“I’m looking for a man in finance. Trust fund, 6’5”, blue eyes,” goes the latest in vogue TikTok hook.
Whether it is invoked in ironic jest or, equally likely, with faux irony and, so, some sincerity, the age-old aspiration of women marrying into wealth appears to be having a new summer.
Rachel Lyon’s relevant retelling of the myth of Hades and Persephone, Fruit Of The Dead, is a reminder of the dangers of this trope.
Published in the wake of the conviction of financier Jeffrey Epstein and the ongoing scandal surrounding the Sackler family, who owned Purdue Pharma, a pharmaceutical company, it recontextualises contemporary debates of the ethics of exploitative age-gap relationships and addictive painkillers into an age-old tale.
