The Garden, the Serpent, and Eve: An Ecofeminist Narrative Analysis of Garden of Eden Imagery in Fashion Magazine Advertising by Shelly Carmen Colette Thesis presented to the Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies of the University of Ottawa as partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (Religious Studies) Thesis Supervisor: Dr. Pierluigi Piovanelli © Shelly Carmen Colette, Ottawa, Canada, 2012 ii ABSTRACT: Garden of Eden imagery is ubiquitous in contemporary print advertising in North America, especially in advertisements directed at women. Three telling characteristics emerge in characterizations of Eve in these advertising reconstructions. In the first place, Eve is consistently hypersexualized and over-eroticized. Secondly, such Garden of Eden images often conflate the Eve figure with that of the Serpent. Thirdly, the highly eroticized Eve-Serpent figures also commonly suffer further conflation with the Garden of Eden itself. Like Eve, nature becomes eroticized. In the Eve-Serpent-Eden conflation, woman becomes nature, nature becomes woman, and both perform a single narrative plot function, in tandem with the Serpent. The erotic and tempting Eve-Serpent-Eden character is both protagonist and antagonist, seducer and seduced. In this dissertation, I engage in an ecofeminist narratological analysis of the Genesis/Fall myth, as it is retold in contemporary fashion magazine advertisements. My analysis examines how reconstructions of this myth in advertisements construct the reader, the narrator, and the primary characters of the story (Eve, Adam, the Serpent, and Eden). I then further explore the ways in which these characterizations inform our perceptions of woman, nature, and environmentalism. Using a narratological methodology, and through a poststructuralist ecofeminist lens, I examine which plot and character elements have been kept, which have been discarded, and how certain erasures impact the narrative characterizations of the story. In addition to what is being told, I further analyze how and where it is told. How is the basic plot being storied in these reconstructions, and what are the effects of this version on the archetypal characterizations of Eve and the Garden of Eden? What are the cultural and literary contexts of the reconstructed narrative and the characters within it? How do these contexts inform how we read the characters within the story? Finally, I examine the cultural effects of these narrative reconstructions, exploring their influence on our gendered relationships with each other and with the natural world around us. iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I gratefully acknowledge the generous financial assistance of the Department of Classics and Religious Studies at the University of Ottawa, and the Province of Ontario, for funding me through five years of research and writing. I would never have been able to finish this project without the support of my family, especially my father, who always understood the words “I can’t, Dad, I have to work” as I stared blankly at a computer screen, and my aunt, who took me in and listened to me blather on endlessly about sex and the devil. I would never have encountered narrative theory in the first place were it not for Beth McKim – thank you for introducing me to this tremendously gratifying field of study. I’m also grateful to Alison Belyea, who taught me long ago to never get so bogged down in theory that I forget my purpose. I’m forever indebted to my delightful colleagues and mentors, Fiona Black and Andrew Wilson, who took a chance on a small-town kid. Most of all, of course, I am grateful for the guidance and support of my dissertation advisor, Pierluigi Piovanelli who, with his unswerving dedication to student mentorship, always knew when to push me in the right direction and when to let me learn from my many (and likely ongoing) mistakes. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract…………………………………………………………………………………….. ii Acknowledgements………………………………………………………………………… iii Introduction………………………………………………………………………………… 1 Chapter One: Literature Review of Ecofeminism, Ecofeminist Literary Criticism, and Ecofeminist Perspectives on Genesis 1-3 ………………………………………….. 23 Part One: Ecofeminism and Ecofeminist Literary Theory………………………………. 23 Similarities Within Ecofeminism …………………………………………………….. 24 Differences Between Ecofeminisms ………………………………………………… 27 Romantic Ecofeminism ………………………………………………………………. 28 Cultural Ecofeminism ………………………………………………………………… 32 Post-structuralist Ecofeminism ………………………………………………………. 36 Part Two: Ecofeminist Literary Criticism and Green World Imagery …………………. 40 Ecocriticism ………………………………………………………………………….. 40 Ecofeminist Literary Criticism: Anthropomorphism and ‘Telling theThing’ ……….. 42 Methods of Ecofeminist Literary Criticism ………………………………………….. 47 Part Three: Ecofeminist Biblical Analysis and the Garden of Eden Narrative ………… 52 Feminist and Ecological Studies of Creation ………………………………………… 55 Feminist and Ecological Studies of the Fall …………………………………………. 65 Ecofeminist Studies of Creation and Fall ……………………………………………. 69 Conclusion ………………………………………………………………………………... 73 Chapter Two: Literature Review of Myth, Metaphor, and Narrative Theory……….. 75 Introduction……………………………………………………………………………… 75 Part One: Reading the Bible in a Narrative World ……………………………………… 77 Northrop Frye and the Great Biblical Code…………………………………………… 77 Paul Ricoeur: Metaphor, Narrative Identity, and Hermeneutics ……………………... 85 Frye and Ricoeur in Conversation…………………………………………………….. 96 Part Two: Mieke Bal, Narratology, and Narrative Analysis…………………………….. 100 Narrative at the Level of Text…………………………………………………………. 104 Narrative at the Level of Story………………………………………………………... 111 Narrative at the Level of Fabula………………………………………………………. 119 Conclusion………………………………………………………………………………. 122 Chapter Three: Eroticizing Eve…………………………………………………………. 123 Introduction……………………………………………………………………………… 123 Stuck in the Middle with You: Emplotment and Continuity……………………………. 124 Crisis, Continuity, and Characterization………………………………………………… 129 No, I am Spartacus: The Various Roles of the Reader………………………………….. 136 A Modern-Day Myth: Time in Narrative Construction…………………………………. 145 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………….. 150 v Chapter Four: Through the Looking Glass: Adam and Eve Images in Advertising… 153 Introduction……………………………………………………………………………… 153 Part One: Eve’s Gaze into the Camera…………………………………………………... 154 The Eye Knows: Eve’s Gaze as Sexual Power……………………………………….. 154 In and Out of Focus: Adam and Eve as Focalizing Agents…………………………… 162 Part Two: Eve Looks Away……………………………………………………………... 166 Getting Back to the Garden: Text and Context……………………………………….. 166 “Global Warning Ready”: Textual Irony in Context…………………………………. 172 The Fall of Man: Sexual Power and Agency in the New Eden………………………. 180 Conclusion………………………………………………………………………………. 182 Chapter Five: Eve, Eden, and the Serpent Images in Advertising……………………. 186 Introduction……………………………………………………………………………… 186 Part One: Eve and Eden…………………………………………………………………. 187 The Garden as Character……………………………………………………………… 187 Gendering Eden: A Wild World of Green…………………………………………….. 193 Part Two: Eve and the Serpent…………………………………………………………... 203 Conclusion: The Three Faces of Eve……………………………………………………. 215 Chapter Six: Implications: Eroticizing Environmentalism……………………………. 218 Introduction……………………………………………………………………………… 218 Getting Back to the Garden……………………………………………………………… 219 Eden for Sale…………………………………………………………………………….. 223 Eroticizing Environmentalism…………………………………………………………... 235 Conclusion………………………………………………………………………………. 240 Conclusion………………………………………………………………………………… 242 Bibliography………………………………………………………………………………. 251 Appendix A: Images Used………………………………………………………………… 274 Appendix B: A Selection of Images Not Used …………………………………………… 285 1 INTRODUCTION Stories, great flapping ribbons of shaped space-time, have been blowing and uncoiling around the universe since the beginning of time. And they have evolved. The weakest have died and the strongest have survived, and they have grown fat on the retelling… stories, twisting and blowing through the darkness. And their very existence overlays a faint but insistent pattern on the chaos that is history. Stories etch grooves deep enough for people to follow in the same way that water follows certain paths down a mountainside. And every time fresh actors tread the path of the story, the groove runs deeper. - Terry Pratchett, Witches Abroad (1991) The biblical Genesis/Fall narrative is ubiquitous in North American culture. Its primary narrative themes of creation, temptation, and punishment are found throughout the corpus of western Christian art and literature. The characters of the story are archetypal: Adam, Eve, the Creator God, the Serpent, even the Garden of Eden itself are characters who transcend the story in which they are situated. Genesis/Fall imagery is instantly recognizable. Who among us doesn’t immediately associate an image of a woman and a serpent with temptation in the Garden of Eden? An apple as an offering? A fig leaf as clothing? These images are so familiar, they have been reconstructed so often, that one sole image can evoke the entire narrative. The Genesis/Fall myth informs our understandings of who we are and what our roles are in the world. In Western culture, the Genesis/Fall myth is foundational to our relationships, both with each other and with the natural world. My interest in popular reconstructions of the Garden of Eden began in late July, 2005 with this image, the cover of a free daily newspaper