The most important book in western civilization is hands down the Bible. The most famous and controversial story in the Bible is Adam and Eve, the first human beings on the planet. Eve has been blamed with all the troubles of mankind from the day that humans were made. Pandora, Hesiod’s story from his Works and Days, is also blamed for all the troubles of the world thanks to her curiosity. How are these stories similar? Well, more ways than one. Their stories are incredibly parallel showing the similarities between Biblical and Greek attitudes toward women.
Eve was made on the sixth day of God’s creations. She was made last, from a rib of Adam and like all of God’s creations, she was made for a purpose, to be Adam’s companion and to please him. This shows the attitude toward women that is present today in many parts of the world, that women are meant to be there to please men. They are made from them and they are therefore objects and possessions. They are also still suffering from the bad choice that Eve made thousands of years ago, to eat the apple from the Tree of Knowledge. Even if who was to blame is debated, the snake, Eve, or Adam, Eve was the one that God severely punished. She was given great pain during childbirth and her desire should be all for her husband and even God says that Adam shall rule over Eve.
Pandora’s story is somewhat similar to Eve’s. She was made not from a man but by a man, Hephaistos who was on orders from Zeus to make an evil. Pandora was the face that Hephaistos gave to that evil. Because she was wicked she gave in to her curiosity and opened the box later to be known as Pandora’s Box even after she was told under no circumstances to open it. She let out all the Death, Old Age, Illness and other horrors and scared, quickly closed it and stopped hope from getting out. She was then blamed for ruining paradise and changing women’s roles in history.
As you can see these two stories are comparable and diverse. Pandora and Eve are...