Reviews with content warning for Rape - Pandora's Jar: Women in the Greek Myths

Just brilliant. I don’t think I’ve ever read a book like this - essentially an extended research paper. It was so interesting. I studied Classics a little in school but only some books of the Iliad or the Aeneid. This book was so informative but it was captivating and the authors voice really shone through - occasionally adding witty or even shocking remarks. Fell in love with the author and Greek mythology all over again.

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viiemzee's review against another edition

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informative reflective slow-paced

3.5

A good book for somebody who is interested in the Greek myths and wants to learn more about their origins and adaptations in the ancient world and beyond. Unfortunately I don't think I'll ever read it again but I do enjoy Haynes's work and will be reading more of her fiction!!

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akswhy's review against another edition

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funny informative reflective slow-paced

5.0

Come for the cathartic classics feminism, stay for the zingers. I would read another volume of these explorations of women in Greek myth if Natalie Haynes so graced us with one.

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bryelle's review against another edition

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emotional funny inspiring reflective slow-paced

5.0

Haynes looks at Greek myths through a feministic lens. She is dissecting why we tell stories of woman and make them the villains/victims/monsters. She goes in depth looking at the different ways these myths are told and even inspirations that have had in modern art. I love this book.

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orcamagicka's review against another edition

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challenging emotional informative reflective

5.0

I want the text of this book transcribed onto my bones and skull. This was my first Natalie Haynes read and by God, absolutely breathtaking. An essential book that everyone should read at least once. So much of what I thought I knew of Greek mythology was either wrong or warped. Now I’m eagerly falling down a rabbit hole of searching for more Haynes books as well as other mythos retellings.

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asipofcozy's review against another edition

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dark funny informative reflective tense medium-paced

4.5

After reading Natalie Haynes' portrayal of women in Greek Literature in A Thousand Ships, I just knew I needed to pick up Pandora's Jar.

I have always been fascinated by Greek culture and mythology. I grew up on stories of Achilles and Hercules and thought, "this is what it means to be a hero". Yet, now, after reading Pandora's Jar I can say that I have changed my tune. It's not that I don't still respect these childhood stories that we still teach children today; it's that I now see the truths that lay behind each of them.

Haynes takes the voices of these marginalized women in greek myths and finally gives them a voice. She analyzes each artist, writer, poet, and singer and how they have hidden away these women in the background. Too afraid to sing of their pain, suffering, and loss at the expense of these heroes. She makes us question if Medusa is actually the villain due to earlier accounts of her story or if Clytemnestra was an out-of-control woman that wanted power. The greek writers and even modern-day writers never want to talk about the women's side of the story, and now we have it.

I think what disturbed me the most was how modern-day writers and retellers of these stories gloss over some serious issues that were normalized in the original greek retellings, which Haynes points out quite often in Pandora's Jar. Such as r*pe, sexual harassment, Stockholm syndrome, and suicide. Take the thousands/millions of retellings of Persephone and Hades for example.

Not one story talks about how Hades forced himself on her or forced the Pomegranate down her throat every day so she couldn't leave. Or how Zeus was a part of all this, yet it's in all of the original texts. Why was this? Was it because it wouldn't be as "romantic" of a story? If so, these modern-day writers are turning a blind eye to r*pe culture and just allowing it. Even now, with some very popular retellings out like Lore Olympus: Volume One or A Touch of Darkness, not one talks about Persephone being r*ped. That it was "romance" that kept her there.

I get that we need these retellings. I mean, I love a good retelling as the next person but are these stories, in the end, taking away the voices from the original women of the myths who are constantly used, abused, and thrown to the side as trash for the next woman that catches the fancy of the hero?

Pandora's Jar made me think analytically about women in literature, women in the modern day, the original stories of these myths, and the retellings of these myths. It led me to question the stories I was told as a child and whether I would think differently of these so-called 'heroes' if I knew how they treated women. Or how modern-day storytellers treat these women by wiping away their original voice. Haynes, in the end, creates a complex situation behind these women like Helen of Troy, Phaedra, and Pandora and if they truly are the beautiful villains we have come to see today.

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rebeccajost's review against another edition

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emotional funny informative inspiring reflective relaxing

5.0

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