Grief In Homeric Hymn To Demeter's Poem

In the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, Demeter’s grief is demonstrated through the concepts of divinity and humanity being symbolically contrasted with a woman’s purpose and social status as a mother or daughter.

While “terrible” is a word we would expect to describe grief, “brutal” is interesting due to its violent connotations (Hymn to Demeter, 90). As a “brutal grief that seized the heart” it lends itself to a comparison with the violent seizing of Persephone, echoed here in Demeter’s emotions about her daughters’ capture, and perhaps denoting that the nature of what causes grief may be reflected in how it is felt (Hymn to Demeter, 90). The words “brutal” and “seized” also portrays grief itself as uncontrollable and forceful, even to the non-human

Being described as “like four goddesses” while Demeter herself is divine and yet, unrecognisable as such seems to hark back to their youth and beauty as a divine gift, while Demeter, in her grief, appears to lose divine status (Hymn to Demeter,108, 94-95, 108). Her grief is almost transformative, the lines “men nor… women recognised her when they looked” characterises grief as something that has made Demeter look human (Hymn to Demeter, 94-95). In travelling from Mount Olympus to earth, an action fuelled by her grief, she becomes a metaphor for a step-down in status from deity to mortal (Hymn to Demeter, 92-93). This reflects the implications of women losing their status as mothers and membership to a family in ancient Greece, when they either cannot bear children, or lose their children.

In humanising Demeter, grief detrimentally effects the goddess’s power as a deity and a woman. In Hymn to Demeter, Demeter’s grief for her daughter works to warn women that their status as a mother is inseparably tied to emotional