persephone and demeter

the misunderstood rage of a mother

The Fate of Persephone (1877), Walter Crane

There is something about rage that unsettles people, especially when it belongs to a woman, even more so when that woman is a mother. The ancient myths knew this, and modern retellings too, though they often twist it into something more palatable and more comfortable for the reader to digest. The story of Demeter and Persephone—a tale of abduction, grief, and bargaining—has, in its modern interactions, become less about the wrath of a grieving mother and more about the romanticisation of her daughter’s captor. Somewhere along the way, we’ve all decided Demeter’s rage must be softened, minimised, or reinterpreted entirely. We’ve made Hades into a misunderstood hero, as though his ability to act with slightly less depravity than Zeus or Poseidon somehow exonerates him. It begins with a slight shift in focus. Retellings of the myth lean into the “love story” between Hades and Persephone, creating an air of inevitably around what was, in its origins, an act of violence. The abduction becomes “kidnapping,” a term that is softened in contemporary parlance, made almost clinical. It was not so clinical for Demeter. The myth tells us that she tore through the world in her search, that she let the earth wilt and die in her grief. And yet, when her rage is depicted at all, it is often with disdain—as though she is a woman who simply cannot let go, cannot understand that her daughter is better off elsewhere.

What is Demeter if not the epitome of righteous anger? Her fury is not a tantrum but a declaration: something has been taken from her, something precious, something irreplaceable. And what is a mother to do when the world refuses to return her child? She turns the soil barren. She makes the rivers dry up. She does what she must to be heard in a world that so often silences women like her. Yet time and again, modern writers portray her as irrational, as selfish, as unwilling to acknowledge her daughter’s burgeoning independence. They’ll paint Persephone’s time in the underworld as a coming-of-age story, an escape from an overbearing mother, while Hades becomes the gentle, sweet, patient, brooding lover who offers her freedom, love and choice.

This is where we must talk about Hades. Writers often jump to his defence with the argument that he is “better” than Zeus or Poseidon, that his crimes are fewer, and his violations less egregious. This argument is frankly, dumb. It operates on a sliding scale of immorality, as though the only bar Hades must clear is being “not as bad” as his brothers. What of the fact that he acted without Persephone’s consent? What of the fact that he conspired with Zeus, her father, to take her from the earth without so much as a warning? These are not actions of a hero, nor a misunderstood romantic. They are the actions of a man who sees what he wants and takes it. When Demeter objects, the narrative shifts to make her the unreasonable one, the villain of the piece.

We live in a culture that vilifies maternal anger. We’ve seen it with Clytemnestra, who is labelled a monster for avenging her daughter’s death. We see it with Demeter, whose grief is treated as hysteria, and whose wrath is rebranded as stubbornness. Demeter and Persephone is not merely a story of seasons; it is a story of power dynamics, of the lengths a mother will go to in order to protect her child. To relegate Demeter to the role of a meddling parent is to erase the depth of her anguish. And what about Persephone? She is so often portrayed as complicit in her own abduction, as though her eventual acceptance of life in the underworld retroactively justifies Hades’ actions. However, this is a huge distortion. Persephone’s dual existence—half in the underworld, half in the light—is not a choice freely made. It is a compromise, one brokered between gods, where her voice is conspicuously absent. Portraying her as a willing participant in her captivity is to misunderstand the nature of survival. Persephone adapts because she must, not because she desires to.

In the brittle sunlight of history, it becomes apparent that Demeter and Persephone once existed in their own mythology, their names etched into the earth long before Hades emerged as a narrative necessity. Demeter, the granter of harvests, and Persephone, the maiden of spring moved through the ancient Greek imagination as separate and sovereign forces. Yet the modern telling, with its penchant for defining women regarding their proximity to men, chains them to Hades’ shadow as though he authored their significance. This revision of myth feels less like storytelling and more like erasure, an unwillingness to see these goddesses as complete within themselves. What remains is not the verdant mother and her radiant daughter. Characters changed to serve the confines of men, their divinity is an afterthought in Hades’ globe.

We should linger on Demeter’s rage, on its rawness and beauty. Her fury truly reshaped the world and halted the endless cycle of growth and decay. It is a fury born out of love, of a profound bond that it refuses to be severed, even by death. Dismissing her as overbearing is ignoring the very heart of the myth: a mother’s refusal to accept the theft of her child. There is nothing villainous in that. If anything, it is heroic.

The discomfort people have with this story does not lie with Demeter herself but with what she represents. She is a power that does not bow to the whims of men. It is a power that demands accountability, that resists erasure. Maybe, this is why so many writers find it easier to romanticise Hades than to grapple with Demeter’s rage. For Hades can be softened, can be moulded into a figure of dark allure. But Demeter’s fury is immutable, unyielding. It is a reminder of what happens when the world—when men—go too far. We owe Demeter more. We owe her story the honesty it deserves. Casting her as a villain misses the point. She is not the problem. She is the reckoning.

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“Angry mothers raise daughters fierce enough to fight wolves.” — Nghi Vo