Download Pandora’s Jar [PDF] By Natalie Haynes

Pandora’s Jar book pdf download for free or read online, also Pandora’s Jar pdf was written by Natalie Haynes.

Natalie Haynes is a writer, broadcaster, and classical academic. She was once a comedian, but she retired when she realized that she preferred tragedy to comedy. She has published three novels, The Amber Fury (Las Furias-USA) in 2014, The Children of Jocasta (2017), and A Thousand Ships (2019), which were nominated for the 2020 Woman in Fiction Award.

Pandora’s Jar Book PDF download for free

The historically male storytellers of Greek myths routinely marginalized female characters. When they take on larger roles, women are often portrayed as monstrous, vengeful, or just plain evil, like Pandora, the woman of scorn and eternal damnation, whose curiosity is tasked with causing all the suffering and evil in the world. forbidden box. But as Natalie Haynes reveals, there was no box in the ancient Greek myths. It was a jar. . . which is much more likely to tip over.

In Pandora’s Jar, the passionate host, author, comedian and classicist turns the tables and equates the women of Greek myth with men. With wit, humor, and sophistication, Haynes revolutionizes our understanding of epic poems, stories, and plays, resurrecting them from a woman’s perspective and tracing the origins of her mythical female characters.

She looks at women like Jocasta, Oedipus’s mother, turned lover, wife, turned wife (Freudian sticking point), at the same time the most intelligent person in history and yet often unnoticed. She sees Helen of Troy, whose marriage to Paris “caused” the Trojan War, as a somewhat lopsided reaction to her decision to leave her husband for another man.

She demonstrates how the maligned Medea was like an old Beyonce: she takes revenge on the man who hurt and betrayed her, albeit by extreme means. And she sets her sights on Medusa, the original female monster whose gaze turned men to stone but wasn’t always a monster, and whose hair turned into snakes as punishment for being raped.

Pandora’s Jar brings nuance and care to age-old myth and legend, begging the question: Why are we so quick to slander these women and so eager to accept the stories they’ve told us?

Pandora’s Jar Book Pdf Download

Having read various mythological accounts, this reading was perfectly timed! The content has been extensively researched, though I’m hesitant to say too much because when you’re reading a reference book, which is how I think it might be classified, you really want all the background! Fortunately, Haynes spliced ​​this history lesson with wit, anecdotes, and pop culture uses of these mythological women! There is an apparent passion to clarify the record of how stories throughout history have rewritten and slandered many of these women.

My love for Greek mythology has grown tremendously through this collection! There were some spoilers about the fate of some women or specific stories, but I had read about these women in previous books. For most of these women, I am grateful that the book did not reveal their deaths. However, I can’t be sure if she left it out or if her fates just aren’t in the historical text.

The benefit of Pandora’s Jar is that I can refer to a specific person’s passage as I continue my mythological journey! My favorite sections were Pandora and Clytemnestra! But they were all fascinating! With some of the women I read about, I was amazed at how their stories unfolded and how creative license fills in the gaps in the fiction.

Leading the charge was Pandora, Greek mythical woman #1, an Eve-like figure created from clay at the command of Zeus as a “gift” to humans to punish them for the (real) gift of fire, that Prometheus (whose name means “caution”). ”I learned) she gave to the then race of men without women. Carved from clay in the shape of a woman, Hermes (the messenger of the gods, not the purse maker) carries her up the slopes of Olympus and, according to one account, is in the care of Prometheus’s brother, Epimetheus (his name means ‘patience’).

It’s not a box, it’s a jar he’s carrying and it’s Epimetheus opening it and letting it out. . . well, we all know. Pandora (her name means “give all”), a woman, is eternally blamed for letting go of “evil”, just as Eve is eternally blamed for her original sin.

Natalie Haynes continues to pick through the various, often contradictory myths, paying attention to ancient Greek mistranslations and their impact on perception, in the order of Jocasta, Helen, Medusa, the Amazons, Clytemnestra, Eurydice, Phaedra, Medea and Penelope. , often with references to contemporary “repetitions” of these archetypal women and with free discussion of what the fate of women was then (c. 500-400 BC) and with revealing and extremely accurate connections to modern women . This is the true lesson of the old myth: que plus ça change c’est la même choose. . .

I also learned from the author that, in her opinion, the playwright Euripides is one of the greatest writers of her generation and after, leading me to imagine a vision of Shakespeare and Aaron Sorkin in one. Euripides is definitely an ancient Greek I want to know more about.

While reading “Penelope’s Jar,” I shared with my wife (=often interrupting her) my glowing summaries of what I was learning, prompting her to comment on the immortal words of Jessica Rabbit/Kathleen Turner as we sat at Phaedra Arrived. that “I’m not bad, I’m just attracted to him”. Exact. And almost all men, Theseus, Perseus, Odysseus, treat their wives, wives, lovers, sisters with cruelty and neglect. When Clytemnestra killed Agamemnon in revenge for sacrificing (killing) her daughter so she could have a good breeze to sail to Troy, I mentally punched the air.

What a wonderful book. I read some chapters (and they are not short) twice because they were so good and to reflect on the ideas that the author presented to this admiring reader. Haynes also looks and sounds like a laugh (I found some of her shows online from Natalie Haynes Stands up for the Classics Radio 4), someone to have a few beers with and laugh while she churns out devastating one-liners.

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