The Pandora Story: Transmission and Transformation of Myth
Lauren Abe (Mark West), Mass Communication

Hesiod’s Pandora functions as man’s punishment for accepting Prometheus’ gifts, rather than as merely the image of the wiles of femininity. The Prometheus and Pandora myths in both the Theogony and the Works and Days explicate the creation of woman. The Prometheus myth serves as the cause and the Pandora myth serves as the effect—man accepts Prometheus’ gifts, thus man suffers the consequence through the labors of taming and cultivating woman. The transmission of the classic Pandora myth, however, transforms Hesiod’s original conception of Pandora in two ways: (1) through detaching the Pandora myth from the Prometheus myth, and (2) through infusing the author’s contemporary social and cultural values into the myth. Taken out of the context of the Theogony and Works and Days, Pandora illustrates an ongoing misogyny in Western society, as the beautiful evil who unleashes misfortune upon mankind.