Women and the Gift: Beyond the Given and All-Giving
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Women and the Gift: Beyond the Given and All-Giving
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Overview
Recent inquiries into the concept of the gift have been largely male-dominated and thus have ignored important aspects of the gift from a woman's point of view. In the light of philosophical work by Mauss, Lévi-Strauss, Derrida, and Bataille, Women and the Gift reflects how women respond to the notion of the gift and relationships of giving. This collection evaluates and critiques previous work on the gift and also responds to how women view care, fidelity, generosity, trust, and independence in light of the gift.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780253010339 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Indiana University Press |
| Publication date: | 12/22/2021 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 244 |
| File size: | 990 KB |
| Age Range: | 18 Years |
About the Author
Morny Joy is University Professor in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Calgary, Canada. She is editor of Continental Philosophy and Philosophy of Religion and After Appropriation: Explorations in Intercultural Philosophy and Religion.
Read an Excerpt
Women and the Gift
Beyond the Given and All-Giving
By Morny Joy
Indiana University Press
Copyright © 2013 Indiana University PressAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-253-01033-9
CHAPTER 1
Pandora and the Ambiguous Works of Women: All-Taking or All-Giving?
Deborah Lyons
[TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]
[Give is a good girl, but Take is bad. She is a giver of death.]
—HESIOD, WORKS AND DAYS
Women in ancient Greek myth and literature are often represented as gifts to be exchanged among men, as objects rather than subjects. When they do become active agents of exchange, these exchanges often have serious negative consequences for themselves and their male relations. Together, these attitudes are part of a larger pattern of undervaluing the contributions of women. Analyzing this material in light of cross-cultural evidence about gender, kinship, and exchange, I will show that anxiety about women's role as exchange object and as exchanger is closely linked to ancient Greek ideas about marriage and the gendered division of labor. What is more, it is already encoded in the first appearance of woman as recounted in two seventh-century bce texts—the Theogony and the Works and Days—attributed to the Boeotian poet Hesiod. In the first of these, woman remains nameless; only in the second is she given the name Pandora.
These texts, which are the primary focus of this chapter, place the creation of woman and the evils she brings to men within the history of relations between men and gods. The creation of woman—by the command of Zeus—is presented as part of a theodicy that indicates the extent to which what modern readers think of as "myth" deals with concepts of a religious nature. While "myth" meant something very different to an ancient Greek ear, and there was no word for "religion," these two categories are very closely related in archaic Greece. It should be remembered that the concepts under discussion—specifically the divine dispensation establishing the difficult lot of mortals—are part of what a modern audience would recognize as a religious discourse.
The misogynist tradition embodied by Hesiod does not go completely unchallenged in archaic Greek culture. Not only does Homeric epic present a more nuanced picture—as I will show toward the end of this chapter—but even within Hesiod's text it is possible to find traces of a tension between negative and positive views of women's contributions to human economy and human existence. In order to understand why the association with women and resources is so fraught with anxiety, it is necessary to consider the contradictions embedded in the institution of marriage.
Claude Lévi-Strauss (1969) saw "woman" as the exchange object par excellence, and marriage as the prototype of all exchange. Yet he recognized the paradox that woman was not merely a sign, but also a producer of signs, which is to say, not only an object but also a subject. This alternation of women between object and subject runs throughout the myths we will consider here. J.-P. Vernant (1983, 133) has pointed to the contradictory nature of woman as both symbol of family continuity and circulating commodity:
In marriage, in contrast to all other social activities, it is the woman who is the mobile social element, whose movement creates the link among different family groups, whereas the male remains tied to his own hearth and home. The ambiguity of the female status lies thus in the fact that the daughter of the house (more closely linked to the domestic sphere by virtue of her femininity than is a son) can nevertheless not fulfil herself as a woman in marriage without renouncing the hearth of which she is in charge.
Another consequence of this mobility is that the daughter who leaves her natal home to enter into that of her husband becomes a wife who is always an outsider, potentially a kind of double agent. Moreover, the integrity of the lineage she enters depends on her fidelity to her husband, and this fidelity is seen as closely linked to her role as guardian of the household possessions. Not only a possession herself, she is often a custodian of possessions as well.
In Hesiod's treatment of women and marriage, anxiety about women's relationship to the household goods is very much in the forefront. In this context, it is worth noting that in the Works and Days, it was from a large storage jar (pithos) of the sort used to store grain, rather than a box, that Pandora, the archaic Greek prototypical woman, released evils into the world of men. While later versions attribute her act to a stereotypical, and destructive, female curiosity, Hesiod does not provide a motivation. Pandora's attribute of the jar and her release of its baneful contents in the Works and Days connects the origin of women to concerns about the use and control of scarce resources (Detienne 1963; Sussman 1984; Petropoulos 1994). That her jar contains evils, including famine, rather than sustenance, goes hand in hand with Hesiod's repeated insistence that women consume household resources rather than contributing to them. Hope alone remains trapped inside, a detail that has remained puzzling to most interpreters: is hope an evil that has not been released, or a good thing withheld from (or available to) men? As several scholars have shown, the theme of the retention or release of the jar's ambiguous contents also points to a related anxiety about reproduction (Vernant 1980; Zeitlin 1995, 1996).
The Greek myth of Pandora explains several features of the human condition: the origin of women, the institution of marriage, and the begetting of children, as well as the general harshness of men's lot on earth. Usually what is remembered is the first of these origins, but what I aim to show here is that all of these elements are tightly bound together in a relentless logic of misogyny, which obscures the actual and indispensable contributions of women to human existence. I will begin by examining the creation of woman as narrated in two archaic Greek poems that have come down to us under the name of Hesiod: the Theogony and the Works and Days. In my treatment of these accounts I will argue that behind this negative version of women's contributions, beginning with the name Pandora itself, it is possible to identify traces of a more positive valuation that has been perhaps deliberately obscured.
As an interesting foil, I will compare this myth to one told by the Chambri people of Papua New Guinea, about a Golden Girl whose appearance also has consequences for the lives of men and for the institution of marriage. While Pandora and the Golden Girl both seem to be artifacts rather than organic human beings, their appearances lead to very different outcomes, which can best be explained by differences in the social organization of two very different cultures. Not surprisingly, gender relations hold the key to these differences.
I will close with some thoughts on the more nuanced valuation of women as both producers and exchangers found in other archaic Greek texts. As this brief survey will show, women's gifts and their role in exchange are by turns appreciated and distrusted, although rarely are they as completely elided as in the two Hesiodic versions.
WOMAN AS TREACHEROUS GIFT OF THE GODS
The very origin of woman is explained by the archaic poet Hesiod (seventh century bce) as the result of a conflict between Zeus, father of the gods, and Prometheus, the trickster god and friend of mortals. These two, well matched in wits if not in power, have quarreled over the allotments to men and gods in sacrifice, and over the control of fire. Prometheus has given the secret of fire to men, despite Zeus's desire to withhold it. In a retaliatory gesture aimed not directly at Prometheus but at his beloved mortals, Zeus creates a trap in the form of a lovely maiden. The woman, who is called Pandora ("All-Gifts") in the Works and Days, but who remains unnamed in the Theogony, brings not gifts but troubles to men. This she does explicitly by opening a jar full of evils, but also implicitly in that her arrival entangles them in the institution of marriage and the cycle of reproduction. The version in the Theogony (590–612) conflates the origin of women with the origin of marriage, and leaves one to wonder whether before her arrival all human beings were male. (I am not the first to observe the curious fact that the Hesiodic tradition does not feel it necessary to explain the creation of men.)
This alluring but dangerous creature, like many other ambiguous gifts in Greek myth, has been fashioned by the divine master craftsman, Hephaistos. Although she is made of earth (Theogony, 571; Works and Days, 70), she is clearly a divine artifact, and further divine contributions—fine garments, golden necklaces, or a golden crown—turn her into something of a luxury object (Brown 1997). Pandora, the name she is given in the Works and Days (80–82), is glossed by the poet as a reference to the gifts given to her by all the gods and goddesses who created and adorned her:
Without delay the renowned lame god fashioned from earth, through Zeus's will, the likeness of a shy maiden, and Athena, the gray-eyed goddess, clothed her and decked her out. Then the divine graces and queenly Persuasion gave her golden necklaces to wear, and the lovely-haired Seasons stood round her and crowned her with spring flowers. Pallas Athena adorned her body with every kind of jewel, and the Slayer of Argos—Hermes the guide— through the will of Zeus whose thunder roars placed in her breast lies, coaxing words, and a thievish nature. The gods' herald then gave her voice and called this woman Pandora because all of the gods who dwell on Olympos gave her a gift—a scourge for toiling men. (Athanassakis 2004, 71–82)
The name Pandora can, however, be interpreted in quite another way, one that makes her an active giver of benefits rather than a passive recipient. Her name can be read not only as the "All-Receiving," but also as the "All-Giving," an epithet that would more properly apply to the earth goddess Gaia than to a mortal woman. In fact, Hesiod's explanation is unique, as this is the only place where the epithet pandora/pandoros or the related form pandoteira bears a passive meaning, that is, receiving gifts. All other uses of these terms in Greek are clearly active, as in "all-bounteous, giver of all," epithets applied to the life-giving earth. In Hesiod's account, however, the newly created woman brings not plenty but scarcity. Her arrival introduces misery to men, in part because of her threatening and destructive fertility, which keeps them enslaved to agricultural labor to feed growing families (Detienne 1963; Sussman 1984; Petropoulos 1994).
The Theogony focuses less on her adornments and more on the arts and skills imparted to the first woman by the gods: Athena teaches her to weave and Hermes to lie and cheat. As previously noted, the Hesiodic tradition discounts even those feminine skills such as weaving that are culturally valued elsewhere in Greek culture (Lyons 2003; see also Zeitlin 1995 and 1996). In the Odyssey (7.109–111), for example, Athena imparts knowledge of weaving, along with good character, to the Phaeacian women. Hesiod's pairing of weaving and lying, on the other hand, suggests a more sinister association: textiles are part of the deceitful but attractive outer form that makes of Pandora a gift that is both treacherous and irresistible.
The Theogony emphasizes that with woman comes the ambiguous institution of marriage (589–612). The lines that follow reveal ambivalence about this institution. A man who does not marry will have a miserable old age and strangers will inherit his property. Hesiod allows for the possibility, however remote, of finding a good wife (608), but nonetheless insists that wives consume precious resources without making their own contribution to the household wealth. In most times and places in ancient Greece, especially among the poor, women played a large role in subsistence agriculture (Sussman 1984; Petropoulos 1994) as well as in textile production. Yet in Hesiod's account, the wife's role as producer is suppressed, hidden like the gifts of the earth or like hope trapped inside the lip of Pandora's jar.
Elsewhere in ancient Greek art and literature, beginning with the Homeric poems, which most scholars consider earlier than Hesiod, women of all classes are depicted at the loom, suggesting not only that their economic contribution was self-evident, but also that this association was central to gender ideology (Jenkins 1985; Barber 1994). Textiles are the quintessential female product, and as such have a specific place not only in the domestic economy but in the symbolic order as well. Cloth is often contrasted with precious metal objects, which are the province of men. In this division, Greek culture is similar to many others in which wealth is seen as gendered, male wealth consisting of durable objects of metal or stone, while female wealth is more ephemeral, made of cloth, leaves, or other flexible materials that may be woven or plaited (Weiner and Schneider 1989).
The association of textiles with women can be seen in the phrase erga gunaikon, "the works of women," which in archaic Greek almost always refers to the garments women weave, which are characterized as soft, shining, graceful, and beautiful. Hesiod, on the other hand, couples the phrase erga gunaikon with the word mermera, "baneful, anxiety-producing" (Theogony, 603). For him, women's works are not textile contributions to household wealth but the source of undefined troubles, perhaps sexual in nature. The exact meaning of the phrase, however, is not obvious. Arthur (1982) has suggested that the reference is to the pressing nature of sexual desire that women stir up in men. As with the very name of the first woman, the phrase mermera erga evokes a positive aspect of women's role, only to dismiss it. Not only is women's production devalued, but apparently so also is their role as sexual companions.
Why this should be so becomes clearer when we examine the Hesiodic attitude toward offspring. The Works and Days (372) recommends strictly limiting the number of offspring to one son to keep the inheritance intact. Women's reproductive potential is thus a double-edged sword. While several later authors also recommend leaving only a single heir, this advice seems ill-suited to an agrarian life, except in times of famine. The poet seems aware of the contradiction, for he follows up immediately with a conventional observation that having many children allows one to amass more wealth. His ambivalence on this point is part and parcel of the ambivalence about women, marriage, and reproduction that runs throughout the poem. One might venture to suggest that the unclear status of Hope, left in the jar, corresponds to the ambiguous status of the offspring in the woman's uterus. Are children merely a burden, or are they the hope for the future? And might that hope prove illusory? All of these questions are implicit in the equation of the pithos with the uterus (Vernant 1980 and 1989; Zeitlin 1996).
Despite a few grudging admissions of the usefulness of having numerous children, Hesiod's precepts obscure the value of woman as producer, casting her instead as a highly dubious object of exchange—in short, a bad bargain. Her childbearing potential does not strengthen the household but threatens to overwhelm it with unwanted progeny. Her potential for agricultural labor is denied; instead she lives off the labor of men. Rather than being a preserver of the household goods, she is a devourer. Even her erga, the paradigmatic work of women at the loom, are unraveled, transformed into a vague sexual threat. She stands—clothed in deceit but denuded of traditional female virtues—as a figure for the mystification of women's economic contribution. Created as revenge for Prometheus's deceitful exchange, she embodies the impossibility of reciprocity between husband and wife.
Although Hesiod has paradoxically placed the giving and receiving of gifts into a context of what Marshall Sahlins (1972) has called "negative reciprocity," this has been possible only through the suppression of the more positive possibilities also to be found in Greek culture. Before turning to these, however, I propose a cross-cultural detour to examine a myth from Papua New Guinea that may help to throw some features of the Greek case into relief.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Women and the Gift by Morny Joy. Copyright © 2013 Indiana University Press. Excerpted by permission of Indiana University Press.
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Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction\Morny Joy
1. Pandora and the Ambiguous Works of Women: All-Taking or All-Giving?\Deborah Lyons
2. Nietzsche, the Gift, and the Taken for Granted\Lorraine Markotic
3. "Everything Comes Back to It": Woman as the Gift in Derrida\Nancy J. Holland
4. Melancholia, Forgiveness, and the Logic of The Gift\Kathleen O'Grady
5. Gift of Being, Gift of Self\Mariana Ortega
6. The Gift of Being, Gift of World(s): Irigaray on Heidegger\Maria Cimitile
7. Graceful Gifts: Hélène Cixous and the Radical Gifts of Other Love\Sal Renshaw
8. John Milbank and the Feminine Gift\Rachel Muers
9. De Beauvoir and the Myth of the Given\Victoria Barker
10. Women and the Gift: Speculations on the "Given" and the "All-Giving"\Morny Joy
Contributors
Index
What People are Saying About This
It is not only that women as givers are not noticed; it is also that women are often the gifts or objects of exchange. There has been virtually no attention to the gendered nature of the discourse.