Pandora: First Woman or First Pawn?
Abigail Yadegar, History of Art and Certificate in Italian, Yale University, Jonathan Edwards, Class of 2024
First Woman or First Pawn?
In Greek mythology, Pandora is the first mortal woman, used in Hesiod’s myths from the seventh century B.C.E. to explain the difficulties of the human experience. In Works and Days, Pandora accidentally releases all the world’s evils and challenges upon human beings, thus expelling mankind from an idyllic “Golden Age” and fulfilling Zeus’ vendetta against Prometheus, who stole fire to bestow it upon humanity. In his 1914 oil painting Pandora, French symbolist Odilon Redon reveals his familiarity with the ancient texts, but chooses to embed the figure within the more contemporary framework of the female nude. Illustrating her in a lush, colorful setting symbolizing the Garden of Eden, Redon employs Pandora’s image as a vehicle for rising anxieties surrounding the onset of World War I. In both sources, Pandora is exploited as a part of someone else’s agenda, either that of Zeus or Redon himself; however, while Hesiod’s Works and Days and Theogony preserve the traditional function of myth-telling (to explain parts of the human experience and glorify the gods), Redon reinvents Pandora and Hesiod’s myths to embody concerns surrounding World War I and contemporary ideas, appealing directly to a modern audience.
In both Hesiod’s Works and Days and Redon’s painting, Pandora is used as a means to achieve individual goals; for Zeus, this encompasses revenge, and for Redon, this involves connecting with the audience by communicating shared anxieties about World War I. In Works and Days, Zeus orders Hephaistos to fashion the first mortal woman from clay as he plots against Prometheus, who stole Zeus’ fire to give it to mankind. In line 103, Pandora, or the “irresistible bait,” is given to Prometheus’ brother, Epimetheus; she later discovers a pithos, or jar, which she inquisitively opens: “But the woman took the lid off the big jar with her hands/ And scattered all the miseries that spell sorrow for men” (Hesiod 115-116). This myth not only functions as an explanation of life’s difficulties, but it also establishes an uneven distribution of power between mortals and immortals. By equating Pandora with bait, Hesiod emphasizes that she and her descendants are bound by the almighty gods’ plans, deprived of any free will. Even though Zeus is the mastermind behind this scheme, his power and position of privilege rids him of all accountability and thus Pandora, who is defenseless, is held responsible. Even her unparalleled gifts are binding, as they only further solidify Zeus’ control over her. In Pandora, Redon revolutionizes Pandora’s image by painting her in the nude and using symbolism, the most contemporary mode of representation at the time, to evoke an idyllic, serene world. Redon caters toward the contemporary audience’s cultural exposure, drawing them in with familiar artistic styles. Further, by choosing to depict the moment just before Pandora opens the jar, Redon strengthens this connection to the audience; viewers anticipate imminent destruction and subsequently associate this with their collective anxieties about the onset of World War I. Such topical concerns were very relevant to Redon, as his son, Arï, had just been drafted. By means of Pandora’s image, Redon generates a communal experience, uniting producer and consumer.
Beauty also drives Zeus’ and Redon’s plots; Pandora’s alluring appearance fulfills Zeus’ vendetta against Prometheus, and Redon’s aesthetic decisions invite viewers to ponder the work’s message. Zeus demands that Pandora’s beauty should resemble that of the gods, instructing Aphrodite to “spill grace on her head/ And painful desire and knee-weakening anguish” (Hesiod 84-85). Theogony reveals the impact of such beauty: “And they were stunned/ Immortal gods and mortal men, when they saw/ The sheer deception, irresistible to men” (Hesiod, 591-593). Pandora’s beauty provides a powerful ethos, blinding even Epimetheus to Zeus’ trickery and thereby guaranteeing the plan’s success. Even though Zeus exploits Pandora’s beauty to recover authority, further widening the power gap between the two figures, Pandora’s beauty also benefits her, as with it she can bewitch even immortals. Redon also frequently harnessed beauty’s power in his pieces by experimenting with color and symbolism to elicit viewers’ dreams, indulge their fantasies,2 and create a space for reflection. In Pandora, he uses complementary color combinations to create a heavenly, harmonious scene: the red-orange leaves balance out the blue-green sky, the sapphire petals by Pandora’s feet accentuate the gold soil, the emerald plants and ruby flowers in the bottom right complete each other, and so on. Since the painting is nearly life-sized, the audience is immersed in these color relationships; viewers trace these colors around the canvas and begin to daydream or imagine themselves in this wild, natural setting. The floral motifs then direct the eye toward Pandora’s youthful, idealized form, the painting’s focus. Redon’s beautiful symbols function as the bridge to peaceful self-reflection, subsequently redirecting the viewers’ attention toward the actual moment that the piece represents and its charged message; beauty ensures that Redon’s concern with contemporary anxieties is successfully communicated.
Whereas Hesiod’s myths embrace polytheistic ideology, Redon recontextualizes Pandora within the Christian belief system to foster a collective consciousness with his audience and add new meaning to the stories. Theogony and Works and Days both fall under the category of myths that explain the world3, but Hesiod’s works also originally possessed religious significance as testaments to the greatness of the gods. Both Theogony and Works and Days establish Zeus as an invincible and omnipotent ruler. In Theogony, Zeus is credited with his children’s creation of women, confirming his dominance over mortals: “That’s just how Zeus, the high lord of thunder,/ Made women as a curse for mortal men” (Hesiod 604-605). His victory against Prometheus indicates his omniscience and authority over immortals: “There’s no way to get around the mind of Zeus” (Hesiod 616). For Hesiod’s audience in seventh century B.C.E, such a myth would likely be recognized as divine truth, consequently moving citizens to fervently revere the gods and enrich Greece’s collective religious life. Redon also produces a communal experience, but he relocates Pandora to a Christian framework, equating her with Eve. This is indicated both by Pandora’s nudity (since European depictions of Eve from the Middle Ages onward are almost always nude), and the setting; the tree represents the forbidden tree, the flora signifies Eden’s plentifulness, and Pandora’s pithos can be likened to the forbidden fruit. By superimposing the pre-Christian Greek mythos on Christian ideology, Redon acts as a contemporary myth-teller; he inherits an ancient tale and infuses it with new meaning to reflect a collective consciousness and maintain its relevance. Moreover, as Eve’s actions are supposedly not predetermined by God, she chooses to eat the forbidden fruit; by illustrating Pandora without any male figure present, such as Zeus or an Adam-equivalent, Redon gives her the same freedom of choice. Redon’s overlap in ideology awards women power where they previously had none, reminding viewers that they too can choose how they respond to an unraveling crisis.
While Hesiod preserved thousands of years of oral tradition, Redon adapted myth-telling to twentieth century art and altered preconceived notions of Pandora. According to Richard Buxton’s Complete World of Greek Mythology, although Hesiod provides some of the earliest written mythological accounts, myth-telling traditions “undoubtedly go back far beyond that date” (16), originating with oral tradition. While his detailed transcriptions of myths are likely not exact replicas of the original versions, Hesiod’s works preserved the tales and expanded the horizons of myth-telling. While Hesiod focused on recording these stories as fully as possible, Redon intentionally omitted many details in favor of generating a new interpretation. Symbolists believed that art should exhibit thoughts or emotions instead of the detailed realist representations of the natural world. Therefore, Pandora features very few references to Hesiod’s myths besides its title, Pandora herself, and the pithos, magnifying the piece’s ideas instead of the narrative’s particulars. Retaliating against Hesiod’s Theogony, which calls women the “deadly race”(595), an “infestation among mortal men”(596), and “a curse for mortal men”(605), Redon emancipates women from such confining ideas. He liberates Pandora from male control, placing her in a paradise removed from Hesiod’s universe in which women only exist to plague men. The flowers that run wild all over the canvas symbolize this newfound freedom. Further, through his color scheme, Redon blends Pandora with her beautiful surroundings, discounting Hesiod’s idea that all women are deceptive by nature and suggesting that they are instead internally beautiful and thus also make the world around them beautiful (indicated by the flowers blossoming all around Pandora). Moreover, since Redon’s image does not actually reveal whether Pandora will open the pithos, the viewer is left wondering whether she would have caused such affliction had she been given the right to choose and tyrannical men had been removed from the equation.
Pandora’s name may be translated as “all-gifted” or “all-giving”; Hesiod’s myths define Pandora by the gods’ gifts, specifically those from Zeus, but Redon illuminates Pandora’s individual contributions to the rest of humanity. In Theogony, Hephaistos shapes Pandora from clay and Athena dresses her in “silvery clothes” (Hesiod 576), adorning her with “a wreath of luscious springtime flowers” (Hesiod 580) and a golden tiara. Works and Days elaborates on the gods’ contributions: Athena taught Pandora embroidery and weaving, Aphrodite gifted her with grace and allure, and Hermes granted her “a bitchy mind and a cheating heart” (87). With regard to Pandora’s purpose, Hesiod includes that Zeus “made women as a curse for mortal men” (605). Hesiod’s Pandora is indeed all-gifted, but her character and the way in which she relates to the world is predetermined upon her birth, thus stripping her of the opportunity to find and define herself. Even the goddesses’ gifts, which are more favorable than those of the gods, confine Pandora to domestic work and, in the case of Aphrodite’s contribution of desirability, subject her to the male gaze against her will. Such details reflect ancient cultural values, as women were not allowed to participate in Greece’s democracy and were instead limited to domestic activities. On the other hand, Redon’s Pandora is all-giving. By associating her with beauty, growth, and fertility (the Garden of Eden setting), Redon acknowledges Pandora’s most significant contribution to the world: life. Instead of shaming and cursing women by attributing all affliction to their gender, as Hesiod does, Redon celebrates them, placing the mother of mankind at the center of paradise and rendering her a symbol of the Golden Age. By choosing to paint her nude, Redon represents Pandora as a blank slate; her nakedness is symbolic of her ability to become anyone she wants to be, inviting twentieth-century women to discover a new sense of purpose as WWI unfolded. Further, the painting itself is all-giving, as it foreshadows the war’s devastation, providing important insight into the years ahead, and offers a heavenly, reflective, and inspiring space to escape heightening anxieties.
In Hesiod’s accounts, Pandora may be compared to the pithos, or jar, from which she unintentionally releases all the world’s evils, an objectifying concept that Redon disputes by realizing Pandora in her full human form, somewhat removed from the male gaze. In Theogony, Hephaistos forms Pandora from clay, the same material as the jar, to please Zeus: “The famous lame God plastered up some clay/ to look like a shy virgin, just like Zeus wanted” (Hesiod 573-574). After Pandora accidentally releases all the pithos’ contents besides “hope,” the myth notes that every woman after her would also tarnish mankind: “The deadly race and population of women,/ A great infestation among mortal men…Zeus, the high lord of thunder,/ Made women as a curse for mortal men,/ Evil conspirators” (595-606). In attributing all the world’s injustices to a single woman, Hesiod fails to mention that Zeus predetermined Pandora’s course of action and Prometheus catalyzed the entire conflict, freeing men of any responsibility. By comparing women to objects, Hesiod dehumanizes and undermines them, suggesting that they exist only to be seen and exploited by men like a pithos is to be displayed and used for storage. He also promotes the restricting and belittling of women to other men, a particularly dangerous message considering how widely Hesiod’s writing has been circulated and his ideas immortalized. Redon restores some of Pandora’s humanity, illustrating her in the barest human form: the nude. Her body’s curves and stance suggest a fluidity of movement that would not be possible in any kind of object, particularly a fired clay pithos, but her skin tone does resemble clay’s earthy color. Redon also illustrates her as very shy and innocent, effectively rebuking Hesiod’s portrayal of women as conniving monsters. Even though Redon’s painting restores some of Pandora’s dignity, however, she is still filtered through the male gaze, a product of Redon’s personal vision. The viewers still experience Pandora not as an individual entity, but as a facet of the male imagination.
After Pandora inadvertently launches all evil into the world, only “hope” remains; Hesiod does not address the positive implications of this choice, continuing to blame Pandora for all existing problems, whereas Redon uses his painting to embody hope itself. The Anthology of Classical Myth translates the Greek word “elpis” as hope, but it has also been translated as deceptive expectation.4 If elpis is interpreted as deceptive expectation, or false hope, its existence among the other evils is justified, as misleading hope leads to a miserable life. If this is the case, then Pandora’s decision to withhold it saves mankind from additional torture. If elpis is translated as a positive hope, then Pandora successfully conserves the one remedy to despair, preserving access to it for all of mankind. Either way, Pandora proves she is “all-giving,” protecting human beings from the world’s unrestrained agonies. However, Hesiod does not elaborate on elpis’ function, relevance, or meaning, disregarding the opportunity to redeem Pandora and her offspring, but remaining consistent with his derogatory depiction of women. In contrast, by producing a vibrant, reflective painting, Redon effectively accesses Pandora’s supply of elpis; he creates a safe haven for viewers who share his distress about the war, reinvents the mode and purpose of myth-telling, and builds an empowering space for women that challenges social expectations. Like its namesake, the painting is a vessel of hope, continuing to inspire contemplation and conversation among viewers all over the world today, a testament to a myth’s ability to transcend the boundaries of time and space.
Hesiod’s myths and Redon’s painting communicate stories. Whereas Hesiod’s concerns revolved around preserving tradition, namely transcribing orally-passed myths to ensure their survival, Redon reinvented myth-telling by expanding it to twentieth century art. With Hesiod’s reverence for the past came restrictive, damaging expectations of women, but with Redon’s modern work arose the challenge of effectively communicating with the audience by the means of an image’s symbols and ideas. Regardless of differences in time period, religion, artistic style, and cultural values, both Hesiod and Redon have contributed to our current understanding of Pandora and are tributes to the timeless power of myth-telling.
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