Eve Character Analysis

According to the biblical Book of Genesis, Eve was the first woman. God created her from Adam’s rib, intending for her to be Adam’s companion in the Garden of Eden. But the serpent tempted Eve to eat a forbidden apple from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Eve then offered the fruit to Adam, who ate it. God had told the two of them not to eat from the tree—and once they did, he angrily cast them out of the garden forever. In her speech “Ain’t I a Woman?” Sojourner Truth invokes Eve to strengthen her argument in favor of equal rights for all women. Truth claims that Eve was strong enough to “turn the world upside down”—and so, by that logic, the women fighting for abolition and equal rights during Sojourner’s day should be able to “get it right side up again.” Truth suggests that Eve’s deeds don’t speak to women’s fallibility, sinfulness, or simpleness, as religious leaders often used her story to claim they did. Instead, Truth presents Eve as a powerful woman whose actions resulted in a reordering of the world. So in Truth’s estimation, women are strong and powerful enough to reorder the world once again. Truth’s invocation of Eve speaks to the speech’s central themes of men’s hypocrisy and religion as an excuse for the subjugation of women.