Proserpine is a verse drama written for children by the English Romantic

Romanticism

Romanticism was an artistic, literary and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Europe, and gained strength in reaction to the Industrial Revolution...

 writers Mary Shelley

Mary Shelley

Mary Shelley was a British novelist, short story writer, dramatist, essayist, biographer, and travel writer, best known for her Gothic novel Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus . She also edited and promoted the works of her husband, the Romantic poet and philosopher Percy Bysshe Shelley...

 and Percy Bysshe Shelley

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Percy Bysshe Shelley was one of the major English Romantic poets and is critically regarded as among the finest lyric poets in the English language. Shelley was famous for his association with John Keats and Lord Byron...

. Mary wrote the blank verse

Blank verse

Blank verse is poetry written in unrhymed iambic pentameter. It has been described as "probably the most common and influential form that English poetry has taken since the sixteenth century" and Paul Fussell has claimed that "about three-quarters of all English poetry is in blank verse."The first...

 drama and Percy contributed two lyric poems

Lyric poetry

Lyric poetry is a genre of poetry that expresses personal and emotional feelings. In the ancient world, lyric poems were those which were sung to the lyre. Lyric poems do not have to rhyme, and today do not need to be set to music or a beat...

. Composed in 1820 while the Shelleys were living in Italy

Italy

Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...

, it is often considered a partner to the Shelleys' play Midas

Midas (Shelley)

Midas is a verse drama in blank verse by the Romantic writers Mary Shelley and Percy Bysshe Shelley. Mary wrote the drama and Percy contributed two lyric poems to it. Written in 1820 while the Shelleys were living in Italy, Mary Shelley tried unsuccessfully to have the play published by children's...

. Proserpine was first published in the London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

 periodical The Winter's Wreath in 1832. Whether the drama was ever intended to be staged is a point of debate among scholars.

The drama is based on Ovid's

Ovid

Publius Ovidius Naso , known as Ovid in the English-speaking world, was a Roman poet who is best known as the author of the three major collections of erotic poetry: Heroides, Amores, and Ars Amatoria...

 tale of the abduction of Proserpine

Proserpina

Proserpina or Proserpine is an ancient Roman goddess whose story is the basis of a myth of Springtime. Her Greek goddess' equivalent is Persephone. The probable origin of her name comes from the Latin, "proserpere" or "to emerge," in respect to the growing of grain...

 by Pluto

Pluto (mythology)

In ancient Greek religion and myth, Pluto was a name for the ruler of the underworld; the god was also known as Hades, a name for the underworld itself...

, which itself was based on the Greek myth of Demeter

Demeter

In Greek mythology, Demeter is the goddess of the harvest, who presided over grains, the fertility of the earth, and the seasons . Her common surnames are Sito as the giver of food or corn/grain and Thesmophoros as a mark of the civilized existence of agricultural society...

 and Persephone

Persephone

In Greek mythology, Persephone , also called Kore , is the daughter of Zeus and the harvest-goddess Demeter, and queen of the underworld; she was abducted by Hades, the god-king of the underworld....

. Mary Shelley's version focuses on the female characters. In a largely feminist retelling from Ceres's point of view, Shelley emphasises the separation of mother and daughter and the strength offered by a community of women. Ceres represents life and love, and Pluto represents death and violence. The genre

Genre

Genre , Greek: genos, γένος) is the term for any category of literature or other forms of art or culture, e.g. music, and in general, any type of discourse, whether written or spoken, audial or visual, based on some set of stylistic criteria. Genres are formed by conventions that change over time...

s of the text also reflect gender debates of the time. Percy contributed in the lyric verse form traditionally dominated by men; Mary created a drama with elements common to early nineteenth-century women's writing: details of everyday life and empathetic dialogue.

Proserpine is part of a female literary tradition which, as feminist literary critic

Feminist literary criticism

Feminist literary criticism is literary criticism informed by feminist theory, or by the politics of feminism more broadly. Its history has been broad and varied, from classic works of nineteenth-century women authors such as George Eliot and Margaret Fuller to cutting-edge theoretical work in...

 Susan Gubar

Susan Gubar

Dr. Susan D. Gubar is an American academic and Distinguished Professor of English and Women's Studies at Indiana University. She is co-author with Dr. Sandra M. Gilbert of the standard feminist text, The Madwoman in the Attic and a trilogy on women's writing in the twentieth century.Her book...

 describes it, has used the story of Ceres and Proserpine to "re-define, to re-affirm and to celebrate female consciousness itself". However, the play has been both neglected and marginalised by critics.

Background

In March 1818 the Shelleys moved to Italy, where their two young children, Clara and William, soon died. Mary entered into a deep depression and became alienated from Percy. Mary recovered to some extent with the birth of Percy Florence

Percy Florence Shelley

Sir Percy Florence Shelley, 3rd Baronet was the son and only surviving child of Percy Bysshe Shelley and his second wife, Mary Shelley. He was thus the only grandchild of Mary Wollstonecraft...

 later in 1819.

Between 1818 and 1820, she absorbed a considerable amount of drama, reading many of William Shakespeare’s

William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon"...

 plays, some with Percy. Percy believed that Mary had a talent for dramatic writing, and convinced her to study the great English, French, Latin, and Italian plays as well as dramatic theory. He even sought her advice on his play The Cenci

The Cenci

The Cenci, A Tragedy, in Five Acts is a verse drama in five acts by Percy Bysshe Shelley written in the summer of 1819, and inspired by a real Italian family, the Cencis . Shelley composed the play at Rome and at Villa Valsovano near Livorno, from May to August 5, 1819...

, and she transcribed the manuscript of his drama Prometheus Unbound. The Shelleys also attended operas, ballets, and plays. Percy also encouraged Mary to translate Vittorio Alfieri's

Vittorio Alfieri

Count Vittorio Alfieri was an Italian dramatist, considered the "founder of Italian tragedy."-Early life:Alfieri was born at Asti in Piedmont....

 play Mirra (1785), a tragedy about father-daughter incest which influenced her own novel Mathilda.

Mary Shelley’s studies were broad during these years. She began to learn Greek in 1820 and read widely. She had also been reading Ovid's

Ovid

Publius Ovidius Naso , known as Ovid in the English-speaking world, was a Roman poet who is best known as the author of the three major collections of erotic poetry: Heroides, Amores, and Ars Amatoria...

 Metamorphoses since at least 1815 and continued to do so in 1820. Her other reading included Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Jean-Jacques Rousseau was a Genevan philosopher, writer, and composer of 18th-century Romanticism. His political philosophy influenced the French Revolution as well as the overall development of modern political, sociological and educational thought.His novel Émile: or, On Education is a treatise...

 philosophical treatise, Emile

Emile: Or, On Education

Émile, or On Education is a treatise on the nature of education and on the nature of man written by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who considered it to be the “best and most important of all my writings”. Due to a section of the book entitled “Profession of Faith of the Savoyard Vicar,” Émile was be...

(1762) and his sentimental novel

Sentimental novel

The sentimental novel or the novel of sensibility is an 18th century literary genre which celebrates the emotional and intellectual concepts of sentiment, sentimentalism, and sensibility...

, La Nouvelle Héloïse (1761), as well as Thomas Day’s

Thomas Day

Thomas Day was a British author and abolitionist. He was well-known for the children's book The History of Sandford and Merton which emphasized Rousseauvian educational ideals.-Life and works:...

 children’s book The History of Sandford and Merton

The History of Sandford and Merton

The History of Sandford and Merton was a bestselling children's book written by Thomas Day. He began his book as a contribution to Richard Lovell and Honora Edgeworth’s Harry and Lucy, a collection of short stories for children that Maria Edgeworth continued some years after Honora died...

(1783–89). Critic Marjean Purinton notes that her reading around the time she was composing Proserpine included "educational treatises and children's literature, replete with moralisms concerning gendered behaviors", as well as her mother Mary Wollstonecraft's

Mary Wollstonecraft

Mary Wollstonecraft was an eighteenth-century British writer, philosopher, and advocate of women's rights. During her brief career, she wrote novels, treatises, a travel narrative, a history of the French Revolution, a conduct book, and a children's book...

, Thoughts on the Education of Daughters

Thoughts on the Education of Daughters

Thoughts on the education of daughters: with reflections on female conduct, in the more important duties of life is the first published work of the British feminist Mary Wollstonecraft. Published in 1787 by her friend Joseph Johnson, Thoughts is a conduct book that offers advice on female education...

(1787) and Original Stories from Real Life

Original Stories from Real Life

Original Stories from Real Life; with Conversations Calculated to Regulate the Affections, and Form the Mind to Truth and Goodness is the only complete work of children's literature by 18th-century British feminist Mary Wollstonecraft. Original Stories begins with a frame story, which sketches out...

(1788). These latter were part of the conduct book

Conduct book

Conduct books are a genre of books that attempt to educate the reader on social norms. As a genre, they began in the mid-to-late Middle Ages, although antecedents such as The Maxims of Ptahhotep are among the earliest surviving works...

 tradition that challenged the gender roles of women.

Composition and publication

Mary Shelley composed Proserpine in 1820, finishing it on 3 April according to her journal. Percy Shelley contributed two lyric poems: "Arethusa" and "Song of Proserpine While Gathering Flowers on the Plain of Enna". A fragment of the manuscript survives, housed in the Pforzheimer Collection

The Carl H. Pforzheimer Collection of Shelley and His Circle

The Carl H. Pforzheimer Collection of Shelley and His Circle is one of the special collections housed within The New York Public Library's Stephen A. Schwarzman building...

 at the New York Public Library

New York Public Library

The New York Public Library is the largest public library in North America and is one of the United States' most significant research libraries...

, and demonstrates the couple working side-by-side on the project. According to their friend Thomas Medwin, Percy enjoyed the play, sometimes altering the manuscript as he was reading. In her biography of Mary Shelley, Miranda Seymour speculates that both Midas and Proserpine were written for two young girls Mary Shelley met and befriended, Laurette and Nerina Tighe, daughters of friends of the Shelleys in Italy. Their mother was also a former pupil of Mary Wollstonecraft

Mary Wollstonecraft

Mary Wollstonecraft was an eighteenth-century British writer, philosopher, and advocate of women's rights. During her brief career, she wrote novels, treatises, a travel narrative, a history of the French Revolution, a conduct book, and a children's book...

, Mary Shelley's mother. That same year, Mary Shelley wrote the children's story Maurice

Maurice (Shelley)

Maurice, or the Fisher's Cot is a children's story by the Romantic writer Mary Shelley. Written in 1820 for Laurette Tighe, a daughter of friends of Percy and Mary Shelley, Mary Shelley tried to have it published by her father, William Godwin, but he refused...

for Laurette.

In 1824 Mary Shelley submitted Proserpine for publication to The Browning Box, edited by Bryan Walter Procter, but it was rejected. The play was first published in 1832 in the London periodical The Winter's Wreath. She cut one-fifth of the play—about 120 lines—for this version, deleting some of the stories from the first act, including Percy's poem "Arethusa", and rewrote individual lines. (She included "Arethusa" in her collection of Posthumous Poems of Percy Shelley in 1824.) Mary Shelley also added an ominous dream to the play, foreshadowing Proserpine's abduction. Her efforts to publish the play in these periodicals and journal entries written during the play's composition suggest that Proserpine was meant to be children's literature

Children's literature

Children's literature is for readers and listeners up to about age twelve; it is often defined in four different ways: books written by children, books written for children, books chosen by children, or books chosen for children. It is often illustrated. The term is used in senses which sometimes...

.

Plot summary

Act I begins with Ceres leaving her daughter Proserpine

Proserpina

Proserpina or Proserpine is an ancient Roman goddess whose story is the basis of a myth of Springtime. Her Greek goddess' equivalent is Persephone. The probable origin of her name comes from the Latin, "proserpere" or "to emerge," in respect to the growing of grain...

 in the protection of two nymph

Nymph

A nymph in Greek mythology is a female minor nature deity typically associated with a particular location or landform. Different from gods, nymphs are generally regarded as divine spirits who animate nature, and are usually depicted as beautiful, young nubile maidens who love to dance and sing;...

s, Ino

Ino (Greek mythology)

In Greek mythology Ino was a mortal queen of Thebes, who after her death and transfiguration was worshiped as a goddess under her epithet Leucothea, the "white goddess." Alcman called her "Queen of the Sea" , which, if not hyperbole, would make her a doublet of Amphitrite.In her mortal self, Ino,...

 and Eunoe

Eunoë

Eunoë, according to Greek mythology is a nymph, a daughter of the river god Sangarius, sometimes associated with Persephone as her mother. Eunoë is the wife of the Phrygian king Dymas, and the mother of Hecuba, the wife of King Priam of Troy....

, warning them not to wander. Proserpine asks Ino to tell her a story, and she recites the tale of Arethusa

Arethusa (mythology)

For other uses, see ArethusaArethusa means "the waterer". In Greek mythology, she was a nymph and daughter of Nereus , and later became a fountain on the island of Ortygia in Syracuse, Sicily....

. After the story, the group gathers flowers. The two nymphs wander off, seeking ever more flowers, and lose sight of Proserpine. When they return, she is gone. They search for her in vain. Ceres returns, angry and frightened at the loss of her child:

I will away, and on the highest top

Of snowy Etna, kindle two clear flames.

Night shall not hide her from my anxious search,

No moment will I rest, or sleep, or pause

Till she returns, until I clasp again

My only loved one, my lost Proserpine.

Act II begins some time later. Ino laments: "How all is changed since that unhappy eve! / Ceres forever weeps, seeking her child / And in her rage has struck the land with blight". Arethusa comes, to tell Ceres that she saw Pluto

Pluto (mythology)

In ancient Greek religion and myth, Pluto was a name for the ruler of the underworld; the god was also known as Hades, a name for the underworld itself...

 make off with Proserpine. Ceres appeals to Jove

JOVE

JOVE is an open-source, Emacs-like text editor, primarily intended for Unix-like operating systems. It also supports MS-DOS and Microsoft Windows. JOVE was inspired by Gosling Emacs but is much smaller and simpler, lacking Mocklisp...

 for assistance, and Iris

Iris (mythology)

In Greek mythology, Iris is the personification of the rainbow and messenger of the gods. As the sun unites Earth and heaven, Iris links the gods to humanity...

 appears, saying that Proserpine's fate is fixed. However, Jove agrees that if Proserpine does not eat the food of the Underworld

Underworld

The Underworld is a region which is thought to be under the surface of the earth in some religions and in mythologies. It could be a place where the souls of the recently departed go, and in some traditions it is identified with Hell or the realm of death...

, she can return. The group leaves to fetch Proserpine, who believes she has not consumed any tainted food, but she is reminded by Ascalaphus

Ascalaphus

In Greek mythology, two people share the name Ascalaphus/Askalaphos .#Son of Acheron and Orphne. Askalaphos was the orchardist of Hades. He told the other gods that Persephone had eaten a pomegranate in Hades. He was punished by being changed into an owl...

, a shade of the Underworld, of some pomegranate

Pomegranate

The pomegranate , Punica granatum, is a fruit-bearing deciduous shrub or small tree growing between five and eight meters tall.Native to the area of modern day Iran, the pomegranate has been cultivated in the Caucasus since ancient times. From there it spread to Asian areas such as the Caucasus as...

 seeds that she ate. Ceres, Ino, and Arethusa volunteer to exile themselves to the Underworld, taking their treasures, such as fertility, with them. However, their sacrifice is not permitted. Iris relates Jove's decision regarding Proserpine's fate:

When Enna is starred by flowers, and the sun

Shoots his hot rays strait on the gladsome land,

When Summer reigns, then thou shalt live on Earth,

And tread these plains, or sporting with your nymphs,

Or at your Mother's side, in peaceful joy.

But when hard frost congeals the bare, black ground,

The trees have lost their leaves, & painted birds

Wailing for food sail through the piercing air;

Then you descend to deepest night and reign

Great Queen of Tartarus.

Ceres promises that only during the time when Proserpine lives with her will the earth be fertile.

Genre

Proserpine is a verse drama in blank verse

Blank verse

Blank verse is poetry written in unrhymed iambic pentameter. It has been described as "probably the most common and influential form that English poetry has taken since the sixteenth century" and Paul Fussell has claimed that "about three-quarters of all English poetry is in blank verse."The first...

 by Mary Shelley which includes two lyric poems

Lyric poetry

Lyric poetry is a genre of poetry that expresses personal and emotional feelings. In the ancient world, lyric poems were those which were sung to the lyre. Lyric poems do not have to rhyme, and today do not need to be set to music or a beat...

 by Percy Shelley. In the early nineteenth century, lyric poetry was associated with male poets, and quotidian poetry (i.e., the poetry of the everyday) with female poets. The division of labour in Proserpine reflects this trend. Percy’s poems help emphasise the mythic nature of Proserpine’s story; he continued this transcendental description of Proserpine in his Prometheus Unbound. Mary's drama consists of carefully described objects, such as flowers. Furthermore, her characters do not speak in soliloquy

Soliloquy

A soliloquy is a device often used in drama whereby a character relates his or her thoughts and feelings to him/herself and to the audience without addressing any of the other characters, and is delivered often when they are alone or think they are alone. Soliloquy is distinct from monologue and...

—except in Percy’s poems—rather, "nearly every speech is directed feelingly toward another character and is typically concerned with describing another’s emotional state, and/or eliciting an emotional reaction." Dialogue in Proserpine is founded on empathy, not the conflict more typical of drama. Mary Shelley also refused to embrace the visual sensationalism of early nineteenth-century theatre, focusing instead on "scenes of heightened emotion".

Scholars have disputed whether or not Mary Shelley intended her play to be staged. Most concur that it was never meant for performance, agreeing with Romanticist Alan Richardson that the play is "lyrical drama" or "mental theater" in the style of Romantic closet drama

Closet drama

A closet drama is a play that is not intended to be performed onstage, but read by a solitary reader or, sometimes, out loud in a small group. A related form, the "closet screenplay," developed during the 20th century.-Form:...

 "with its emphasis on character over plot, on reaction over action, and its turn away from the theater". However, eighteenth-century theatrical scholar Judith Pascoe challenges this conclusion, pointing to detailed stage directions in the manuscript: "Ceres and her companions are ranged on one side in eager expectation; from the cave on the other, enter Proserpine, attended by various dark & gloomy shapes bearing torches; among which Ascalaphus. Ceres & Persephone embrace;–her nymphs surround her." From this evidence, she argues that Shelley intended her play to be staged.

Literary scholar Jeffrey Cox

Jeffrey N. Cox

Jeffrey N. Cox is a Professor of English literature and the Associate Vice Chancellor for Faculty Affairs at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Cox specializes in English and European Romantic literature, cultural theory, and cultural studies...

 has argued that Proserpine, along with Midas, Prometheus Unbound and other plays written by the Leigh Hunt circle, were "not a rejection of the stage but an attempt to remake it". Turning from the traditional genres of tragedy

Tragedy

Tragedy is a form of art based on human suffering that offers its audience pleasure. While most cultures have developed forms that provoke this paradoxical response, tragedy refers to a specific tradition of drama that has played a unique and important role historically in the self-definition of...

 and comedy of manners

Comedy of manners

The comedy of manners is a genre of play/television/film which satirizes the manners and affectations of a social class, often represented by stock characters, such as the miles gloriosus in ancient times, the fop and the rake during the Restoration, or an old person pretending to be young...

, these writers reinvented drama by writing masque

Masque

The masque was a form of festive courtly entertainment which flourished in 16th and early 17th century Europe, though it was developed earlier in Italy, in forms including the intermedio...

s and pastoral

Pastoral

The adjective pastoral refers to the lifestyle of pastoralists, such as shepherds herding livestock around open areas of land according to seasons and the changing availability of water and pasturage. It also refers to a genre in literature, art or music that depicts such shepherd life in an...

 dramas. He argues that Midas and Proserpine are a pair of mythological dramas that demonstrate "the forces of oppression". For him, Proserpine "celebrates a pastoral world...threatened by male sexual violence and the tyranny of a sky god".

Themes

Mary Shelley expanded and revised the Roman poet Ovid's

Ovid

Publius Ovidius Naso , known as Ovid in the English-speaking world, was a Roman poet who is best known as the author of the three major collections of erotic poetry: Heroides, Amores, and Ars Amatoria...

 story of Proserpine, which is part of his larger Metamorphoses. The tale is based on the Greek myth

Greek mythology

Greek mythology is the body of myths and legends belonging to the ancient Greeks, concerning their gods and heroes, the nature of the world, and the origins and significance of their own cult and ritual practices. They were a part of religion in ancient Greece...

 of Demeter

Demeter

In Greek mythology, Demeter is the goddess of the harvest, who presided over grains, the fertility of the earth, and the seasons . Her common surnames are Sito as the giver of food or corn/grain and Thesmophoros as a mark of the civilized existence of agricultural society...

 and Persephone

Persephone

In Greek mythology, Persephone , also called Kore , is the daughter of Zeus and the harvest-goddess Demeter, and queen of the underworld; she was abducted by Hades, the god-king of the underworld....

, which explains the change of the seasons through Persephone's visits to the Underworld: when she is confined to Hades's

Hades

Hades , Hadēs, originally , Haidēs or , Aidēs , meaning "the unseen") was the ancient Greek god of the underworld. The genitive , Haidou, was an elision to denote locality: "[the house/dominion] of Hades". Eventually, the nominative came to designate the abode of the dead.In Greek mythology, Hades...

 realm, autumn and winter cover the earth, and when she returns to live with her mother, spring and summer bloom. The myth depicts the victory of male violence over female procreation. Like Percy Shelley, John Keats

John Keats

John Keats was an English Romantic poet. Along with Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley, he was one of the key figures in the second generation of the Romantic movement, despite the fact that his work had been in publication for only four years before his death.Although his poems were not...

, and Lord Byron, Mary Shelley was interested in rewriting the classical myths; however, like other Romantic women writers, she was particularly interested in challenging their patriarchal

Patriarchy

Patriarchy is a social system in which the role of the male as the primary authority figure is central to social organization, and where fathers hold authority over women, children, and property. It implies the institutions of male rule and privilege, and entails female subordination...

 themes. In revising the Proserpine myth, she placed women and their power at the centre of the narrative. For example, Ovid represents Proserpine as "an unreflective child, willfully straying after flowers in infantile abandon" while "Shelley portrays Proserpine as a thoughtful, empathetic adolescent" who wants to find flowers for her mother. Ovid’s version of the myth focuses on violence, particularly the abduction and rape of Proserpine, while Shelley’s play focuses on the suspenseful search for Proserpine. Her version highlights Ceres and the nymphs’ grief and Proserpine’s own desire to escape from the Underworld instead of the rape (the rape happens offstage). In contrast, other nineteenth-century adaptations often expanded the rape scene, romanticising it and turning it into a scene of courtship.

Women and women’s issues dominate Mary Shelley's drama—no male characters appear, with the brief exception of Ascalaphus

Ascalaphus

In Greek mythology, two people share the name Ascalaphus/Askalaphos .#Son of Acheron and Orphne. Askalaphos was the orchardist of Hades. He told the other gods that Persephone had eaten a pomegranate in Hades. He was punished by being changed into an owl...

. However, as Romanticist Marjean Purinton argues, there is a strong masculine presence in the play even without male characters, suggesting "the ubiquitous presence of patriarchal power in the domestic sphere". Although the myth is fundamentally about rape and male tyranny, Shelley transforms it into a story about female solidarity and community—these women are storytellers and mythmakers who determine their own fate. Ceres's love—a mother's love—challenges the power of the gods. Shelley tells the story almost entirely from Ceres's point of view; “her play elegiacally praises female creativity and fecundity as ‘Leaf, and blade, and bud, and blossom.’ ” Shelley writes active, rather than passive, roles for Proserpine and Ceres. For example, it is Ceres's anger, not her grief, that brings "winter's blight". However, Proserpine’s abduction is prefigured in the story of Arethusa and, as literary scholar Julie Carlson points out, the women can only join together after Proserpine has been abducted.

In Shelley’s version of the myth, paradise is lost not through the fault of women but through the interference of men. Pluto's "egotistical, predatory violence" is juxtaposed with Ceres’s "loving kindness, her willingness to sustain life, [and] her unswerving devotion to her child". Sex, in this myth, is represented as a separation from the feminine and a forced surrender to the masculine. Pluto’s domination of Proserpine symbolises "a culture based on acquisition and brutality, a culture that covertly justifies (when it does not overtly celebrate) male mastery".

Proserpine and Midas are often seen as a pair of contrasting plays. Proserpine is a play of female bonding, while Midas is a male-dominated drama; male poets participate in a contest in Midas while in Proserpine female characters participate in communal storytelling; "where Midas lives in his golden palace imagining himself at the center of an all-powerful court, Ceres laments leaving the pastoral enclave she shares with Proserpine for Jove’s court"; Midas focuses on gold, while the women in Proserpine enjoy flowers; and "where the society of Midas is marked by egotism, greed, and strife, the female society of Proserpine values community, gift-giving, and love".

Legacy and reception

As feminist literary critic

Feminist literary criticism

Feminist literary criticism is literary criticism informed by feminist theory, or by the politics of feminism more broadly. Its history has been broad and varied, from classic works of nineteenth-century women authors such as George Eliot and Margaret Fuller to cutting-edge theoretical work in...

 Susan Gubar

Susan Gubar

Dr. Susan D. Gubar is an American academic and Distinguished Professor of English and Women's Studies at Indiana University. She is co-author with Dr. Sandra M. Gilbert of the standard feminist text, The Madwoman in the Attic and a trilogy on women's writing in the twentieth century.Her book...

 argues, Mary Shelley’s drama is part of a female literary tradition, including Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Elizabeth Barrett Browning was one of the most prominent poets of the Victorian era. Her poetry was widely popular in both England and the United States during her lifetime. A collection of her last poems was published by her husband, Robert Browning, shortly after her death.-Early life:Members...

, H.D.

H.D.

H.D. was an American poet, novelist and memoirist known for her association with the early 20th century avant-garde Imagist group of poets such as Ezra Pound and Richard Aldington...

, Toni Morrison

Toni Morrison

Toni Morrison is a Nobel Prize and Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist, editor, and professor. Her novels are known for their epic themes, vivid dialogue, and richly detailed characters. Among her best known novels are The Bluest Eye, Song of Solomon and Beloved...

, Margaret Atwood

Margaret Atwood

Margaret Eleanor Atwood, is a Canadian poet, novelist, literary critic, essayist, and environmental activist. She is among the most-honoured authors of fiction in recent history; she is a winner of the Arthur C...

, and Doris Lessing

Doris Lessing

Doris May Lessing CH is a British writer. Her novels include The Grass is Singing, The Golden Notebook, and five novels collectively known as Canopus in Argos....

, which has responded to the story of Ceres and Proserpine. These writers use the myth as a "way of dealing with their experience of themselves as daughters growing up into womanhood and potential motherhood....they use the myth of Demeter and Persephone to re-define, to re-affirm and to celebrate female consciousness itself." Poets such as Dorothy Wellesley, Rachel Annand Taylor

Rachel Annand Taylor

Rachel Annand Taylor was a Scottish poet, biographer and literary critic.Born in Aberdeen to stonemason John Annand and his wife Clarinda Dinnie, she was one of the first women to study at Aberdeen University. She later taught at Aberdeen High School for Girls.As a writer she was admired by...

, Babette Deutsch

Babette Deutsch

Babette Deutsch was an American poet, critic, translator, and novelist.Born in New York City, the daughter of Michael and Melanie Deutsch, she matriculated from the Ethical Culture School and Barnard College, graduating in 1917 with a B.A...

, and Helen Wolfert as well as Mary Shelley portray the procreative mother as a heroine who creates an arena for nurturing relationships that challenge “the divisions between self and other” that rest at the centre of patriarchy. Feminist poet Adrienne Rich

Adrienne Rich

Adrienne Cecile Rich is an American poet, essayist and feminist. She has been called "one of the most widely read and influential poets of the second half of the 20th century."-Early life:...

 writes that "the loss of the daughter to the mother, the mother to the daughter, is the essential female tragedy", and it is this tragedy that Mary Shelley discusses in her play.

When A. Koszul first published a transcription of Proserpine in 1922, he argued "that the little classical fancies which Mrs. Shelley never ventured to publish are quite as worthy of consideration as her more ambitious prose works". However, his "Introduction" to the play speaks mostly of Percy Shelley and his contribution to Mary Shelley's works. In fact, as he explains, he decided to publish in order to contribute to the Percy Shelley centenary. Since their original publication, neither Midas nor Proserpine has received much critical attention. Critics have either paid attention only to Percy Shelley's poems, or have ignored the plays altogether. Literary critic Elizabeth Nitchie writes that the plays are "distinguished only by the lyrics that [Percy] Shelley wrote for them", and Sylvia Norman contends that they "do not really call for analytical and comparative study". While Frankenstein

Frankenstein

Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus is a novel about a failed experiment that produced a monster, written by Mary Shelley, with inserts of poems by Percy Bysshe Shelley. Shelley started writing the story when she was eighteen, and the novel was published when she was twenty-one. The first...

has remained a powerful cultural force since its publication, Mary Shelley's other works have rarely been reprinted and scholars have focused almost exclusively on Mary Shelley, author of Frankenstein, and Mary Shelley, wife of Percy Bysshe Shelley

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Percy Bysshe Shelley was one of the major English Romantic poets and is critically regarded as among the finest lyric poets in the English language. Shelley was famous for his association with John Keats and Lord Byron...

. However, with the publication of works by Mary Poovey

Mary Poovey

Mary Poovey is an American cultural historian and literary critic whose work focuses on the Victorian Era. She is currently Samuel Rudin University Professor in the Humanities at New York University,and Director of the Institute for the History of the Production of Knowledge. Her PhD was from the...

 and Anne K. Mellor

Anne K. Mellor

Anne Kostelanetz Mellor is a Distinguished Professor of English Literature and Women's Studies at UCLA; she specializes in Romantic literature, British cultural history, feminist theory, philosophy, art history and gender studies...

 in the 1980s and The Other Mary Shelley in 1993, more attention has been paid to Mary Shelley's "other" works, such as her dramas.

External links

• Proserpine and Midas at Project Gutenberg
  Project Gutenberg
  Project Gutenberg is a volunteer effort to digitize and archive cultural works, to "encourage the creation and distribution of eBooks". Founded in 1971 by Michael S. Hart, it is the oldest digital library. Most of the items in its collection are the full texts of public domain books...
  
  
• Metamorphoses (Book V) translated by A. S. Kline
  A. S. Kline
  A. S. Kline, known as Tony Kline is a British poet and translator, living in England.He graduated with a degree in Mathematics from the University of Manchester, and was Chief Information Officer of a large UK Company before dedicating himself to his literary work and interests...
  
   (2000)
• "Hymn to Demeter" from the Homeric Hymns
  Homeric Hymns
  The Homeric Hymns are a collection of thirty-three anonymous Ancient Greek hymns celebrating individual gods. The hymns are "Homeric" in the sense that they employ the same epic meter—dactylic hexameter—as the Iliad and Odyssey, use many similar formulas and are couched in the same dialect...
  
  translated by H. G. Evelyn-White (1914)