The Demeter-Persephone Myth as Writing Ritual in the Lives of Literary Women
This volume explores the life stories of Elizabeth Bishop, Virginia Woolf, Alice James, and Edith Wharton, whose individuation process mirrored Demeter/Persephone’s mythic journey from abduction and rage to purposeful reconciliation. These authors often courted humiliation and consequent exile by voicing what others did not want to acknowledge, yet each took restorative action to discover and preserve emotional and mental wellbeing. Writing during the 19th and early 20th centuries when an association between female authors and physical ailments, neurasthenia, hysteria, and other nervous complaints by the medical paternity reflected how society in general understood mental illness, as well as the narrative perceptions of women, Bishop, Woolf, James and Wharton, claimed personal autonomy by speaking truth about sorrow and suffering in their lives. Despite restrictions and limiting gender norms, each author continuously recast painful experiences of loss, abuse and mental illness, as fodder for the imagination to forge lasting literary careers.
The book emphasizes the therapeutic value of narrative disclosure and its ability to yield a deeper understanding of the impact of childhood trauma and adversity on women writers, and how their creative response shaped modern culture. As such, it contextualizes trauma as lived experience for each writer, along with current research on early loss and mourning, childhood abuse, and family systems theory, in order to appreciate more fully how writing as ritual may help transform mental and emotional debility.
Dr Jana Rivers Norton has been a college instructor for more than 25 years. She has taught undergraduate and graduate courses in Psychology, Gender Studies, the Psychology of Creativity and Narrative as Therapeutic Disclosure at several institutions including Humboldt State University and the University of New Mexico, Gallup. Her research focuses on creativity and mythos, trauma and abuse, the literary arts and gender, and writing. Her peer- reviewed articles can be found in journals such as ReVision: A Journal of Consciousness and Transformation and the International Journal of the Humanities. Her first book, Taming Trauma’s Wake, was published in 2009. Dr Norton currently teaches full time at Cochise College, Santa Cruz in Nogales, Arizona.
“For me, myths are imaginative narratives about important human concerns that have consequences for behavior. They are rooted in the imagination, thus they never were. But they are existential, thus they always are. The ancient Greek myth of Demeter and her daughter Persephone has elicited numerous reactions over the years; it is a story that speaks to people of both genders and all ages. This marvelous book, as an example of first-rate scholarship, pulls together the spin given to this complex mother-daughter relationship by four eminent writers. However, Bishop, Woolf, James, and Wharton were creatures of their time, and their eras were not exactly friendly to creative women, especially if they had literary talents. These four essays, each one fascinating and inspired, can be seen as microcosms of their own lives, and the struggles still faced by many brilliant women to make their voices heard.”
—Stanley Krippner, PhD, Professor of Psychology, Saybrook University
“Neglect by the father and the breaking of the mother/daughter bond is an all-too familiar story for many women. In her illuminating new book, feminist scholar Jana Rivers-Norton uses the myth of Demeter and Persephone to show how four prominent women authors found writing therapeutic to track their descent and re-integration, and transformation from victim to creator. [It is] highly recommended for psychotherapists and women as a mythic lens to understand and work through intergenerational trauma.”
—Ilene A. Serlin, PhD, BC-DMT, Fellow of the American Psychological Association; Associated Distinguished Professor of the California Institute of Integral Studies; Author of The Anne Sexton Complex and Women and Humanistic Psychology
“[This book represents a] privilege and a transforming experience to look deeply into the lives of these stellar and strong literary women with huge life challenges—to see their resilience and creativity, their will to survive and, at best, to overcome and heal. At times, the reader’s eyes may mist over. In different guises, we witness the “myth of the eternal return” and the healing powers of art which, we also see, can benefit us all. In this beautifully written book, Rivers-Norton gives us both the exquisite sensitivity and scholarly excellence to make this book a classic.”
—Ruth Richards, PhD, MD, College of Social Sciences, Saybrook University; Editor of Everyday Creativity and New Views of Human Nature: Psychological, Social, and Spiritual Perspectives; Co-Editor of Eminent Creativity, Everyday Creativity, and Health
Jana Rivers-Norton
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