An Apple a Day...

So after a few weeks of Genesis-filled class time, we've moved on to some of the contemporary feminist representations of the story. I'm particularly fond of Michelene Wandor's "Gardens of Eden," especially the opening poem, "Eve in the Morning."

So God created man (sic) in his (sic) own image?

'Male and female he created them' Genesis 1:27

Look
it was only a tree, for God's sake
a nice tree
nice shade, green leaves
an apple

You eat one apple and they remember you forever; you
only want to be left in peace, make
chutney, compote, dried apple rings
on a string

a snake? don't be silly
knowledge? you read too many Good Books
naked? so I like the sun. I tan easy.

Hava. Eve. Me (3)

The poem continues, but this is the part that strikes me as being especially emblematic of the Revisionist Mythology movement in feminist women's writing, particularly in poetry. I'm particularly fond of the opening line; the "(sic)" is an editorial indication that the original text being quoted contained an error - though usually reserved for a spelling or punctuation error, I find it rather poignant that Wandor uses it in this case. She not only questions the gender of deity, but also of whether it was man, woman, or both that were supposedly created in the image of god. It also implies that, ideologically, the entire conception of patriarchal dominance and authority is drawn from human error in Biblical narrative.
I also like the way Wandor has Eve minimize the Fall itself - "Look / it was only a tree, for God's sake" - by reducing the importance of the Tree of Knowledge. The almost neglectful way Eve says "for God's sake" - though clearly Wandor's use of the phrase is very deliberate - downplays the 'sin' of eating the fruit and practically scoffs at the way the temptation is figured in Genesis (and in subsequent texts, like Milton's Paradise Lost).
Wandor's Eve is also very domestic (in contrast to Lilith, the other figure in the sequence "Gardens of Eden," who is exotic, sexual, powerful, and worldly), desiring to make "chutney, compote, dried apple rings / on a string." However, domestication - the language of cooking - is also a tool of minimization; the "apple" is symbolically reduced from a signifier of sin and feminine weakness in regards to temptation, becoming instead a series of foods: things to be consumed in comfort, things which are homey, things that have no mythic significance whatsoever. Eve's domestication of the Genesis myth laughs in the face of the serious and somber temptation and Tree, creating instead an image of domestic simplicity that is nevertheless both intelligent and witty, empowering Eve as woman, as mother, and as autonomous speaker.

Reign in Hell

My class - the one I teach - is reading pieces from John Milton's Paradise Lost this week. I've always been especially fond of Satan in this poem, and I have a few thoughts about how the poor guy just gets co-opted into spouting all sorts of self-defeating religious ideology in Milton's poem.
Satan in Paradise Lost I:249-263 - "Farewell, happy fields,
Where joy for ever dwells! Hail, horrors! hail,
Infernal world! and thou, profoundest Hell,
Receive thy new possessor--one who brings
A mind not to be changed by place or time.
The mind is its own place, and in itself
Can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven.
What matter where, if I be still the same,
And what I should be, all but less than he
Whom thunder hath made greater? Here at least
We shall be free; th' Almighty hath not built
Here for his envy, will not drive us hence:
Here we may reign secure; and, in my choice,
To reign is worth ambition, though in Hell:
Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven."

Power, knowledge, etc. seem to inversely impact goodness - "While they adore me on the Throne of Hell, / With Diadem and Scepter high advanc't / The lower still I fall, only supreme / In misery; such joy Ambition finds" (Milton IV:89-92). The ideology of power would seem to dictate that the higher one ascends in power, the less one wishes to be challenged; in an ideological system based on the struggle for power, it makes sense for religious ideology to encourage humility rather than ambition. The desire for power is curbed with threats of hell and the educated elite are left with power, knowledge, et al. Ironic, isn't it?

Satan seems to be attempting to escape this ideology by reversing it - "Evil be thou my Good" (ibid IV:110) - however, by constructing attempted escape as a reversal, Milton ensnares Satan within the discourse of that same ideology: "So farewell Hope, and with Hope farewell Fear, / Farewell Remorse: all Good to me is lost; / Evil be thou my Good" (ibid IV:108-110). Even in rebellion, Satan is trapped - and Milton traps him intentionally in the snare of his own discourse - in an Althusserian vicious cycle in which he must always perpetuate the divine ideology, regardless of if he strives to do evil or to do good.