Trudell is a freelance writer with a bachelor's degree in English literature. In the following essay, Trudell discusses Bialosky's unique use of the Demeter-Persephone myth in her poem.

The myth of Demeter and Persephone has been significant to American women's writing since the late nineteenth century. It provided a common groundwork for certain types of female artistic thinking during the industrial revolution, including the search for a feminine voice and identity within a male-dominated world. Josephine Donovan writes in her book After the Fall: The Demeter-Persephone Myth in Wharton, Cather, and Glasgow that the myth "allegorizes the transformation from a matricentric preindustrial culture—Demeter's realm— to a male-dominated capitalist-industrialist ethos, characterized by growing professionalism and bureaucracy: the realm of patriarchal captivity;" to the authors in the title, the ancient story was an appropriate metaphor for the female experience at this time of social upheaval. Donovan's book goes...