A Trio of Eves

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A few days ago, I was discussing the story of Adam and Eve with a friend, and he sent me a link to a theatrical cutting of Mark Twain’s (translated) diaries of Adam and Eve. It was a short and fascinating piece, so I tracked down the full texts and have been reading them between homework and meals. Twain takes Eve in an intriguingly different direction from what little we see of her in Genesis, much like Pullman does, especially compared to the Adam and Eve we see in Paradise Lost.

So let’s look at these three Eves, shall we.

In Paradise Lost, we have the easily tempted Eve. This woman has inherent weakness to her and is an inferior creature to Adam. Milton considers her as less intelligent, vain, and separated from God. Really, she gets a lot of flack, and Milton seems to think all of it is well deserved.

In the diaries of Adam and Eve, we get an Eve who is lyrical and sweet. She’s a little annoying because she just has so much to say and go on about, and she also assumes that Adam might be less intelligent because he doesn’t like chattering back at her. Yet she’s charming. She adores the world around her, tries to be as helpful as she can, is strangely scientific, and is heartbreakingly lonely. She’s also very young. She doesn’t understand that the moon will come back the next night, and she thinks her reflection in water is a dear friend (which is a scene Milton uses to showcase Eve’s vanity).

Then, there’s Lyra. Fierce little Lyra who runs about on rooftops and tells lies so easily that she is renamed Silvertongue. She is a ruffian and a fighter, but a stuck up, not overly intelligent one. She also has a degree of compassion that makes her very brave when faced with things such as Tony Makarios without his dæmon. She is absolutely an immature child who might be growing up a little.

These are three very very different takes on who Eve is. So what does Eve, as a biblical figure, stand for? In Milton’s eyes, she stands for the instrument of Man’s Fall. Twain’s Eve doesn’t seem to stand for anything but a character in a story (or at least not where I am in the books). Pullman writes an Eve that practically spits in the face of Milton’s Eve in terms of agency and temperament. Is any one Eve more valid than another, and is it possible to reconcile all of these conceptions of Eve?

4 responses to “A Trio of Eves”

  1. remashha Avatar
    remashha

    I took a look at the diaries to discover that their tone is much quirkier and cuter than that of Paradise Lost, maybe that’s why their Eve is similarly sweet. Milton and Twain’s Eve’s can be easily reconciled because their depictions are just different interpretations of the same character: the origin of women, partner of Adam, susceptible to coercion, innocent until tasting the forbidden fruit. I have more trouble consolidating Lyra with these interpretations because she seems to be developed as a response to the character described by Milton and Twain. Do you believe that Lyra’s characteristics that connect her to other characters in Paradise Lost prevent her reconciliation with other Eve’s?

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    1. yonuc Avatar
      yonuc

      I actually find it easier to reconcile Lyra with Milton’s Eve. They both share a certain kind of vanity and frivolity that I don’t see in Twain’s Eve, even if Milton’s and Twain’s are both more agreeable overall (at least initially).
      I do find Lyra’s similarity to other characters (e.g. Satan) really interesting, but I think of it as more “isn’t it interesting how these traits from these several characters coalesce so well into one Lyra” than “do the other characteristics make her inherently different from any other Eve”.

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  2. ewingleo Avatar
    ewingleo

    It seems that many great thinkers are intrigued by portraying the single most important human in Christian history, Eve, the betrayer. While some want to give her a chance, such as Twain and Pullman, others describe her as she is described in Genesis; a fool with little individual thought and even less wisdom. Yet, all three of these authors are known for one thing: challenging society and the power of institutions. This connection, in my mind, is what brings them and their Eves together, as tools for a cause. Going against the grain is something they all identify with, and Eve, the ultimate hipster of not following directions (she did it WAY before it was cool), is someone that surely fascinates them and inspires a crack at interpretation of her true story. In what way they portray her matters less I think, than the fact that they all felt the necessity to write about her and her “OG” rebellious spirit.

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    1. yonuc Avatar
      yonuc

      Milton, however, didn’t just focus on Eve whereas Pullman built his trilogy entirely around her and Twain clearly wrote more for Eve than Adam (The books are called “Eve’s Diary” and “Extracts from Adam’s Diary”).
      Yes, they all chose to write about Eve, but there also seems to be a shift towards Eve’s popularity; more people are drawn to her and willing to write her sympathetically as time goes by. I wonder at how what Eve stands for has evolved (pun fully intended), and it’s interesting to look at these three unique interpretations of Eve and try to figure out what she is meant to be (and whether that should be changeable).

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