판도라 신화에 나타난 여성상(像)과 메시지

Abstract

Hesiod introduces the story of Prometheus and Pandora, to explain the fact of toil. The mere existence of woman was a punishment meted out by Zeus to avenge the theft of fire by Prometheus. Pandora must be taken as having been the personification of the Earth, as earth-goddess, the all givers who gives all to man, and it was only Hesiod who twisted her into the first woman created from earth and clay. Pandora had been Zeus instrument. Hesiod Pandora was nothing more than a tool of punishment as the guilt had lain with Prometheus. Zeus asserts his supremacy by punishing all men with the creation of woman. The creation of Pandora guaranteed man’s never-ending struggle with the earth to obtain a meager living. It was she who brought on all the evils by her mere existence as well as by her character that had been fashioned by the gods. Pandora’s double nature is the symbol of the ambiguity of human existence. The figure of Pandora combines all the tensions and ambivalences that characterize the status of men. Pandora reflects the brilliance of the divine. The nature of Pandora as earth-goddess and the economically ‘evil’, deceptive nature of Pandora as woman. As earth-goddess, Pandora means life and death to those who depend upon her. Ambivalence characterizes Hesiod’s view of feminity, on both a divine and human level. The complexity of Hesiod's view of feminine nature serves as a focus for his anxiety about life in general. Hesiod’s negative depiction of women is in the mainstream of archaic poetry. Hope meant a thing good or bad for mankind. If Pandora had not opened the jar, men would still be subject to all evils and would also be responsible for all of them. Hesiod would have classified hope as an evil. But human being may comfort themselves with vain hopes. Hope is generally considered a good. Hope is one of the gifts, whether good of bad, given to the human race by the gods. Hope alone remained, this is the will of Zeus. Hesiod’s concern is not with the cosmos as a whole but more restrictedly with society, with man in his works and thoughts. Hesiod tries to account for the social and moral situation of his own world. In Hesiod's works, Hesiod gives the explanation of the origin of toil.