between 800–500 BCE), Zeus becomes the figure who organizes the women in the story, permitting Hades to take Korê (Suter 2005, 23). The role of Zeus, in performing the ‘function of the father’ of separating mother and child, troubles feminist readings, yet, as I will ultimately show, is present as a prominent question in the plots of Alias and Grey’s Anatomy.

Traces of earlier goddess worship nevertheless remain in the Hymn. For though Demeter and Korê/Persephone are represented as individuals, these figures were originally depicted as different faces of the one goddess, known as the ‘triple Goddess’ (Kerényi 1958, 230), who embodied different aspects of woman’s life: virgin, mother, crone. As Graves argues, the triple Goddess expressed ‘three characters’ of sky, earth, and underworld; Persephone (as underworld) is responsible for ‘Birth, Procreation and Death,’ but in all aspects she embodied ‘primitive woman – woman the creatress and destructress’ (1948, 339). Further, Persephone etymologically appears in earlier myths as ‘Pherephassa, Pherephatta and Phersephonia,’ suggesting she derives from a hybrid of earlier goddesses (Room 1990, 240), and I would note, here, that where the ‘authentic’ identity of post-feminist Persephone figures is thought to be similarly located in the past – it pushes the narrative towards an analysis of her genealogy that mirrors this scholarship on Persephone.

The specifically ‘feminine’ aspect of the myth anticipates more recent debates about the psychology of ‘woman.’ Archaeological relics suggest Korê’s transformation into Persephone is symbolized through the representation of Persephone as her mother’s twin (Neumann 1974, 309) such that, for Neumann, the significance of the myth lies not only in cycles of death and rebirth, agricultural fertility, and the seasons but also – particularly when the myth appears in earlier periods – in denoting a sacrifice to ‘the Great Goddess as the female self’ (1974, 319). For, after ‘the reunion of the young Korê turned woman, with Demeter, the Great Mother’ one perceives, through the emotional sufferance experienced, the significance of the female self (Neumann 1974, 319). It is only after this process that the woman achieves ‘union on a higher plane with the spiritual aspect of the Feminine’ (Neumann 1974, 319). Hayes agrees, arguing that prior to the inscription of the myth in the Homeric Hymn, ‘the maiden was viewed literally as part of the mother, the mother’s younger self’ (1994a, 8). Subsequently, images of the myth are thought to depict ‘the feminine’ as ‘susceptible to endless renewal’ (Neumann 1974, 309), and Jung, accordingly, nominates the myth’s specificity as feminine experience, where Korê and Demeter are interchangeable figures of the feminine archetype in different stages of development, ‘appear[ing] now as the one, now as the other’ (1989, 145). So dominant are the themes of the feminine, Jung argues, it is a story belonging exclusively to women and holds nothing for man: ‘Demeter-Korê exists on the plane of the mother-daughter experience, which is alien to man and shuts him out’ (1989, 164). Foley observes (1999, 80) that Jung is supported by interpretations identifying the myth’s ‘privileging’ of female relationships and experience of ‘the divine mother and daughter’ but nonetheless maintains the significance of Zeus, Hades, Helios, and Hermes in both instigating action and bringing about resolution to the events in the Hymn, if not in all versions.

Feminist interpretations

The myth has often been retold in Western literature in works identified with a feminist voice, such as Mary Shelley (2004[1820]), who used the myth to narrate her grief over the death of her child. D. H. Lawrence, Margaret Atwood, and Alice Walker have contributed prominent examples during the twentieth century (see Hayes 1994b; Radford 2007), as has Edith Wharton’s entire oeuvre (see Donovan 1989; Louis 1999). And, following archaeological theses that the myth depicts a transition into patriarchal cultures, feminist scholars use the myth to make claims about modern notions of patriarchy and its effects on women. Some second wave feminists renounced the myth, for the goddesses presented ‘images of women that have supported the feminine mystique by associating femininity with self-renunciating and un-thinking physicality’ (Guber 1979, 302). As part of second wave feminism’s critique of essential or ‘natural’ femininity, for instance, de Beauvoir (1997, 173–9) shunned Demeter because she considered her to have already been demoted by the patriarchal system – a figure to be reviled, rather than revered. Others nevertheless sought to ‘reclaim the goddess’ and feminine experience from pre-patriarchal culture (for example, Irigaray 1994; Rich 1986) – many taking inspiration in personal (Agha-Jaffar 2002), clinical (Carlson 1989, 1997; Wilkinson 1996), pedagogical (Pratt 1994), or occupational (Klein 2014) experience...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Introduction: Why Persephone?
• 1  The Myth of Persephone and the Hymn to Demeter
• 2  Persephone in Heroine Television: The Post-feminist Impasse
• 3  Persephone as Narrative Symptom: Narrative Transactions in Long-Form Viewership
• 4  Persephone as Epistemological Impasse: The Real Body of Sydney Bristow and The Woman Here Depicted
• 5  Persephone as Methodological Impasse: Feminine Jouissance in Veronicas Two Stories
• 6  Persephone as Historical Impasse: Confrontation and Accommodation of the Post-feminist Heroine
• Notes
• Screen Works Cited
• Bibliography
• Index