American Interpretations
Rosemary Radford Ruether, a feminist theologian, makes a powerful argument for the prolonged, negative impact of particularly the Edenic portions of the myth on American society. She gives credit to chauvinistic interpretations of the Edenic myth, like that of the Puritans, that portray the earth as subordinate to man, for the “subjugation of the female by the male and its parallel expressions in oppressor-oppressed relationships between social classes, races, and nations” (46). The prevailing modern interpretation that accomplishes these societal divisions was not always present on a global scale but traces its origins to the first millennia when the human race’s relationship with the earth shifted from one concerned with preservation to one concerned with cultivation (Ruether). This revision gave man dominion over the earth, an interpretation that would serve, within the subsequent cultural structures, as not only a model for man’s relationship with the earth, but within the human race as well. Evidence of this myth, and how deeply embedded it is in the societal, political, and institutional practices of American culture, can clearly be seen in the birth of the “New World” as European settlers arrived on the eastern shores of North America seeking a tabula rasa on which they could build their unfettered society. In his History of the United States, George Bancroft relates that “the concession of the Massachusetts Charter seemed to the puritans like a summons from Heaven, inviting them to America. There the gospel might be taught in its purity; and the works of nature would alone be the safe witnesses of their devotions” (Bancroft, 380). The puritanical mythology found a foothold in both the natural abundance and religious autonomy the New World offered. Much of what was written by the first groups of settlers implied, and in some cases directly referenced, the fruition of their preconceived ideas. The foundation their beliefs laid to support the moral framework of what would become the United States would endure longer than any other group.
In an account of his travels in and around Virginia and North Carolina, Colonel William Byrd II describes his impressions of the land and its people. Much of his descriptions include references to the richness of the soil, the height of the trees, and the abundance of fresh water he encounters. Upon reaching the eastern bank of a creek in North Carolina, Byrd notes that “six paces from the mouth, and just at the brink of the river Dan stands a sugar tree, which is the beginning of [his] fine tract of land in Carolina, called the Land of Eden” (Byrd, 284). However, despite the beauty the first Americans encountered, they could not accept new Eden at face value; it needed to be molded out of the wilderness, and they set about doing just that from the moment they arrived. Even hundreds of years later, the idea of the “garden rather than the wilderness” dominates the imagery used to describe that period of time because “Eden was ‘achieved’ when nature was cultivated, and not ‘discovered’ in the wilderness” (Lewis, 590). This distinction was also extended to Africans and African Americans, and it would be this same argument, a need to tame what was wild in order to civilize it, that would give American leaders like Jefferson Davis the justification to “defend openly the South’s ‘paternal institution’” of slavery for which he claimed “biblical legitimacy and sanction” (Cooper, 186). It will be this distinction between the untamed and uncultivated archetype fashioned by God and the version man presumed superior, that which he must wrestle and tame, that will linger in American manifestations of the Edenic myth for centuries.
American Quakers immediately recognized how deeply embedded these beliefs were in their system of religious and civil authority and how dangerous that could be for mankind, and began to resist society’s strict categorizations as early as the mid-1800s. At that time, Transcendentalists also began to take issue with both America’s reliance upon the industrial revolution and the destruction of nature that came as a result. They sought to overthrow the institutions they saw as oppressive and marry the ideals of man with those of the most wild and untamed version of nature that could be salvaged. John Steinbeck, William Faulkner, and Nathaniel Hawthorne also rejected society’s puritanical manipulations, and in their place, presented characters that criticized the American man’s purported dominion by creating situations in which the characters were eroded by their disparate positions in society, but their impact was limited because they continued to work within the framework of a divisive system that positioned man on one side of the argument while representing the opposition as a dominated “other” which only perpetuated the binary system so deeply embedded in the myth. True rejection of the dualism created by the myth would not take place until the 1920s when authors and artists began to create texts that not only defied the binary system but also defied traditional patriarchal conventions of print.
In an account of his travels in and around Virginia and North Carolina, Colonel William Byrd II describes his impressions of the land and its people. Much of his descriptions include references to the richness of the soil, the height of the trees, and the abundance of fresh water he encounters. Upon reaching the eastern bank of a creek in North Carolina, Byrd notes that “six paces from the mouth, and just at the brink of the river Dan stands a sugar tree, which is the beginning of [his] fine tract of land in Carolina, called the Land of Eden” (Byrd, 284). However, despite the beauty the first Americans encountered, they could not accept new Eden at face value; it needed to be molded out of the wilderness, and they set about doing just that from the moment they arrived. Even hundreds of years later, the idea of the “garden rather than the wilderness” dominates the imagery used to describe that period of time because “Eden was ‘achieved’ when nature was cultivated, and not ‘discovered’ in the wilderness” (Lewis, 590). This distinction was also extended to Africans and African Americans, and it would be this same argument, a need to tame what was wild in order to civilize it, that would give American leaders like Jefferson Davis the justification to “defend openly the South’s ‘paternal institution’” of slavery for which he claimed “biblical legitimacy and sanction” (Cooper, 186). It will be this distinction between the untamed and uncultivated archetype fashioned by God and the version man presumed superior, that which he must wrestle and tame, that will linger in American manifestations of the Edenic myth for centuries.
American Quakers immediately recognized how deeply embedded these beliefs were in their system of religious and civil authority and how dangerous that could be for mankind, and began to resist society’s strict categorizations as early as the mid-1800s. At that time, Transcendentalists also began to take issue with both America’s reliance upon the industrial revolution and the destruction of nature that came as a result. They sought to overthrow the institutions they saw as oppressive and marry the ideals of man with those of the most wild and untamed version of nature that could be salvaged. John Steinbeck, William Faulkner, and Nathaniel Hawthorne also rejected society’s puritanical manipulations, and in their place, presented characters that criticized the American man’s purported dominion by creating situations in which the characters were eroded by their disparate positions in society, but their impact was limited because they continued to work within the framework of a divisive system that positioned man on one side of the argument while representing the opposition as a dominated “other” which only perpetuated the binary system so deeply embedded in the myth. True rejection of the dualism created by the myth would not take place until the 1920s when authors and artists began to create texts that not only defied the binary system but also defied traditional patriarchal conventions of print.