The diligent daughters who refuse to leave their looms are caricatures of these deeper weavers who weave tissue to bone out of the substance of their bodies. They too are resistant. Even though they approach the threshold with dignity (initiate, Scene I), they turn in terror when the thunder begins to rumble, knowing that the bull-roarer's simulation of thunder announces an inevitable bolt that will shock and sear Semele, sending her on to that final stage of transformation where what was bound inside is freed.

After the lightning (in which the uterus descends into the pelvic cavity toward the end of pregnancy) comes the rupture. There is a profound inevitability in the process of childbirth that is only like the inevitability of death. Its coming does not depend upon what one wills. Movement, despite what one wills, is a regular and disturbing characteristic of Dionysian possession. The death of those women in childbirth was induced by a shock that knocked them out and under. The swift movement and sudden revelation (the bolt out of the blue) is like the moment of realization that the course of your immediate life is unalterable. Even though the idea of motherhood grows as slowly as the child grows, even while a woman grows slowly accustomed to the changing shape that will shape her changes in the future, she can be suddenly stunned by seeing the image of her own death in this child's birth.