Maya Zhorov, Period 2, 11/15/2022

 Maya Zhorov Period 2 11/15/22

Literacy & Learning

Persephone and Hades.  Beauty and the Beast. I grew up thinking that these couples had the most romantic love stories of all time.  Passion.  Tragedy.  A happy ending.  My idea of romance as a child was stories with themes of kidnapping, Stockholm syndrome and imbalance of power.  We were taught as children to fall for the anti-hero, the morally gray character that abuses the heroine.  

The princesses that we dressed up as on Halloween every year were victims of abuse from their “Prince Charming”.  We aspired to be the women who were placed into the tight cages of stereotypes but were glorified because they were “beautiful”.   To what extent do these stories really have on our lives?  In our society?  Take Beauty and the Beast, for instance.  Belle was trying to escape from the harassing Gaston and his unwanted advances when she became entrapped by the Beast.  Her selfless sacrifice for the life of her father portrayed yet another rope tying her life to another man.  She was put in a situation where she had no option but to accept her fate.  Spending time with the Beast she ultimately looked past the rough exterior to find the human underneath.  The barbarism of the male character was attributed to his exterior appearance but yet why can we excuse his behavior for his human side?

Belle was pushed into domestic roles from the circumstances of her story, no matter how nice the castle was.  In the beginning of the story, she wanted to explore the world and her potential but the happy ending was that she ended up living in the same place she was trying to escape?

How about Hades and Persephone?   Persephone was the epitome of a pure angel.  So protected by her mother, she remained oblivious to the corruption of her world.  Her virginal status was tainted once Hades physically took her from her world and kidnapped her to the underworld.  Being naive, she didn’t understand that eating the pomegranate would trap her in metaphorical hell.  The pomegranate was the “seed” of Hades and therefore, ruining the virgin character.  If we take a look at the story, we see Persephone handed from the protective hands of her father to the possessive hands of Hades.  She never had the chance to be on her own, independent from any possession.  Instead she was passed from one hell to another. 

How are these the romantic stories we craved for as children?  How are the themes of rape and kidnapping what we wanted in relationships?

It is so easy to see these themes expressed in today’s society.  We romanticize serial killers because they are “handsome” and excuse the behavior of misogynistic men because they are “charming”.  Ted Bundy was one of the most despicable rapists and serial killers of our world and yet we have little girls crushing over him.  How can we continue to let these stories be the example we set forth as love to younger generations?