The world for once in perfect harmony with all it's living things?
Okay then so apparently this is what preoccupies my mind first thing in the morning. So let me talk for a bit about Persephone and Hades. I don't know where this whole fascination with them came of late, but it is definitely present. I keep seeing these adorable romantic pictures of them. While the pictures are adorable, I am not denying that, they keep annoying me on some level.
Here's the thing, Hades and Persephone's relationship is nowhere near romantic. The man literally appears out of a crack in the Earth and takes her by force while she is little more than a child. Even if you are going by the translations where she chose to run away with him you have to question the validity of a whimsical child choosing to run way with a man clearly depicted as being much older than she is. Everything about Prosperine, her being a goddess nonwithstanding, is depicted in a naive child-like manner. She spends her time gaily singing song and prancing among the flowers. No adult is depicted like this, merely nymph and other fairies. So yeah, even if she did consent she didn't quite know what she was getting herself into.
Then you see her behavior in the underworld. There is nothing about her behavior that remotely suggests that she is happy with her choice. (Hey, even if you pick your husband that doesn't mean you are happy with him.) Hades clearly wants to keep a hold of her, though it is unclear in the different versions if it is because of infatuation, power, or merely because she is the first living and truly beautiful thing that is forced to be with him. She on the other hand spends her time wandering about the underworld looking and searching and finding herself trapped her motions become more and more desperate. The longer she is there, the worse that she gets. Take her image in the tale of Orpheus, it is a cold, unsmiling woman who is only moved after he plays a song that reminds her of the love that she used to have. She still doesn't smile, nothing about her dances like she used to. She doesn't change death to make him more gentle, death makes the spring more grim.
Let us compare this to how she behaves with her second husband, Adonis. When she is with Adonis she seems truly happy and she hangs over him. She fought to have him when everybody else wanted to take him away, which is why she gets him for the part of the year where everything is the richest (summer). Never once did she fight to keep Hades, in fact in the entire battle for her future she seems very desperate to leave and in the end people other than her make the decision for her about what to do.
So let's just stop portraying them as this adorable, soft couple. I'm not saying you can't write your own interpretation and have it be adorable and soft and wonderful, power to you if you want to take on that challenge. All I am saying is that to claim that they are naturally that way is mythologically inaccurate. If you have heard other versions of the myths, let me know.
Here's the thing, Hades and Persephone's relationship is nowhere near romantic. The man literally appears out of a crack in the Earth and takes her by force while she is little more than a child. Even if you are going by the translations where she chose to run away with him you have to question the validity of a whimsical child choosing to run way with a man clearly depicted as being much older than she is. Everything about Prosperine, her being a goddess nonwithstanding, is depicted in a naive child-like manner. She spends her time gaily singing song and prancing among the flowers. No adult is depicted like this, merely nymph and other fairies. So yeah, even if she did consent she didn't quite know what she was getting herself into.
Then you see her behavior in the underworld. There is nothing about her behavior that remotely suggests that she is happy with her choice. (Hey, even if you pick your husband that doesn't mean you are happy with him.) Hades clearly wants to keep a hold of her, though it is unclear in the different versions if it is because of infatuation, power, or merely because she is the first living and truly beautiful thing that is forced to be with him. She on the other hand spends her time wandering about the underworld looking and searching and finding herself trapped her motions become more and more desperate. The longer she is there, the worse that she gets. Take her image in the tale of Orpheus, it is a cold, unsmiling woman who is only moved after he plays a song that reminds her of the love that she used to have. She still doesn't smile, nothing about her dances like she used to. She doesn't change death to make him more gentle, death makes the spring more grim.
Let us compare this to how she behaves with her second husband, Adonis. When she is with Adonis she seems truly happy and she hangs over him. She fought to have him when everybody else wanted to take him away, which is why she gets him for the part of the year where everything is the richest (summer). Never once did she fight to keep Hades, in fact in the entire battle for her future she seems very desperate to leave and in the end people other than her make the decision for her about what to do.
So let's just stop portraying them as this adorable, soft couple. I'm not saying you can't write your own interpretation and have it be adorable and soft and wonderful, power to you if you want to take on that challenge. All I am saying is that to claim that they are naturally that way is mythologically inaccurate. If you have heard other versions of the myths, let me know.