I’ve been thinking about hope recently. Mostly because I’ve been reading something about the Greek myths again and it struck me that there is through all the myths there is a thread of hope. But during the week I also listened to Life Matters where one of the speakers, and several talkback callers seemed to maintain that Hope was a negative emotion to experience.
In the myth where Hope makes its first appearance, most people would be familiar with the story that Zeus had Pandora made as a ‘gift’ to punish Mankind for accepting the fire stolen by Prometheus from heaven. One of her wedding gifts was a coffer or box that was sealed, and the instruction that she was never to open it. But, “being a woman” she opened the box, letting out all the curses of the world but closed the lid again in time to trap the illusion Hope, with which Mankind has been inflicted with ever since.

Yet a chap called Hesiod, with additions by another chap called Homer, wrote the myths and legends that we are most familiar with from the ancient Greeks. What if Hesiod and Homer were the ancient equivalents of the modern collectors and editors of folktales and short stories? It is known that there were at least three layers of culture in the Aegean basin up to the Classical Greek period of about 600 BCE, and it is not inconceivable that the stories that we have from that period were adaptations and retellings from earlier periods. Given what is known of those previous cultures today, there is some indication that the way in which groups within the later cultures were treated differed significantly from the earlier ones. Some archaeologists, particularly ones of a feminist bent, maintain that the earliest culture that we know in the Aegean, that of Crete, was matriarchal or a reversal of the patriarchy on later times. I tend to the view that it was probably more matrifocal and possibly even matrilineal given the way in which “Zeus” kept having to “marry” or “rape” various females, who may have been the local version of the Goddess of the Land – what the Romantic period of the 19th century called “Sovereignty” to whom the “king” was married.

Now if Zeus represents the incoming invaders to a culture that had been matrilineal and matrifocal, then there is the need by the ‘invaders’ to justify and enforce the rightness of their rule. In a culture that was now subdued but had been ‘ruled’ by women, the fastest way to enforce the idea that this “women’s rule” was wrong would be to recreate within the telling of the story the idea that it was the fault of a woman that caused all the problems that were suffered by the people who were conquered and that the new (male) rulers were the ‘true’ authority for what and how the world came into being.
If one proposes that the original major deity was ‘feminine’ then the meaning of Pandora, the All-Giver, perhaps makes more sense. Thus the version of the story with which we are most familiar becomes one where the new ‘masculine’ deities try to make the previous type of deities into demons, thereby reducing the Giver of All to a construct, an early model Trojan horse to punish humans for accepting stolen goods (Prometheus’ theft of Olympian fire) and to trick them into honouring and obeying Zeus and his cohorts.

The box that Pandora opens contains all the woes of the world. Which makes sense really, because Pandora is “the giver of all things”. The gifts in her box include not only the woes of the world with which the story familiarises us, but also the joys, since they are also part of all things. They are all let out into the world so that as we move through life we encounter both woe and joy. But what does she retain? Hope.
I believe there are two ways to regard this particular retention. As the dupe of Zeus, Pandora retains Hope so that we do not recognise the joys that also accompany the woes that the world tosses in our direction. Thus we come to rely on petitions to the ‘gods’ to give us the strength to survive the woes that living brings. This leads to a dependent style of living, where all direction comes from a higher authority.
Or, as an avatar of the “Great Mother”, Pandora stands for all of us in keeping Hope alive and preserved in her box, so that we can recognise the joys that come our way and that we are inspired to strive through the dark times. This I feels leads to a more self-directed way of living, and I have to admit that as a mother to two youngsters it is the sort of life I want them to live! I can hope?!