WOMAN: The Gift of All

Trials, deaths, fears, wars, overshadowing dominion of men, battle against good and evil, love of lover and husband, and dignity---this is the background with which women strive to carve their roles in Greek Mythology.
Generally, women were regarded as insignificant. They were thought of as mere household keepers. While their husbands are out in the open to explore the world, they were left to tend to their children and when he comes home, she has to serve him and satisfy his earthly desires. Aside from that notion, they were also labeled as temptresses, wreckers of marriages and a being destined to suffer and to do evil. She lures men away from their journeys.

Women gained this infamous status after the first woman was brought to being. Evil and torment enveloped the earth due to her curiosity and due to her evil and destructive nature. It should be remembered that the gods fashioned her that way. Another account of feminine frailty was the frequent infidelity of Zeus towards Hera because of his inability to resist the beauties of Nymphs and maidens. In turn, these women were punished by her. But in this case, women cannot be blamed alone. It was man’s insolence which prompted the gods to create the destructive Pandora. And it wasn’t the fault of the maiden nor the nymph’s either to be very lovely for the gods to adore her.
Those are but a few of the illustrations of women’s bad reputation. However, this is not always true. No matter how powerful Zeus’s father and the father of Zeus father was they still needed a woman to bear their children. Without a woman, the great Zeus will not be born. In fact, it was Zeus mother who saved him from his father’s fatal paranoia. Gaia fills the earth with all its bounty. She also provides a dwelling place for all humans. She is one source of life. Demeter, the goddess of vegetation is also a mother not only to Persephone but also to humans. She can cause famine over the earth thereby putting humans at her mercy. Childbearing alone is no easy feat.
The huntress Artemis who rightfully kills his subjects whenever they displease her, the athletic Andromeda who can equal men in strength, and the amorous Aphrodite; they are all out to prove that women has a pivotal role in the cosmos.

While it cannot be denied that men are superior over women, this doesn’t mean that they are inferior to men. Yes they are only second to men, but beyond this vista is the fact that it is the female beauty which launched a thousand ships. Women can’t be underestimated. They, too, deserve the laurels.