virginity was sold to the highest bidder. This image was continued
in her next films, Blue Lagoon and Endless Love, and in her advertise-
ments for Calvin Klein jeans. At the same time, the media described
her as a sheltered and obedient Persephone-type daughter of a
mother who firmly managed her career and her life.
A Persephone woman does not need to be young in age or to be
sexually inexperienced to lack a sense of herself as a sensual or
sexual woman. As long as she is psychologically the Kore, her
sexuality is unawakened. Although she likes men to like her, she
lacks passion and is probably nonorgasmic.
In Japan, even more than the United States, the ideal woman re-
sembles Persephone. She is quiet, demure, compliant—she learns
that she must never say no directly: she is brought up to avoid dis-
turbing the harmony by disagreeing or being disagreeable. The ideal
Japanese woman graciously remains present but in the background,
anticipates the needs of men, and outwardly accepts her fate.
GUIDE TO THE UNDERWORLD
Although Persephone’s first experience with the underworld was
as a kidnap victim, she later became Queen of the Underworld, the
guide for others who visited there. This aspect of the Persephone
archetype develops, as in the myth, as a result of experience and
growth.
Symbolically, the underworld can represent deeper layers of the
psyche, a place where memories and feelings have been “buried”
(the personal unconscious) and where images, patterns, instincts,
and feelings that are archetypal and shared by humanity are found
(the collective unconscious). When these areas are explored in ana-
lysis, underground images are produced in dreams. The dreamer
may be in a basement, often with many corridors and rooms that
are sometimes like labyrinths. Or she may find herself in an under-
ground world or a deep cave, where she encounters people, objects,
or animals and is awed, afraid, or interested—depending on
whether or not she fears this realm in herself.
Persephone the Queen and Guide of the Underworld represents
the ability to move back and forth between the ego-
Goddesses in Everywoman