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The guiding principle when searching for the cause of everything wrong in the world has been, all too often: cherchez la femme.
It seems reasonable to suggest that, for the ancients, Pandora’s role as the ancestor of all women was far more important than her disputed role in opening the world to incessant evil. Even if, for Hesiod, these two amount to much the same thing.
Not all cultural traditions survive intact, but satyr-plays are probably closest to burlesque, if burlesque had more permanently priapic man–horse hybrids singing and dancing in it. Doubtless this niche is being catered for somewhere).
When women take up space, there is less available for men. But it means we get a whole story instead of half of one.
And in the visual arts she disappears from view almost entirely. I suspect we don’t see her reflected back at us from paintings because she has committed the ultimate sin against art: she is an older woman. And while painters never tire of showing us women and girls in their twenties or teens, they tend to be far less keen to show us a woman in her forties or fifties.
He is still afraid of her, even after he has beheaded her and trodden her down. If you’re looking for a better metaphor for virulent misogyny, I’m afraid I don’t have one.
There is something cripplingly true about this, isn’t there? That we are so often the authors of our own misfortunes because of the same qualities which make us brave, or hopeful, or loving in the first place.
I would have told you, but you’d have gone nuts. Sure, call me names, I’m the one going into exile. That’s your fault, shouting your mouth off. What did you think I would do? Fine, well, if you need help, let me know. I will never need your help. Jason and Medea are a hero and a semi-divine sorceress from a mythic world of fire-breathing bulls, enchanted fleeces and giant snakes. And yet they sound like every divorcing couple we have ever known.
When the question arises – why retell Greek myths with women at their core? – it is loaded with a strange assumption. The underpinning belief is that women are and always have been on the margins of these stories. That the myths have always focused on men and that women have only ever been minor figures. This involves ignoring the fact that there is no ‘real’ or ‘true’ version of any myth, because they arise from multiple authors across multiple locations over a long period.
But you’ll forgive me for suggesting that an all-male age with no women (and no fire) sounds incredibly boring. Of course it was carefree, what the hell would anyone care about?
