Essay Comparing The Homeric Hymn To Pandora's Demeter

Comparing the Demeter of the Homeric Hymn to Hesiod’s portrayal of Pandora, each representation may, at first glance, appear as two entirely separate characterizations of an archaic wife’s role. A closer look at each story, however, suggests that the two women are actually made from the same substance, and each fulfills the same functions expected of women at the time.

One of the most important duties a woman could perform in Archaic Greece was bearing and raising strong, healthy children that would continue her husband’s legacy. Although the narratives on Pandora and Demeter take different approaches, both strongly emphasize the significance of motherhood through these women. On Zeus’ orders, Pandora was created by all of the Olympian gods,

each contributing to her bewitching beauty and cumbersome vices.

Hesiod suggests that the arrival of womankind is the sole cause of the world’s strife—including the necessity for both hard labor and reproduction. Her one redeeming quality is portrayed through the hope that remains in the jar after Pandora closes the lid, entrapped in the “unbreakable container” (Lombardo 26). This remaining Hope in the jar is symbolic of a woman’s uterus and her ability to bear children, and in turn provide her husband with an heir to his property (Fantham et al. 39). Raising these children properly was the next crucial duty of a mother, so that they may go forth and fulfill their respective duties just as their parents had before them. In relation to this, the Hymn to Demeter demonstrates the attachment a mother had to her children, because once the children were old enough to marry, the mother’s sole purpose in life had been completed. Demeter’s grief over having her daughter snatched away from her shows how difficult the transition was for

mothers as their children began to marry. The goddess is depicted tearing at her hair, clutching her chest, and desperately searching for the kidnapped Persephone (Trzaskoma, Smith, and Brunet 170). Maternity was the most important part of life for an archaic women, and this purpose is epitomized through Pandora’s jar and Demeter’s desperation at the loss of her daughter.
Another similarity that can be drawn is the role both Pandora and Demeter play as a disruption in men’s lives. In turn, the negative viewpoint taken against women in the archaic age is displayed through the disturbances the two women cause. Having released all of the sorrows upon the world, Hesiod blames Pandora for men’s infuriating necessity for a wife. Good for nothing except bearing children, a woman only drains the resources of the household that a husband has labored to attain. Hesiod uses the image of a beehive to express uselessness of women and the burden they are to a man’s home: “compare how the honey bees in the protected cells of the hives garner food for the drones, conspirers in evil works—all day long they are active until the sun goes down, busily working and storing white honey during the daylight—while the drones keep within their protected cells of the hives and garner into their stomachs the food that others have worked for” (Fantham et al. 41). The arrival of womankind—in this case, Pandora—marked the exact moment that men’s lives became so very difficult. This idea is paralleled in Demeter’s story, as well. Unable to find Persephone and save her from her captor, Demeter withdraws from the other gods in grief. So overtaken with sorrow at the loss of her child, she allows terrible and barren years to overtake the earth, concealing the seeds man needed to survive (Trzaskoma, Smith, and Brunet 175). Although the disruption Demeter causes is not through means of her gluttony, as in Pandora’s world, by withholding the crops she still manages to upset the lives of men. Each author employs different means of expressing the hindrance women are, but Pandora and Demeter nonetheless share this trait.
There are countless other instances across archaic literature that reinforce the burdensome nature of women. For example, the hero Odysseus is met with every obstacle imaginable as he tries to return home from war in the Odyssey, and unruly womenfolk are the source of many of these obstructions. In book 5 of the epic, the hero is sent to Calypso’s island by the goddess Athena. The nymph seduces and falls in love with Odysseus, and in turn keeps him as a prisoner of sorts, withholding the secret of leaving the island. This causes a significant delay in the hero’s return to Ithaca, conveying the uselessness and inconvenience of love from a woman. Her tantalizing beauty conceals her vices (unreliability, greediness, and uselessness), and causes men to stray from their goals (Fantham et al. 39). Only by the direct order of Zeus does Calypso allow Odysseus to leave, because only the gods are able to control these wily seductresses who cause nothing but strife for mankind.
In contrast to the claim that Pandora and Demeter are a bane to the existence of men, they are also characterized as essential to their survival.

When Demeter allows her grief to overcome her after her daughter’s kidnapping, she indeed proves that she is a hindrance to men; however, at the same time, the state of toil the world is thrust into when she hides the seeds demonstrates the pivotal role a woman plays in man’s survival. The seeds withheld in the hymn prevent a harvest, but could the seed not also represent the fertility of a womb? The same concept is reflected in Pandora’s preservation of hope after opening the jar and releasing all the world’s strife. Granted, there wouldn’t have been a need for reproduction if Pandora hadn’t opened the jar to begin with, but the moment all of the sickness, labor, and misery was unleashed, Pandora made womankind a necessity to men. Through Demeter’s symbolic power over crops, and Pandora’s preservation of Hope, the two characters come even closer together in

similarity.
The last likeness between Pandora and the goddess Demeter that proves they are made of the same substance is the viewpoint that they are difficult to deal with. Considering that Pandora was created as a punishment to man, this may not come as a surprise. Womankind was created to be alluring in every aspect of her appearance, but also to be sly, untrustworthy, and worthless on the inside. As Hesiod puts it, Zeus “ordered the quicksilver messenger, Hermes / to give her a bitchy mind and a cheating heart”, along with “a breast full of lies and wheedling words” (Lombardo 25). These vices are emphasized in the story in order to warn against the deceitfulness of women and the danger they pose to men who interact with them. Not only this, but—through Demeter’s interactions with the other gods—women are also portrayed as stubborn and apathetic. The goddess, aware of the fertility she withheld from the earth, allows the humans to suffer with her as she yearns for her daughter. Unconcerned with the famine she has caused, she represents women’s narrow-mindedness. Not even her fellow Olympians could sway her: “Thereafter the Father sent forth all the blessed gods, all of the immortals, and coming one by one they bade Demeter return and offered her many splendid gifts and all honors that she might choose among the immortal gods. But none was able to persuade her by turning her mind and her angry heart, so stubbornly she refused their appeals” (Trzaskoma, Smith, and Brunet 175). Both stories seem to imply that, if men were in their positions, less people would suffer because they are neither as unwitting as Pandora, nor as emotionally compromised as Demeter.
The viewpoint that women are difficult to deal with is a feminine quality found in many other works of literature from the time. When Odysseus and his men encounter the sorceress Circe, the immediate threat she poses is an exaggerated instance of this concept. She acts as a sort of trickster, luring men in with her beauty and mystery, only to “strike them with her magic wand” (Lombardo 323, line 314) and reduce their forms to pigs. This may seem a rather blatant condemnation on the nature of women, but the Hymn to Demeter and Works and Days both present an equally exaggerated representation of feminine liability. In addition, it is apparent that men were fearful that a woman could emasculate them through any means. The threat Circe poses through both transfiguring the men into pigs (literally reducing them to an animalistic, inferior state) and later plotting to “unsex” Odysseus once he was nude (Lombardo 323) illustrates this concern. Difficult female characters are abundant throughout archaic literature, perpetuating the wariness men felt towards their wives, reluctant to admit that women were essential to carrying on their legacy. Pandora and Demeter especially fall into this category, adding yet another layer to their mutual qualities.
Studying literature from the Archaic Age such as the Odyssey, Homeric Hymns, and Works and Days, one can gain a sense of how women were viewed and valued at the time. Considering that all of these texts were written both by and for male audiences, the prejudices and stereotypes against women become clearer. With this perspective in mind, a closer look at the female characters in any of these stories shows that they are essentially reiterations of the same characteristics of the “first” woman—Pandora—begging the conclusion that all of these women are made of the same substance in order to perpetuate male ideologies.
As Greece progressed into the 5th century BCE, this notion would gain greater significance as a new type of woman--one who was more limited--was idealized. This version of a wife participated in the household as a like-minded “partner” of the husband, although still not equal in status or value. This concept took hold as the new polis and citizenship laws developed, and the focus of the oikos was redistributed to the preservation of the polis, democracy, and yes, a man’s status. The women in this new age were desirable as “blank slates” of sorts; ones that husbands could mold into whatever they needed to enhance their position in society and protect the honor and legitimacy of his children. Comparing this latest idealization of women with characters from the archaic age, it is apparent that Pandora and Demeter, through their expressed similarities, were paradigmatic of a time when women were allowed more personality and identity than later Athenian women.