The sun rises and sets. It has been 500 days since we fell and left in shame from the Garden. The months following the fall left Adam and I in perpetual grief, and we found it difficult to enjoy the lands the Father has generously allowed us to keep when we remember the plenty we once had and willfully abandoned. However, out of our grief was born newness of joy, and the arrival of our son changed everything for us. We named him Cain. The moment I laid eyes on my son and touched the pure smoothness of his skin, I experienced a transcendence of what I knew to be love. I could be called upon to do anything, give anything, or say anything for my son, and I would. It was a self-sacrificial love, and I was profoundly grateful to God for giving Adam and I something so pure and beautiful despite our sin and fall from the Garden.
As Cain grew however, I was constantly reminded of the sin I had brought into the world. He disobeyed, he was selfish, he fought, he lied. Despite the blank slate he represented as a new life, he was just as broken and prone to making mistakes as his father and I were. After this revelation, I found that the only source I could really find hope in was the promise God had given me within the curse. I had been promised pain of childbirth, but I had also been promised a child. Time quickly made it clear that the promised child was not Cain; someday, a Child would come and would be bruised by the same wickedness of Satan that had brought sin and death into the Garden, but would crush his head and bring an end to the dominion of evil. The only hope I have for myself, for Adam, for my son (and another on the way, whom we have decided to Call Abel) is in this promise. We will not be under the bondage of my mistake forever. I take responsibility for my actions now, but I know that someday my children or some future generation will be redeemed from my mistake into a paradise of unity with God and one another even better than the one I once enjoyed.
The hope of tomorrow brings some alleviation to the pain of today, but I live everyday with the knowledge that the fate of mankind rested in my young, ignorant, proud hands, and I compromised it. Not only that, but I brought my dearest one, my darling, the love of my life into my same sin, and watched him pay the same price. I often wonder whether God would have let me pay the full price of my sin had I asked (or had Adam agreed with the prospect), and if so, whether I would have been replaced by another wife for Adam, that they might continue on our kind. As a young woman, nothing could have seemed a more miserable idea, but now, I wish I could have done more.
We have begun to notice the physical repercussions of our sin, as some of our hair has begun to change color, our skin has faded from its former vibrancy, and our very bones feel tired after a day of work. Adam knows how often and how deeply I am plagued by my sin, and has made a tremendous effort day by day to make the most of the days we have together. He treasures me and brings me such delight. I know how devoted he is to me, but I no longer seek to use that devotion for my own purposes. According to the hierarchy the curse has established, I have humbly subdued my pride and submitted myself to the rule of my husband. His love for and protection of me have always come naturally to him, but I am learning to respect and honor him whenever I can. Though I still tell him when I think something is awry or ought to be improved, I am not the ambitious woman I once was. I am Adam’s wife, he is my husband, and we are doing the best we can to create for ourselves a life and living outside paradise.
Analysis:
I am generally enthralled by the passage we discussed in class from Book 10 that follows Adam and Eve’s quarrel as they process their fall. Eve has been found to be ambitious and proud so far in the epic poem, but in this section of Book 10 (lines 927-936), she humbles herself and takes responsibility for her pride, wishing that “the sentence from thy head remov'd may light on me, sole cause to thee of all this woe” (934-935). For the first time, she exhibits self-sacrifice. This was interesting to me for two reasons. First, Eve suddenly looks more like the Son than like Satan, and I wanted to explore the implications this would have on her life later on when she has a son of her own and experiences self-sacrificial love in a new respect. Secondly, I wanted to explore what Eve’s life would look like after the fall in terms of the repercussions her sin had on gender roles. I wanted to know how she might react to the curse; would she proceed with humility or the pride that brought her fall in the first place? Of course there is no way to know for certain, but Milton’s portrayal of Eve after the fall makes me believe that she would maintain the attitude she demonstrates during her reconcile with Adam. My Eve doesn’t have the dramatic flair that Milton characterizes her with (simply due to the unfortunate fact that I am not John Milton!), so I had to adapt her character to my own writing style and portrayal of her character after the fall. Even so, I believe adapting Eve’s character so dramatically allows us to consider her in a new light entirely, from another perspective, in another timeframe. The classic Bible character has multiple dimensions, each of which may be considered from different perspectives, and each of which provide us with unique, interesting ways to think about her character.
Rachel C