ABSTRACT
This chapter examines evidence from two different societies in an effort to connect two seemingly different cultural understandings of the virgin and her otherworldly bridegroom, the bride of Hades and the bride of Christ. It highlights the agency of girls in adopting the label of bride as a dominant theme, by attempting to reconstruct the female experience of threatened, interrupted, or prolonged adolescence. The transitional point in women’s lives — when they were on the brink of marriage and able to become mothers — was not meant to be a place to linger. The bride of Christ metaphor, however, allows the girl to conform her deviancy.
