Clarissa's Analysis of "Mother Eve"

Clarissa Gregory

Freshmen Writing 150 Honors

3/1/12

Evil Eve?

Few women are subject to more scorn than Barbie and Eve, both are viewed as awful role models by society. Barbie’s issues are physical and mostly cursory, but Eve’s controversy lies in her personality and decision making skills. By appealing to ethos and logos, Campbell is able to correct widely accepted and deeply rooted misconceptions about Eve and the Fall and replace them with correct doctrine effectively by going through fifteen points systematically in her essay Mother Eve, Mentor for Today’s Woman: A Heritage of Honor. By using etymology, Campbell appeals to logos. By using quotes from authorities, She appeals to ethos.

Etymology is a matter of fact, the roots of words are generally irrefutable; Campbell uses etymology to appeal logos and correct misconceptions. The first word she breaks down using etymology is “help meet”. She explains that the word “help meet” means “even with or equal to” and that the Hebrew roots imply equality, rescuing, and strength. This is a stark contrast to society’s belief that “a help meet is a person of lesser stature”. When society reads Genesis and gets to the word “help meet”, people view Eve as being lesser than Adam she is more a servant than a companion. This false impression is rooted in misunderstandings. Campbell exposes these errors using etymology, her use of simple logic appeals to a sense of ethos, and helps lay the foundation for correct doctrine.

Many people believe that had Eve resisted temptation, Heavenly Father would have presented a more pleasant alternative than current reality, by using a powerful quote from an authority, Campbell appeals to ethos and replaces an incorrect belief with true doctrine. She quotes Elder Bruce R. McConkie, “Adam, our father, and Eve, our mother, must... fall... become mortal. Death must enter the world. There is no other way. They must fall that man may be”. McConkie states in no uncertain terms that the Fall had to occur, it was the plan, not plan A. Campbell doesn’t have enough authority or credibility on her own to go after such a deeply held, albeit wrong belief. As she observed, even at BYU some students don’t know better. But no one in her LDS audience will argue with Bruce R. McConkie. By quoting him she lends credibility to her argument and is able to quickly weed out a misguided belief that would undermine the rest of her paper if allowed to remain intact.

Campbell uses etymology to appeal to logos and address the idea of original sin. Adam and Eve were commanded not to eat the fruit, many people believe that by eating the fruit and disobeying, Adam and Eve sinned and doomed all of mankind. She found from a Hebrew scholar, that “the word command used in the Creation stories [was not from the] same root word as commandment as used in The Ten Commandments... the command used in the Creation story was from a different verb form. Its usage seems to indicate a strong, severe warning.. possibly temporary in nature”. This etymological detail provides great additional detail and lends credibility to the idea that eating the fruit was merely a transgression, not a sin. This detail may seem trivial, but is essential. In this part of her paper Campbell is laying the foundation, she is taking on deeply rooted false ideas, the misguided version of the Creation story upheld in the world has done a lot of harm. Because of the errors in the Creation story, people have a place to point to and say, “there, women are inferior, sinful, and shouldn’t make decisions”, because of the errors people turn from religion as a whole because aren’t interested in worshipping a sexist god who would pick favorites. Point by point, Campbell is taking apart and rebuilding the story of the beginning that has influenced much of society. Her words go against popular belief, so her argument has to be iron clad. She fortifies her stance using etymology and by doing so appeals to logos.

The traditional story suggests that Eve was made from one of Adam’s ribs, an afterthought built with “spare parts”, in an appeal to ethos Campbell quotes President Spencer W. Kimball. In the eyes of her predominantly LDS audience, its hard to find a more authoritative source on gospel matters than the Prophet. So, when she quotes him saying that “[the account of the rib] is of course, figurative”, she puts an end to argument. She establishes that Eve was her own person, not an extension of Adam but an equal.

Campbell uses etymology to appeal to logos again when debunking the myth that God cursed women with suffering in child birth. The language “I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception. In sorrow thou shalt bring forth children”, is austere and plainly seems to state that child bearing pain is a punishment. Plenty of people believe this, after all, aside from women all members of the animal kingdom go through childbirth generally painkiller free out in the dirt, and they don’t scream about it. Medieval logic would infer that women suffer pain because God cursed them. But that isn’t so, looked at in terms of Hebrew and science God’s words become informative rather than punishing. The Hebraic word that gets translated as sorrow in fact means “‘to labor, ‘to sweat’ or to do something very hard’”. Campbell goes on to explain, “The Father is not cursing or causing pain to be inflicted on Eve; he is making her aware that her newly mortal body will experience pain in the process of childbirth, a pain that will come and go and repeat itself many times”. It would arguably be much crueler not to warn Eve. Scientifically this interpretation of God’s words makes sense, it is logical. Logically, if God’s words are instructions not chastisement, then He is being loving not judging her, and if so than Eve is not hated by God. For centuries, women have been treated as inferior, even God liked men better. The Creation story was the root of this, and its effects have negatively impacted all of Christianity. What kind of people would want to worship a God who cruelly inflicted pain, who didn’t like women, and who punished all humans with death as a result of their progenitors choice that they had no hand in. The difference in the meaning of little words completely changes the story and supports her argument irrefutably.

In the course of a few pages, Campbell corrects thousands of years of misinformation. She is able to do this because she uses etymology to appeal to logos and quotes from authorities to appeal to ethos. Because of her sources she is able to take incorrect assumptions viewed as fact, and replace them with true doctrine. The little changes completely alter the way Eve and God are characterized. Because she effectively appeals to logos and ethos, instead of being angry and argumentative at the end of the paper her reader is able to embrace the points she makes.