Dear Friend and Reader,
I HAVE AN older sister who was in high school while I was a child. She was involved in the drama club, so I had the pleasure of attending every show she was in. I remember once the play was about the Greek gods, and though I have no idea what the exact plot was, I remember two things: I remember Prometheus always had a Bic lighter and I remember Pandora opening the box. All of these little third graders came jumping out, dressed like goblins and screaming and running in all directions much to Pandora’s horror. After they had left the stage a final apparition rose out of the box: a young girl dressed in a white sheet/toga, her hair pinned with golden leaves. She was Hope. Pandora closed her back in the box.
Pandora is given to us by the Greek tradition. She follows the same basic theme as Eve’s story: a woman does the one thing she’s not supposed to and changes the entire world. Like Eve, she is also the first woman ever. Her name means “Many Gifts.” Could it be that the ancient Greek mind understood irony? Or was her name given purposefully because even back then the ancestors realized life without some negativity did not progress?
The myth goes as follows: Prometheus was ordered to create mankind. This he did and when he felt sorry for their baseness, he stole fire from the gods. Zeus, angered by the titan’s thievery, commanded Hephaistos to form a woman out of the clay. Thus Pandora was born. She was sent to the younger, not as intelligent brother of Prometheus as a bride. When he received her, she opened a vase given to her by Zeus as a wedding present, thus unleashing all manner of evil spirits into the house. They were sickness, old age and hard labor.
There is one feminist interpretation of Pandora’s box I have found so far, provided by Wikipedia and proposed by Jane Ellen Harrison, which suggests this myth is one in a series of misogynist propaganda stories being circulated at that time. Pandora’s jar, or box, is the symbol of her womb. The many evils that flow out of it could be a sign that ancient Greece was uncomfortable with feminine sexuality.