Representations of Eve in Antiquity and the English Middle Ages by John Flood (review)

The title well describes the purpose of the book, which is to provide a survey of the Eve figure both geographically and chronologically. The introduction situates the work as “feminist,” but pursues no critical agenda. The author instead outlines—judiciously and carefully—the various readings of antique and medieval exegetes as they “naturalise[d] … contemporary beliefs about women with the authority of Genesis” (p. 5). High altitude flyovers of patristic tradition (Tertullian, Augustine, Ambrose, Avitus, Isidore, Bede, Hugh of St. Victor, et al.) descend to more local readings of medieval texts, with attention to the persistent “association between women and religious error” (p. 10) and to the major typologies of Eve as Mary (Eva/Ave) and of Eve as the Church. The inclusion of classical, Midrashic, and Koranic perspectives provides welcome—but necessarily superficial—background and reference points. The main text and the notes offer numerous ways into the material, and even though all of the subjects ramify quickly, Flood is very good at capsule summaries in the spirit of an encyclopedia entry in lecture-note format.

The real value of the book lies in its up-to-date bibliography of primary and secondary sources and in its even-handed treatment of the woman question in multiple contexts. The index would be the first place I would go when investigating some point or question of Eve lore. For example, in an Old English context, it is helpful to be made aware (or reminded) of what the Genesis B poet calls Eve’s “wacran hyge” (p. 60; weaker mind?), and one welcomes an annotated discussion of the order and location of creation—including a comparison of the materials used—of man as opposed to woman (pp. 84–88). At its best, the book provides integrated readings of themes such as the motif of the female-faced Eden serpent (pp. 71–77) and of texts such as the very important Legend of Adam and Eve, the English cycle plays, and accounts of the Harrowing of Hell (including Langland’s). The notion that Eve “borrowed” sin from the devil (p. 121; found in the Fasciculus Morum and the Stanzaic Life of Christ) could be developed more fully, however. Likewise, the review of the long-running querelle des femmes tradition is severely compressed (pp. 81–82), the short section on Dante is conventional and has little to do with Eve (pp. 77–80), and the two-page epilogue on Witches is oddly tacked on. In fairness, each of these subjects could easily be the subject of several independent monographs.

Flood concludes that Eve was not a uniformly negative figure, and that a medieval audience of a cycle play would not necessarily have been “unprepared, shocked, or even mildly indignant” (p. 122) when Eve spoke on stage. Happily, most readers of medieval literature, and even most critics, have moved beyond this narrow response and recognized that medieval readers and writers were as intrigued by the rich ambiguities of the protowoman as we are.