The descendants of Eve: rewriting the Fall in nineteenth-century French literature

From Balzac’s adulterous housewife, who must be ‘lifted up’ and redeemed, to Villiers de l’Isle Adam’s (dis-)obedient Eve robot, there presentation of Eve takes a plurality of forms in nineteenth-century French literature.

This topical and recurring trope lends itself to various literary, social, political and religious strategies across space and time; although writers and philosophical thinkers have tried to bind Eve to one particular ideological representation of woman as deviant, an analysis of the Eve trope demonstrates that there is a resistance to the suppression of female identity.<br>