Persephone as Historical Impasse: ‘Confrontation and Accommodation’ of the Postfeminist Heroine

In contrast to the stark framing of post-feminist extremes in Veronica Mars, the romantic dramedy of Grey’s Anatomy articulates, Levine argues, ‘a feminist-friendly fiction or fantasy’ that ushers in a ‘new phase in postfeminist culture’ (2013, 140–6; original emphasis) that, I suggest, presents post-feminism in the historical sense, of having moved on to ‘different problems and concerns’ (Gill 2007, 249).1 For while feminism appears to have ‘truly changed’ this world (Levine 2013, 146), it remains historically distanced from heroine Meredith Grey (Ellen Pompeo), in the figure of her mother. Strikingly, however, the themes of Persephone unfold as real psychic symptoms for Meredith, who self-diagnoses her constant malaise as a response to: ‘the mother thing, the father thing, the sister thing [and] the dying and coming back to life thing’ (‘Kung Fu Fighting’ 4.6).