the pomegranate seeds by nathaniel hawthorne

There are no sexual undertones here, and it is clear that Hades looks upon Persephone as a child, someone to brighten his dark days with her innocent play, rather than as someone who can offer the companionship and sexual relations that a wife would. Laura Geringer's retelling is taken from that of Nathaniel Hawthorne, in his 1853 Tanglewood Tales: A Wonder-Book for Girls and Boys, and is clearly meant to focus on the former interpretation. Given the sexual connotations it often has, and its theme of the kidnapped bride, it can also be read as a tale about the separation of young women from their natal families (at least in ancient Greek and other Mediterranean cultures), when they are married. The story of Persephone - her kidnapping by Hades, her mother's consequent grief, the eventual arrangement whereby she divides her time between the upper and underworld - can be read as a pouquoi tale, one which explains the existence of the changing seasons. Henceforth she would have to spend three months a year with him, and nine with her mother. All is not so simple however, as the captive Persphone, tempted by their beauty and fragrance, had eaten three pomegranate seeds, tying her to Hades' kingdom. When matters reach a crisis point, Zeus intervenes and arranges to have Persephone returned to her mother. Her mother Demeter, in the meantime, searches the world over for her, so consumed by grief that she eventually causes all growing things to wither and die. Kidnapped by her uncle Hades and taken to his palace in the underworld, Persephone resists all of her captor's efforts to reconcile her to her new life, and refuses all food.

Author Laura Geringer and illustrator Leonid Gore join forces in this picture-book presentation of the Greek myth of Persephone.

The pomegranate seeds by nathaniel hawthorne