What Lies in the Woods

As young girls, Naomi, Cass, and Liv played a game in which they pretended to be goddesses from classical Greek mythology. The three goddesses they embodied are Artemis, Athena, and Hecate. Artemis is the goddess of hunting, wild animals, and chastity, and Athena is the goddess of wisdom and war. Hecate is associated with magic, ghosts, witches, nighttime, and crossroads; much later, Hecate appears in Shakespeare’s play Macbeth as the goddess whom the witches serve. All three goddesses feature in myths about jealousy, hubris, and power dynamics: Artemis causes the death of the hero Actaeon after he accidentally glimpses her naked, Athena turns the rival weaver Arachne into a spider, and Hecate facilitates the abduction of Persephone into the underworld. These motifs connect the girls’ game to the novel’s interest in Jealousy and Tension Within Friendships, as well as the revelation about why Cass urged Liv to stab Naomi.

The nickname of the skeleton is also linked to Greek mythology. The friends refer to the skeleton as Persephone (which turns out to be the name of Jessi’s niece). In Greek mythology, Persephone is the beloved daughter of Demeter, the goddess of agriculture and the harvest. After the underworld god Hades abducts Persephone, her distraught and angry mother refuses to allow any crops to grow until her daughter is returned to her.