Pandora's Jar: Women in the Greek Myths

by Natalie Haynes

'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 Greek myths are among the world's most important cultural building blocks and they have been retold many times, but rarely do they focus on the remarkable women at the heart of these ancient stories.

Stories of gods and monsters are the mainstay of epic poetry and Greek tragedy, from Homer to Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides, from the Trojan War to Jason and the Argonauts. And still, today, a wealth of novels, plays and films draw their inspiration from stories first told almost three thousand years ago. But modern tellers of Greek myth have usually been men, and have routinely shown little interest in telling women’s stories. And when they do, those women are often painted as monstrous, vengeful or just plain evil. But Pandora – the first woman, who according to legend unloosed chaos upon the world – was not a villain, and even Medea and Phaedra have more nuanced stories than generations of retellings might indicate.

Now, in Pandora's Jar: Women in the Greek Myths, Natalie Haynes – broadcaster, writer and passionate classicist – redresses this imbalance. Taking Pandora and her jar (the box came later) as the starting point, she puts the women of the Greek myths on equal footing with the menfolk. After millennia of stories telling of gods and men, be they Zeus or Agamemnon, Paris or Odysseus, Oedipus or Jason, the voices that sing from these pages are those of Hera, Athena and Artemis, and of Clytemnestra, Jocasta, Eurydice and Penelope.

• ISBN10: 1509873112
• ISBN13: 9781509873111
• Publish Date: 1 October 2020
• Publish Status: Out of Print
• Out of Print: 7 April 2022
• Publish Country: GB
• Publisher: Pan Macmillan
• Imprint: Picador
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 310
• Language: English

Reviews

[bookstagramofmine]

Easily one of the best books on the women in greek mythology!

[niamh]

Thank you to Netgalley for providing me with a free e-arc of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Haynes does a fantastic job at retelling our beloved classic Greek Myths to make the reader think more about 10 women from Greek mythology. These women are; Pandora, Jocasta, Helen, Medusa, The Amazons, Clytemnestra, Eurydice, Phaedra, Medea, and Penelope.
Why have they always been pushed aside? Why is it that we are never told their POV?
Haynes brings these women to the forefront in such a witty and relatable way, it feels like they're real humans.

I personally love how Haynes used ancient and recent sources and other pieces of culture to tell these women's stories, and I definitely feel like I now have a starting point on where to look for more female POV Greek myth retellings.