The Myth of Proserpina

Also known as Persephone, Kore, or Cora, Proserpina, as she is known in Latin, is one of my favorite mythological characters. The beloved daughter of Ceres, the goddess of the harvest, Prosperina is abducted while picking narcissus (the flower I chose for Jack’s golden bough) by Pluto, lord of the underworld. In the Metamorphoses, Ovid offers an explanation for Pluto’s behavior that is not given elsewhere: Venus, the goddess of love, has ordered her son Cupid to shoot Pluto with one of his arrows of love so she can extend her empire over the dead, as well as the living.  

Ceres is so grief-stricken by her daughter’s abduction that she refuses to bless the earth. With no harvest, life comes to a standstill until Jupiter, responding to the prayers of the hungry, forces Pluto to release Proserpina. But, before this can happen, Proserpina makes the fatal error of consuming a half-dozen pomegranate seeds. Because she has eaten, she must return to Hades for half the year, a month for each seed she ate.

On its most basic level, this myth explains the seasons—while Proserpina is back with Ceres, the earth is bright and nature grows; when she returns to Hades, Ceres mourns and the earth turns cold and barren. But it also touches on some of themes I wanted to explore in The Twilight Prisoner: the power of love to make people act recklessly (Jack and Cora, Euri and her mysterious boyfriend), the intense bond between mothers and daughters (Cora and her mother), the challenge of moving back and forth between the worlds of the dead and the living (Jack.)