SOURCE: Crosland, Andrew. “Kate Chopin's ‘Lilacs’ and the Myth of Persephone.” ANQ: A Quarterly Journal of Short Articles, Notes, and Reviews 14, no. 1 (winter 2001): 31-4.

[In the following essay, Crosland explores Chopin's use of the Persephone myth in her story “Lilacs.”]

The myth of Persephone provides a framework for Kate Chopin's 1894 story “Lilacs,” a tale of ambiguous good and evil subtly defined through mythological allusion. Chopin's use of myth in her other writing, the prominence of mythology in the literary magazines of her day, her familiarity with authors who employed it, and evidence in the story itself all argue for her reliance on it in “Lilacs.”

Critics have shown that Chopin used mythology in her most studied work, The Awakening. Lawrence Thornton bases his analysis of the novel on the myth of Icarus (138); taking another approach, Rosemary F. Franklin draws parallels between protagonist Edna Pontellier and Psyche (144). Sandra Gilbert regards Chopin as a precursor of James Joyce, whose Ulysses superimposes a modern plot on a structure of mythology. She examines Chopin's use of Aphrodite, focusing on the “mythic radiance that might at any moment flash through ordinary reality” in The Awakening (46). These essays demonstrate that myth is a tool in Chopin's creative repertoire. It is also an instrument she hones in “Lilacs” for later use in The Awakening.

Sarah Way Sherman notes that mythology was a popular subject in American literary circles during the 1800s and that the Atlantic Monthly “regularly informed its readers on pre-Christian goddesses and their rituals” (16). In Sarah Orne Jewett, an American Persephone, she argues that Jewett and many other American writers of the period used the myth of Demeter and Persephone in their work. Indeed, this story of female strength, fidelity, and triumph was a favorite of nineteenth-century feminists (Sherman 21-27). About the time she began “Lilacs” in 1894, Chopin advised her neighbor and would-be author Kate Hull, “I know of no one better than Miss Jewett to study for technique and nicety of construction” (Toth 237). Chopin's familiarity with the Atlantic is evident from its having rejected “Lilacs” for publication (Toth 473). Thus, Chopin's literary models and the prevalent interest in mythology suggest her awareness of Persephone and of the uses of mythology in fiction.

The parallels between the myth of Persephone and “Lilacs” are obvious. In the myth, Cupid's arrow strikes Pluto, making him love Persephone and want her for his queen. He abducts her to the underworld. Demeter, the young virgin's divine mother, searches the globe for her daughter. When she finds her, she bargains for Persephone's release, but because the daughter has eaten a pomegranate seed in the underworld, she cannot gain complete freedom. Pluto and Demeter agree that Persephone should spend spring and summer on earth and the other two seasons in Hades as queen.

In “Lilacs,” Adrienne Farival leaves the innocent days of her convent schooling for the worldliness of Paris, where she performs on stage and has several lovers. Each spring, when the lilacs first bloom, she leaves her tawdry, chaotic life for a visit to her old convent school. There she finds peace, order, and renewed innocence. Like Persephone, Adrienne lives in two worlds: the convent that restores her and the city that exhausts her.

Although Persephone receives an annual reprieve from Hades and the world is granted springtime, fertility, and renewal, in the end Adrienne is denied access to the convent; she has no intervals of peace and must stay always in the tumult of Paris. Persephone finds a respite that Adrienne is denied.

Other details amplify the differences in Adrienne's story. Kidnapped by Pluto, Persephone drops the lilies she had been gathering. Traditional symbols of innocence, lilies signify Persephone's loss of this quality. Adrienne retreats to her convent each spring when the lilacs bloom, but when the nuns bar her from entering, she similarly drops the bouquet of lilacs she has made. Among the first flowers to bloom in spring, lilacs symbolize renewal and signal Adrienne's departure from the sins of Paris. By changing the lilies to lilacs, Chopin replaces lost innocence with the loss of hope.

Another telling detail is the reason for the betrayal of both young women. Aphrodite orders Cupid to shoot Pluto with one of his arrows so she can influence the underworld. She also fears Persephone may join virginal Athena and Artemis in scorning her. Under the influence of love, Pluto abducts his unwilling queen. Adrienne, who has Henri, Paul, and perhaps other lovers, is clearly no enemy of Aphrodite. The story suggests that she is denied entry to the convent because one of these lovers or her manager persuades the Mother Superior that she is morally unfit to be there. Thus, love betrays both the virgin and the worldly entertainer. Persephone falls for having no beau; Adrienne suffers because she strongly attracts several men.

A major irony in the story is that the Mother Superior denies Adrienne her annual retreat from the squalor of Paris. The obligation of those in religious orders is to help people in need, not to scorn them. Thus, a person who should sustain Adrienne turns her away. The nun's title of “Mother Superior” compounds the irony. Compared to Demeter, she fails as a mother. Demeter searched both earth and Hades for Persephone and did all she could to aid her. The childless Mother Superior is without maternal love and even Christian charity because she spurns Adrienne as a visitor to the convent. Her superiority is merely titular.

Taking a different view, Elmo Howell argues that “Lilacs” is not “an indictment of the Church as represented by the Mother Superior” but is the story of “an individual soul at odds with itself” (106). He thinks Adrienne “hopes to have both worlds at once by keeping them tidily apart, for use in their seasons as the need arises” (108). Interestingly, Howell's choice of words also suggests the underlying myth of Persephone, a figure who succeeds in living in two worlds “in their seasons” even as Adrienne does not.

Howell's analysis denies Adrienne the role of innocent victim. She makes no effort to save her soul at the convent but goes there to revive her youth and temporarily escape Paris. Unlike Persephone, she moves at will between her two worlds; she is drawn to the convent and her past by the smell of the spring lilac blooms, but she soon will return voluntarily to the city.

Sister Agathe, Adrienne's closest companion at the convent, tells her, “I fear that you do not turn as you might to our Blessed Mother in heaven, who is ever ready to comfort and solace an afflicted heart with the precious balm of her sympathy and love” (358). Adrienne admits that she does not. The Virgin Mary also is neglected by the nuns who refurbish a statue of Joseph, leaving Mary's “almost dingy by contrast” (356). In “Lilacs,” the Holy Mother may be considered another counterpart for Demeter. As such, she is not her child's salvation, and this failure is emphasized when Adrienne finds the expensive necklace she donated for the statue of Mary among the items returned to her at the end of the story.

Perhaps the major difference between the myth and the story is the role of the divine. The mythological gods protect Persephone and humanity, making fertility and the rotation of the seasons the outcome of a sorrowful abduction. Divinity and its agents, however, are ineffectual in Adrienne's world. Not only is Mary neglected, but the picture of Ste. Catherine de Sienne—a mystic who gave Pope Gregory XI the courage to return the papacy from Avignon to Rome—is removed from its place of honor in the convent. Finally, the pharisaic Mother Superior strays from her religious duties. The gods who shaped the mythological world have been replaced by a heavenly power that does not intervene and is ignored.

By building her story on a framework of myth, Chopin subtly emphasizes her portrayal of a lost world: one where the sinner seeks rest but not salvation, where the religious leader is more sanctimonious than saintly, where even good Sister Agathe is disconcertingly gullible and ignorant. However, the tone of “Lilacs”—at least until Adrienne is denied entry to the convent—is lighter than might be expected with such pessimism. This disparity is explained in an episode of the story that Chopin may have included as an allegorical gloss on her fictional method. Adrienne tries to catch the attention of her complaining servant Sophie by pelting her face with rose blossoms. Failing in this effort, she playfully threatens to throw a book and says: “Now I warn you, Sophie, the weightiness, the heaviness of Mons. Zola are such that they cannot fail to prostrate you” (362). Chopin subtly contrasts Persephone's world of female strength, fidelity, and triumph with Adrienne's experience of betrayal and defeat; she does it deftly, like the gentle toss of a rose, which she prefers to the heavy-handed literary naturalism of Zola.

Allusion to the myth of Persephone emphasizes the duality of good and evil, of salvation and damnation, and of renewal and death. It is an excellent structural device that invokes a richer past to emphasize by contrast the barrenness of the present. Understanding Chopin's reliance on myth in “Lilacs” is important because it illuminates both her subtle fictional technique and her pessimistic message.

Works Cited

Chopin, Kate. “Lilacs.” The Complete Works of Kate Chopin. Ed. Per Seyersted. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 1969. 355-65.

Franklin, Rosemary F. “Edna as Psyche: The Self and the Unconscious.” Approaches to Teaching Chopin's The Awakening. Ed. Bernard Koloski. New York: MLA, 1988. 144-49.

Gilbert, Sandra M. “The Second Coming of Aphrodite: Kate Chopin's Fantasy of Desire.” Kenyon Review 5.3 (Summer 1983): 42-66.

Howell, Elmo. “Kate Chopin and the Pull of Faith: A Note on ‘Lilacs.’” Southern Studies 18 (1979): 103-09.

Sherman, Sarah Way. Sarah Orne Jewett, an American Persephone. Hanover: UP of New England, 1989.

Thornton, Lawrence. “Edna as Icarus: A Mythic Issue.” Approaches to Teaching Chopin's The Awakening. Ed. Bernard Koloski. New York: MLA, 1988. 138-43.

Toth, Emily. Kate Chopin: A Life of the Author of The Awakening. New York: Morrow, 1990.