Mothers and Daughters: Ancient and Modern Myths

Author(s): Ellen Handler Spitz

Source: The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Vol. 48, No. 4, Feminism and
Traditional Aesthetics (Autumn, 1990), pp. 411-420
Published by: Wiley on behalf of The American Society for Aesthetics
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/431577
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 ELLEN HANDLER SPITZ

Mothers and Daughters: Ancient and Modern Myths

"As ivy clings to oak will I clasp her."

-Euripides, Hecuba

Psychoanalysis has tended, in its discussions of version. Yet, although in all its forms it addresses
the entanglements between women, to weight the theme of mother-daughter relations-which
negative aspects-recalcitrant guilt, envy, and Freud eventually came to recognize as central to
rage. This essay seeks to redistribute that bal- female development, for he asked "What does
ance by adding to the scales a goodly measure of the little girl require of her mother?"-he never
the strength that derives from female-to-female chose to interrogate this exemplary myth in
intergenerational bonding. The following pages terms of his own important question.9 His scat-
are dedicated to one regal grandmother, two tered references to it curiously bypass its central
wise daughters, a stepmother who never quite motif. He refers to Demeter only with regard to
realized that she had become a real mother, and a an incident that occurs in her daughter's ab-
very real mother who died too young but whose sencel0 and to Persephone with no mention of
articulate voice can still be heard, softly modu- her relationship to her mother. 1I1 Freud's failure
lated, throughout these pages. 1 to address the bond between the two women-
which is the subject of the myth-suggests that it
Inspired by a small head of Demeter in Sig- may yet prove a rich source for the current psy-
mund Freud's collection of antiquities, this es- choanalytic exploration of this theme. In this
say offers a "thematic" reading of the ancient spirit, I offer the following retelling, an amal-
myth of Demeter and Persephone with the inter- gam and an abridgement, which draws on two
polation of selected texts of contemporary fic- principal sources-the ancient Greek "Homeric
tion that also foreground the relations between Hymn to Demeter" and Ovid's tale, "Calliope
mothers and daughters.2 These include: The Joy tells of the rape of Proserpine," from The Meta-
Luck Club,3 Annie John,4 Lovingkindness,5 A morphoses.
Raisin in the Sun,6 and The Shawl.7 These texts
were authored by women of varied racial and II

ethnic backgrounds, and my aim here is in no

way to flatten out the many differences between In relating a mother's search for her lost daugh-
them nor between them and the ancient texts ter, the story of Demeter and Persephone gives
in which the Demeter-Persephone myth is in- priority to one role, namely, that of the mother,
scribed. Rather, I have created a bricolage, an over that of the daughter. Yet, its fabric impor-
intertext, which not only uses but also occasion- tantly suggests that daughter and mother are one
ally challenges psychoanalysis (art always be- and that their experiences both reciprocate and
ing, as Freud said, in the avant garde of theory, replicate each other. This is a point that pervades
rather than the other way around) and raises Amy Tan's recent best-selling novel, The Joy
more questions than it answers .8 Luck Club, which is dedicated "To my mother/
and the memory of her mother." A finely bro-
caded work, this text explores spatio-temporal
and cultural continuities and disjunctions be-
Freud, having read Ovid, clearly knew the story tween four sets of Chinese-American mothers
of Demeter and Persephone at least in its Latin and daughters, and it offers a moment when one
The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 48:4 Fall 1990

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 412 The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism

daughter, still a young child, suddenly reen- scape, plucks a fateful narcissus. This detail, the
counters the all-but-forgotten mother who had narcissus flower, is of interest because it recalls
been wrenched from her in her earliest child- another comparable and contrasting myth-
hood. Despite the years of separation, however, namely, that of an ill-fated male adolescent, the
this mother proves to be no stranger. At the youthful Narcissus who fell in love with his own
moment of meeting, An-Mei Hsu, trying to re- reflection in the water and thereby perished.
capture it years later for her own daughter Rose, Thus the flower may be seen as emblematic of
says: "I tried to keep very still but my heart felt self-involvement, of the girl's pleasure in her
like crickets scratching to get out of a cage. My own loveliness, but also, perhaps, of her desire
mother must have heard [in other words, heard to add something to it. In evoking its namesake,
into the little girl's heart], because she looked it alludes both to convergences and to discon-
up. And when she did, I saw my own face look- tinuities between the bodily and developmental
ing back at me."12 Later, this same character experiences of the genders.
An-Mei Hsu, describes-again for the benefit of According to the text, this sweet-smelling
her own daughter-a scene in which she watched flower, the narcissus, is placed before Perseph-
transfixed as her mother took a knife and cut a one as a lure by her father Zeus on behalf of his
piece of flesh out of her own arm and, bleeding brother Hades, god of the underworld, who had
and crying, put it into a soup to feed to her own seen the girl playing and developed a passion for
aged, dying mother in a desperate attempt to her. As Persephone plucks the flower, the earth
prolong her ebbing life. gapes open, and grim Hades appears in his gold-
This focus on the immediacy, intensity, and en chariot (the Homeric Hymn) drawn by death-
physicality of identifications is central also to less horses. Panic-stricken, the young girl cries
Jamaica Kincaid's Annie John, where the title out to her mother (Ovid) and to her father (the
character, growing up on the island of Antigua Homeric Hymn) to save her. Her entreaties are
in the Caribbean, describes her discordant, in- in vain. Zeus, merely a regal figurehead here,
dissoluble bond with a mother who has exactly maintains his distance from her throughout the
the same name as her own: story, and, by staging her ravishment, may in
fact be seen as enacting by proxy his own in-
Something I could not name just came over us, and cestuous wishes towards her. Never is he por-
suddenly I had never loved anyone so or hated anyone trayed as having direct contact with her; her
so. But to say hate-what did I mean by that? Before, entire filiation is bound up with her mother.
if I hated someone I simply wished the person dead. Thus, on this "oedipal" level, the plot follows
But I couldn't wish my mother dead. If my mother the paradigm articulated by Levi-Strauss who,
died, what would become of me? I couldn't imagine in addition to analyzing the structures of myth,
my life without her. Worse than that, if my mother theorized kinship as casting women in the role of
died I would have to die, too, and even less than I a medium of exchange between men-a per-
could imagine my mother dead could I imagine myself spective that Freud himself did not precisely
dead." 13 adopt but which might have served him well. 14
(In the Dora case, as has been much remarked,
Such passages, besides scoring deep and am- his lack of attention to this dimension of the
bivalent congruities, also connect, as does the material caused him to become in fact one of the
Demeter-Persephone myth, the theme of death very men among whom Dora was passed.) 15
with that of the mother-daughter relation-a link For our purposes here, therefore, it is worth-
with many layers of meaning to which we shall while to consider-but to resist overempha-
return. sizing-the implicitly triadic structure of the
mother-daughter relation. Clearly, initiation into
III heterosexual relations comes in this myth by
means of trickery, violence, and betrayal by the
Demeter, goddess of fertility and the harvest, father. But interestingly, this betrayal is consid-
thus a mother par excellence, adores her beau- ered as such only from the point of view of
tiful daughter Persephone who, while gathering women. In Ovid, Zeus (or Jupiter as he is there
flowers with other young girls in an idyllic land- called) protests Demeter's complaints that their

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 Spitz Mothers and Daughters 413

child has been pirated. He claims, on the con- given a sweet barley drink by a woman who
trary, that his brother's deed "was no crime, but takes pity on her in her grief. When, however,
an act of love," and he staunchly upholds the this woman's young son taunts the goddess with
lord of the underworld as a fitting husband for being greedy (a suggestive detail), Demeter turns
her. 16 According to him, even if Hades has no on the boy and, enraged at his insult, rewards his
other qualities to recommend him, he is still, mother's kindness to her by hurling the drink
after all, a brother! 17Thus, the father rational- into the child's face, thereby setting off in him a
izes and reveals, possibly, his own vicarious grotesque metamorphosis. As his mother watches
pleasure in colluding with the scene of sexual in horror, her child's skin puckers, spots devel-
violence. op, and legs sprout on him where arms had once
Demeter's response to Persephone's disap- been. As she reaches out to touch him, he shriv-
pearance has, on the other hand, elements of els up into the form of a loathsome lizard and
both narcissistic and object loss: she becomes by slithers away to hide, leaving her to tears of grief
turns sorrowful, depressed, and bitterly indig- and astonishment. Thus, here too, Demeter
nant. Wandering over land and sea in an effort to causes another mother to suffer a loss compara-
discover the whereabouts of her beloved child, ble to her own.
she enacts a sequence that uncannily prefigures It is possible as well to read this incident as
the stages of mourning and melancholia Freud revealing by displacement the depths of De-
outlined in 1917.18 Turning aggression inward, meter's unacknowledged ambivalence toward
she tears the covering on her hair, refuses both Persephone-not only, on the oedipal level, her
food and drink, and ceases to bathe. This self- jealousy toward the girl as the (incestuously)
destructive behavior continues, fascinatingly, preferred object of the father and her envy for
for precisely nine days-thus, symbolically, she her "flowering," her burgeoning fertility, but
replicates and magically undoes the nine months also, on a deeper level, Demeter's wish to appro-
of her pregnancy. Upon learning finally that priate unto herself all the prerogatives of moth-
Zeus was party to the rape, her grief reaches erhood. On this reading, the boy child, arriving
fever pitch. Cutting herself off from all company on scene subsequent to Persephone's abduction,
of the gods, disfiguring herself, she assumes the can be seen as representing in Demeter's fantasy
appearance of a decrepit old woman whose her own daughter's future child-a child whom
childbearing years are over. she wishes to appropriate and possess. Further-
Shortly after this, in the course of her wander- more, this boy child may, it has been suggested,
ings, however, she manages to "adopt," as it represent to her the treacherous male world that
were, another woman's child. Partly to deny her has so recently betrayed her. 19
loss and symbolically to recover Persephone, The intensity of Demeter's comingled sexu-
she "becomes" a mother again. Yet the child this ality and aggression toward this "new child"
time is a boy, and the incident has disturbing are, however, sensed by the boy's real mother,
overtones. That a male child is chosen for the and a confrontation between the two women
replacement suggests that Demeter, having once occurs. This is the sole moment in the narrative
been forsaken by a daughter, must now ward off where any aggression between women is repre-
repetition of that loss by acquiring a new child of sented. Direct relations between mother and
the opposite sex. She "steals" him, as it were, daughter are, as we have seen, portrayed only as
from his own mother. By breathing on him, loving while aggression is projected outward on
clasping him to her bosom, and placing him each to the predatory males. Here, however, in the
night in a fire in order to turn him into a god, she frame within the frame, a catalytic moment of
seeks utterly to possess him-and thus to sepa- open anger toward another woman seems to re-
rate him irrevocably from his own mother. In lease Demeter from her depression.20 She now
this way, under the guise of beneficence, she reveals herself in all her glory as a mighty god-
gives rein to aggression. Turning passive into dess and, rejecting the substitute child, simul-
active, she relives her own trauma in reverse by taneously throws off her melancholy disguise.
inflicting it on another woman. "Thrusting old age away from her," goes the
Ovid, in his more florid Roman style, also text, "beauty spread round about her and a
dramatizes this cameo. Here, we find Demeter lovely fragrance was wafted from her sweet-

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 414 The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism

smelling robes ... golden tresses spread down that may, fact, be read as the spine of the story,
over her shoulders. "21 etched fossil-like into the softer ground sur-
Vehemently now, having regained her royal rounding it. It is a line, moreover, that may
status, she redirects her wrath outward. In order easily escape those focused only on an oedipal
to punish Zeus, she plays power games with him reading.
by withholding her fertility. Permitting nothing It is the selfsame line, however, evoked by
to grow on earth, scourging the land with a cruel Amy Tan, when she writes as follows in the
famine, she coerces him finally into returning persona of her character An Mei Hsu: "even
Persephone to her. Meanwhile, the girl, pining though I taught my daughter the opposite, still
for her mother among the dark shades of the she came out the same way! Maybe it is because
dead, rejoices when Hermes descends, at the she was born to me and she was born a girl. And
bidding of Zeus, to rescue her. Hades, however, I was born to my mother and I was born a girl.
has managed meanwhile to slip some pomegran- All of us are like stairs, one step after another,
ate seeds into her mouth, the pomegranate being going up and down, but all going the same
(among its many meanings) redolent of hetero- way."24 This wonderful, only apparently para-
sexual union with its seeds and blood-red juice; doxical image from The Joy Luck Club uncan-
thus, furtively, he has bound her to him forever. nily conveys the repetitive perpendicularity of
The myth, as is well known, is resolved by Persephone's movements as she mounts and de-
compromise: partially restored to Demeter, Per- scends between Hades and Demeter, the worlds
sephone, because she has tasted the fruit, cannot of darkness and of light.
fully sever her ties to her husband. According to
different versions, she spends two thirds or one IV

half of the year with Demeter and the other half

or third in Hades. During the seasons when This power of a mother's mother over both death
mother and daughter are reunited, they are por- and life and her sudden appearance as "dea ex
trayed as radiantly happy, and the earth regains machina" at the end of the myth is a feature also
its fertility: "So did they then, with hearts at of Annie John, where, late in the action, the
one, greatly cheer each other's soul and spirit young protagonist, now entering adolescence,
with many an embrace: their hearts had relief falls ill with a malady that responds neither to
from their griefs while each took and gave back conventional nor to island remedies. Unexpect-
joyousness."22 By contrast, when Persephone edly, yet as if fated, her grandmother mate-
returns to Hades, "her expression and tempera- rializes magically from the neighboring island
ment change instantly: [she becomes] so melan- of Dominica and remains with her own daughter
choly as to seem sad to Dis [Hades] himself; " and granddaughter on Antigua until the child's
while, in spite of this, she reigns as honored recovery is secure: "[she] would come into my
Queen of the Dead.23 bed with me and stay until I was myself ...
One further detail must not be allowed to es- again. I would lie on my side, curled up like a
cape notice: Final reconciliation between daugh- little comma, and [the grandmother] would lie
ter, mother, and Olympian Zeus is brought about next to me, curled up like a bigger comma, into
through the agency of another goddess, Rhea, which I fit."25
the mother of Demeter and grandmother of Per-
sephone. Rhea's role is to ask her daughter to V

forgive her husband and to return with her to him

and to the other gods at Olympus. For Demeter Many questions come to mind at this point, and,
to acquiesce in this request, therefore, is to obey as with all art and myth, psychologically valid
her own mother. Appearing thus as a crucial interpretations may logically contradict one an-
agent at the very end of the story, Rhea repre- other. How might these texts both illuminate and
sents the fertility of the previous generation. Her complicate Freud's own question as to what a
presence bears special meaning for our theme little girl requires of her mother (and vice-versa)?
because it marks a crucial axis of the myth- Does the ancient story represent or teach us
namely, a powerful matriarchal lineage-an axis anything about what we have come to call nor-
of intergenerational gendered bonding-a line mal or pathological relations between a mother

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 Spitz Mothers and Daughters 415

and a daughter? Does it offer some layering and that she will one day have a granddaughter who
combination of these? In celebrating the endur- will come from Israel to visit her: a grand-
ing power of the mother-daughter bond at the daughter.
apparent expense of joyful heterosexuality, does Early on in this book, however, the husband
it endorse its own solution or express wishes and and father of Annie and Andrea is summarily
fears-or fears of wishes and denials of fears? introduced and immediately eliminated. De-
Precisely what wishes and fears are at stake? scribed as an ineffectual character, he walks out
What developmental levels of fantasy are ad- of a penthouse window in a state of extreme
dressed? Does the myth correspond to female or inebriation, and, although his ambiguous, sur-
to male fantasies or to both? The aggressive real demise continues to haunt the text, it works
bridegroom figures clinically, for example, in strategically to free the author to treat mother
dreams of both genders, and the fear of doing or and daughter exclusively as a dyad. Similarly,
experiencing damage in the act of intercourse is Annie John, while not eliminating its husband/
pervasive. father character totally, relegates him to a clearly
subordinate status. Described as shorter than the
VI mother physically, he is of decidedly lesser stat-
ure than she in the eyes of their pre-adolescent
In order to focus on the mother-daughter dyad, daughter and plays only a minor role in her life.
the myth, as we have seen, relegates its male In her words: "When my eyes rested on my
characters to the periphery, and this is likewise a father, I didn't think very much of the way he
feature of contemporary novels that treat the looked. But when my eyes rested on my mother,
mother-daughter theme. Take, for example, Anne I found her beautiful. "27
Roiphe's recent roman 'a lettres, Lovingkind- Likewise, the death of Lena's husband occurs
ness.26 Here, a feminist scholar with a name before any action takes place in Lorraine Hans-
strangely similar to Jamaica Kincaid's heroine berry's play, "A Raisin in the Sun," which is de-
(she is called Annie Johnson) struggles with dicated "To Mama: in gratitude for the dream."28
herself over her mothering of a twenty-two year The absence of the husband and father here
old daughter, Andrea, who, when the book be- leaves the stage open at the end of Scene One for
gins, has not communicated with her mother for a uniquely powerful moment in American the-
five months. Ideology and intellectualism have ater: Beneatha, fiercely independent, headstrong,
long served defensively to hide from this mother and twenty, having just treated her mother to
her own failure to provide boundaries for a child a barrage of typical adolescent jargon on her
who now, after years of wild, self-destructive inalienable right to express herself, culminates
behavior, has suddenly telephoned collect from with the statement: "God is just one idea I don't
Jerusalem to announce that she is embracing accept. "29
a new lifestyle, namely, that of ultra-orthodox The ensuing stage directions read:
Judaism. This choice on her part represents, of
course, a rebellious repudiation of her mother's (MAMA absorbs this speech, studies her daughter
feminist principles, but it also betokens a deeper and rises slowly and crosses to Beneatha and slaps her
need-an urgent need for external limits and powerfully across the face. After, there is only silence
values that might compensate adaptively for in- and the daughter drops her eyes from her mother's
trapsychic structures that have never fully de- face, and Mama is very tall before her.)
veloped. Fascinating here is the paradox that, MAMA Now-you say after me, in my mother's
because on a deep level, this mother and daugh- house there is still God.... In my mother's house there
ter are importantly connected (as is Annie John- is still God.30
son with her own ambivalently devalued mother),
Andrea's rejection of Annie's manifest (femi- Well-acted, this scene conveys the sheer weight
nist) credo is precisely what makes possible at of ongoing maternal presence as it shapes the
some point in the future (beyond the text of the consciousness of a daughter. With keen insight,
novel) an identification of the two women as Lorraine Hansberry crafts Lena's contrasting
mothers. Such an intimation is made explicit by behavior towards Beneatha and towards her son
Annie's wishful fantasy in the closing paragraphs Walter Lee. Innately in tune with the headstrong

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 416 The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism

young pre-med student who is obviously a sec- same caldron. We would then sit in this bath in a
ond edition of herself, Lena readily guides, dis- darkened room with a strange-smelling candle
ciplines, supports and opposes her; she knows burning away. As we sat in this bath, my mother
she can count on Beneatha's strength, just as she would bathe different parts of my body; then she
can count on her own. With Walter Lee, on the would do the same to herself."33
other hand, her interventions falter and misfire, Anne Roiphe begins a passage, "I had been
and she comes only painfully, and after loss, to a named Annie after my dead grandmother, Ann.
rapprochement with him. My grandmother's picture was in a jade frame
In marginalizing triadic elements, therefore, near my mother's bed."34 Thus, she evokes the
both the Demeter-Persephone myth and its mod- presence of a matriarchal lineage which itself
ern counterparts force us to recognize the power becomes the frame for a scene in which her
of gendered sameness and of biology-to see, in protagonist, as a little girl, sits waiting outside
other words, that, because the girl is a second her mother's bedroom for her to wake up:
edition of her mother, their object relations are
deeply structured by this sameness. Brilliantly, I would lie on the carpet and put my face next to the
the ancient myth evokes this bodily identifica-
crack at the bottom of the door ... I could stay in that
tion through its cyclical content and its solu- position a long time.. I learned how to float with
tion-which takes the changing and repeating time as if on a raft in a becalmed sea. My mother's late
seasons of the year as a figure for the periodicity
sleeping habit had the effect of teaching me how to lie
of the female reproductive system.
like a lizard waiting for a passing fly. It also taught me
how to love through a closed door.35
VII

Washing, water, and the female body figure Not insignificantly, as we have seen, this same
prominently in both ancient and modern myth. little girl grows up to become a mother who,
Persephone is pictured near a deep lake of glid- when her own daughter loves her through a
ing waters3l "playing with the deep-bosomed closed door (by not communicating, for exam-
daughters of Oceanus" when she is abducted; as ple, for months at a time or by loving through the
we have seen, Demeter refuses to bathe when closed doors of the Yeshiva Rachel), she strug-
she realizes she has lost her child; she searches gles intellectually to make it somehow all right.
over the seas; and (in Ovid) she learns the truth The text continues: "Sometimes [my mother]
of Persephone's ravishment from a water nymph would let me in the bathroom with her. I would
who has been changed into the water of her own sit on the toilet as she soaped in the tub. A small
sacred pool.32 All the contemporary novels cited woman with soft folds all over her body.-"36
here take ocean as a metaphor for psychological This passage, by juxtaposing images of grand-
distance between mothers and daughters (in The mother, mother and daughter with a small girl's
Joy Luck Club, it is the Pacific; in Lovingkind- feelings of loneliness and ambivalent attachment
ness, the Atlantic; and in Annie John it is both and the physical intimacy of beholding the moth-
the Caribbean Sea and the Atlantic), and dream- er's naked body (which is, of course, a future
like mother-daughter scenes of bathing and version of her own body), overlaid with the rich
swimming are likewise featured. In each of metaphor of the bath, when read alongside other,
these instances, external waters serve both to similar passages from related texts, seems to tap
connect and to divide the women-and thus they a kind of organic memory.
serve as metaphors for the inner amniotic waters And, finally, from Annie John, a section that
which originally united and divided the pair. seems designed to tell Persephone's side of the
"My mother and I often took a bath together," ancient myth:
writes Jamaica Kincaid in the mesmerizing voice
of her young Antiguan heroine. "Sometimes it The only way I could go into the water was if I was on
was just a plain bath, which didn't take very my mother's back, my arms clasped tightly around her
long. Other times, it was a special bath in which neck ... It was only then that I could forget how big
the barks and flowers of many different trees, the sea was, how far down the bottom could be ...
together with all sorts of oils, were boiled in the When we swam around in this way, I would think how

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 Spitz Mothers and Daughters 417

much we were like the pictures of sea mammals I had to perish."'41 Our texts, however, indicate that
seen, my mother and I, naked in the seawater."37 daughter and mother, on the contrary, continue
to search for each other throughout their life-
The passage goes on to describe the mother times.
swimming by herself, leaving the little girl to Current psychoanalytic literature,42 while it
play and watch on shore. Suddenly, however, the does not deny the centrality of the girl's long
child realizes in terror that she has lost sight of dependence on the mother, frequently charac-
her mother: terizes it with extreme negativity and expatiates
on its "tenacity," "difficulty," "hostility," and
My eyes searched the small area of water where she "sadism."43 Its accounts, frequently drawn from
should have been, but I couldn't find her. I stood up the associations of patients who have had "deep-
and started to call out her name, but no sound would ly unsatisfying relationship[s] with their actual
come out of my throat. A huge black space then mother[s] ... in which the daughter experienced
opened up in front of me and I fell inside it. I couldn't her mother as withholding or withdrawn and as
see what was in front of me and I couldn't hear hostile and destructive ... [yet] found herself, to
anything around me. I couldn't think of anything her continual unpleasant surprise, still seeking
except that my mother was no longer near me."38 her mother's love and approval," tend to dis-
regard the rich preserves of strength, wisdom,
This episode, virtually a rewrite of Demeter's self-affirmation, and challenge that inhere in the
mythic loss and separation but from the daugh- mother-daughter relation-qualities which, how-
ter's viewpoint, ends, as does its prototype, with ever, in some case histories, are transferred to
a reunion that is only partial and with a perma- the patient's new relationship with a female ana-
nent rift having opened up between mother and lyst.44 Without hope, without promise, however,
daughter. Interestingly, it is at this point that no conflict can maintain its claim; thus, par-
fantasies of mother and father together emerge adoxically, it is precisely the image of good
in the text, as do similar fantasies after the com- mother-daughter relations (inscribed on one lev-
parable bathing passage in Roiphe. el of reading by the Demeter-Persephone myth)
One of the points I wish to stress here is that that keeps both conflict and communication in
psychoanalytic theory, by structuring the rela- play.
tionships between women so exclusively around Fortunately, adult women, both growing and
the pivotal figure of a male (or, in some ac- aging, and young girls in various stages of devel-
counts, the male organ) desired by both women opment can and do cherish ongoing meaningful
(i.e., the oedipal paradigm: mother and daughter relations with each other while simultaneously
vying for the attentions of a husband/father), has nurturing precious ties to fathers, brothers, male
tended to miss and to dismiss the intense, on- lovers, husbands, and sons. The Demeter-Per-
going intergenerational relations among women sephone myth, however, in dramatizing its ver-
inscribed by the texts I have quoted here-texts sion of this state of things, ends manifestly in a
written within the past thirty years by gifted compromise, but in fact offers a stark either-or
women of varied racial and ethnic backgrounds. solution that can be seen as the simple inverse of
Each of these texts, by temporarily assigning its the classic psychoanalytic position, which, in its
male characters to the wings, forces its readers most extreme form, seems equally stark.
to gaze fixedly and not without discomfort at the Whereas the latter has tended to conceptualize
female-to-female bond as a primary structure the mother-daughter bond as archaic and atavis-
placed stage-center and under bright lights. tic, a stage in female development that must be
Classical psychoanalytic theory has posited superseded and "left behind;" the myth, on the
the little girl as necessarily turning away from other hand, portrays it (manifestly) as ongoing
her mother. While acknowledging the intensity but uncomplicated, as thoroughly tender, lov-
of early ties, Freud states: "[the girl's] attach- ing, and fulfilling. Neither view is adequate, for
ment is forced away from her mother;"39 "the as our rich literary texts teach, the bond can
turning away from her mother is an extremely neither be understood only as a positive source
important step in the course of a girl's develop- of continuing strength nor only as a regressive
ment;"40 "the attachment to the mother is bound pull or unpleasant site of conflict throughout the

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 418 The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism

individual life history of women. In fact, it is all conditions of social reality have not significantly
of the above. altered. Clinical evidence, moreover, reveals
that women require not only stable maternal
VIII introjects but ongoing contact with primary ma-
ternal objects-especially at moments associ-
Dreading her loss of self and of object, a mother ated with fertility-at menarche, marriage, preg-
goes, as we have seen, in search of a daughter nancy, birth, and the nurturance of children.
whom she must keep. What does this mean? At The ancient myth, which tells its story man-
what price is Persephone rescued from Hades ifestly from the mother's side, stresses Demet-
and returned to earth? An all-too-obvious psy- er's desire to be available as an ongoing presence
choanalytic reading might cast Demeter as an in Persephone's life, to play an active role and to
omnipotent preoedipal mother, more powerful foster identifications between her daughter and
than all males or perhaps as a narcissistic mother herself, but this is equally true in reverse. It
who, under the pretext of salvation, sacrifices relates the suffering attendant upon their inevita-
her child in order to maintain hegemony and ble separations and the gradual acceptance of
control.45 changes in their relationship. Mothers and daugh-
On this reading, Persephone reverts to her ters who reestablish rapport after the discord of
mother merely to gratify the latter's need. Not adolescence stand to discover more fully their
only barred from achieving loving heterosexual own unique capacities for nurturance-a point
relations, she does not within the mythic nar- underscored in the myth by the presence in the
rative become herself a (biological) mother. On end of the grandmother, as well as by the closing
this moot point, it is possible however to priv- pages of Anne Roiphe's book where, as we have
ilege the allegorical nature of the text and inter- seen, the mother becomes in fantasy a grand-
pret Persephone's participation each spring in mother herself.
the refertilization of the earth as a species of Cynthia Ozick, interviewed recently on the
symbolic motherhood. In any case, the negative subject of her tragic masterpiece, The Shawl, a
reading offers us a Demeter who only super- savage tale of a mother who survives at the price
ficially rescues a cherished and victimized child; of sanity the murder of her infant daughter in a
in fact, she herself becomes the victimizer, using Polish concentration camp, recalled the memory
and abusing her daughter for her own ends. By of her own grandmother.46 In trying to answer
retrieving Persephone and taking her once again the interviewer's questions about why she, an
to her bosom, she asserts her eternal and ex- author who never experienced the Holocaust,
clusive prerogative to be the mother (One con- chooses to write about it, she evoked an image
jures images here of little girls "playing house," of her grandmother "weeping and beating her
vying with one another as to who will "be the breast" upon learning of the British White Paper
mother. ") in 1939 (an act that cut off, for German Jews, all
To interpret thus, however, is to do so against hope of escape from the Nazi terror). "'Maybe I
the grain of the manifest content and tone of the was born to be a witness,' she said. 'I got it from
myth. It is to deny the fact that Persephone's my grandmother. I grew up always as a wit-
initiation into heterosexuality comes via rape ness'."47
and perhaps even weakly disguised incest and to
misprise the very mood and language of the Ix

original texts, which clearly exalt the symmetry,

mutuality, and tenderness of the mother-daughter While the ancient myth associates youthful in-
bond. Idealization may, however, serve to de- nocence in an enclosed female space with play-
fend against underlying pathology, and so-called fulness and freedom from care, marriage, on the
"unconflicted" love may cover a tragic inability other hand-in the form of Hades-is equated
to separate. with brutality and death. For Persephone, the
What all these texts teach, however, is that on joys of marriage and heterosexual love are appar-
some level mother and daughter do not and can- ently absent. Despite her restoration to mother,
not ever separate. Rather, they portray deeply her sacrifice continues, and she fails, as queen
felt needs for maintaining ties that the changing of another realm, to establish a satisfying exis-

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 Spitz Mothers and Daughters 419

tence there. This dark parallelism of nuptials the subject of motherhood and death, I wish to
and death evokes other Greek legends inscribed quote a passage by Cynthia Ozick, who writes in
in the tragedies, such as that of Sophocles's An- The Shawl, "Motherhood-I've always known
tigone, who, as she is led to her death in the this-is a profound distraction from philosophy,
cave, is said to be marrying somebody in Hades, and all philosophy is rooted in suffering over the
and Euripides's Iphigenia, the pitiable daughter passage of time. I mean the fact of motherhood,
of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra, whose father, the physiological fact. To have the power to
after agreeing to have her throat cut so that the create another human being, to be the instru-
winds may blow as the ships set sail for Troy, ment of such a mystery"-is thus to triumph
laments that Hades will marry her before long. over death);50fourth, a recognition of a mourn-
Thus, sacrifice, marriage, and death are in- ing process on the part of both mother and daugh-
terwoven if not equated in ancient Greek culture, ter as they experience the inevitable changes in
and shards of such beliefs continue even in our their relationship; andfinally, the significance of
time to appear in fantasies and to deform the intergenerational gendered bonding, of a matri-
feminine psyche.48 Fed by pervasive visual and lineal filiation, which deeply etches itself into
literary tropes, and simultaneously denied by the lives of women and affects them in ways
overidealization in the form of other pervasive underexplored by psychoanalysis and structural-
myths exemplified by such tales as "Sleeping ism, theories content for so many years to con-
Beauty" and "Cinderella," where to marry is strue women as a variant on, as complementary
"to live happily ever after," they deserve to be to, opposite of, even occasionally as inferior to,
more widely addressed by contemporary writ- the male as both model and norm.
ing on women's anxieties and conflicts. Thus, to ponder the myth of Demeter and
Persephone in the light of recent literature by
x and about women is to grasp its significance,
longevity, and power and to open rich possi-
It would be inaccurate to say that Freud evinced bilities for the further elaboration of feminine
no interest in these complexities. Yet, despite his psychology.
many references to Greek culture, his theoret- One classicist has written of the myth as en-
ical attention remained riveted on the towering compassing a circularity, a self-containedness
figure of Oedipus whose tale, he firmly be- that excludes man, and by this, he of course
lieved, could stand alone as a paradigm to which means mankind as opposed to the gods.51 But
all others-even when the protagonists were fe- the interpretation of gender works as well. De-
male-could be referred if not reduced.49 We meter and Persephone being doubles, mother
have seen here, however, that the image of De- and maiden, each contains the other within her-
meter, mythical mother, symbol of the harvest, self. Descending and retreating, the tale moves
wandering land and sea in search of her daughter within a closed system, like the generative earth,
(who is also herself), offers another paradigm with man ploughing and playing in it a crucial
which cannot be mapped directly on to or equat- rather than a central role.
ed with the Oedipus myth.
Among the prominent motifs that have emerged In closing, I wish to share a more general
in this paper are: first, the deep bodily identifi- reflection: Psychoanalysis is a study not merely
cation of mother and daughter-which weaves a of the ways in which the past constructs the
cord between them that, though it may at times present but of the ways in which the present
rip or fray in both pain and anger, can never be constructs the past. As such, it offers hypotheses
completely broken; second, the importance to a rather than conclusions. Its hypotheses, how-
woman of becoming, being, and remaining a ever, exactly like the great myths, have power to
mother (a desire that may, in contemporary cul- exert far-reaching influence over human lives,
ture, find many diverse paths of sublimation); both now and in the future. For this, each one of
third, the wish to possess in perpetuity the us who works with its ideas must take serious
power conferred by this role, a power that then responsibility, and to do so fully means not only
encompasses in fantasy both birth and death, to "use" theory but to reflect critically on it, to
which are, in the unconscious, equated (here, on continue to reinterpret it, to be able both to

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 420 The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism

understand and to imagine alternatives-to exer- 18. See Sigmund Freud, "Mourning and Melancholia" in
Standard Edition 14, pp. 239-258.
cise that freedom of mind, that openness to pos-
19. See Marilyn Arthur, "Politics and Pomegranates: An
sibility which, as I have tried to demonstrate Interpretation of the Homeric Hymn to Demeter," Arethusa
here, is fostered by our contact with the very 10 (1977): 7-47.
real, invented worlds of the arts. 20. Ibid.
21. "The Homeric Hymn to Demeter" in Hesiod, The
Homeric Hymns, and Homerica, trans. H.G. Evelyn-White
ELLEN HANDLER SPITZ
(Harvard University Press, 1924), p. 309.
37 Iselin Terrace 22. Ibid., p. 321.
Larchmont, New York 10538 23. Ovid, Metamorphoses, p. 131.
24. Tan, The Joy Luck Club, p. 215.
25. Kincaid, Annie John, pp. 125, 126.
26. See note 5.
1. A version of this essay was read to the Washington 27. Kincaid, Annie John, p. 18.
Society for Psychoanalytic Psychology on September 24, 28. See note 6.
1989. Several sections are adapted from my catalogue essay, 29. Hansberry, A Raisin in the Sun, p. 51.
"Psychoanalysis and the Legacies of Antiquity" in Freud 30. Ibid., emphasis added.
and Art: His Personal Collection of Antiquities, ed. Lynn 31. Ovid, Metamorphoses, p. 126.
Gamwell and Richard Wells (New York: Abrams, 1989). A 32. Homeric Hymn, p. 289.
version will appear as a chapter in Image and Insight (Co- 33. Kincaid, Annie John, p. 14.
lumbia University Press, forthcoming). Grateful acknowl- 34. Roiphe, Lovingkindness, p. 20.
edgement is due to the Fund for Psychoanalytic Research of 35. Ibid., p. 22.
the American Psychoanalytic Association and to the Getty 36. Ibid., p. 23.
Center for the History of Art and the Humanities. For their 37. Kincaid, Annie John, p. 42.
thoughtful reading and valuable discussion, I would like to 38. Ibid., p. 43, emphasis added.
thank Mary Ann Caws, Helene P. Foley, Marilyn Arthur. 39. Freud, "Female Sexuality," p. 235.
Muriel Gold Morris, Lisa Burkhalter, Ruth F. Lax, and 40. Ibid., p. 239.
Joanna Burnstine Strauss. 41. Ibid., p. 234.
2. See Ellen Handler Spitz, Art and Psyche (Yale Univer- 42. See, for example, Nini Herman, Too Long a Child:
sity Press, 1985). The Mother-Daughter Dyad (London: Free Association
3. Amy Tan, The Joy Luck Club (New York: G.P. Put- Books, 1989).
num's Sons, 1989). 43. E. Kirsten Dahl, "Daughters and Mothers: Oedipal
4. Jamaica Kincaid, Annie John (New York: New Ameri- Aspects of the Witch-Mother," The Psychoanalytic Study of
can Library, 1983). the Child 44 (1989): 267-280.
5. Anne Roiphe, Lovingkindness (New York: Summit 44. Ibid., p. 268; see also Elizabeth Young-Bruehl,
Books, 1987). "Looking for Anna Freud's Mother," The Psychoanalytic
6. Lorraine Hansberry, A Raisin in the Sun (1959; New Study of the Child 44 (1989): 391-408.
York: New American Library, 1987). 45. See Alice Miller, The Drama of the Gifted Child (New
7. Cynthia Ozick, The Shawl (New York: Summit Books, York: Basic Books, 1981).
1987). 46. See note 7.
8. Sigmund Freud, "Delusions and Dreams in Jensen's 47. Quoted in Richard Bernstein, "Being Nice or Rotten
Gradiva" in Standard Edition 9, pp. 3-95. in Writing," The New York Times (October 2, 1989), pp.
9. Sigmund Freud, "Female Sexuality" in Standard Edi- C 15 and C2 1.
tion 19, pp. 225-243. 48. See Nicole Loraux, Tragic Ways of Killing a Woman,
10. Sigmund Freud, "A Mythological Parallel to a Visual trans. Anthony Forster (Harvard University Press, 1987).
Obsession" in Standard Edition 14, pp. 337-338. 49. Freud states: "I should like to insist that ... the begin-
11. Sigmund Freud, "The Theme of the Three Caskets" nings of religion, morals, society and art converge in the
in Standard Edition 12, pp. 291-301. Oedipus complex. This is in complete agreement with the
12. Tan, The Joy Luck Club, p. 45, emphasis added. psychoanalytic finding that the same complex constitutes the
13. Kincaid, Annie John, p. 88, emphasis added. nucleus of all neuroses, so far as our present knowledge
14. Claude Levi-Strauss, The Elementary Structures of goes. It seems to me a most surprising discovery that the
Kinship, trans. James Harle Bell, Richard von Sturmer, and problems of social psychology, too, should prove soluble on
Rodney Needham (Boston: Beacon Press, 1969). the basis of one single concrete point-man's relation to
15. See Charles Bernheimer and Claire Kahane, eds., In his father ("Totem and Taboo"; Standard Edition 13,
Dora's Case (Columbia University Press, 1985). pp. 156-157).
16. Ovid, Metamorphoses, trans. Mary I. Innes (Mid- 50. Ozick, The Shawl, p. 41.
dlesex, England: Penguin, 1955), p. 130. 51. Walter Burkert, Structure and History in Greek My-
17. Ibid. thology and Ritual (University of California Press, 1979).

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