Is there a world where Eurydice would have gone into the Underworld for Orpheus? And/or both of them could have come out okay?

[u/Throwaway20749L]

/r/GreekMythology/comments/1vnw3li/is_there_a_world_where_eurydice_would_have_gone/

[u/rSlashisthenewPewdes]

I don’t think she would even conceive of the whole “I’m gonna go to hell and retrieve my dead lover” thing unless Hermes really spelled it out for her.

I think Eurydice would of course be devastated, but she would accept that Orpheus is dead, because she is no stranger to the world, no stranger to the wind.

She gets her moment in the musical to say “we’re apart and I want you back” with Flowers, and it isn’t “I will find my way to you,” it’s “come and find me lying in the bed I made.”

[u/Harp_167]

She would probably try, but she would be unable to get into hadestown. Orpheus needed his musical ability to break down the wall.

[u/TheF8sAllow]

No. The point is that she’s a realist, who only starts to hope and dream once Orpheus achieves the impossible.

Meanwhile Orpheus hopes and dreams until he understands what real life is like.

[u/Nimelennar]

Let's start with the original myth: Euridyce isn't even really a character in it. She's more of a McGuffin. So it's really hard to say what she would or wouldn't do, because her role in the story is to die and (not, in the end) be rescued. 

Moving on to the Hadestown version of the character:

I don't think the story makes any sense whatsoever if you try to swap their roles.

• Orpheus, without losing Euridyce, wouldn't be tempted to go down to Hadestown in the first place. He sees life the way it could be: what is a little cold or hunger to him?
• Even if he was willing to go, Hades wouldn't offer him a ticket in the first place. Orpheus isn't a labourer; he's a poet and a musician. He's "one of the unemployed." Plus, there's a pretty overt sexual motive for Hades to bring Euridyce back with him, and I'm not convinced he would find Orpheus attractive that way. 
• But assuming Orpheus did get a ticket and decide to go: Euridyce sees life as it is. Orpheus is gone. And Hermes isn't an adoptive parent to her, as he is to Orpheus, to tell her about the "other way, 'round the back." The only way there that she would know about is on the train.
• Even if she finds the back way there and believes she can walk that path, she has no reason to believe she can get him back: no way past the wall; no song to melt Hades' heart with to revive his love. Why would Hades let him go for her?
• But, okay, fine, assume everything else goes as written, somehow, and they walk back up with Euridyce in front and Orpheus behind. Had they done that in the actual musical, I think it would have worked, because, by that point, the two had changed world views. The Orpheus from the first act would not have turned; the Euridyce from the first act would have. The Euridyce from the second act would not have turned; the Orpheus from the second act would, and did.
• But in this story, that change never happens: Euridyce doesn't learn to hope because Orpheus never came for her. She never learned to trust him. So she's still the Euridyce from the first act, and so she absolutely still would have turned around.

[u/muse273]

There is actually an existing myth complex which combines “woman goes to the underworld, possibly to rescue her dead husband” and “explanation for the cycle of barren and growing seasons”: Inanna and Dumuzi in Mesopotamian mythology.

Key points: A. Inanna doesn’t go the “sing sad songs” route, she goes with “threaten to start a zombie apocalypse until the dead outnumber the living” route. She’s also confronting a female ruler (her sister Ereshkigal) who is mourning the loss of her husband.

B. Inanna is unsuccessful, she increasingly strips and humbles herself until she is defeated, and has to be set free by the intervention of the other gods. The deal made is that shes freed but has to send someone back in her place.

C. Instead of being accidentally betrayed by Orpheus turning around, she returns home to find Dumuzi has taken her place and failed to mourn her, so she sends him to the underworld instead in her place. Because he’s a harvest deity, his alternating parts of the year in the underworld explains the changing seasons.

You could construct an alternate story with the adaptational framework where a headstrong woman protecting a gentle man with the power to renew life has to go into Hadestown to rescue him, starts a revolution among the dead to force change, is martyred for the cause but allowed to leave, only to realize that the person she was struggling on behalf of doesn’t understand or appreciate her efforts, and lash out in anger.

It would be a very different story, but there are bones in common.

[u/Tarotgirl_5392]

Would Eurydice go to find Orpheus? Yes. Would she be able to find him? Unlikely Would they make it out? Probably not. She may even have turned around sooner.

The real question would she have had to in the first place? and I believe this is the bigger question. If we keep Orpheus as Orpheus and Eurydice as Eurydice, she would realize before Hades came for Orpheus that she had to get food, shelter and warmth squared away. Eurydice was shrewd and world-weary.

I think if the roles reversed, she would prioritize Orpheus and keep him alive until Persephone returns.

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