Pandora's Jar: Women in the Greek Myths(5)

And plenty of writers have done exactly that. In Roger Lancelyn Green’s Tales of the Greek Heroes, first published by Puffin in 1958 and many people’s first encounter with Pandora, she is roundly stitched up. Not only does she open the casket (which she has been told is full of treasure) while Epimetheus is out, but she ‘crept quietly’ to do so: she is malevolent and secretive because she knows she is in the wrong. In the most recent Puffin edition, this scene is excerpted inside the front cover for maximum impact. And in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Tanglewood Tales for Boys and Girls, which have similarly been the gateway to classics for many children since their publication in 1853, Pandora is even less generously treated. Her story is foreshadowed at the end of the previous chapter, in which she is introduced as ‘a sad naughty child’ (which coincidentally describes the background of anyone I have ever wanted to know).

Hawthorne’s next chapter, ‘The Paradise of Children’, begins by introducing us to Epimetheus as a child. So that he would not be lonely, ‘another child, fatherless and motherless like himself, was sent from a far country, to live with him, and be his playfellow and helpmate. Her name was Pandora. The first thing that Pandora saw, when she entered the cottage where Epimetheus dwelt, was a great box. And almost the first question which she put to him, after crossing the threshold, was this, “Epimetheus, what have you in that box?”’

So far, so bad. Pandora ‘was sent’, but we aren’t told by whom. The passive voice is a tremendous aid in avoiding responsibility (think of all those non-apologies which employ the formulation ‘I’m sorry if any feelings were hurt’. So much less effort than actively apologizing for having hurt someone’s feelings. ‘I’m sorry I hurt you’ can be heartfelt and sincere. ‘I’m sorry you were hurt’ is a reason to boot someone out of your life and never see them again). Zeus, Hephaestus, Athene and Hermes couldn’t find a more helpful alibi than Hawthorne here provides for them. Unnamed, unmentioned: their role in Pandora’s creation, let alone her arrival at Epimetheus’ cottage, is whitewashed from the story. Pandora’s interest in the large, mysterious casket is immediate and ongoing: she and Epimetheus fall out over it. She demands to know where it has come from, Epimetheus remembers it was delivered by a man Pandora can identify as Quicksilver (a cute pun, since quicksilver is another name for the metal, mercury, which is in turn the Roman name for Hermes). Hawthorne consistently loads his narrative against her: Epimetheus says things, Pandora – often using the same words – cries pettishly. His irritation is an expression of fatigue, hers of naughtiness. She is to blame for wilfully opening the box, Epimetheus is an accessory at most: ‘But – and you may see by this how a wrong act of any one mortal is a calamity to the whole world – by Pandora’s lifting the lid of that miserable box, and by the fault of Epimetheus, too, in not preventing her, these Troubles have obtained a foothold among us.’ The story is accompanied by not one but two illustrations of Pandora and the box, which is large enough for her to sit on. Again, we are invited to see Pandora’s unquenchable curiosity as a sin for which we all must pay.

Both these writers have made choices which reflect the times in which they were working rather than anything we might find in ancient versions of the myth. Myths – Greek ones perhaps especially so – are protean. As mentioned above, they operate in at least two timelines: the one in which they are ostensibly set, and the one in which any particular version is written. The condescending, paternalistic tone in Hawthorne’s version of Pandora is far more overt than the irritable misogyny we find in Hesiod. Hesiod may present Pandora as a trick, a construct made by the gods to bring harm to men, but he wants us to know about the reasons Zeus orders her creation, the revenge on Prometheus and the rest. In simplifying the stories for children, Green and Hawthorne both oversimplify, so that Pandora becomes more villainous than even Hesiod intended.

What might have happened if nineteenth-and twentieth-century myth-writers had been more interested in the sources of their stories? If they had looked beyond Hesiod or Erasmus at some of the less well-known versions of Pandora’s story? If they had been willing to trawl through fragments of Theognis’ Elegies, from the sixth century BCE, they might have found a short passage which suggests that Pandora’s jar is full of good things rather than bad. When the jar is opened, everything good – Self-control, Trust etc. – flies away, which is why we so rarely find them among mortal men. Only Elpis – Hope – remains, as one good which did not abandon us.12

Of course, we might think it unreasonable to expect a children’s writer to be hunting through obscure texts like Theognis to present a more complicated story. One of the joys of children’s stories is their simplicity. But there is a writer that small children have been reading – in one form or another – for a couple of millennia, a writer who also tells the story of Pandora. It’s impossible to say how many people contributed to Aesop’s fables: multiple authors wrote the short stories which have been attributed to him. Aesop himself may have been a slave who won his freedom with his wits a hundred years13 or so after Hesiod was alive, or he may not have existed at all. But what is certainly the case is that his version of the story14 is closer to Theognis than to Hesiod. Again, the jar is full of useful things. And again they fly away when the lid is taken off. But the guilty party is not Pandora. Rather it is a lichnos anthropos – a ‘curious or greedy man’. Is it Epimetheus who is responsible this time? The fable doesn’t give him a name. But it is certainly a man rather than a woman, and one who is curious rather than evil. In the sixteenth century the Italian engraver Giulio Bonasone seems to have taken Aesop’s version as his inspiration. His engraving (now in the Metropolitan Museum in New York)15 Epimetheus opening Pandora’s Box is an intriguing piece of work, not least because – in spite of its title – Epimetheus is clearly taking the lid off a huge Grecian jar, its hefty handle turned to face the viewer. None of Hawthorne’s infantilization is present here: Epimetheus is a grown man with a full beard. Escaping from this jar are female personifications of various good things: Virtue, Peace, Good Fortune, Health. As is consistently the case in almost every version of the story, Hope is retained.