Through pushing away from the feminine and seeing marriage as a trap, Frederica and women can continue her journey and her education through traveling and moving through her hardships and finding success within herself.
In Still Life, the heroine Frederica learns that she will be going to college at the University of Cambridge and traveling to France before the start her semester. While this is a continuation of the rejection of the feminine, it is also the beginning of hardships. Hardships according to Murdock the part of the journey that the heroine realizes that it is not easy to become equal in societies eyes. She will constantly battle the stereotypes of females and with each success she becomes stronger in her own character. As she …show more content…
Byatt’s Babel Tower the reader finds Frederica has been married to Nigel. In the same chapter Hugh Pink, a friend of Frederica from college, is composing a poem about a pomegranate and Persephone, the forced wife of Hades. The decent to the goddess and the traveling in the underworld for both Persephone, Chloris/ Flora and Frederica are surprisingly similar as they are taking and wedded while in their grief. According to Classical Mythology and Classical Gods and Heroes Myths as told by the Ancient Authors Persephone is the daughter of Demeter and a goddess of Spring. Zeus gave her to Hades to take as his wife and while she was in the underworld with Hades, he gave her pomegranate seeds, also know as food for the dead, so she would always be part of the underworld even after she went home to her mother Demeter. While this story is the ancient original tale of winter, this reflects the trouble of all women. Seeds are symbols of children. Although Persephone did not have children with Hades, Frederica and Nigel had their son Leo, who is the seed that keeps her tied to Nigel and their abusive marriage. Nigel played on Frederica’s grief to make her his bride and gain control over her and her life, similarly to the way Zephyrus takes control over his wife Flora previous known by Chloris. In Classical Mythologies, when Chloris, the nymph turned goddess, is asked about her name she must recall her rape and unfortunate marriage to Zephyrus. Chloris who later becomes the goddess Flora had the same issue when she was taken, raped and wedded to Zephyrus, the god of the Western Wind. She was taken out of the garden of Venus and raped by Zephyrus whom renamed her Flora. While she gained a title, her identity was completely removed and changed to fit the needs and wishes of her husband (Morford 648). Chloris is forced to stay with Zephyrus because she has lost her maidenhood and she can no longer be a nymph, a maiden in charge of protecting nature like