The Rape of Medusa - Beth J. Seelig, MD

as it has been by Kulish & Holtzman (1998), as depicting the girl's sexual love for
her father conflicting with her attachment to her mother. When she eats the
pomegranate seeds, she symbolically unites with Hades sexually. As a result, she
must return to him every year. She shuttles between her mother and her husband,
who also represents her father. The girl's forbidden desire for sexual fulfilment
with her father is portrayed by rape by his proxy. All direct sexual desire is
attributed to the male. Persephone's own desire is represented as oral only. In the
male-dominated Greek culture this form of female desire might have been less
threatening. According to the myth, Persephone knows that if she eats anything
while she is in the realm of Hades, she will have to stay. Therefore, from her
eating the seeds of the pomegranate, we can infer that, at least in part, she wanted
to be forced to remain with him. Her vaginal hunger for the seed(s) of Hades is
represented and disguised by her oral hunger for the seeds of the pomegranate.
Athena and Demeter are both powerful goddesses. They both represent
maternal figures. They are also sisters, daughters of Zeus. However, unlike
Athena, Demeter is a mother. Her daughter Persephone is her brother Zeus's child.
Both Persephone and Medusa are raped by father-surrogates, but Demeter does not
blame Persephone for having been raped as Athena blames the victimised Medusa.
Persephone is regarded as virginal and blameless until she eats the pomegranate
seeds.
The story of Medusa in the temple of Athena depicts the dilemma of the
oedipal daughter from another perspective to that of Demeter and Persephone, in
which the attachment to the mother is the primary focus. Medusa, like Persephone,
is attractive to her father. However, unlike Persephone who keeps her mother's
love, by a process of projection Medusa becomes a hideous monster to her envious
mother. In the case of human Medusas and Athenas, the mother's sexual
possession of the father is regarded as monstrous by her daughter. Mother and
daughter can agree that there is a sexual monster in this story and that she is
female. However, the two disagree passionately about which of them is the
monster. From the perspective of the Athena-daughter, who has successfully
repressed her sexual desire for her father, Mother's sexual relationship with him is
horrifying and disgusting. Her sexual face is hideous in the eyes of her ‘pure’
daughter. Similarly, in the eyes of the narcissistic Athena-mother, the daughter's
burgeoning sexuality is hideous. She is the Medusa.
The male figure in these mythological stories is depicted as a rapist god, in an
incompletely successful effort to delegate all sexual desire and aggression to the
male. However, although a rapist, he is regarded as entitled to satisfy his sexual
desires, even forcefully. In the Medusa myth, he has been seduced by the power of
female sexual attractiveness and is not to be condemned for succumbing to her
allure. She is entirely to blame for attracting his desire. In this way, the male is
also protected from female condemnation. Paradoxically, he is also regarded as