Waking Point

by Helen Noakes

“. . . where love is lacking, power fills the vacuum.”—C. G. Jung, “Four Archetypes”

SAN FRANCISCO, CA—(Weekly Hubris)—8/30/10—Centuries ago, or perhaps yesterday, the powerful goddess, Demeter, accompanied her daughter, Persephone, on their annual perambulations through the verdant meadows of Epirus. The day was glorious, the goddess would not have it any other way, and the scent of Gaïa’s rich and velvety gown permeated the warm breeze.

Demeter smiled at Persephone’s childlike glee at collecting the brilliant wildflowers that adorned her great grandmother Gaïa’s breast, and marveled as she noticed that, in the short span of one winter, Persephone had been transformed from an awkward child into a beautiful adolescent.

“Mother, look!” Persephone called across the sweet soft grasses, “Narcissus!”

A cloud swiftly moved across the sun. Demeter felt a chill seize her heart, and cried, “No!” But it was too late.

Mothers know when shifts occur. They know when a child is about to leave them. Some, as we have in recent years too often seen, prefer to dispatch them.

The Greek myths, which so cannily explore the dark side of human nature, did not flinch at exploring the possessive and pathological aspects of motherhood.

The myth of Demeter and Persephone is familiar. Persephone is snatched by a besotted Hades, god of the underworld, who takes her to wife. Demeter, the goddess of grain and the fertility of the earth, goes in search of her daughter, finds out that Zeus, Hades’s brother, and Persephone’s father, had given Hades permission for the abduction.

Raging, Demeter punishes both the gods and humankind by refusing to attend to her duties. Famine ensues, men grumble against the gods, and Zeus, king of all the deities brokers a compromise: Persephone is allowed to leave the underworld to visit Demeter for a few months (the length of her sojourn in the sun varies, depending on which version of the myth you read) but must return to her husband, Hades, for the rest of the year.

The most popular myth states that Hades abducted Persephone against her will. An older version tells us that the highly sensitive Persephone, upon hearing the cries of the dead in the underworld, takes pity on them and descends of her own accord. In both versions, Persephone is eventually seduced by Hades.

As in all Greek myths, there are many layers to the story, all of which are viable. The most obvious is a story of a daughter who, becoming a woman, elects to live with her lover. The mother perceives this as abandonment and proceeds to demand her daughter’s attention, seeking to bend her to her maternal will.

I will explore this myth in depth in another column, because it is a complex and rich study of both the best and the worst of the feminine estate.

In another ancient story, Medea kills her children to punish her husband, Jason, for abandoning her in order to marry another woman.

Both myths explore that side of “mother love” which most of us prefer to leave alone.

Demeter loved her daughter to distraction. Medea loved her children to death. Both were convinced that they were acting for the benefit of their offspring. Unable to distinguish between their own selfish ends and the welfare of their progeny, they justified their destructive acts as part and parcel of the maternal prerogative.

Were they so deeply steeped in their own darkness that they could not distinguish love from ruthlessness? Are there women who are incapable of love, who see their children as objects to be manipulated or transformed into miniature copies of a mother’s ideal?

The latter is quite evident in the obscenity of children’s beauty pageants, those pageants that were so thoroughly exploited by the media when Jonbenet Ramsey was murdered. I was both appalled and disgusted by what the parents of those little girls visited upon them. It comprised, to my mind, nothing more than child pornography. Please don’t tell me that pedophiles don’t get their kicks from watching such events. I can’t believe that the parents of these children are not aware of that fact and, in my estimation, they are pimping out their tiny daughters.

Recently, we’ve heard about yet another woman who killed her children. And I find myself wondering how it is possible for a woman to carry a child to term, give birth, see the helpless infant in her arms—how it is possible for a mother to visit cruelties on her offspring let alone kill her own child . . . .

Carl Gustav Jung summarized the pathological mother in his Four Archetypes: “First she gives birth to the children, and from then on she clings to them, for without them she has no existence whatsoever. Like Demeter, she compels the gods by her stubborn persistence to grant her the right of possession over her daughter. Her Eros develops exclusively as a maternal relationship while remaining unconscious as a personal one. An unconscious Eros always expresses itself as a will to power. Women of this type, though continually ‘living for others,’ are, as a matter of fact, unable to make any real sacrifice. Driven by ruthless will to power and a fanatical insistence on their own maternal rights, they often succeed in annihilating not only their own personality but also the personal lives of their children. The less conscious of such a mother is of her own personality, the greater and more violent is her unconscious will to power.”

The “. . . unconscious will to power” is a deleterious thing, and certainly not restricted to the female of the species. But since we are exploring mothers here, might I suggest that every woman who is about to become a mother, every woman who is a mother, stop and examine her role.

Just because you gave birth to your children does not mean you own them. A child is not a thing. A child is a human being, and what sort of human being that child becomes is largely dependent on you.