my favourite thing about the story of hades and persephone is that the story grew up with us.
i think most of us, when we were young girls ourselves, heard that first, most tragic version of the story: persephone, the innocent child of spring, who wandered into a dark, terrible place, and ate of a cursed garden. hades, meanwhile, was cast as a shadowy, grasping seducer, looming from the darkness: here he stood, the god of riches, of gemstones and bones, of cold, dead things, who wanted to snatch a little bit of sunlight for himself.
and then came the second version of the story, when we were older, not so much a change in narrative as it was of perspective: we heard about zeus raping leta, we read the way medusa was cursed for being raped by poseidon, we read about athena’s jealousy when she was outwoven by arachne, about hera tossing little hephaestus down a cliff because he wasn’t as beautiful as a god ought to be.
once more, we considered hades: the youngest of the trinity, free of spite and hatred and fits of rage, running an empire greater than his brothers’ together, with little ego and quiet efficiency. a god who only took one wife, only loved once, and then too: wholly, completely.
like something not out of a horror movie, but perhaps, indeed, a fairytale.
then the third turn, when we had grown older, acquired a veneer of cynicism, suffered boys who never grew to men, when we realized that the only way our sexuality would not be annexed was if we conquered it ourselves.
then came kore, the woman of spring, who found in hades a quiet, dark refuge, away from demeter’s wrath and hungry possession, away from the squabbles of those tiresome, reckless gods. the girl who fell in love with darkness. the goddess whose spirit was of renewal and rebirth, and still flourished in the heart of the underworld, the duality of her nature only serving to highlight her strength.
hades remained as he ever was, unchanging, like death itself. but persephone grew, acquired facets and beauty in her change, spring given form in metaphor and mythology.
hades and persephone grew with us. that’s why they’re powerful. that’s why they’re loved.
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