An Analysis of "Eve's Apologie": Religion and Its Significance Anonymous College

Aemelia Lanyer was the "first" established Englishwoman to have asserted her identity as a poet through her single collection of poems. Eve's Apologie by Lanyer is essentially a subversive text that questions dominant assumptions about the role of women in society. It delineates the idea that women should not be subordinated for the sin of Eve and compares faultless Eve to Pilate, who was well aware of Christ's innocence. This was a radical idea in her time. Through this text, the poet uses logic to contest the validity of the dominant social hierarchy and show that men's sin can be seen as being greater than that of women, who have been marginalized for the sins of Eve.

The narrator of this poem says that "faultesse Jesus", who had committed no crime, is being made to suffer for no reason. She asks her husband to remove this cause of sorrow and let justice takes its own course; furthermore, she asks him to not go against his own conscience and stand silent as a crime is being committed. In these respects, she makes a very interesting remark:

Let not us Women glory in Mens fall,

Who had power given to over-rule us all.

In the above line she attempts to say that if this crime is truly commited, then men should not be able to...