Heresy in paradise

Forster’s handling of the Eden myth encompasses the predominant uses of this theme in literature during the first half of the twentieth century. To focus on modernist adaptations of one myth is unusual, but to consider the role of myth in modernist literature more generally is not without precedent. In some cases, it allowed them to explore history as myth, and to present the idea of a lost or false paradise. It focuses on how they incorporated Eden's narrative themes into a wider discussion concerning our historical and biological origins, simultaneously referring to the genesis of a new age through the symbolic language of the old one. Carpenter argues that in being civilised, man has lost 'a primitive condition of ease and contentment', and that the authors create legends of paradise to articulate this loss. Christine Froula has called this part of the text Woolf's 'first rewriting of Genesis', and claims that it shows her struggling 'against Eden's legacy'.