Myth is a folklore genre that consists narratives that plays fundamental role in society. The study of Myth called as Mythology. There are two types of Mythology, they are Greek and Roman. One of Greek Mythology's characters is Pandora. Pandora's name was taken from the word pan and doros means "All-Gifts". She hasno parents since she was directly made by Gods as the first mortal woman on earth which formed of clay. (Dictionary of Greek and Roman
Biography and Mythology, 2021).
Based on Greeks Mythology, before her departure, Pandora was taught how to make fine crafts and dressed with silvery robes by Athena; Aphrodite gave her beauty; while Hermes gave boldness and cunning; adorned with jewelries by Graces; crowned with a golden headband by Hephaistos; and garlands of spring flowers by the Seasons to complete her.Â
Pandora sent to the earth by Gods and she was given a box that she had to keep. She was banned to open the box. But, her curiosity forced her to break the Gods prohibition. She opened it and released all evils of the world that caused diseases, wars, vices, toils and necessity to work sustenance. (Mark Cartwright, 2015).
Women in society life identically perceived as a gentle creatures in life. Pandora in Greek's Mythology can be a representation of women in social perception. The representations can be in both ideal traits of physical and inner terms.
The first is represented women as the beautiful beings with Pandoras appearance which is decorated with so many jewelries and adorned with prettiness by the Gods before she went to the earth. Nowadays, things related to beauty are still very important for women. Even, beauty trends are always developing over time. Cited from Statista Research Center, in 2018, the global cosmetic market grew in estimated of 5.5 percent compared to the previous year.
Other than that, women also attached to tasks related to household chores. Neither did Pandora, which was taught by Athena how to make fine crafts. Particularly, patriarchal norms are still dominated the worlds social relation system; although, there are also partly use matriarchal norm. Patriarchal is a social relation system that positioned the men as main ruler, in family life, men are obligated to regulate or lead the other family members. This norm straightway makes the women delivered to other obligation supporting mens roles by being the regulators all household needs.
Then, Pandora's boldness and cunning characteristics also represented women in society. Quoted from BBC, James Morgan reported "Men were slower and less organized than women when switching rapidly between tasks in tests by UK psychologist." Other sentence said "Men and women are equal when tasks were tackled one at time. But when the tasks were mixed up, there was a clear difference." From SAWWA: Journal of Study Gender also said that clinically women's brain has thicker corpus collosum than man, which has important role to be more crafty and certain of doing many jobs at once.
The last is women's curiosity, represented by Pandora's Box case. As explained before, that women have different brain morphology, the thicker and wider corpus collosum make the women's right brain connected to the left one. It forced the women to be creatures that easier to overthink and having great curiosity than men. These curiosities also tend to resulted conflicts in women's social life.
However, myth as a type of narrative that plays fundamental role in society has stories that can be reflected to the real society life. One of them is Pandora which is represented women's ideal traits of physical and inner terms in social life through her specialties that delivered and believed in Greek Mythology.
Bibliography
Iliad. Translation by Lattimore, R. (2018). HOMER. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Accessed on February 21, 2021Â
