Beautiful Evil: Pandora and the Problem of Female Beauty
Every culture has some kind of story to explain the existence of evil. In Greek myth it is Pandora, the first woman, who brings evil into the previously carefree world of mortal men. The Greeks did not think of human beings as poised between poles of pure good and evil, however, but as enmeshed in a complex field of overlapping and ambiguous forces: beauty and evil, joy and pain, are inseparable aspects of our world. As misogynist as it is, the story of Pandora makes women emblematic of that complexity. It is a story not just about good and evil, but about the inextricable presence of both in human life.
Ruby Blondell is a professor of classics and Byron W. and Alice L. Lockwood Professor in the Humanities at the University of Washington in Seattle. She has published widely on Greek literature and philosophy, and on the reception of myth in popular culture. Her books include The Play of Character in Plato’s Dialogues (Cambridge 2002); Women on the Edge: Four Plays by Euripides (co-authored) (Routledge 1999); Helping Friends and Harming Enemies. A Study in Sophocles and Greek Ethics (Cambridge 1989); and most recently, Helen of Troy: Beauty, Myth, Devastation (Oxford 2013). She is currently writing a book on the portrayal of Helen in film and television.