The Myth Of Persephone in "Hadestown."

I’ve written many posts on Tumblr where I analyze various print and media versions of The Myth of Persephone born out of a specific fascination I have with the myth and mythology in general (and a book writing related reason) under the tag “The Persephone Project.” For a year I have also been unable to stop talking about and occasionally posting about the musical “Hadestown.” However, I realized yesterday as I listened to the musical for the first time in many months that I have never analyzed The Myth of Persephone as it exists in “Hadestown.” Yes, “Hadestown” is actually about The Myth of Orpheus and Eurydice but because the musical elevates the characters of Hades and Persephone to main character status and their relationship, and more specifically the changes that their relationship has gone through over time, is such a prominent feature in the musical as it is a foil to the relationship between Orpheus and Eurydice, The Myth of Persephone had to be addressed at least a little for context.

The “Hadestown” version of The Myth of Persephone is actually one of only two that I’ve seen where Demeter, Persephone’s mother, is entirely absent. I don’t just mean she isn’t physically in the show, but she is only alluded to twice and one of those times is a play on words that is clearly meant to evoke the more common versions of the myth without necessarily addressing her directly. That “joke” time is from Hades in “Chant” when he says, “Someone grateful for her fate/Someone who appreciates/The comforts of a gilded cage/And doesn’t try to fly away/The moment Mother Nature calls.” Obviously, Mother Nature is Demeter in this scenario but in this kind of Demeter-less universe Hades could just be more vaguely gripping about Persephone’s job and how she has to leave him to bring about spring and how he wishes he had someone who could stay with him all year round. In Greek Mythology the true Mother Nature is actually not Demeter but Gaia, who is actually the grandmother of Hades and Demeter, but that’s another path this argument could go down. Either way, the comment is more of a shout out than a direct addressing of the presence of Demeter in the “Hadestown” universe.

The second time Demeter is mentioned is much more direct but mentioning her almost doesn’t relate to the myth at all. In “Epic III” later on in the show, Orpheus is trying to convince Hades to let him and Eurydice leave by reminding him of what it was like for him to be young and in love by painting the image of the first time he saw Persephone “in her mother’s garden.” The fact that Persephone was in her mother’s garden in this scenario is not particularly significant to the story aside from the fact that it conveys the idea that Persephone was younger. She was young and therefore still lived in her mother’s garden: symbolically unwed.

Any discussion of the actual Myth of Persephone is completely absent of Demeter and any other players who sometimes feature in the myth like Zeus, Hecate, Hermes, and Helios. Orpheus lays out the myth very broadly in “Epic I” when he says, “Lady Persephone half of the year was bound to stay down in the Underworld.” There is no mention of Hades kidnapping her, no mention of pomegranate seeds, no mention of Demeter causing winter, and no mention of deals made.

Whenever Persephone discusses the formation of her relationship with Hades it is always very positive and seems to lack complications or any kind of deals. In “Chant” she says to Hades, “I recall there was a time/We were happy, you and I/In the garden where we met/Nothing was between us yet.” Early on in the show, this evokes the idea of a mutually formed relationship that has only soured with time. Persephone gets more explicit about it (ha) in “Chant II” when she tells Eurydice the specifics under the guise of giving her advice,

“Love was when he came to me
Begging on his bended knee
To please have pity on his heart
And let him lay me in the dirt

I felt his arms around me then
We didn’t need a wedding bed
Dark seeds scattered on the ground
The wild birds were flying around

That’s when I became his wife
But that was in another life
That was in another world
When I was a young girl.”

The story of her marriage is simple through her explanation: they met, later he asked her to marry him, they had sex as a consummation of their marriage, and that is what started the arrangement of her spending half her time in the Underworld. Without Demeter to fight for half her time while her husband claims the other half, the implied narrative is very different.

In this narrative, we can assume that the world’s nature state is one of winter and that it is through the work of Persephone specifically that we have seasons. Her decision to marry the King of the Underworld meant that she was committing herself to him, and as such, must give up some of her time to be with him in order for them to have a real marriage. You could say this is still sexist, like the original narrative can be, but realistically Hades has a higher status as an older god and a king and actually would be completely unable to abandon his job as King of the Underworld to spend time with her. His job is constant, which is why Hades is often portrayed in more original-myth-accurate media as being overworked and tired a lot. While there are no flowers or warm weather in Persephone’s absence, there is not a complete destruction of order like there would be if Hades left his job to spend six months with his wife. People be dying always.

This also kind of allows Persephone’s dual nature to be fully shown in a way a lot of myths neglect because of Persephone’s usual lack of agency. It is not Demeter that brings on cold and death in winter but Persephone herself through her choices. She was draw to the darkness in Hades, “hungry for the Underworld” as she calls it, and thus became a force of death herself half the time when she isn’t a force of life. In “How Long” she reflects on the cyclical nature of her job and really, the necessity of the life and death cycle that her marriage to Hades causes with a kind of acceptance.

Ultimately, the “Hadestown” version of The Myth of Persephone may be one of the best ones even if it’s one of the least accurate as it lacks basically all the major iconic components of the myth. I’ve complained in the past about how Demeter often ends up becoming the most focused on character in the Myth of Persephone with Persephone often given little development or even regulated to an object to be bartered for. When you remove Demeter from the narrative, Persephone increases in both importance and agency and the true nature of her character and what makes her so interesting is revealed.

“Hadestown” is so brilliant, I can barely even deal with it.