Women in Mythology

Women in Mythology

Women in Ancient Greek Mythology played a major role in Greek Culture. The ancient Mycenaean, patriarchal society, was superior to the Minoan, matriarchal society. The Mycenaeans were a male-dominating society, where everything was centered on the men. The men made all of the decisions and they were in complete power and control. The Minoans were a female-dominating society, where all women were in control. Men were believed to be worthless and women were especially thought to be important because of their ability to give birth in this society. Throughout Greek Mythology, women are portrayed as inferior to men. Each Greek Myth teaches a lesson or explains something to its readers that makes women seem less powerful to men. Two very popular and recurring issues with the women in the Greek myths is being, overly-curious or causing to bring pain or suffering to mankind. A few myths that demonstrate these horrible personality flaws of women are “Pandora”, “Demeter and Persephone” and “Psyche and Eros”. “Curiosity can be a bad thing,” is composed by a girl named Pandora who is found being overly-curious and resulting in causing pain upon the world. Psyche is another over-curious female character, when she takes some of Persephone’s beauty for herself. Two women that bring pain and suffering to mankind is Pandora and Demeter. Pandora was created and sent to the earth to bring sickness and suffering upon the people. Demeter’s depression over losing her daughter to grim Hades causes her to remove herself from the society of immortals and mortals. She causes devastation to spread upon the earth. All four of these women were constructed in Greek mythology to make the superiority between men and women clear to the readers. The women in the Greek myths demonstrate how the Mycenaean society was superior to the Minoan society in Ancient Greek Culture.