I’ve been asked this question many times. My blog title isn’t the usual snappy tea-and-biscuits or cupcakes-and-moonbeams moniker, and it stands out like a sore thumb in the polished world of lifestyle blogging. It’s too long to use as a Twitter handle and when I talk about my blog in person I often have to repeat myself a few times before people catch it. So why on earth did I choose something so awkward?
Before I ever started a blog, I knew what I wanted it to be called. While studying an English Literature A-Level, I came across a phrase that caught my attention and brought on one of those insanely geeky late-night Google researching sessions. I’d always known the story of Persephone, the human girl who, while picking flowers, was kidnapped by Hades and taken down to The Underworld to be his Queen. It’s fair to say I’m slightly obsessed. The relationship between Hades and Persephone is a huge archetype within Greek mythology, world literature, poetry, film, BDSM and erotica, and modern psychology. Famous Hades-Persephone relationships could include Humbert and Lolita, Jane Eyre and Mr Rochester, Peter Pan and Wendy Darling. The Phantom of The Opera is another good example. In a Hades-Persephone relationship, the Hades partner forces his Persephone to change; not into what he wants her to be, but into what she really is, whether that be as an artist, a singer, a sexual being, a human, or whatever else. In order to do that she must dance with the devil.
As she dances, Persephone is transformed. No longer naive or limited by her own fears. This transformation is almost always expressed through a dance, song, or other flowing artistic form; which isn’t really surprising when you consider how relevant the Persephone story is for female artists. The descent into one’s own nature that we undergo as we try to make something of worth is all too real.
When I was a kid, my favourite movie was a film called Legend. It’s probably the only Tom Cruise movie that I will actually watch, and contains a scene where the heroine, Lily, is seduced by a faceless darkness in the opulent halls of Hell, that to this day, fills me with a totally inexplicable enchantment.
Only when I was doing the research for this post did I realise how similar it is to another of my favourite movie scenes, the prologue in Black Swan. Black Swan has many obvious Persephone parallels – an innocent girl with brilliant potential, seduced by an older, experienced male who guides her artistically as well as sexually, intensely struggling as this transformation takes place, and then ultimately reconciling with both the light and dark sides of her personality.
A girl with a Persephone Complex requires things and people in her life who will help her transform, and who will stay with her through the darkness. She chooses to suffer so that she may be reborn, and the people around her will often wonder why she puts herself, for want of a better word, through hell. For her to reach her potential she feels she must give in to a darkness that is greater than herself, a darkness that chooses her. The promise of transformation is seductive. It can be dangerous, and painful. But it ultimately leads to a more powerful, immortal Persephone. My blog title has always been a way of telling people everything about my personality type without saying much at all. 'Oral/Schizoid with Anxiety and Sleep Disorder' didn't quite have the same ring.
