The fame of Atalanta precedes her to Arcadia and to her father. Years have passed and he has not had the son and heir he desires, so, when he realizes that Atalanta is the daughter he ordered abandoned, he acknowledges her as his daughter.
In the contemporary world, Atalanta represents the once-ignored daughter who succeeds and has grown into a person in her own right. Perhaps a son or son-surrogates did not turn out to have the competence or ambition expected by the father; or perhaps a father—wary, as in real and mythic stories, of sons who may depose or supplant him—now undertakes to mentor a daughter to take up the duties, expectations, and responsibilities of heir apparent.
In the myth, Atalanta herself becomes a prize to be acquired. She is beautiful, famous, and heir to a kingdom. When she inherits the throne, her husband will be king. Suitors come, but she is not interested. Once she is recognized by her father, however, she comes under his dominion again. Just as he could order that she be disposed of at birth, now he can demand that she marry. She is no longer a free, adventuresome, capable, and independent woman with goals of her own. She no longer has sovereignty over herself; she belongs to her father until she marries. Then she will belong to her husband.
Atalanta is famous as a runner as well as a hunter. Women runners are a common sight today—for many, a daily run is part of their routine. Running fits as an Artemis activity, because it is something a woman can do by herself that takes her out of the house or away from work and into the outdoors—on trails or through parks, and as close to nature as can be fit into the day. There is something very one-in-yourself about being a runner. You do it because you want to and because it pleases you. If you decide to run a certain distance and improve your time, this is a target of your own choosing. If you decide to enter a race, the most common reason to do so is to achieve a personal goal. Running makes you feel competent; you have sovereignty over yourself while you run; you can clear your mind and be in the present moment. Fleet-footed runners can also get into the “zone” associated with endorphins—a “runner's high.”
Women enter races of varying lengths, from sprints to marathons. Many are benefits to raise money for good causes. Run for the Cure, which benefits breast cancer research, is a well-organized and well-known example, in which women recruit friends and relatives to sponsor their efforts. Each sponsor agrees to donate a certain amount per mile the runner runs. This principle can be used for any cause by runners who want to inform people about a cause or a need, and to raise money for it. I learned about how this works when Heather C. Brewer, a college woman in North Carolina, initiated a run to raise money for Earth Child Institute after learning about what this organization does in my book Like a Tree (2011).
Another run, this one for Women in the Congo, was the inspiration of Lisa Shannon, who, after watching the Oprah show one afternoon, was appalled to learn about “the war people don't know about.” She heard from journalist Lisa Ling about the violence in the Congo that had killed four million people and about the rape atrocities and sexual slavery routinely inflicted on women. Zainab Salbi, founder of Women to Women International, the organization that is helping Congolese women heal and become empowered, showed a video of these women. Their faces stayed with Lisa. Women to Women International is an amazing and effective organization that provides a way for women to sponsor women who have become the collateral damage of conflicts in the world. She said that a Congolese woman could be sponsored for twenty-seven dollars a month. Lisa decided that she would do this. When she found herself on the verge of being distracted from her commitment, she caught herself, saying: “I have to do it now, before it becomes one more thing I meant to do.” Then she immediately went to her computer to sign up to sponsor two women (one of 6,000 Oprah viewers who did this).
The feeling that she needed to do more kept coming back in Lisa's mind. She tried to convince her friends to join her in creating a 5K walk or run for women in the Congo, but none of them agreed or cared to learn about the conflict. She knew she had to do something to convince her friends and family how serious, how personal, this was to her. She decided to run the entire length of the rugged Wildwood Forest trail through Portland's West Hills. Her goal was to raise thirty-one sponsorships—one for each mile. She kept her intention a secret initially, because she was not sure she could do it. She had been a casual runner.
It took four months of serious training to prepare for the run. Every day, she hit the trail alone; each week, she went on the longest run of her life. Her mother pitched The Oregonian to do a feature article on her run; friends hosted events where she showed clips from Oprah and talked about why she was doing her run. Her dedication was convincing. On the big day, she ran the whole 31.16 miles and raised $28,000, which sponsored eighty Congolese women. Her Run for Congo Women was grassroots activism—something she was moved to do to help the women in the Congo. And it led to doing more. It took her to the Congo to meet the women she was sponsoring, and motivated her to write A Thousand Sisters: My Journey into the Worst Place on Earth to be a Woman (2010). One right step led to the next right step, and then to the next—which is how most heart-centered activists find that they are on a soul path.
That there are women runners hardly seems remarkable in this day and age, yet it took consciousness-raising and women acting together to make this so. In 1972, six women entered the New York City Marathon, challenging the American Athletic Union rule that barred women. The AAU justified their ban with unfounded “scientific” research, including claims that women who ran more than a few miles risked infertility. The organizer of the marathon courted women runners and got the AAU to relent somewhat: “certain women” could take part provided that they started ten minutes before or after the men on a different starting line. An article in Runner's World (Robinson, October 2012) described the scene. Six women lined up at the starting line for their ten-minute head start. The women spread across the line side by side, the gun went off, and the women sat down and held up signs mocking the AAU. The photo ran across four columns of the Monday New York Times and that helped to launch a running revolution for women.
Nina Kuscsik, one of the six, made running history in 1972 when she became the first woman to win the Boston Marathon. Another lasting image of a pioneering runner was taken just five years previous to that, in 1967 in Boston. The photo shows the enraged director of the Boston Marathon attacking Kathrine Switzer as she is midstride on the marathon course. He tries to take her bib/number off and is thwarted by a body block by her boyfriend (another man in the role of Meleager). At a time when women were banned from the race, Switzer became the first woman to finish the course, wearing an unofficial bib number on her shirt.
“How dare she!” anger is directed at women who do not do what they are told or stay in their places. Patriarchy and patriarchal men (thank goodness there are increasing numbers of men who are not) treat women as children who are supposed to obey, as possessions that belong to them, or as inferiors who deserve less of whatever is important. When women behave as if they are equal and are empowered to decide what they will do, including breaking discriminatory rules, the patriarchal response is: “How dare she!”
Once Atalanta is acknowledged (and legitimatized) by her father, he expects her to carry out her obligations as daughter, the first of which is to marry. In the myth, however, Atalanta negotiates conditions. The man she marries has to beat her in a footrace. And if an aspirant loses the race, he loses his life. This condition discourages some fortune hunters, and is a challenge for others who think well of themselves as winners—and probably have little or no experience losing to a girl. Atalanta's reputation in classical Greek mythology as the fleetest-footed mortal has not yet been established, but it will be through these races.
One man after another competes, and one after another loses the race. As metaphor, men who compete with women and underestimate them simply because they are women, or who overestimate their own ability and feel they are naturally superior, do lose more than one race when they lose to a woman. They feel humiliated. When men respect the women who compete with them, it is a different story.
Initially, the footraces engage Atalanta. She is fully involved in winning. Then, as one man after another races her, and one man after another loses the race and his life, it becomes routine to her. She knows she is really good at running and the races offer no real challenge. So it can be for women who enter the competitive world of men and become really good at what they do. The Atalanta/Artemis in them gets bored at winning, once they master the skill involved or there is no new terrain to explore. Mere winning for the sake of winning, or for the acquisition of power and money, are not major motivations for an Artemis. Nor is she interested in suitors who are drawn to her persona and who see her as a prize. The beauty, fame, and possessions that make Atalantas attractive to men are superficial attributes to those women themselves.
Finally, there is only one suitor left—Hippomenes. All of the rest sought to beat Atalanta to acquire a trophy wife and a kingdom. Hippomenes, on the other hand, sees her race, fearing each time that another man may win and have her. He knows that she can beat him; yet, because he loves her, he puts his life on the line and enters the race. He may know of her grief at the death of Meleager and of how she left Calydon, where there are only painful memories for her.
The night before the race, Hippomenes prays to Aphrodite, Goddess of Love and Beauty, that Atalanta might love him and that he might win her. All of the other suitors also prayed before they raced, but they prayed to Hermes or Zeus or Ares for speed or power in order that they might defeat Atalanta. Aphrodite hears in Hippomenes' prayers the wish to win her for love and, when he wakes in the morning, he sees three gleaming golden apples left by the goddess.
Atalanta waits at the starting line for this last race to begin. She takes no pleasure in the prospect of defeating Hippomenes, which is, for her, a foregone conclusion. As he approaches, she notices that he is holding his hands over the band in his tunic (where the three golden apples are hidden), which she finds peculiar. This reminds her of how Meleager suddenly put his hands in a similar position just before he died. She has put this horrible moment out of her mind and, with it, the memories of the closeness and idyllic times she had with him.
The Artemis/Atalanta woman can often put aside memories of the past to focus on something current that absorbs her interest. Long-distance runners push themselves and their bodies to reach new goals and don't look back as they do. Yet looking back, remembering and reflecting upon past experiences, is the inner task at hand for women with this archetype. Until midlife or mid-career, especially if they are outer-directed, they have lived out aspects of Artemis as goddess of the hunt. When they are able to stop running and lose interest in winning, there comes a time when they can turn to Artemis as goddess of the moon. This draws them inward—to reflect upon the past, to attend to dreams, and to see shades of gray in the behavior and motivation of self and others. They no longer judge people and circumstances simply in terms of black or white, good or bad, right or wrong. With reflection, they can see that patterns and compassion can enter in.
Atalanta, being reminded of Meleager's death, loses her focus just as the signal is given to begin the race. Hippomenes immediately takes off down the track; Atalanta is distracted long enough to give him a good head start. When she realizes that the race has begun and Hippomenes is out in front, she comes back to her usual competitive self and, because she excels at this, it takes her very little time to catch up. In no time, she is at his heels. A few more strides and she will pass him—except that she doesn't. At that moment, Hippomenes tosses a golden apple into her path. It is just too beautiful, especially in the glow of sunlight, to pass up. Atalanta slows down to pick it up, and Hippomenes spurts ahead.
At this point in the race, we know that there are two more golden apples to come. What do they represent? What appears in an Atalanta/Artemis woman's life to distract her, to draw her inward so she can react to other stirrings in her psyche?
Atalanta is drawn to the shining beauty of the first golden apple. She picks it up, gazes at it, and can see her face mirrored back, distorted by the curves of the apple. The thought enters her mind: This is how I will look when I grow old.
Women who are focused on what they are doing, who set long-term goals for themselves, and for whom accomplishments or mastery of something are all-absorbing often do not pay much attention to the passing of time. They don't chart the effects of time on their faces. Women for whom being attractive to men is essential notice the beginning of aging with a slight sag or a wrinkle years before an Artemis/Atalanta notices that she is slowing down, or that she is not as keen about challenges or reaching goals, or that her fascination with exploration and new horizons is waning. Atalanta's thought that the apple shows her how she will look when she grows old brings with it an insight that may never have occurred to her before: I shall grow old someday.
The insight here is the awareness of time passing. This may occur at any age in adulthood, especially when there are markers to meet—the “by now you should have . . .” expectations. In the mid-thirties to mid-forties, the idea of midlife arises when you realize that the decades have passed quickly. The time you have left may equal the years that have passed so far—and how quickly those years went by! As people live longer and healthier lives, vitality extends life and the quality of it. Active, engaged-in-life women of sixty, seventy, or even eighty may pause and give thought to time passing when they realize that they are within sight of the finish line. Reaching the chronological age at which a parent died often causes us to pause on the track and reflect, perhaps more objectively than before because we are now of the same age. Thoughts about time passing may also bring up the realization that death may come at any age; it's not only an octogenarian who should have documents, wishes, and finances in order and be current with the people who matter, especially when it comes to speaking from the heart.
When Atalanta slows down to pick up the first golden apple and pauses to gaze at it, Hippomenes races ahead. As soon as she realizes this, she refocuses on the race and effortlessly gains on him. She would pass him, except that he throws another golden apple in her path, which rolls away onto the side of the track. She retrieves it, giving Hippomenes time to increase his lead.
The second golden apple stirs in Atalanta a yearning for the physical and emotional closeness she once had with Meleager. The painful memory brought back by Hippomenes' clutching his belt also brings back the good times she spent with Meleager and their beautiful shared experiences. While it is common to want to avoid thinking about a relationship that ended painfully, when the loved moments are remembered as well, an important question arises: Would it have been better not to have loved at all?
Atalanta begins life learning to count on nature and animals for solace; people are not there for her. She more or less raises herself. By virtue of archetype and circumstance, she learns to be self-sufficient. She is one-in-herself as a child; she does not count on others. Perhaps she has imaginary playmates as well as animals and birds as friends.
Meleager overcomes her mistrust and becomes her companion and defender. He admires her competency and sees her as beautiful. He is her male counterpart, and perhaps her lover—even if, as is likely, she did not fall in love with him as he did with her. They explore and hunt together. He is her first best friend—until his mother breaks up the relationship, kills him off, and leaves her with the pain and loss. But when you remember fully and know that a relationship is significant and soul-growing, no matter how it ends, it can lead you to gratitude for having had the experience and the person. And no matter how long the relationship lasts, you can also come to have gratitude for the grief that goes with loss. It may seem strange to be glad to grieve, but if you learned that there was no sympathy for tears or sadness, and had an innate strength of will and ability to focus, grief is held in and tears are held back. When these feelings finally well up and you sob with deep grief, it opens a channel to your feelings, which become more accessible to you and make it possible to open your heart more to others.
Aphrodite stirs yearnings in us for love and creates the attraction. We see the other person in the golden glow of Aphrodite and are drawn to the love and beauty we feel. When recall of a past love does not focus on the negatives, when you can recall how it felt to express love and feel loved, yearnings to feel this again arise. When this is combined with an awareness that time is passing, it can generate a new receptivity to love and intimacy, at any age.
As the finish line approaches and Atalanta draws even with Hippomenes, he drops the third golden apple. For a split second, Atalanta hesitates. Should she cross the finish line and win the race, or pick up the apple and lose? She reaches for the apple just as Hippomenes crosses the finish line to win the race—and Atalanta.
When Aphrodite imbues the urge to have a baby with her alchemical attraction, the mother archetype (Demeter) teams up to divert a goal-focused woman who, up to now, was never fascinated by babies or desired one of her own. It is the longing plus the tug of instinct to be a mother that shifts a woman away from her career track, and lets others pass her by. Wanting to have a baby can become compelling and surprising to the woman who never knew before that it could be important to her. But when Aphrodite casts her spell in conjunction with (or in conspiracy with) Demeter, a baby becomes the longed-for beloved.
This is very different from thinking about having a baby to complete an image, or put a checkmark on a To Do list. Or, as is often the case, to live up to the expectations that you should want to have at least one baby and that, once you do, the children come first. For women who are archetypally maternal, being a mother or not being able to conceive a child are deep soul issues. When archetype and role come together, being maternal is soul-satisfying, a source of meaning. But when this is not who you are deep down, being a full-time mother leads to what Betty Friedan described in The Feminine Mystique (1963) as “the problem with no name.” She describes women “who had it all”—a husband with a career, children, a house in the suburbs with all the modern conveniences—and had expectations that it would make them happy. When they were not happy, they blamed themselves. These were women who didn't find meaning living through their relationship roles—as Mrs. and Mother.
Now that women are expected to integrate work and personal life, often with the added necessity to work for financial reasons, women who want most of all to be mothers are deprived when they can't be full-time mothers and have to leave their children with others. On the other hand, non-maternal women who have a baby because it is expected of them and secondary to a career or to a cause, may hardly miss a step as they take a very short time out to have the baby, then put it in the arms of someone else and return to the race. Some women who know themselves and also know that children deserve more than they can give them make the decision to be childless by choice. They find, however, that they are put on the defensive by the expectations of others. Now there is an assertive counter-designation to “childless”—“childfree.” Still, it takes self-knowledge and courage to make this choice, which may be honoring a deep commitment of these women to a calling or cause, or a deep knowledge that motherhood is not for them.
Aphrodite's third apple can be the one that draws an Atalanta woman toward her creative expression. She picks up the golden apple and quits the race, which, up to then, has been absorbing. She is drawn to do something that holds a promise of fulfilling a need in her that would not be fulfilled by a baby or by continuing on the same path. Once this particular golden apple affects her, the urge is to create, not procreate—to bring forth something out of her soul and her experience. It may be through a medium like painting, music, or writing that she becomes totally absorbed in for the pleasure and fascination of it. Or it may be a cause to which she now wants to commit her experience, talents, and passion, becoming as devoted to this and to making a difference through what she is doing as a maternal woman is toward her child.
Aphrodite's golden apples cast her spell on Atalanta from the beginning, when they are hidden in Hippomenes' waistband. Atalanta is receptive to Aphrodite's influence for many reasons. The immediate task no longer challenges her; it is just one more race that she can easily win. The race will also be the end of Hippomenes, however, who loves her, which may have touched her heart. When she sees him coming toward the starting line with his hands on his waistband, she is reminded of Meleager, which opens doors of memory that she had closed.
Memories from which you cut yourself off remain alive in your personal unconscious, temporarily forgotten but accessible. Glimmerings of them may appear in dreams, but until you are able to take your focus away from the activities in the outer world, there is little space in your psyche to remember. With memory come feelings, thoughts, and reflections. Interest in what may lie in the personal unconscious seems to open a gateway to the collective unconscious, to the language of symbols and the relevance of myths to personal life. I have been bringing you into this realm.
In the Roman version of Greek mythology, the underworld is presided over by Pluto, the lord of the underworld whose name refers to “riches underground.” Whatever we have neglected to develop is there; our untended natural talent, sources of joy and pain through which we are connected to all humanity, the archetypal patterns common to us all. As the Roman poet Terence said: “Nothing human is foreign to me.” When the third apple of Aphrodite symbolizes creativity, an Atalanta who chooses to pick it up will be drawn into the archetypal world, which deepens creativity, empathy, and understanding.
In Goddesses in Everywoman (1984), I place Aphrodite in a category all her own as the alchemical goddess. In her mythology, she has awesome and irresistible power. She can cause all mortals and divinities—except the virgin goddesses—to fall in love, to forget their usual concerns and bonds, and to conceive new life. She imbues an attraction with magnetic beauty and subjectivity, as in “beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” She inspires poetry and persuasive speech, and symbolizes the transformative and creative power of love. She values emotional experiences with others more than either independence from others, which characterizes the virgin goddesses (Artemis, Athena, Hestia), or the qualities or bonds to others that define the vulnerable goddesses (Hera, Demeter, Persephone). When Aphrodite's influence is felt, the present moment is all that matters. The focus is on the beloved person or object, or on creative work that is totally absorbing. Under Aphrodite's spell, time distortions occur. When you are with your beloved person or creative work, you lose track of time; hours can seem like minutes and a timeless moment can feel like the eternal now.
Women whose dominant archetypes are not the virgin goddesses are much more susceptible to Aphrodite. They are emotionally more vulnerable to falling in love without seeing the person clearly. They are more apt to become obsessed by another person, or to be dominated by a stronger personality, or to feel that their worth depends on having a defining relationship as spouse, lover, or mother. When Aphrodite is the dominant archetype in a woman, especially if she is attractive and young, she is often caught between the archetype in her (embodied, sensual, in the moment), and the consequences of being sexual and unwise (pregnancy, a bad reputation, victimized).
Until the footrace, Atalanta is not under the spell of an Aphrodite attraction. During the footrace, she undergoes an internal struggle between being in the race and winning it, or succumbing to the attraction of the apples and, with them, Hippomenes. She forgets that she is in the race and that the point is to win it. Each time Hippomenes throws a golden apple in her path, it distracts her focus. Then she remembers the race, sees that she is losing, and races to catch up. At the very end, however, Aphrodite prevails over the goal-oriented competitive focus of Artemis.
What do Aphrodite's apples mean to you? Awareness of time passing? Love and intimacy? A baby? Your own creativity? Or something else?
When Atalanta reaches for Aphrodite's third golden apple, she loses the race. But she gets the apple and Hippomenes for her husband. Until this race, goal-focused, one-in-herself, competitive Atalanta identifies with Artemis. In real life, similar stories are brought to life through what appears to be an attraction of opposites. A man like Hippomenes, who falls in love with an Atalanta, may have admired her from a distance. He is probably not as ambitious or as accomplished as she is and doesn't compete with her or feel diminished by her. His love may include seeing and wanting to take care of her vulnerability, which she hides—from others and from herself. If that third apple arouses thoughts of having a child in an Atalanta, and if she is also affected by her ticking biological clock, she may notice Hippomenes' good-father qualities and be attracted to them. Time was when a warrior/defender or a bring-home-the-bacon provider fit the definition of a good match, but a successful Atalanta has these qualities herself.
People who still have a traditional, patriarchal notion of marriage expect a woman “to do better” than be with a man who makes less money than she does or has less education. They will be even more judgmental if he becomes the primary parent when they have children—if he is the one who goes to school conferences and stays home if a child is sick. While most Atalanta/Hippomenes unions are not complete role-reversal marriages, they usually are egalitarian and each fills some of the other's traditional roles.
An Atalanta is not attracted to patriarchal men who consider wives, and women in general, as possessions and adjuncts to their needs. When asked why she wasn't married, Gloria Steinem once said in an interview: “I don't mate well in captivity!” This was a question that assumed that any woman as attractive as she should have been chosen. Ordinary unmarried women are asked the same question, and often feel it tinged with the subtext: There must be something wrong with you. Men do the choosing, after all, and a woman's worth and role are based on this principle in most of the world and in many extended families.
Cultures with a male god at the top of the pantheon and men made in the image of that god do not consider women as equals, but as possessions. This is a viewpoint in transition in the United States, but it is one widely held and enforced in other more fundamentalist societies in the world. The difference archetypally between men, whom I categorize in Gods in Everyman (1989), is between those who identify primarily with the father archetypes (and tend to be patriarchal) and those who identify with the “generation of the sons” (more egalitarian). The patriarchal roles for women make her a daughter until she becomes a wife and then becomes a mother.
The patriarchal marriage is between two people who consider themselves almost different species, each conforming to the expectations or stereotypes of their gender. They divide responsibilities and psychological qualities between them. As husbands used to say: “She is my better half ”—meaning that he goes into the competitive world and acts accordingly, while she stays at home and is the caretaker and nurturer, and is the more empathic and kinder half of the couple. Human qualities have a bell-curve distribution among male and female. Culture shapes which ones are acceptable in each gender and individuals learn which parts of themselves they should suppress to fit the acceptable stereotype. The qualities we develop result from nature and nurture, the matrix of genetic-archetypal and family-cultural influences.
The distribution of human qualities between men and women actually resembles two overlapping bell curves, in which some women (like Atalanta) have more of what men are supposed to have than a lot of men, and some men (like Hippomenes) have more qualities considered womanly than many women. Only when boys and girls, men and women, are free to develop whatever human qualities they have—the natural talents human children are endowed with that patriarchy assigns to one or the other of the genders (also failing to consider the in-between transgendered people among us)—are people free to be themselves. Researchers on empathy describe women as the empathic gender, but there are men who are more empathic than many women, just as there are women who are more goal-focused than many men.
Another way of looking at the marriage of Atalanta and Hippomenes is as an inner marriage, or coniunctio (which means “joining” in Latin), a concept developed by C. G. Jung. This refers to a union of opposites in the psyche that leads to wholeness. Jung's anima/animus concept postulated that every man has an anima, a feminine, in his psyche; likewise, every woman has a contra-sexual male aspect, or animus. These need to be brought into consciousness. In Jung's view, a man's anima and a woman's animus are, by definition, less conscious and therefore inferior to similar ego-developed qualities in the other gender. This theory works with men and women who have qualities that are typical of stereotyped roles. This is generally so if women are not educated and can't have responsibilities and authority in the world, and if men are not involved with young children, have no domestic responsibilities, and are discouraged from interests in the arts.
Typically male and typically female psychological patterns may apply to a majority or more of each gender, but do not fit a significant number on a normal bell curve of human qualities. Once these qualities are seen as part of a continuum, and not defined as either “masculine” or “feminine” in a binary system, then Atalanta and Hippomenes can be seen as an atypical, but normal, pair of opposites that attract each other. This attraction of opposites can be seen in same-sex couples as well.
Couples where both become unique and whole people often start out with each partner admiring something that is different from themselves as part of the attraction to the other. The potential of bringing something beautiful that exists in your unconscious into consciousness is an impetus toward wholeness, and part of the alchemical attraction that Aphrodite creates between two people whose differences attract the other person.
In versions of Atalanta's story that go back to ancient Greece, the myth doesn't end at the end of the race. Instead, almost as a postscript, we learn of the consequences that befall Hippomenes and Atalanta on their journey home.
Aphrodite is unhappy with Hippomenes, who has won Atalanta with her help. He forgets that he owes his wife (and his life) to Aphrodite and fails to honor her. At the very least, according to Ovid, he should give her thanks and burn incense in her temple. When he doesn't, the goddess feels slighted and becomes angry. To make matters much worse, when the couple stop for a rest at the temple of Cybele, Hippomenes is overcome with passion. Seeing a dimly lit cavern where priests placed their old wooden images, he makes love to Atalanta there. This is a desecration of an ancient temple, a sacrilege. For this, the lovers are changed into a pair of lions and forever yoked to Cybele's chariot. Aphrodite thus enjoys a delicious revenge, for it was believed at the time that lions did not mate with one another, but only with leopards—a very strange misconception. In any case, yoked as they are and pulling in traces together, the pair can not mate.
I think of this ending as a cautionary tale—one that metaphorically can lead to “persona marriages” when Aphrodite is not honored. These are marriages between two people who are lionized as a well-matched pair and who look the part in public. But between them in private, they are not emotionally intimate and love-making has become perfunctory and infrequent, or even non-existent. Aphrodite may have sparked the original attraction, but once settled into a routine or into the glamour or importance of their roles—or because of long hours, travel, the intensity of work, or children—intimacy fades. When the honeymoon is over and they are establishing themselves as homeowners, parents, and responsible members of the community, the couple can feel yoked together, harnessed to mortgages, student loans, and other financial burdens.
A woman physician spoke to me years ago after I had told this story, because in this she found a metaphor for her own marriage. She and her husband had a well-run household and a smoothly functioning partnership. I wonder: Did she speak to him about being lonely in the marriage, about the lack of emotional and physical intimacy, which she now wanted? Did he have any similar feelings? Was he dismissive or defensive? Could they speak together of vulnerabilities, disappointments, needs, and fears? What did each want of life and each other? Did they go into couple therapy? Was it possible to transform them from “lions” into intimates? Or did talking make it clear that they held irreconcilable expectations, as often happens between a patriarchal husband and his egalitarian wife. When this happens, even though the partners may be the same age, they may be a generation apart in attitude. Women who are archetypally Artemis may leave a conventionally good marriage for reasons that other women with different archetypes do not understand. This is perhaps what Jane Fonda, then around sixty, meant when she commented at one of the annual Omega conferences on her divorce from a man whose expectations of her limited who she could be: “I realized I could either die whole or die married.”
The name Atalanta is familiar to many women who, as children or as young mothers, remember Marlo Thomas' Free to Be . . . You and Me, which tells the story of the footrace (“Atalanta,” by Betty Miles). The Princess Atalanta “was so bright, and so clever, and could build things and fix things so wonderfully, that many young men wished to marry her.” There are too many men for the king to choose among, however. Atalanta says: “You don't have to choose, I will choose, and I'm not sure I'll marry anyone at all.” The king discounts this last possibility, saying: “Of course you will . . . it's what people do.”
With so many suitors to choose from, the king decides that he will hold a great race and give the winner the right to marry his daughter. Like the mythological Atalanta, she agrees to the race, but negotiates a condition: “Very well, but you must let me race along with the others.” So the race with marriage as the prize is announced throughout the kingdom. Atalanta prepares for the race, getting up at dawn to practice running in secret, until she can run the course faster than anyone has ever run it before.
Meanwhile, one suitor—Young John, who has seen Atalanta at a distance—wants to earn the right to talk to her and become her friend. He thinks: “For sure, it is not right for Atalanta's father to give her away to the winner of the race. Atalanta herself must choose the person she wants to marry, or whether she wishes to marry at all.” He also secretly practices running, until he can run the course faster than anyone has done before.
The day of the race, there are no golden apples. Many suitors race, but none can keep up with Atalanta except Young John. They reach the finish line and break through the golden ribbon together. The king then gives Young John the right to marry Atalanta, since he has come the closest to winning. Young John responds: “I could not possibly marry your daughter unless she wished to marry me. I have run this race for the chance to talk with Atalanta, and if she is willing, I am ready to claim my prize.” The two talk, become friends, and go off separately to see the world.
This version of the Atalanta myth ends with: “Perhaps some day they will be married, and perhaps they will not. In any case, they are friends. And it is certain that they are both living happily ever after.” I would add a postscript. It is likely that Atalanta and John are models for the generation of children who read this book and sang the songs—the Gen X and Millennials who had mothers influenced by the Women's Movement who raised them to be “free to be themselves.”
“Living happily ever after” is a fairy-tale ending. What happens after “and they lived happily ever after” is what Stephen Sondheim's award-winning musical Into the Woods (1986) is about. All the fairy-tale characters must deal with what happens after “happily ever after.” How does Jack, of beanstalk fame, deal with a dead giant in his back yard? Do Cinderella and Rapunzel marry princes and really end up having happy and fulfilling lives? Is carving up the wolf really the solution for Little Red Riding Hood? In real lives, there is unpredictability and routine. However, Atalanta and Young John have characters that will hold up in life. They have principles; they know what matters to them. And they are willing to work hard, and respect the sovereignty of each other. They will not take that which is not freely given, and they have a capacity for male/female friendship as equals.
Atalanta/Artemis women who know that their careers, creativity, or causes are their calling may heed Sheryl Sandberg's advice about relationships in Lean In: Women, Work and the Will to Lead (2013). While Sandberg writes about leadership in the outer world of institutions, I am writing about girls and women whose indomitable spirit leads them to have authentic and meaningful lives, however conventional or unconventional they may be—with or without a Meleager or Hippomenes. Sandberg writes:
I truly believe that the single most important career decision that a woman makes is whether she will have a life partner and who that partner is. I don't know of one woman in a leadership position whose life partner is not fully—and I mean fully—supportive of her career. No exceptions.
Sandberg learned from her own experience and is now in the mutually supportive marriage she describes, after a brief previous marriage and divorce.