Pandora's Jar: Women in the Greek Myths

by Natalie Haynes

Every myth contains multiple timelines within itself: the time in which it is set, the time it is first told, and every retelling afterwards.

HE WHO FIGHTS MONSTERS, NIETZSCHE TELLS US, SHOULD TAKE care that he himself does not become a monster.

Clytemnestra is a byword in the ancient world, and ever since, for a bad wife, the worst wife even. But for wronged, silenced, unvalued daughters, she is something of a hero: a woman who refuses to be quiet when her child is killed, who disdains to accept things and move on, who will not make the best of what she has.

But these myths are full of violence and we should at least ask why it is the violence against women that is removed in order to make our heroes uncomplicated adventurers.

Every telling of a myth is as valid as any other, of course, but women are lifted out of the equation with a monotonous frequency.