Mastery of Life and Death
To achieve the greatest success, the heroine becomes a “goddess” herself. In this way she achieves enormous power and becomes a guardian for the next generation. While this acknowledgement in the external world is more important to the male hero, many heroines achieve inner ascendancy and outer recognition together. Persephone spends half her time as a maiden and flower princess, helping Demeter as fertility goddess of the harvest. The other half, she rules the dead as a crone. This dichotomy is perplexing, but less so if we understand the message contained here. Persephone is maiden and flower-goddess, death-crone and queen of the damned. This duality does not represent a split, but a converging; Persephone returns each spring and dies each autumn because she has mastered both worlds.
Read: Hymn to Demeter
Read Henry Potty and the Pet Rock: The Unauthorized Harry Potter Parody