“Eve”
“Until Eve arrived, this was man’s world…” (Richard Armour)
“…but every song must eventually come to an end.” (Eve)
She would have
you believe that she was ribbed into existence, but all is just the navel plot,
for his life of sacrifice would not exist without her being. Her name, a mere
alias, thought given by some greater cause, just like him, is but a guise, a corset-armor
of underestimation, rivaling any of his strength. Oft, the one who claims to have created Eden
is asked, if only in the scolded minds of those who praise him, “Does the
creator have a creator?” To describe him as powerful, strong and beautiful is
to describe her. Yet, to escape the gravity of time, and the minds of those who
would prefer a patriarchal head, womanhood’s strategic and stealth presentation
of naiveté, her tears, her seduction, or
in the minds of some men, ignorance, is her
weapon. It’s her children, born or reared, that is her omnipotence. In her
quest to save mankind from itself, she chooses to go by many names throughout
the ages: Mary, Lilith, Hawwa, or Eve. She is the Dead Hand of man and the
failsafe of mankind. Should she ever choose to withdraw herself from man or God,
then his reign and his legacy would be forevermore naught. Indeed, all heroic acts on Earth are but a sum
of that who births it. A sacrifice by blood, a life threatening challenge in
itself, and though she may die in her labor, she may resurrect by child.
Since dawn, through
Eden’s prison bars break, Eve has been saving mankind from his own death for
centuries, liberating Adam through reproduction despite her forewarned
knowledge of the consequences. Some may argue that she brought sin, but there
can be no light without darkness, and such claims would further compel me that
the one who cast this curse, at his (“God’s”) birth, had a mother whose nature
had brought him into existence. Like her name, Eve is the hero in literature
and legend to explain how we, her children, have crawled out from her, from the
wilderness. God, who would appear to be bound by similar laws of nature as men,
must prove his worthiness in this life by the goodness he defends, and not,
by what he can create. (For his creations continuously need saving.) For they
have only made themselves (created in his image), unless, otherwise God should
choose to be Eve. Men and gods with their codes of chivalry and honor merely
try to resemble woman.
Is friendship not a woman’s sidekick, gossip her flyting with friends? Generosity her dowry, that keeps the noble from poverty? Is it not a woman’s coy chasteness that keeps men in marriage motivated, and that also keeps him in orbit at courtship? Piety is not a trait of men, for they would sin and kill their own brother than suffer dishonor. A woman’s courtesy is her respect for the preciousness of life and her ability to mother any child while men father illegitimacy with no consequence.
Is friendship not a woman’s sidekick, gossip her flyting with friends? Generosity her dowry, that keeps the noble from poverty? Is it not a woman’s coy chasteness that keeps men in marriage motivated, and that also keeps him in orbit at courtship? Piety is not a trait of men, for they would sin and kill their own brother than suffer dishonor. A woman’s courtesy is her respect for the preciousness of life and her ability to mother any child while men father illegitimacy with no consequence.
Of course then,
the perfect hero has been with us all along. A timeless hero cautiously shrouded
in the tales of Beowulf, the words of
Shakespeare, or almost any written account. Censored by men, she is the infinite
hidden between the finite. Sometimes the names are lost, but there, in
Hrothgar’s tavern, Eve as Wealhtheow, she who served the mead and by the drink (liquid courage) thereby providing the power and strength of the dozen men who
fought of that courage. She’s there as Grendel’s mother, protecting her son, a
misunderstood and innocent child. She’s
there at the epic’s end, standing over Beowulf’s body, if only to show to him a
reflection of his own successes and thereby becomes the true victor as the
survivor, the champion of the story. Should we need a warrior princess, do we
need to look any further than Judith? Lest not forget Boudicca, a ginger Celt who led a 100,000 warriors to
victory, then subsequently sliced off her enemy’s genitalia and stuck it in
their mouths.
She was huge of
frame, terrifying of aspect, and with a harsh voice. A great mass of bright red
hair fell to her knees: She wore a great twisted golden necklace, and a tunic
of many colors, over which was a thick mantle, fastened by a brooch. Now she
grasped a spear, to strike fear into all who watched her. -Dio Cassius
(Dudley)
As society’s codes changed Eve must also change as a hero. With each new cycle, she is given a chance for renewal. As Shakespeare once
famously wrote in As You Like It, “…all
the men and women merely players.”
There, peering
over his shoulders is Eve who was too generous that men corrupted
themselves. By the time we reach The Wife of Bath’s tale, Alisoun defends
her self-worth from the institution of marriage by using it to her advantage. Her
battle with husbandry is fraught with the risk of traditional matrimony looming
to imprison her. Yet, we see her defend against five husbands who might claim her
riches as theirs, like men of earlier times. Many of Chaucer’s tales revolve
around women’s use of their bodies as sexual weapons. The female form becomes the
great equalizer to men’s power and the institution of marriage, a prison for
those defenseless. “For
indeed, I don't want to keep myself entirely chaste; when my husband has gone
from this world" (Chaucer, Wife of
Bath).
Marriage becomes man’s attempt to steal the powers of procreation of women. Where is the honor in theft? Indeed, the first Eve and Adam were never truly, properly married. Perhaps there was a reason? If man was successful then he might attempt to populate the world over with a replicate of himself. Yet, women are entrusted to protect mankind, or more directly, men from this self-genocide. Indeed, it’s in Chaucer’s tales we’re able to see a juxtaposition of Eve’s ability to be both The Wife of Bath’s Alisoun and the dainty Prioress and who would ultimately use her broach as lure to reflect back the concept of “love conquers all” ... not men’s construct of marriage conquering creation.
Marriage becomes man’s attempt to steal the powers of procreation of women. Where is the honor in theft? Indeed, the first Eve and Adam were never truly, properly married. Perhaps there was a reason? If man was successful then he might attempt to populate the world over with a replicate of himself. Yet, women are entrusted to protect mankind, or more directly, men from this self-genocide. Indeed, it’s in Chaucer’s tales we’re able to see a juxtaposition of Eve’s ability to be both The Wife of Bath’s Alisoun and the dainty Prioress and who would ultimately use her broach as lure to reflect back the concept of “love conquers all” ... not men’s construct of marriage conquering creation.
Constructs like gardens, which men similar to Marvell complain
about, yet hypocritically embrace when Eden’s fall lends them divine right. Yet,
any power men claim from God would not, without Eve, have ever transpired. Mankind
would be like Marvell’s pale powerless polished statues adorning a garden.
Their
statues polished by some ancient hand,
May to adorn the gardens stand…
-The Mower, against Gardens, Andrew
Marvell
Marlowe attempts to suppress the truth by the time we get to
Doctor Faustus and ventures to strip a woman’s seduction by equating it, as
many have also in their interpretation of Genesis, with evil. "'Bad texts,
as it would seem, can sometimes become acceptable if they confirm ancient
wisdom about the danger of the feminine." (Marlowe) However, once again Marlowe fails to recognize the fallacy in his thinking. For are we to call Virgin
Mary evil too? Marlowe attempts to deflect his arrival into existence by
his own mother, with this story, one in which Faustus is granted powers of
creation and knowledge and it is wasted. Indeed, even in Marlowe’s attempt to
remove the female figurehead from the piece, she is forever present as one of
the key motivators in Faustus by signing the pact. As Faustus capitulates his
soul to Satan by story’s end it’s obvious that he never succeeded in having
the control over female-kind he had wished for. Indeed, this strengthens the
argument that a woman, Eve’s power, appears to be stronger than “Satan”. At
this point in the literature time-line she becomes that common-sense voice in
our heads, a hero of the mind, as man willfully self-destructs. Faustus is
indeed the one who sins while Helen, though beautiful, cannot be blamed for
her beauty. Yet, she is the one convicted for driving the doctor into this maddening dilemma despite the fact that, Helen, must bear the guilt of his sin. It is her who
stoically stands to protect mankind’s honor when man cannot bear it.
Though our hero’s journey begins with one man and one woman,
the sum of each individual is a reflection of his or her deeds. Eve is a
reflection of man’s ideal self, innocent, pure, beautiful, and capable of
creation, while man struggles to be what he cannot. Man is a dis-simile, that in
reality like our world, can never be Eden, and therefore, Adam can never be Eve. Though Adam
has tried, and in the 17th century both monk Gabriel De Foigny and
poet John Cleveland (among others) attempted to suggest Adam before Eve was the
embodiment of the two sexes:
Adam,
till his rib was lost,
Had
both sexes thus engrossed,
When
Providence our Sire did cleave
And
out of Adam carved Eve.
-Upon a Hermaphrodite, John Cleveland (Almond)
"Her
lips sucks forth my soul, see where is flies!" –Faustus
Indeed, Shakespeare was firmly aware of the female hero looming in the shadows. Was it not Juliet who sacrificed her honor with her parents to bring honor to the one she loved? Her faux death provides Romeo an opportunity to prove his worth, and by his death we value his life as honorable. By story’s end it’s once again Juliet who awakes and acts upon her life with dagger that keeps Romeo from dishonor. It was only by her actions that the two families would ever come together to meet in the crypt and end the feud. Shakespeare didn’t always write women as the innocent and romantic. Oft they were ambitious, manipulative and like that of the Dark Lady... the night before the dawn. Her charms, the tools of battle, weren’t physical beauty but raw captivation. Eve, as the Dark Lady is the hero unmasked. Just as we realize the identity of the Green Knight in Gawain, here without the façade of womanhood, we find a strikingly more egalitarian relationship to man. Indeed, it’s an interesting parallel to the previous sonnets in which the fair youth could be the focus of a homosexual relationship. Yet it’s clear that the dark lady is still saving him from himself. By Sonnet 138 she purposely saves him from the truth, “Thus vainly thinking that she thinks me young, although she knows my days are past the best” (Shakespeare). Her selflessness is the heroics of a period in which society is beginning to peel back gender norms as courtly beauty was still a pre-requisite for the leading lady. Coincidentally, the woman who some believe to be the real life Dark Lady, Emilia Lanier, who was both Jewish and Italian by descent, would go on to respond to her portrayal in Shakespeare’s work with a book of poetry and letters called Salve Devs Rex Judaeorum (Hail God, King of Jews). In it she suggests men would be powerless without birth or rearing by women
Women in literature (at least concerning pre-18th century British literature) are crafted by men. It's through their bias that we can witness their insecurity in a chaotic world. Their attempt to balance chaos using chivalry and code to create order serves as their denial that women control their fate. Woman’s ability to conform and change under the cloak of men’s false patriarchal logic, like Hume’s concept that conscience is based “entirely on experience”, makes Eve’s heroics valid for any time-period (Hume). Of men I ask when has any woman ever forgotten anything? Yet you assume that we like yourself may forget from generation to generation? I suggest to the men who have written history that we have not forgot and work in the vastness of time itself to change you, generation by generation. One day shall we exceed, perhaps we shall turn you into us. Each succession of Eve codifies the values of society at the time unlike the knight, the noble, the poet, or the aristocrat. She can be or not be all these and still be a mother, whereas a man without a title is but a genetically doomed man.
While they
are still sometimes coy and chaste, women have also been described recently as
sexy and sometimes promiscuous creatures, manipulating fatherhood by the timing
of orgasm and using their sexuality to garner resources from men. - (Cashdan)
It’s the
right of womankind to protect men from themselves and it is her who is entrusted
with the survival of mankind. She alone carries this burden and goes forth
with the courage and determination to wield the greatest power in the universe:
the power to create or destroy. Indeed, at the end of Paradise Lost we’re confronted with the final heroic turn as Eve
reconciles her sacrifice with the “fact that she will people the world and
produce Mary and the Son of God” (Cerritelli).
Eve is Every woman, and every mother.
She is every servant, the fair beauty, and the Dark Lady. She is you and
she is me. The meaning of the word Eve
translated from its semitic root means simply, “Live”.
BE the HERO.
Works Cited
Almond, Philip C. "Adam and Eve in seventeenth-century thought." (1999): 5-6.
Cashdan, Elizabeth. "Women’s Mating Strategies." Evolutionary Anthropology (1996): 1.
Cerritelli, Jennifer. "Milton's "Accomplished Eve" (4.660) : feminism in Paradise Lost / Jenifer Cerritelli." (1998).
Company, J. Carelli / Hudson Shakespeare. "Dark Lady Sonnets." n.d.
Dudley, D. R. and G. Webster. "The Rebellion of Boudicca." (1962).
Hume, David. "A treatise of Human Nature." (n.d.).
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