Eve of the 21st century CE
Mark Twain, in his Diaries of Adam and Eve, published in May 2000, depicts the day-to-day life of the predecessors of mankind in the form of a journal said to be “translated from the original manuscript”. Adam’s diary begins with his encounter with Eve, that irritating, way too talkative creature with a tendency to name things, following him around. Eve is changing the sights of Eden, that she alas baptized “Niagara falls Park”(Twain, 365). After the fall, Adam eventually learns to appreciate the company of his female companion and ends up falling for her, saying “wherever she was, there was Eden” (377). Eve’s diary recounts her discovery of Eden and Adam, and her growing love for him. Human love, replacing that of God, appears as a feeling that does not need an Eden, a feeling that is in itself a redemption. Throughout the excerpts, an image of the two characters can be shaped but also an image of their respective genders’ roles, behaviors and understanding of love… To what extent does the portrayal of Eve in the extracts apply to the expectations for women today? Millenniums later, some of these expectations may have not changed a lot, but some fundamental changes in the way women are perceived did occur.
To begin with, Eve is quite the sensitive kind, and the use of the word “feel” (Twain, 368) repeatedly, and the semantic field of feelings (feel, heart, love, passion, romantic etc.) expended in her first diary entry, highlight her emotional nature. She also seems to cry at many occasions, and describes it as “natural”. She is appalled by Adam’s attempt to fish and says: “Hasn’t it any heart? Hasn’t it any compassion for those little creatures?” (Twain, 373) which tells the reader a great deal about her. This portrayal of Eve reflects a certain image of women as delicate and sensitive creatures who are very much in touch with their feelings and cannot detach themselves from them, causing them to only think with their hearts and not make much use of their reason. In her book Leaving Beirut; Lebanese writer Mai Ghoussoub recalls how mathematics and French literature were considered respectively as “male and female subjects” (Ghoussoub, 399) math being a scientific subject that requires the use of reason and logic which automatically made it “male”, and literature being a matter that perhaps deals more with expression and emotion, and is therefore seen as “female”. Today, there is still a stereotype of women being too affective and much more sensitive than men. And, while women are expected to demonstrate their feelings and show signs of weakness, men are encouraged to hide them, in order to “appear strong” and keep their macho image intact. In fact, we often hear parents telling their young sons that “men don’t cry” while we rarely see a parent tell their sobbing daughter to stop crying because she’s a woman, and women don’t cry.
Moreover, Eve is represented as a sentimental romantic. She is hopelessly in love with Adam, and is very passionate about him. It is a very devote love that she has for her partner and quite the selfless one as well, since she says: “ I would work for him, and slave over him, and pray for him, and watch by his bedside until I die” (376); she attributes this to her “passionate nature” and thinks that it is a trait of her sex. Eve’s burning passion is therefor said to be that of all her gender, of all women. Nothing really indicates that women are more capable of love than men, and we rarely encounter this sort of love nowadays. Most women would feel deeply offended if you suggest that they were to slave over the one they love .
On a different matter, Eve has an expressed love for beauty. She repeatedly employs the word “beautiful” (Twain, 369), and declares: “the core and center of my nature is love of the beautiful”. Eve also shows an interest for fashion and wishes to make a “lovely gown” (Twain, 371) out of tiger skin and put some stars in her hair. This reveals a certain stereotype of women being into all things pretty, decorative, and embellished, and expressing a rather superficial interest in their looks. In the poem “Barbie Doll” by Marge Piercy, the author emphasizes on how, even though the protagonist was a smart, healthy girl, all society could see in her were her physical flaws:
“She was healthy, tested intelligent,
Possessed strong arms and back,
Abundant sexual drive and manual dexterity.
She went to and from apologizing.
Everyone saw a fat nose on thick legs. “ (Piercy, 360)
The young girl ended up losing herself in order to fit the social norm of what a woman should look and dress like, but to society, she got her “happy ending”: even if she died trying, at least she makes a “pretty” corpse (Piercy, 361). In today’s world, there is a growing obsession with looks; women all over the world are trying, no matter the cost, to fit the expectations society has placed for them. Women are supposed to look good, and wear dresses, and love pink, and if they don’t, then they are automatically judged and categorized.
Finally, Eve seems to have made it her purpose to serve on Adam and is rather too dependent on him. She says: “ if he should beat me and abuse me, I should go on loving him” and “I am weak, I am not so necessary to him as he is to me”. She also points out that she is “only a girl” (Twain, 377), the use of the adjective “only” makes the allusion that being a girl is not enough to entitle her to think, or to say what she thinks, but is rather an excuse for her ignorance. This idea of women being weak, and not as intellectually advanced as men, which therefor makes them dependent on the latter, is slowly on its way to extinction, thanks to feminist movements and thinkers that have showed the world, over the years, that women are just as smart and just as capable as men, and have all the means to be emancipated and independent.
In conclusion, some prejudices about women encountered in The Diaries of Adam and Eve by Mark Twain have endured, and double standards still exist in our modern world. And even though changes regarding the status of women have occurred, it is still a “Man’s, man’s world” as James Brown sings in his hit record…

Works cited
Ghoussoub, Mai, “Missed Opportunities: Me and My Gender”, After words, a reader for academic writing, Rantisi, Rima; Arnold, Lisa R; George, Nate; Hanna, Rima N; Jarkas, Najla; Najjar, Jasmina; Sinno, Zane S; Middle East: Educart, 2012
Piercy, Marge “Barbie Doll”, After words, a reader for academic writing, Rantisi, Rima; Arnold, Lisa R; George, Nate; Hanna, Rima N; Jarkas, Najla; Najjar, Jasmina; Sinno, Zane S; Middle East: Educart, 2012
Twain, Mark, extracts from The Diaries of Adam and Eve, in After words, a reader for academic writing, Rantisi, Rima; Arnold, Lisa R; George, Nate; Hanna, Rima N; Jarkas, Najla; Najjar, Jasmina; Sinno, Zane S; Middle East: Educart, 2012.