Pandora’s Jar: Was She Really To Blame?

Pandora is often remembered as the woman who unleashed everything that is evil with the world, but was she really to blame? 

In this episode of The Mythic Atlas, we dive into the story of Pandora. Exploring her creation, the infamous jar, and how she was set up from the beginning. Let’s take a closer look at one of the most misunderstood women of Greek mythology. 

The resources I used for this episode are: Greek Mythology By: Liv Albert, Mythology 101 By: Kathleen Sears, and “The Myth of Pandora’s Box” from the website greekmyths-greekmythology.com 

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Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:02

Hello everyone and welcome. My name is Clarissa, and this is The Mythic Atlas, a podcast where we dive into the world of mythology, legends, and mystery. Today is Monday, which means we are discussing a myth, which is probably my favorite pillar of this podcast. Monday's my favorite. Staying on the Greek mythology path, we will be discussing Pandora's box, more so rather jar, but we'll get into that a little later. Pandora is an undervalued and misrepresented character in Greek mythology, and I feel like that needs to be discussed more. A lot of people blame her for a lot of things that I truly deeply believe in my heart and soul were not completely her fault. I would say that she's a decently widely known character, but so many people view her in such a negative light. We will get into her story and why people view her the way that they do in this podcast episode, but before that, I'd like to refer you to Pandora's Jar by Natalie Haynes. I've not read the specific book from her, but I know a lot about it, and I know a lot of people that I personally love and trust recommend this book to literally everyone. So I'm just doing my due diligence in passing this along to you. As always, if you have any recommendations for podcast episodes, please feel free to reach out to me on Instagram at the.mythic.atlas. I will also have it linked in the description below. Part one, the theft of fire. I feel like we can't discuss Pandora without discussing Prometheus and Epimetheus. So if you're kind of getting two stories with one episode, consider it a double feature. You're welcome in advance. Epimetheus was told by Zeus to give out all the good qualities to animals on Earth. But he ended up giving them to just the animals and not any to the humans. Kind of explains why we are the way that we are. Prometheus was a titan known for his intelligence as well as the fact that he could pretty much get away with anything under everyone's noses. Prometheus eventually grew tired of watching the humans suffer, so he took fire from the gods to give to the humans so that they could at very least have fire. And take a wild guess who absolutely hated this idea? No other than Mr. Zeus himself. Zeus was deeply angered, and honestly, I imagine him as like picking shit up and throwing it against the wall because he was that angered, and he just like kind of seems like that kind of person, if I do say so myself. To punish everyone for Prometheus's actions, he ordered Pandora to be made. Because of Epimetheus' idiocracy, Prometheus was able to steal the fire and give it to the humans. So basically, the blame falls on Epimetheus, Prometheus, and Zeus. So just keep that in mind for the rest of this episode. Part 2. The woman with the jar. Pandora is considered to be the first human woman in Greek myth. She was not born though, because before her the world was only populated by men, and through science, we know that men cannot reproduce with each other. She was created by the gods. She was sculpted out of clay by Hephaestus, like every other human was, because he was the god of craft. Athena, goddess of strategic warfare and wisdom, and various other badass shit. I will not get into that though. Gives Pandora a beautiful gown and teaches her how to weave and do needlework, like any good woman would know how to do. Aphrodite gives Pandora beauty, making her absolutely breathtaking to look at. And Hermes gives her the ability to be cunning. Basically, all the gods worked on creating her like a school project, giving her blessings and curses as they see fit. We're gonna flash forward a little bit. Prometheus was eventually punished for his actions, which is a whole nother story within itself. And Epimetheus was told that he was going to marry Pandora. He said, Alright, that's fine, because he was completely captivated by her beauty. He just kind of ignored all of her not so great traits, like being curious, and God forbid a woman asks a fucking question. Before Zeus put Pandora on Earth, he gave her a jar. Yes, a jar, not a box. The original text was mistranslated into a box, but really it is a jar. I will scream that it is a jar from the rooftops because for some reason it really peeps me. If y'all go out here and tell me it's a box, it's a jar. It's a jar, it's a jar, it's a jar. Zeus just told her never to open the jar, but never really told her why not to open the jar. Epimetheus ignored his brother, telling him that do not accept the gift of Pandora being your wife, because obviously the gods are up to something that is no good. His brother is obviously stupid and wrong, and on top of that, he's being punished for his tomfoolery over there. So why is he coming over here and telling me shit? He let Pandora into his home and wed her. Was this a consensual wedding? It doesn't sound like it was, but we will get into that a different time. Eventually, Pandora's curiosity got the better of her and she opened the jar, as one would. When she opened the jar, she released all the suffering and all of the misery into the world. Basically, every evil thing that you can think of in the world came out because of Pandora's jar. She closed the jar as soon as she could after opening it, but that did absolutely nothing. Everything was already out and reigning havoc on the world, so she couldn't really do much about anything. The only thing that actually remained in the jar was hope. Different scholars believe different things about hope remaining in the jar. Some people believe that hope was the truest of the terrible things in that jar. Others believe that hope was purposely trapped away from the humans, and others believe that hope was specifically preserved for the humans. This has been a long time debate, and there's honestly no true answer to it. Because of all this, Pandora is seen as the true problem with the world and blamed for everything over and over again. Part 3. Was Pandora really to blame? Like I said in the intro, Pandora is a misrepresented character. But I will say that she shows a lot about how ancient Greece felt about women. Let's look at the story from a different lens. Pandora was created purely out of punishment, specifically from the actions of Prometheus, which were only able to happen because of the actions of Epimetheus. I can say with almost 100% certainty that if Epimetheus didn't distract Zeus and Prometheus didn't give fire to the humans, Zeus never would have had Pandora be made. Epimetheus did a stupid thing by not having enough traits to give to the humans. I assume he was just giving out the good traits to the animals like candy at a parade. And Prometheus did a stupid thing by purposely defying Zeus and giving the humans fire. All of this happened before Pandora was even a simple concept, but they created it so it sealed her fate. Zeus also had a part to play in this, and by that I mean he was not a rational ruler over the humans or over the gods. He was power-hungry and egotistical, which made him have poor choices. When Pandora was eventually created, she was showered with gifts, and one of those gifts being curiosity. That wasn't a trait she just naturally developed herself. It was forced upon her at the highest degree, once again sealing her fate. And Zeus knew exactly who and what Pandora was because he helped create her. If he truly wanted this jar to be closed forever, why would he give it to the person that is literally known for being curious? There is no logical explanation of why he would do that unless he knew for a fact that she was going to open that jar and he just wanted to punish the humans. But if that was the case, why did he give it to her and not give it to Epimetheus? His dumbass would have opened the jar too. But he didn't give it to Epimetheus. He gave it to Pandora, once again sealing her fate. She was completely set up to open that jar, and I'm sure the gods didn't give her the gift of resisting your urges or the gift of self-control. Part 4. Pandora through a modern lens. Many modern scholars interpretate this myth as a reflection of the deeply patriarchal values of ancient Greece. There are bad things going on in that time period, and who is better to blame than the people that they already see as property? The people who are stepping out of line to ask too many questions. The people whose beauty literally absorbs a man and he cannot look away. The people who have a strict certain set of rules to be a good woman, and if they stray from that path, they can be punished. We see this in many forms of myth. In the Bible, Eve is in the same kind of situation, not exactly obviously, but similar enough. Instead of being tempted by curiosity, she's tempted by a snake to eat an apple, and then of course we blame her for all of the wrongdoings of the world. It's a clear view for how people at this time saw women. They were evil, they caused all the bad things in the world because how else are we supposed to look at it? Are we supposed to look inward at our societies? Are we supposed to look inward at ourselves? Well, of course not. That's ridiculous. This was the easy option. And in Greek myth, all women descended from Pandora, meaning that they all had these awful traits that Pandora possessed. Some people in ancient Greek times really hated women and just saw them as an easy target for all of these myths. And this isn't like an ancient times thing. I'm sure if you're a woman today, you've experienced some form of sexism. I know I have. And even if you look outside the US, in other countries, women are still being treated this way. Sometimes even in more extreme ways. And this is not me saying that every woman in Greek myth is formed of some sort of sexism. That's not true. There are some badass women in some of these stories who I absolutely love with my full chest. Think Athena in the Odyssey. Think Artemis and Clytemnestra and Helen. These are all women who are smart and have lots of stories about them. And some of the stories, yes, are not the greatest, but not all of the stories took away from who they were. Smart, powerful, badass women. All of that to say is that sometimes this myth is used to create a negative viewpoint on women. Part 5. Final thoughts. I love Greek myth, and I am in no way trying to say that I don't love it. I just feel like as someone who is trying to discuss these myths, it is very important to understand that they are a product of their time and specifically written to serve a very niche group of people. I will never condone hate towards any specific group of people, and I hope you can see these myths and understand that. I hope you can see my perspective and understand my viewpoint and where I'm coming from with this myth. All that being said, I hope you enjoyed this episode of The Mythic Atlas. If you would like to support me on this journey, I will have my Venmo linked in the description. Any donations help with me purchasing books so that I can keep doing this research. If you are not comfortable with a monetary donation, I will have an Amazon wish list filled with books that will also be down below for you to purchase and send me. By doing that, it just means that I can pump out more episodes with sarcastic commentary that a lot of you are enjoying. Stay tuned for Wednesday's episode where we discuss the chupacabra. Mondays are for myths, Wednesdays are for mythical stories, and Fridays are for folklore. All resources I use for this video will be credited in the description below. If you are interested in this topic and want to read more about it, they will be down below. I hope you have a wonderful rest of your day and you have been listening to The Mythic Atlas hosted by Clarissa.