Published Paper Details:

This research does a comparative evaluation of three allegorical female characters--Pandora from Greek mythology, Sita from the Ramayana, and Eve from the Judeo-Christian tradition--to identify how the representation of their characters has been changed to maintain the dominance of the male gender. These female figures derived from very different cultural settings are conceptually very close in the end: all of them are accused to have committed the biggest sin that misplaces blame of the society, God, or males onto women. While Pandora, as per Hesiod's description, was a punishment made by gods technically erasing her previous status of a mother earth; Sita's experience with Agnipariksha shows how society and legal systems have turned virtue into a weapon for repression of women's agency; and Eve's link with original sin is a gradual theological imposition, especially by Augustine, thus consolidating the position of women in the hierarchy of subordination. The work is an interpretation of the view that blaming mechanisms--deterministic, societal, and theological--are different but intersect at the point of disempowerment of women. The feminist movement today and the newly interpreted versions of the characters speak out the once quiet voices, thus, myth still stands as an ever-changing cultural text that can be altered and challenged.