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. Myths may be the home of the miraculous, but they are also mirrors of us. Which version of a story we choose to tell, which characters we place in the foreground, which ones we allow to fade into the shadows: these reflect both the teller and the reader, as much as they show the characters of the myth.

But the verb in Pandora’s name is active, not passive: literally she is all-giving rather than all-gifted.

When women take up space, there is less available for men. But it means we get a whole story instead of half of one. It scarcely needs saying that our understanding of the story of Oedipus is enriched when we know the story of Jocasta, and vice versa.

AMAZONS WERE ‘A BUNCH OF GOLDEN-SHIELDED, SILVER-AXED, man-loving, boy-killing women.’1 The fifth-century BCE historian Hellanikos of Lesbos presumably doesn’t intend this list as a compliment, but it certainly makes me want to join them.

Their stories should be read, seen, heard in all their difficult, messy, murderous detail. They aren’t simple, because nothing interesting is simple.

We do not live in a world of heroes and villains, and if we believe we do, we should really consider the possibility that we haven’t thought about things properly. We cannot hope to make sense of our stories or ourselves (myths are a mirror of us, after all) if we refuse to look at half of the picture. Or – worse – don’t even notice half of it is missing.