Persephone and Demeter Myth - Holly

Many feminist interpretations of well known myths including Margaret Atwood’s Penelopiad and Carol Ann Duffy’s poems are designed to give voice to the absent women of the stories or to create a feminist version of that voice. I find them lacking, however, because in the end, those voices are meaningless without their reference to the main, male voice. Giving a voice to Mrs Beast, is meaningless without reference to the story of the Beast. In the story of Persephone and Demeter, much is made of Demeter, as the mother of Persephone and about the pain of separation but Persephone is often overshadowed in this. I therefore chose to take focus away from Demeter’s trials and the hunt for her daughter’s whereabouts and look more at the events affecting Persephone. Feeling, as I have said, that Persephone is meaningless without the more mainstream representations of her mother, of Hades or of the Gods, it did not seem appropriate to leave them out. Instead I divided the story into three columns trying to show the story from three perspectives: Demeter’s, Persephone’s and Hades. Persephone’s, however, the central column, is placed lower than the two on either side of her so that her perspective becomes more subsumed, their voices being the dominant narratives of the myth, drowning out Persephone. Persephone also becomes absent during the story and the myth becomes a tug-of-war between Hades and Demeter. She reappears only to finish the tale off. Finally, all three voices are overwritten by primary basic headings within the story, as the ‘facts’, the basic narrative, apparently absent of all voices, overwrites all perspectives.