#also i think the reading of theseus purposefully not changing the sails to cause his fathers death and get the throne of athens is awesome

[finelythreadedsky]

the framing of demeter and persephone’s relationship as generational conflict between mothers and daughters broadly speaking is weird to me, because actually generational tension and conflict is all over greek myth. there are so many stories of children who rise up against their parents and overthrow them, and of parents who are terrified at that possibility and take early violent measures against their children to prevent it.

obviously the divine succession myth of the theogony, where ouranos is overthrown by his son kronos even after he imprisons his children out of fear, then kronos is overthrown by his son zeus even after he eats his children out of fear, then zeus is prophesied to be overthrown by his son so he eats metis to prevent that son from being born and also avoids having a child with thetis to get out of the prophecy that any son of hers would be stronger than his father. and on the mortal side of things, laius fears being killed by his son oedipus, so he injures and exposes him, but oedipus does eventually kill his father and takes his kingdom (and his wife). acrisius fears the prophecy that he will be killed by his daughter danae’s son (because he himself has no sons) so he tries to prevent perseus from being born and then tries to kill him, but perseus ends up accidentally killing him anyway and taking his kingdom. and in the iliad and the odyssey there’s also this tension between the heroes we see and their fathers-- they feel pressure to live up to and exceed their fathers’ reputations in a way that pits the son against the father.

but it’s always fathers and sons. a son, in greek thought, has reason to hate his father-- while his father is alive, the son is under another man’s authority, a position that he might naturally be expected to resent. after the father is dead, the son comes into possession of his father’s property and political power. myths tell us about fathers who are terrified that their relationship to their sons will be poisoned by this knowledge, afraid that it will push their sons from love into resentment and violence.

mothers do not hold the power and authority that could inspire resentment, outright hatred, or retaliation. a mother has no control over her children’s inheritances, she does not arrange their marriages, she does not hold political power or influence or wealth that her children will inherit on her death. she has nothing to withhold from them, no power or authority that they do not have.

which is why the characterization of demeter as an overbearing overprotective helicopter parent seems so strange to me-- the reality is that it would have been pretty damn near impossible for an actual ancient greek women to be any of those things. mothers simply did not have enough control or authority over their children for that. and of course demeter is a goddess in a myth, not a real woman in history, but myth absolutely does reflect cultural reality, and the myth of the abduction of persephone in particular is informed by the experiences of real women with marriage and death and relationships and families. that’s not me speaking, that is a scholarly consensus-- it’s the very first sentence of the description of helene foley’s translation and commentary of the homeric hymn to demeter. and our contemporary concept of adolescence and the contemporary reality that many women do have abusive mothers or have generally poor relationships with their mothers, those things were not really part of the ancient world in the same way they are part of our world now. their reality was a world in which mothers generally did not possess anywhere near enough institutional power or authority to be overbearing, overprotective, controlling, or smothering (all words i’ve seen applied to demeter).

the structure and construction of kinship and family vary vastly across different cultures, time periods, and geographical locations. we can’t really superimpose contemporary (mostly american) ideas of familial relationships onto ancient (particularly archaic and classical) greece-- to do so is inaccurate, but more importantly, it obscures the way that greek notions of kinship and family were founded on deeply entrenched misogyny and relied on treating women as objects and property.

which brings me back full circle to my initial post, ten months later: i think we do a disservice to the women of the ancient world by whitewashing their lives and forgetting the ways this story reflects the pain of their culture treating women as little more than childbearing machines, denying mothers any role in their daughters’ lives, and severing the relationship between mothers and daughters at marriage.