In Defense of Women

"Eve's Apology in Defense of Women", Amelia Lanier, 1611

The 60 year old crab apple tree in my yard has been striving to produce apples for the last few years with shrivelled and dissatisfying success. This year it over-produced; robust fruit that tasted sweet, the juice running down my hands and lips as I tasted them. I took a picture, not sure if I was commemorating its life or death.

I went inside and began flipping through a used book I picked up days before in a kiosk at the Fringe Festival in Winnipeg: The Norton Anthology of Literature of Women.

I sped through the introduction and into the pieces of writing. The book begins with women writers from the 1300's. I descended into the pages and found Amelia Lanier, who possibly was Shakespeare's Dark Muse.

Her poem questions the rationale of blaming Eve for The Fall and posits that when Eve gave Adam an apple, it was an act of kindness, a gift of love: knowledge. Lanier contrasts Eve's act of generosity to the greed and violence of men in the persecution and crucifixion of Christ. She rewrites the Myth of the Garden of Eden making women equal, kind and generous and exposes men, their betrayals and their abuse of power in the destruction of love.

Over 400 years later, her feminist view is both uplifting and sombering. Here is the second last stanza of her poem. I have included parentheses provided in the book for clarification.

"Then let us have our liberty again,

And challenge (claim) to yourselves no sovereignty.

You came not into the world without our pain,

Make that a bar (prevention) against your cruelty;

Your fault being greater, why should you disdain

Our being your equals, free from tyranny?

If one weak woman simply did offend,

This sin of yours hath no excuse nor end...