Lulu is the central character in Frank Wedekind’s play Pandora’s Box.
Wedekind published Pandora’s Box in 1904 as the second part of a dramatic sequence about Lulu, following Earth Spirit. Lulu’s beauty and forceful personality attract a series of lovers and admirers, while the play examines sexuality, social hypocrisy, power, and violence.
The character became internationally famous through later adaptations. G. W. Pabst’s 1929 film Pandora’s Box featured Louise Brooks as Lulu, and Alban Berg based his opera Lulu on Wedekind’s plays. These adaptations helped make the name Lulu more widely known than the original stage work.
Lulu is not the mythological Pandora. Wedekind borrowed the title and its associations, but his play is a modern European drama about a fictional woman. Confusing Lulu with Pandora herself produces the wrong answer even though both names appear in the title.