Legitimizing Myths as a Tool of Social Dominance: The Case of Lilith, Eve and Pandora

English Literature

Classical myths and religious narratives have always served as legitimizing myths that take ideas favored by a society and propagate those ideas as apparent truths. These ideas or concepts propagated through legitimizing myths are chosen by the dominant social groups of that particular society and period. This paper tries to analyze how legitimizing myths in classical, Judaic and Christian narrative have denoted the first woman of the world as ‘seductress’, ‘demon’ or ‘curse’ and have thus created avenues for Social Dominance of men over women. The first woman in the world according to classical Greek mythology, Christian and Judaic narrative, namely Pandora, Eve and Lilith, are taken as examples in this paper. The paper uses the propositions in Social Dominance Theory which dictate that groups that interact in society tend to dominate over each other and the dominant groups maintain their supremacy through the disproportionate use of force against subordinate groups. It also focuses on the idea that patriarchy imposes gender roles on female subjects to apply the social dominance. This paper tries to show how Pandora, Eve and Lilith, women who went beyond the conventional gender roles promoted by their respective society, were either demonized or considered as sources of catastrophe for humankind so that they may be dominated by the patriarchal rulers.

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