Pandora's Jar

Women in the Greek Myths

Natalie Haynes

• Publisher: Harper Perennial
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN: 9780063139466
• eBook ISBN: 9780063139473
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Greek Ancient History
• Index: History

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

“Funny, sharp explications of what these sometimes not-very-nice women were up to, and how they sometimes made idiots of . . . but read on!”—Margaret Atwood, author of The Handmaid's Tale

The national bestselling author of A Thousand Ships returns with a fascinating, eye-opening take on the remarkable women at the heart of classical stories Greek mythology from Helen of Troy to Pandora and the Amazons to Medea.

The tellers of Greek myths—historically men—have routinely sidelined the female characters. When they do take a larger role, women are often portrayed as monstrous, vengeful or just plain evil—like Pandora, the woman of eternal scorn and damnation whose curiosity is tasked with causing all the world’s suffering and wickedness when she opened that forbidden box. But, as Natalie Haynes reveals, in ancient Greek myths there was no box. It was a jar . . . which is far more likely to tip over.

In Pandora’s Jar, the broadcaster, writer, stand-up comedian, and passionate classicist turns the tables, putting the women of the Greek myths on an equal footing with the men. With wit, humor, and savvy, Haynes revolutionizes our understanding of epic poems, stories, and plays, resurrecting them from a woman’s perspective and tracing the origins of their mythic female characters. She looks at women such as Jocasta, Oedipus’ mother-turned-lover-and-wife (turned Freudian sticking point), at once the cleverest person in the story and yet often unnoticed. She considers Helen of Troy, whose marriage to Paris “caused” the Trojan war—a somewhat uneven response to her decision to leave her husband for another man. She demonstrates how the vilified Medea was like an ancient Beyonce—getting her revenge on the man who hurt and betrayed her, if by extreme measures. And she turns her eye to Medusa, the original monstered woman, whose stare turned men to stone, but who wasn’t always a monster, and had her hair turned to snakes as punishment for being raped.

Pandora’s Jar brings nuance and care to the millennia-old myths and legends and asks the question: Why are we so quick to villainize these women in the first place—and so eager to accept the stories we’ve been told?

Notes

PANDORA

1. Hesiod, Works and Days, introduction xiv.

2. Louvre Museum.

3. Sir John Soane’s Museum.

4. http://www.sothebys.com/en/auctions/ecatalogue/2014/british-irish-art-l14132/lot.207.html.

5. Hesiod, Theogony 585.

6. Ibid 570.

7. Ibid 585.

8. Ibid 587.

9. Hesiod, Works and Days 57.

10. Ibid 80–3.

11. Ibid 96.

12. Theognis, frag 1. 1135.

13. The Aesop Romance.

14. Aesop Fable 526 (Gibbs)/123 (Chambry)/312 (Perry).

15. Metropolitan Museum, Drawings and Prints.

16. https://www.britishmuseum.org/research/collection_online/collection_object_details.aspx?objectId=461830&partId=1.

17. https://www.ashmolean.org/sites/default/files/ashmolean/documents/media/learn_pdf_resources_greece_focus_on_greek_objects_teacher_notes.pdf.

18. Hurwit, Jeffrey M. (1995), ‘Beautiful Evil: Pandora and the Athena Parthenos’, American Journal of Archaeology 99.

19. Pausanias, Description of Greece 1.24.7.

20. Thucydides, The History of the Peloponnesian War 2.45.2.

21. The phrase used for women is attike gune – ‘a woman of Attica’, which is a geographical description, but removes the civic context present in the word ‘Athenian’. Jones, N. F. (1999), The Associations of Classical Athens: The Response to Democracy (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press) 128.

22. https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entrypulp-fiction-fan-theories_n_5967174.

23. Hesiod, Theogony 585.

JOCASTA

1. Antiphanes, frag 189.3–8, cited Wright, M. (2016), The Lost Plays of Greek Tragedy, Volume 1: Neglected Authors (London: Bloomsbury Academic), p. 214 + Taplin http://www.engramma.it/eOS/index.php?id_articolo=3303.

2. Wright, p. 97.

3. Sophocles, Oedipus Tyrannos 858.

4. Ibid 981–3.

5. Ibid 1071.

6. Ibid 707ff.

7. Ibid 713.

8. Homer, Odyssey 11 271.

9. Ibid 274.

10. Pausanias, Description of Greece 9.5.10–11.

11. Euripides, Phoinissai 20.

12. Ibid 30–1.

13. Ibid 44.

14. Ibid 619.

15. Martin, R. P. (2005), ‘The Voices of Jocasta’, Princeton/Stanford Working Papers in Classics. Available as of March 2020 at https://www.princeton.edu/~pswpc/pdfs/rpmartin/050503...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Introduction
• Pandora
• Jocasta
• Helen
• Medusa
• The Amazons
• Clytemnestra
• Eurydice
• Phaedra
• Medea
• Penelope
• Conclusion
• Acknowledgements
• Notes
• Further Reading and Other Sources
• About the Author
• Praise for Pandora’s Jar by Natalie Haynes
• Also by Natalie Haynes
• Copyright
• About the Publisher