The strife of nike, Hebe and Mnemosyne: spiritual conflict, innocence and memory in Jeffrey Eugenides’ female characters
The strife of nike, Hebe and Mnemosyne: spiritual conflict, innocence and memory in Jeffrey Eugenides’ female characters

Summary/Abstract: One of the most obvious concerns of Jeffrey Eugenides’ prose is to pinpoint the overwhelming difficulties of the coming of age of process, or, in other words, of the loss of childhood innocence on the transition road that leads to maturity and adulthood. This aspect is especially relevant when it comes to the heroines of his three major novels, The Virgin Suicides, Middlesex, and The Marriage Plot. In sketching out the portraits of the three central figures of these novels, Lux Lisbon, Calliope Stephanides and Madeleine Hannah, Eugenides proves to be somewhat of a feminist. His female characters, although ultimately victims of both their tragic fate and of societal restrictions, possess a greatness and spiritual strength comparable to those of the goddesses of ancient Greek mythology. Both Olympian and shatteringly human in nature, they symbolize the eternal damnation of the innocent soul on its pilgrimage through a morally corrupt and hostile world.

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