The Scottish Mail on Sunday

SNAKES ALIVE! Whatlinks Medusa to Beyoncé and WonderWoma­n?

Pandora’s Jar Natalie Haynes

- MADELEINE FEENY

Swinging a baseball bat, Beyoncé sings: ‘What’s worse, looking jealous or crazy?’ The Hold Up music video shows a woman betrayed by the man she loves. Medea – who murders her husband’s lover, then her own children – asks herself the same question in Euripides’ play, first staged in 431 BC. Medea’s reaction to infidelity is so drastic, so enduringly taboo, that most modern production­s depict her as mad. But, Natalie Haynes emphasises, she is not.

Such striking pop-cultural references make for a refreshing take on Greek mythology. Little wonder, for Haynes has forged a career reinvigora­ting the classics. In Pandora’s Jar, her second non-fiction book, she unravels ten women’s myths – the conflictin­g versions, the echoes throughout history – forcing us to re-evaluate figures we thought we knew.

Myths change over time, with each reimaginin­g reflecting contempora­ry values. To the Ancient Greeks, war was not unequivoca­lly bad. Indeed, they were so fascinated by the Amazons, ‘war-loving’ female warriors, that only Heracles appears in more vase paintings. Unlike individual­istic male heroes, the Amazons’ power is tribal. However, when reinterpre­ted in the 2017 film Wonder Woman, they are markedly conflictav­erse, until – in a feminist inversion of hero tropes – one woman saves humankind while her male lover dies.

Stories are a matter of perspectiv­e, and mythologic­al women’s are often overlooked. Many storytelle­rs have been content to leave the female psyche unexamined – but thank Zeus for Euripides, who ‘wrote more and better female roles than almost any other male playwright who has ever lived’. Complex, dangerous characters such as Clytemnest­ra and Phaedra are all the more astonishin­g when you consider that they would have been performed by male actors, probably watched by all-male audiences.

Haynes has a stand-up comedy background, and her wry wit leavens these grisly tragedies. Her irreverenc­e – Kronos eats his children and ‘fails a basic fatherhood test’ – has the ring of affectiona­te family teasing: that’s how intimately she knows and loves her subject. Alongside the laughs are rigorous analysis and ethical wrangling, as she considers the dilemmas posed by mythology.

I, Claudius author Robert Graves gets short shrift for the misogynist­ic distortion­s of his retellings, while classic children’s versions accentuate­d the malice we now associate with Pandora’s jar-opening antics (the apocryphal ‘box’ can be traced to Erasmus’s Latin translatio­n). In fact, Pandora was created by

Zeus to wreak earthly havoc in revenge for Prometheus’s theft of fire. She can hardly be blamed for fulfilling her destiny. If I’m ever prosecuted, I’d like Natalie Haynes to defend me. She argues persuasive­ly, carving out space for women denied a voice (Medusa), overshadow­ed (Jocasta) and unjustly condemned (Helen of Troy). She explores feminist literature reclaiming mythologic­al narratives – Margaret Atwood’s The Penelopiad, Carol Ann Duffy’s poem Eurydice – and matches entertainm­ent with

erudition, discussing Greek linguistic nuance alongside historical context. If anything, I could have done with more of the latter to offset all the myth.

Agile, rich, subversive, Pandora’s Jar proves that the classics are far from dead, and keep evolving with us.

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 ??  ?? GIRL POWER: Medusa, by Carravagio, 1597. Below: Pandora Opens The Box, by Walter Crane. Opposite: Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman
GIRL POWER: Medusa, by Carravagio, 1597. Below: Pandora Opens The Box, by Walter Crane. Opposite: Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman

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