Lessons From Eve

Most of my readers are aware that the Adam and Eve story is predominantly a Judeo-Christian one, and as a Christian, I grew up hearing and analyzing its many facets, under the recommended guise of pertaining to an understanding of Judeo-Christian heritage, but also as both an origin story for the development of mankind, as well as a metaphorical illustration of the triangular and hierarchical relationship of both men to women, and their connection to both God and Christ.

In my early years, I understood it as a simplistic metaphor, a kind of paradoxical humans-disappointing-god with their curiosity and superficial carnality type story, that through their innocent stupidity, the portal of human existence was opened to the totality of god’s children, and the advent of their human reign began on Earth.

Adam’s archetype, in my early years, represented a sort of beloved fatherly figure who was the unfortunate victim of Eve’s more gullible and sin-prone nature.

In those days, it was easy for me to view Eve’s archetype as representing the weaker of the sexes with her innate tendency to go astray when left to her own feminine devices, which devices seemed to my young mind to be a proclivity toward going against god and husband, and therefore all things right and holy, by simply taking a stranger’s word for it; her sin-prone, weak and gullible nature being the fundamental necessity for locking her in an hierarchical structure of patriarchal protection from evil, as well as a safeguard against her own innate weakness and vulnerability as a tempted woman.

As my mind and capacity for comprehending analogous and metaphorical structures increased, questions about this story’s validity and interpretation naturally arose, not simply about the plausibility of such a story as pre-historic, original fact—that two people called Adam and Eve were the first parents—but my curiosity often centered around Eve as an archetypal character of womanhood.

Eve’s part in an original sin of such proportions and magnitude became of serious interest to me, first as a teenager, then as a mother, and now as a matriarch of a growing extended family of my own.

A woman taking such a bold, maternal step into the unknown, without the blessing of either father (god) or husband, despite that step being provoked by an evil, unfamiliar, brotherly, male archetype, is curious, at the very least, and I have often felt drawn to ponder on the necessity, or lack thereof, of such an example of human, specifically feminine, blunder, at least as it is known by many to be. 

These questions, which I will explore in more detail below, have produced years of pondering, both scholarly and personal, on the notion of original sin, what some call the Fall, its consequences for womanhood—if such exist—while living and surviving in an indisputably patriarchal ordered state, which men and woman have done for thousands of years.

Unarguably, the story of Adam and Eve is a lot for a child to swallow, especially such a curious, why-asking and truth-seeking child, as I was. But it is also quite a substantial knot to untangle, even for a 47 year old woman, as well, not because I am still living under the same intellectual precepts I was as a child, but because of the effects of those intellectual and religious precepts on the minds and hearts of Judeo-Christian adult women everywhere, which precepts, these women, and others outside of these religious traditions, hotly and idiosyncratically debate without any sort of universal agreement on the fundamentals of Eve’s story or relevance, or on the tenets of patriarchy.

With that said, I am aware that my questions are certainly not novel, nor am I the first or the last to attempt to tease out the difficult parts of feminine identity within or without a religious construct. I am simply one in many working on unraveling and understanding the many questions related to such a topic as the garden of Eden analogy poses.

What is a woman?

What is her relationship to god and man?

Is the feminine nature fundamentally flawed or is it simply difficult to quantify properly when predominantly expressed in a culture of patriarchy?

How should a woman’s inherent nature be analyzed using a story such as Eve’s as a metaphorical element?

Certainly, at this stage of life, I have more than enough justification for dismissing such a metaphor as irrelevant, sexist, and, like any bedtime story, just a myth with little to no significance other than that of fairytale nonsense.

However, it is not in my nature to dismiss anything I find curious without putting it through the wringer, so to speak, of my own thoughts and analysis.

Every stage of life produces new and interesting perspectives, and as I have an inherent passion for symbolism and a somewhat maverick approach to questioning everything—I don’t see the profit in bipolarism—I can’t dismiss an age-old story simply on the grounds that it may be irrelevant, sexist, or fantastically silly.

There are many interpretations of this Adam and Eve, human origin story. In today’s entry, I have no intention of pursuing a scholarly approach to outlining, debunking or justifying the merits, validity, or analyzing the Judeo-Christian based morals or ethics on the subject.

Instead, I would like to simply explore Eve and her symbolic character in the overarching study of feminine identity.

How likely is it that every woman, if put in similar circumstances, would have acted in an identical fashion?

Is Eve an accurate female archetype, and how much can the feminine learn about matriarchal tendencies in a patriarchal world?

My retelling of the eating of the apple metaphor is a conglomeration of perspectives, most of which will be taken from my own understanding, interpretation, and study, under the influence of my lifetime membership in a certain faith.

One woman’s Ever-evolving perspective on feminine identity

As I mentioned previously, when I was young, my perspective on Eve and the whole garden and apple story was very biased, and not in favor of the female in the story, even though I am and have always been female.

If anything, as a child and even as a teen, and perhaps into my twenties, my personal perspective on Eve, and consequently women in general—myself included—was mostly negative.

Why? Because the feminine was not something promoted as positive in my home growing up, at least from my perspective, and everywhere I looked, I observed a framework of femininity that was prone to extreme fallibility.

I knew my own weakness and my parents, and then husband, daily pointed those weaknesses out to me, as family does, and due to my own disappointing and hurtful entanglements with the few so-called female friends I had growing up and as I matured, as well as some abhorrent-to-me sexual encounters from childhood and throughout my teen years, my perspective on being female was disproportionally negative.

All things considered, I loathed my own femininity and I detested the portrayal of it in Eve and the other secondary figures of feminine identity I encountered in the Christian faith and in the world around me. I rarely met with a female archetype I could personally relate to that also persuaded me that being female was a worthwhile endeavor. (Thank you, Charlotte Brontë, for gifting me Jane Eyre.)

Eve represented to me, at least back then, everything I was, but didn’t want to be: weak, selfish, gullible and easily duped, impetuous, short-sighted, overtly trusting (even of strangers, and especially vulnerable to subversive men), childish, and silly.

Clearly, at least to my youthful, inexperienced mind, Eve was unable, on all counts, to be obedient to God and to coexist in an equal partnership with Adam. She was rogue and reckless, and so was I. I despised those attributes in myself, and therefore, I despised them in her.

Has my perspective changed? Yes, of course it has. But, perhaps not in the way one might expect.

I must admit that my understanding of what it is to be a woman, especially in this overtly masculine world, has only begun to take on new meaning in the last few years.

In fact, I’m not sure if I am substantially fit to write about Eve in a completely unbiased way, even now; in my heart still lie many of the same resentments and questions about the value of the feminine identity in the grand scheme of things.

If I could sum up how I feel at this moment in time about being female and my own understanding of what it means to be feminine, the best explanation I can give is a deep-seated ache I have difficulty in truly describing.

I ache over the malignant misunderstandings, the many atrocities and abuses, the confusion, the appropriation of the feminine by men, the female self-loathing that leads women to support the usurpation of feminine identity by men, and the unabashedly merciless and unpunished crimes committed against women by men, not to mention the biggest disappointment of all, the disconnection I feel from a deified and divine feminine presence in the universe.

I know I’m not alone in these feelings, yet I find that although women may share some similarities of thought, they are by no means united in the interpretation of those thoughts and feelings.

As communal as women appear to be on the surface, they are far more independent in spirit than they are often given credit for.

The Culture of Women, A Necessary Explanation

Before moving on to Eve’s story, I feel it necessary to share my own perspectives on female culture, as it is a major part of my personal understanding of Eve’s nature and role in the garden story.

Despite being female and having feminine tendencies, I’ve rarely considered myself to be a part of the culture of women, and in fact, I still struggle embracing that culture. Perhaps, because of its inherently independent order.

The culture of women is, even to women, as sophisticatedly complex as the female body.

No two females share a body type, despite the many systems that try in vain to type them, it’s why dressing their diversity can be so difficult, and no two females share a decidedly similar disposition, although many men in their arrogance or ignorance have tried in vain to boil female rationality down to a few pathetically inadequate presumptions, the absurdity of which I won’t insult your intelligence by repeating here.

Women are, by no means, an easy study. They are, decidedly, the contrasting element that stands juxtaposed in almost every way to men, whose nature and disposition has been studied in depth for thousands of years, consequently by men, and according to men, their own culture has been fundamentally, categorically, and successfully understood for many of those years, to the pride of all their sex.

Contrastingly, feminine culture, nature, and contribution cannot be categorically embedded into a universal taxonomy. They are singular, creative, enigmatic (sometimes even to themselves), sensual, desirable, independent, resolute, and intensely misunderstood creatures, who surprise, most often then not, themselves above all, as they navigate the waters of feminine evolution.

Where men often study the outer world and the immensity of space, women more often study the immensity of mysteries found within.

They are not easily governed, although they often concede to be led when they feel it is right to do so.

However much they allow themselves to be led, internally, they are their own masters—sovereign entities—that will never fully be subjected to any masculine form of monarchy; a disposition abhorrent and feared by insecure and controlling men, yet a characteristic that is particularly sought for and appreciated by secure and sensible men.

The culture of women, although often ridiculously reduced down to a simplistic group of nurturing service providers, is instead, more like an intricate exhibition of an ordered galaxy of sovereign entities choosing to dance around one another in a creative flow, feeding off of and at other times exuding, a nurturing and collective energetic presence that drives and motivates the surrounding stars and planets to orbit around the splendor of their authentic, yet oddly harmonious, radiant and blinding beauty.

As idealistic as that image may be, the truth is, women and the culture they naturally engender is not masculine, and it is not at its best when represented, informed, or controlled by masculine tendencies; in fact, when seen and compared under the microscopic lens of masculine values and expressions, the feminine is weak, erratic, cultish, and antagonistic.

Women are, by no means, exempt from the basest and most abhorrent forms of human expression. Yet, with all their faults, the masculine tendency toward categorization and reductionism will never fully explain the reasoning behind female behavior, no matter the magnitude of statistical evidences.

Until women are seen through a lens of truly matriarchal, feminine proportions, they cannot be fully understood within a patriarchal structure, and I don’t believe it is possible to fabricate such a separation of the feminine in a masculine-designed organization.

Despite these, and other theoretical conclusions, here we are, women and men together, on Earth, in a predominantly male environment, working to better understand one another and diffuse our different natures and cultures into something the universe might call harmonious.

It is an interesting study, to say the least.

The Independent Nature of Women

When I ponder on Eve, it is curious to me that she was, and still is, at least in the Judeo-Christian traditions and to my understanding, the only female presence mentioned in the primordial state found in doctrinal canon.

Other females are mentioned within scripture after Adam and Eve’s fall from heavenly presence, but prior to it, Eve stands alone among a variety of male archetypes—God, the father, Jesus Christ, Adam, and Satan—a solitary woman amidst a panel of men. That distinction and singularity is an interesting phenomenon.

What would be the necessity of placing only one woman into such a masculine scenario?

Many argue, due to scriptural interpretation, that Eve was to be an helpmeet and companion for Adam in his confinement in the garden.

Yet, the assumption is made by most that sex and sexuality were unknown to the Adam and Eve characters until the apple incident. Therefore, a female companion was, for all intents and purposes, an odd choice when two men would have made a much more companionable relationship and defensive tactic against Satan.

Adam would have been much happier shooting the breeze and talking shop with a brother rather than a sister. If it was God’s determination to make the garden of Eden man’s primary resort, as some religions interpret, why not give Adam someone he had something in common with?

Adam was, according to the story, naturally put off by Satan and wouldn’t have anything to do with him. It was in Adam’s masculine nature to follow God’s commands with exactness, and wasn’t that one of the main points of the Adam character, to illustrate the masculine tendency towards strict obedience?

If that is the case, wouldn’t another man of Adam’s caliber most likely have encountered and rejected Satan with the same superiority, derision, and disdain for Satan’s conniving nature and lesser status in the hierarchical structure of the garden and God’s realm, as Adam had?

Wouldn’t the presence of another strong and discerning male in the garden have completely poo-pooed Satan’s proposals and plans, therefore supplanting any designs for disruption of the status quo?

But, that isn’t how the story goes. Instead, Adam is offered an helpmeet—a decided chink in the chain of command—an independent woman.

However gullible the Eve archetype might be, the necessity of a female character introduced a couple of wild cards into the mix: firstly, the potential for sexual contact which also introduces the potential for posterity; and, secondly, the potential for mutiny.

According to the story, God placed two trees in the garden and gave some instructions:

Adam and Eve could eat the fruit of the tree of life, but couldn’t eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil because, as God points out, they will die if they eat the fruit of the latter.

However, to make things even more confusing and tenuous, at least for Eve, God adds this ironic and conflicting caveat, they are to multiply and replenish the earth, meaning they are to procreate and have posterity; an impossibility in their current, immortal state.

One tree kept the key players, Adam and Eve, eternal in nature and incapable of death, and all that was wrapped up in that type of existence, including the inability to have children or grow old.

The other tree was the red button, so to speak, that would change them from immortal to mortal and would introduce a world of evolutionary growth, knowledge of good and evil, including the procreative power and physical death.

One must surmise from such a decision, that by placing two opposing trees (and, consequently, two opposing genders) into the garden, God was NOT trying to maintain a status quo, and arguably, was hoping, or at the very least, kept the possibility open, that both of them would most likely hit the red button and go for broke, eat the fruit and procreate, despite the element of death.

If God is as omnipotent as he is purported to be, then it wasn’t a big shock WHICH one of his children, the man or the woman, would be most likely to hit the big red button first.

He placed Eve, a rogue, bold, independent—ridiculously suggested by many to be sexually charged—wild card into the otherwise conforming, ordered, and blandly predictable state Adam was loathed to leave.

When Satan—the angry, disillusioned, and demoted from son-of-the-morning antagonist—came on the scene after having attempted in vain to persuade Adam to eat the death-apple, he went straightway and found the so-called gullible Eve.

Their encounter is a curious one. Through a series of half-truths, Satan beguiles Eve into believing that if she eats the apple, she can become like god, knowing good and evil.

This potentiality of gaining such divine knowledge is so enticing to Eve, she independently hits the red button and bites the apple.

Adam is eventually entreated, reluctantly of course, by Eve to bite the apple, or in other words hit the red button himself, starting the chain reaction that leads to the introduction of humankind into a patriarchal structured world of chaos, procreation, and a temporary state where God’s children can taste for themselves the bitter and the sweet in order to become like him, knowing good and evil, and introducing the key player—Satan’s bane and opposition—the hero Jesus Christ, to save mankind from their lost and fallen state; the one Eve so dramatically made possible through her willfully rebellious choice.

Eve, the archetypal women

God placed Eve in the garden alongside a man, Adam, because she was the character, at least according to the story, willing and able to voluntarily, albeit naively, make the harder of the two decisions, choosing the opportunity for procreation and evolutionary growth—to become like god, knowing good and evil—even with the caveat of death and the potentially severe consequences of willful disobedience to, at least one of, god’s laws.

Eve saw the choices laid out before her, and she chose the latter, why? What was in it for her?

Maybe she was just stupid and gullible. It wouldn’t be the first time a woman was persuaded into child rearing and all that’s wrapped up into that by some fairytale notion.

Did God place her in that spot because she was such a dummy?

One thing is certain, if he chose a gullible dummy, he must have wanted the gullible dummy to push the red button. Why else would God set things up the way he did?

If he didn’t know what he was doing, he’s the dummy.

But if he did—and I assume that is what omnipotence is, to know what’s going to happen—then maybe Eve’s choice wasn’t so gullible or dumb.

The questions I have, and have had for years, are these:

• Is Eve’s character depiction and portrayal fundamentally feminine, making her, and all women, the most likely candidate for such a necessary, yet foolhardy—disgraceful in the eyes of men—type job, to push the red button when the Adam characters cannot yet see the profit in it?

• And, was Eve’s decision truly a gullible one?

Gullible and sexually charged, or not, Eve saw beyond the superficial aspects of God’s commands, past the absolution of death, to a state of intellectual and emotional equanimity with God.

She saw the knowledge gained through procreation, the bitter and the sweet, the cold and the hot, and the good and the evil, as a desirable means to an end that was better than what she was currently experiencing, and for some reason, albeit a naive one, she concluded that the big red button was the right move.

Where Adam was stuck in semantics, trying to decide which of the two opposing commandments of God to live by—don’t eat the apple, but still find a way to procreate—Eve wasn’t.

Her determination to courageously propel herself and her potential posterity forward, opening an opportunity for growth unlike anything God’s children had yet experienced up to this point, took more than gullibility.

Where Satan thought he had won another kill mark on his war-against-god bomber, he had simply pushed the female over the edge of her own conclusions into a self-assured flood-gate of understanding she was already on the precipice of uncovering.

She was a female, endowed with the creative capacity to give life, sitting in a stagnant world of endless plant husbandry and veterinary care that was simply not enough for her. If it had been, Satan’s propositions wouldn’t have been so persuasive.

God had already established a plan, knowing Eve wouldn’t resist her feminine inclinations, and Jesus Christ stepped up to offer himself as the masculine clean up crew in contrast to Eve’s feminine willingness to act as a vessel or portal to God’s children who wished to gain, as she did herself, the knowledge and wisdom that would evolutionarily offer mortal life experience (i.e. knowledge of good and evil) to all.

Certainly, it is easy to wonder why God would set up such an elaborate, bizarre, and somewhat counterintuitive scenario?

If humans needed to procreate and learn good from evil, why not just plop them down into a mortal state to begin with? Why the charade?

Apart from the story illustrating God’s desire to safeguard freewill and choice, my secure and sensible husband pointed out this tid-bit: Eve and her daughters were going to face the worst of it on Earth, shouldn’t she/they be given the choice to take it all on for themselves?

In other words, the feminine in all their varieties—from maiden, to mother, to matriarch—were going to experience the best and worst of masculine tendencies in this world built to test and challenge, teach and train, devoid of the divine feminine, except in her daughters, a world of imperfect, bumbling, and sin-prone dummies.

This Earth existence is a very masculine world, and as my husband observed, it would have been unfair to ask women to endure it without their consent.

The Eve story is, in some form, a metaphorical story of courageous consent.

For Eve to say yes, even when the personal cost was exorbitantly high, was and is an illustration of the best of womanhood, not the worst.

In many ways, a woman’s capacity and courage is often judged inadequate by men. Yet, the very fact that women are here in this existence, playing house with a bunch of bumbling Brutuses, really says it all. They are stronger and much more capable than they look.

Fundamentally Feminine

Certainly, there are many other possible interpretations of the Eve story. As my own perspective is challenged and changed, I imagine so will this particular interpretation.

Yet, however flawed or lopsided it is, there is an element of it I believe many women, myself included, find accurate, or at the very least, familiar.

Women, even in their weakness and naivety, are, like Eve—when acting in their most pronounced feminine state and nature—willing to put everything on the line to fulfill that which they perceive to be the highest and best.

I was listening to an interview, the other day, between Jordan Peterson and Tulsi Gabbard. Gabbard was asked by Peterson about her time in the military, and he alluded to the fact that women serving militarily in the Middle East face an even greater threat than men, that of capture and torture by the enemy using methods that men would never have to endure, such as sexual depravities of the most horrific kind.

Peterson questioned the ethics of sending a woman to such a potentially awful fate, and he asked Gabbard for her opinion on the subject.

Her response was interesting. In very Eve-like fashion, she recognized the risks and the blatant fact that they were not for every woman. But for those women who understood the risks, accepting them fully and with all seriousness, but still found it their duty to defend and protect freedom and the rights of those they loved from tyranny and oppression, their consent was enough and they should be allowed the right to follow that duty to whatever end.

For thousands of years, women have put their lives on the line to give men posterities they can gloat over and to bring spoiled and ungrateful children into the world, feed them, nurture them, give up everything for them, including one’s youth and beauty, most often without even a “thank you” from the child (or the husband) when they fly the coop.

One could argue that their desire to do so is purely instinctual.

Instinct and hormones may be the reason for the insanity of motherhood the first time you get pregnant, vomit almost every hour for five months, watch your body go to hell as it fattens and stretches into something no longer resembling your maiden form, carry around a bowling ball in your belly for months, and then squeeze it out (along with other undesirable things)—ripping and tearing—through a hole the size of a soda can, so that you can bleed for weeks while being treated like a milking cow at all hours of the day, potentially for years, not to mention the sleepless nights, weight loss, belly flesh, and other fun aspects of your new life as a mother-slave to ungrateful and self-absorbed children, that these women love more than life itself.

Instinct is certainly not why women, myself included, ravage themselves over and over again to give beautiful, yet self-centered, spirits bodies and an opportunity to gain their own knowledge of good and evil for themselves.

As my husband so delicately puts it, if child-bearing was left up to men, it would have happened once and the rest of the male population who witnessed it would pass the story down through their dwindling ranks, agreeing to never do it again. (Although this is all hypothetical, as there wouldn’t be a male or female population to speak of.)

One could argue that women do what they do because of hormones or instinct, but one would also be a gigantic jackass of the most unforgiving kind to do so.

Lessons from Eve

Eve’s story, like most stories, paints an inconclusive picture.

Is the garden story, decidedly, a metaphorical representation of female consent to participate in a hostile-to-women, masculine world? Perhaps.

Was Eve just a dummy and fall guy for a Judeo-Christian myth that sexualizes women and praises men’s fortitude against temptation? I don’t know.

Is Eve just another flawed female, duped into believing a fantasy that ultimately robs her of her self-respect and an ease-full life? Maybe.

The truth is, whether the garden tale is a genuine and accurate portrayal of the human origin story or a myth illustrating the relationships and oddities within the genders, it really doesn’t matter.

What matters is this: every human has to figure the truth out for themselves and live under the precepts and principles that most suit their desires.

Like Eve, I often find myself in challenging and compromising circumstances, and I have to decide—for good or ill—what I am going to do, regardless of what others, including my husband, choose.

For me, the decision usually comes down to a simple question of, “What choice will make me feel most satisfied long term?”

If there was one lesson from Eve that stands out most, it is the one that reaffirms the desire I have for living with the end in mind.

Like Eve, I want the knowledge of the tree of good and evil, and I don’t see a way to gain that knowledge without knowing for myself the bitter and the sweet, the hot and the cold, maidenhood versus motherhood, dependence versus independence, and so forth.

If this life, and all the sacrifice it involves, doesn’t end in becoming more like the divine through experience and learning, I haven’t lost anything for wanting to learn everything I can.

If it does, however, end with knowledge that qualifies me, and everyone else, for a level up in status, wisdom, and capacity in the next phase of existence, I want to learn everything I can in order to be prepared for the responsibilities of that kind of consciousness and presence.

Either way, I’m okay just trying to be the best version of myself I can be, and that is going to look different for me than it does for other women and men.

Conclusion

Where Eve used to be a kind of shadow of everything I didn’t want to be, now she is the depiction of everything I hope to be, naiveté included.

There are so many things I simply wouldn’t have chosen to be or do if I had known in advance how difficult it was going to be to walk through the valley of the shadow of that death to the other side of pure and unadulterated understanding and beauty? So many.

I only hope I will have the foresight, wisdom, and determination to live with such a vision as Eve’s, to sacrifice for greater knowledge my fear of failure and pain, trusting that in the end all that I suffer and learn will be atoned for, and more than that, worth it.

Thank you, Eve, for representing the divine mother I feel so disconnected from, and for gifting me with the perspective to take chances, especially those that grow my capacity for love, empathy, a sense of adventure, a sense of humor, and to expand my understanding of what a privilege it is to be a woman.

With love.

References:

The biblical story of Adam and Eve, the one that I am most privy to, can be found in the King James translation.

Interview with Jordan Peterson and Tulsi Gabbard

**This is an interesting interview, between Dr. Jordan Peterson and Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard, which I mentioned in this entry. By posting it I am not implying that I am in any way affiliated with either person, nor am I suggesting that I am in favor of their opinions, per se. Please watch at your own discretion.

Share this post