Death and the Maiden (Routledge Revivals): Girls' Initiation Rites in Greek Mythology

A remarkable number of Greek myths concern the plight of virgins – slaughtered, sacrificed, hanged, transformed into birds, cows, dear, bears, trees, and punished in Hades.

Death and the Maiden, first published in 1989, contextualises this mythology in terms of geography, history and culture, and offers a comprehensive theory firmly grounded in an ubiquitous ritual: pubescent girls’ rites of passage. By means of comparative anthropology, it is argued that many local ceremonies are echoed th...