The self-analysis bit..

It's difficult for me to really even begin to explain where that myth version came from because I feel like I wrote it pretty unconsciously. I put it off until pretty much the last minute then sat down and basically forced myself to vomit words onto a page, but I think in the act of doing that it became something quite revealing - I don't think it was very clever or very evocative or very good writing, but looking back at it I find it interesting.

Originally, I planned to write my version from Hades' perspective. I've always felt a degree of identification with those kinds of characters, stretching right back to when I first read myths as a child. I think I've always rejected the traditional, savagely masculine heroes and king-figures in favour of more morally ambiguous and conniving characters, perhaps because they reminded me (and still do) of a lot of my own personality quirks and flaws.

The way I've tended to see it on previous readings, Hades is actually the weakest character in this story, because he needs Persephone in a way she doesn't need him. His need to control her is, to me, a sign of his own inherent weakness - it's his acknowledgement that ultimately she has no need of him. At the same time, there's an ambiguity between the two because, for all his emotional weakness, he does have the raw power to restrict her. While I wanted that ambiguity to have a role, I didn't actually run with it as far as I could or should have done. I think the reason I ultimately switched to Persephone's perspective was because I felt I could write from the stronger position through that character, and besides, it wasn't as dangerously close to home. I actually think if I'd been a bit braver and more willing to expose myself, I could have done something better.

Entailed in my empathy with this (entirely inflected and unspoken) part of the story, though, I think there's a consequent rejection of the mother/daughter love story which seems to be the major focus in most of the retellings I've seen. I wanted to portray a maternal love which is just as possessive and obsessional, because I'm afraid to say that's largely my experience.

What I tried to do with my version, and I don't think it worked, was make that (the paragraphs of crap above) explicit. I was aware that I wasn't playfully and neutrally adopting a position so much as trying to get a view back on myself from a different position, so I wanted to try and make the separation between the characters and myself intentionally vague. I wanted to make clear that it was an imaginative excercise on my part purely for my benefit and that what I was writing and thinking at the time had nothing to do with the actual story itself so much as how it related back to me. At the same time, because I knew I'd have to post it, I think I was constantly aware of the presence of a reader, and slightly worried by that, so I endeavoured to incorporate a fictional reader (who again, I think was just a reflection on myself) to highlight the artifical nature of an enclosed narrative, and futility of trying to describe a story (which is really a story about myself) in the face of someone else and their preconditions.

Finally, I think I wanted to have a go at the way I've always been told to read myths, as some kind of functional or utilitarian construct. I've always been told that that particular story serves as a parable for marriage and the conflicting emotions and ambiguous liminal states people experience, or that it's some kind of pre-scientific substitute explanation for the passing of the seasons, so I suppose I just wanted to throw in the final word that it doesn't have to be that simple or functional, and actually, I think it's much more important to indulge your own reading than to look for metaphorical explanations.