me, I felt wonderful. It was like a mystical reunion. I can’t explain
it: there was a deep sense of peace at the same time that it was elec-
trifying. This dream was a major event in my life.”
In this purely inner experience of the sacred marriage, the
dreamer experiences herself as Hera the Perfected or Fulfilled One.
This often has a quieting effect on the drive to be a mate and the
need to be married.
THE SPURNED WOMAN:
THE NEGATIVE HERA PATTERN
The goddess Hera did not express anger at Zeus for his public
infidelities. The pain she felt at being rejected by him and at being
humiliated by his affairs she channeled into vindictive rage directed
at the other woman or at children fathered by Zeus. The Hera arche-
type predisposes women to displace blame from her mate—on whom
she is emotionally dependent—onto others. And Hera women react
to loss and pain with rage and activity (rather than with depression,
as is typical of Demeter and Persephone). In my analytic work, I’ve
found that vindictiveness is a mental sleight of hand, which makes
a Hera woman feel powerful rather than rejected.
Jean Harris is a contemporary personification of the spurned Hera.
The haughty headmistress of the exclusive Madeira School was
convicted of murdering her longtime lover, the developer of the
Scarsdale Diet, Dr. Herman Tarnover. Harris was known to have
been in a jealous rage over Tarnover’s preference for a younger rival,
whom she judged as having less breeding, education, and class than
herself. She was convicted of the murder after her raw hatred toward
the other woman was revealed, in a lengthy letter written to Tarnover
just before his death. She wrote,
You have been the most important thing in my life, the most
important human being in my life, and that will never change.
You keep me in control by threatening me with banishment—an
easy threat which you know I couldn’t live with—and so I stay
home alone while youGoddesses in Everywoman