Is Your Heroine a Goddess?

by Eileen Charbonneau

Who graces your heroes best? Why divine goddess heroines, of course! Let’s explore the history and the current manifestations of goddesses showing their virgin/mother/wisdom keeper faces.

The Goddess is elemental. She represents the seasons of a woman’s life.  She’s the tree in Spring (flower), the tree in Summer (fruit) and in Winter (seed). She’s reflected in the phases of the moon and our own lives. She’s the Young Woman, the Adult Woman, and the Wise Woman.

Let’s explore how her aspects can serve the needs of the heroines in our  writing.


The VIRGIN Goddess is she who belongs to herself:
The New Moon
The Goddess of the Sky
The Tree in flower

She’s wholly separate from men-- that virginal is not literal, but meaning one-in-herself. She does not act to please or gain power over others but because what she does is TRUE. She has a great quality to call on ourselves as writers: She can concentrate her attention on what matters to her and can focus on both the task at hand and long range goals.

Here are two virgin goddesses from Greek mythology:

Artemis is the Goddess of the Hunt. She is a country mouse, avoids contact with men, hanging around in the wilderness with nymphs. She’s separate from men and their influence. She’s undomesticated, having kinship with the natural world.

Athena, the Goddess of Wisdom is a city mouse who identifies and is joined with men as an equal or superior. She’s cool-headed in strategy and battle.

Heroines strong in this virgin goddess aspect often avoid filling traditional women’s roles. So if your heroine: develops her own talents and pursues her own interests, solves problems, competes, expresses herself well through language or art, puts her surroundings in order, values solitude… you just might have a virgin goddess on your hands. Her jobs might include: being a competitive swimmer, a  scientist, a statistician, a soldier or sailor, a corporate executive, a horsewoman.

Is she called "pig-headed" and stubborn? Considered unfeminine? Is she spurred ON by competition? The advocate of a lost cause (a voice crying out in the wilderness?) Does she need little encouragement or commercial success to keep going? Does she love gal pals and have good sisterly relationships (like us with other writers, yes?)


For an Artemis sex is VERY physical…another sport to relish! So too for Athena, whose cool head is delightfully surprised!

This aspect of the goddess is attracted to men who are aesthetic, creative, healing, musical, in helping professions. She’s a good mother, a teacher, protective like a bear, she will fight to the death for her children, she’s also a GREAT aunt, scout leader, etc.

A wonderful modern Artemis was Georgia O’Keefe, with her passion an affinity to the untamed American Southwest, and her intensity of purpose.

Fictional heroines strong in this aspect of the goddess include: Nancy Drew (of course!), Scarlett O’Hara, Capt. Janeway of Star Trek: Voyager (evasive maneuver!). The classic western frontier heroine has got the country Artemis in her but is also strongly Athena in the domestic realm (the weaver and craftswoman) as she unites her hands and mind to work side by side with her husband-partner to thrive in the wilderness.

This aspect’s negative aspect might be seen in the Lady of Shallot weaving that tapestry and caught in her own web of denied experience. And in Medusa..using that powerful intellect or physical prowess to terrify and petrify her victims!

The armored Athena is great fun in romance as she puts up all those intellectual defenses to keep pain at bay…she observes, labels, analyses, tries SO hard to stay cool!

Romance heroines strong in this aspect might be found in: Patricia Gaffney’s Wild At Heart (match: Anthropologist and Wolf Man) and Maggie Osborne’s The Promise of Jenny Jones (match: frontier couple).

Olana Whittaker of my 1906 set historical Waltzing in Ragtime as her father’s favorite Athena. Ginny Rockwell from Rita-winning The Ghosts of Stony Clove as half of an intrepid frontier couple.

2. The MOTHER Goddess is:

Woman in her fullness
The Full Moon
Earth Woman, the Lover/Wife
The Tree in Fruit

The identity of this aspect of the goddess is dependent on relationship. It is activated when your heroine has the compelling urge to marry/mate or have a child, or feels her life "pregnant" with possibility.

From the Greeks we have Hera: the stately, the regal, the beautiful. This Goddess of marriage has been denigrated by patriarchal culture to become her negative aspect: the vindictive, jealous shrew. The most well known stories that remain of her reflect the conflicts she had with Zeus. But her name means "great lady." It’s the feminine form of the Greek word for hero.


Hera is a lovely symbol for a heroine. She is yearning to be a wife in three meanings of marriage:

1. the INNER need for a mate
2. the OUTER recognition as husband and wife
3. the SACRED nature of marriage as a spiritual union—a sacrament through which grace can be channeled

I see the Hera archetype surface in many contemporary romance stories whose theme revolves around the career woman in mid-life realizing she wants husband and children. And the moms and stepmoms of romance stories who want a better pattern for her family.

Demeter means "mother" in Greek. This powerful mother goddess was the consort of Zeus before Hera and is associated with grain and the story of the abduction of Persepone, her daughter.

Demeter returns growth to the earth and provides the Elysian Mysteries…a secret ceremony that was alive and well for 2,000 years in ancient Greece (from 1,500 BC to 500 AD) This is one POWERFUL goddess!

Her maternal instinct is manifested through pregnancy or through nourishment of others. I think she has a powerful influence on many of our heroines who are: persistent, who will NOT give up where a child is concerned.

You might recognize Demeter in your story if it’s centered around the needs of this provider…
Perhaps your heroine has a history of making sacrifices for others and is burnt out? Perhaps she volunteers at a nursery school, a hospital, or nursing home, or protects children from abuse?

The Demeter type is attracted to two kinds of men…perhaps her man has never been well mothered: here I would submit Mary Jo Putney’s Fallen Angels Series heroes as examples--they band together to nurture each other, but all, it seems to me, are drawn to motherly heroines.

The Demeter heroine aids the physically handicapped and the social misfit. I realized I was dealing with this sort of heroine myself with the instant attraction between Judith Mercer and Ethan Randolph in The Randolph Legacy—Ethan is both!

The second type of man I think Demeter heroines find attractive is one with motherless children, or a man who wants a family…this is a VERY sexy quality for a Demeter woman!

Aphrodite is the goddess of charm and laughter. Her name means "golden" which is also "beautiful" to the Greeks. She is the lover and the creative woman. This archetype is the aspect of the goddess that expresses a woman’s enjoyment of love and beauty, her sexuality and sensuality. This goddess impels women to fulfill both creative and procreative functions.

Aphrodite heroines have personal charisma—magnetism, electricity. These "IT" girls include: Cleopatra, Dolley Madison, that Hamilton Woman, Margo Fontayne, Maria Callas, and Ava Gardner.

The beauty of these woman stemmed more from their joi de vivre, and natural,  unselfconscious sensuality. They are often fueled by something spirit-based too, giving them that glow-- think Jane Eyre’s righteousness.

They are often drawn to complex, creative, moody men. The extroverted Aphrodite makes her man feel sexy.

La Veryle Spenser’s work is filled with latent Aphrodites I think…women discovering her own sensuality and sexiness. I think of the heroine of Nora Robert’s Homeport here, too, getting her Aphrodite functioning due to the sexy Pierce Bronson-type hero.

Our novels have "Mighty Aphrodite" moments because a woman in love is transformed into the Golden Goddess. Her voltage goes up, she’s brimming with vibrancy. During these moments her sensory impressions are intensified—she hears music more clearly, fragrances are more distinct,  taste and touch are enhanced…They are our love scenes, of course, and our scenes of sexual tension, but other, quieter moments of reflection too.

And we have these moments in our work, then we are tapping into Aphrodite showing her creative face—the artist engrossed in a creative project—it’s true alchemy. Changing words into LIFE via the kiss of the Golden Goddess!


3 The WISE WOMAN

The Waning Moon
Guardian of the Mysteries (Birth/Procreation/Death)
Widow
The Tree in Seed

This goddess was once the most celebrated, but it is most battered in modern times.

The Wise Women were the midwives of birth and death—both birthing women and the dying want a nurturing, loving, wise woman to cradle them on to the next stage.

In Western culture these women had power. Those intimidated by that power  initiated the Inquisition—300 years of holocaust for women. First the midwives, then the herbalists, then the eccentric were hunted out. It is estimated that 9 million perished. We live with the effects of this period as this archetype is not honored in our culture.

The Slavic Wise Woman Goddess Baba Yaga rode about the skies in a mortar (used with the pestle to grind grain)…grinding away at what was extraneous to the essence. She was transformed into a witch on a broomstick who eats children.

Who is this wise woman goddess? She is not known for intellectual wisdom but wisdom gained from having lived.

She knows the deliciousness of solitude. Her wisdom is drawn from the unseen, the dark and intuitive…the opposite of enlightenment.

In the Native American cultures this archetype is still honored, so here are 13 Clan Mothers to help tell Wise Woman’s story. The 13 Clan Mothers are based on the 13 full moons of the year. The moons describe a woman’s progress in the getting of wisdom:

1. Talks with Relations
2. Wisdom Keeper
3. Weighs the Truth
4. Looks Far Woman
5. Listening Woman
6. Storyteller
7. Loves All Things
8. She Who Heals
9. Setting Sun Woman
10. Weaves the Web
11. Walks Tall Woman
12. Gives Praise
13. Blue Moon of Transformation: Becomes Her Vision

Her remnants in the Greek culture may be found in Persephone, the Goddess of  the Underworld, who might be seen as the flip side of Golden Aphrodite. In one myth they both fall in love with the same guy—Adonis, so Aphrodite keeps him half the year and Persephone the other half in a flip side of her own abduction by Hades.

When Persephone first emerges from the Underworld she’s in the company of a  shadowy goddess—Hecate, Goddess of the Dark Moon, the Crossroads. She is a spirit-based Goddess who walks "before and behind" Persephone and emerging, she no longer fears death.

For us as writers, this aspect of the goddess represents our ability to be open and flexible. She corresponds with the fallow, healing, germinating periods in our work (The Tree in Seed).

If your heroine is touched with this goddess’s magic, she’s mature and  self-confident, though she stays young in spirit. If she is stuck in the young spirit aspect though, she becomes like Miss Havasham in Great Expectations, Laura in The Glass Menagerie, Orphelia in Hamlet, who, when reality becomes too painful, goes psychotic.

Heroines of all ages are in touch with their wise woman goddess when they value solitude, reflection, friendship.

The wise woman is present in those "sacred" moments of your story, when your heroines are truly, deeply REAL…nurtured, deepened, charged up. They connect with this Goddess of the Crossroads when they reach crossroads moments in life and make a decision with their courage leading them.

The wise woman’s mission is to show others how to love unconditionally, to be their personal best, to drop the need to control or belittle and show compassion.

In the Chinese Buddhist tradition comes the Goddess Kuan Yin, the spirit of compassion, whose name is so powerful that its mention is believed to ease suffering.

Competition, conflicts, and alliances occur within a heroine’s psyche as they once did on Mt. Olympus. But afterward comes the happy ending-- when our goddess unites with her hero. I wish the best of luck with your own heroines as they put on their goddess crowns!
 

Articles Writers Area 

Special Offers for Authors on book promotion and web design

Get 2 BOOKS + a mystery gift  from  eHarlequin.com

 

AUTHORS

The Romance Club Home Page