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4.0 

Pandora's Jar

By Natalie Haynes
Pandora's Jar by Natalie Haynes digital book - Fable

Publisher Description

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?

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1918 Reviews

4.0
Thumbs Up“So the premise of this book is to give a larger insight into the roles of women in Greek Mythology and how those have changed and warped over the years into the more simplistic versions we are familiar with now. I felt like she did a good job, but as someone who has read quite a lot of Greek Mythology much of what she reveals about the complexity of the women chosen is something I was already familiar with. Def a great read for someone not quite as familiar with the different versions of the stories and I will be picking up some original plays to go over and re-read later this year.”
Thumbs Up“Thoughtful presentation of many women through Greek mythology and how they're often portrayed in such a negative light. Made me want to pull out all my old English Lit books from Euripides (Medea) and Sophicles (Antigone).”
Thinking Face“I’m still in my Greek mythology kick, clearly. For the most part, I enjoyed hearing about the different versions of women in Greek myths. Haynes has clearly done her research and has told these women’s various stories to the best of her ability. My only beef is with the chapter about Medea— it almost seemed like Haynes was pushing the ‘feel sorry for the woman’ thing a little too much, Medea was straight up wrong for what she did and saying that we ‘couldn’t feel more sympathetic towards her’ —— nooo yeah, I could feel more sympathetic towards her because I felt NO sympathy towards her. I get that women are misunderstood, underrepresented, and just given the short end of the stick A LOT but the Medea chapter just made me mad that we were trying to justify what she did, when Agamemnon did similar things, mentioned in the Clytemnestra chapter and Haynes draggggggged him lol. That being said, everything else I truly enjoyed… from the references to art throughout history that shows these women, to the various mentions of different plays and poems centuries apart. It was a very thorough and thought out book.”
Expressionless Face“I was not a fan of the writing for this one. I had a very hard time finishing it. The author was rather heavy handed in her opinions on this one in my opinion and her comparisons were often pretty questionable/ big stretches.”

About Natalie Haynes

Natalie Haynes is the author of six books, including the nonfiction work Pandora’s Jar, which was a New York Times bestseller, and the novels A Thousand Ships, which was a national bestseller and short-listed for the 2020 Women’s Prize for Fiction, and Stone Blind. She has written and recorded nine series of Natalie Haynes Stands Up for the Classics for the BBC. Haynes has written for the Times, the Independent, the Guardian, and the Observer. She lives in London.

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