The Seba library treats Rib in 4 passages, across 4 authors (including Hillman, James, Woodman, Marion, Auerbach, Erich).
he is her material cause, since she is made of his rib; and he is her final cause, since her end and purpose is help for him. The male is the precondition of the female and the ground of its possibility.
Hillman demonstrates how the rib narrative was systematized by patristic commentators into a full Aristotelian causal hierarchy, making Adam the ontological ground of Eve’s existence, substance, and purpose.
, The Myth of Analysis: Three Essays in Archetypal Psychology, 1972thesis
The woman who has pondered that mystery in her heart will never be merely sprung from Adam’s rib, for she has not come to her spirituality through a head trip.
Woodman argues that genuinely embodied feminine spirituality transcends and dissolves the subordinate identity imposed by the rib-derived origin myth.
, The Owl Was a Baker’s Daughter: Obesity, Anorexia Nervosa and the Repressed Feminine: a Psychological Study, 1980thesis
far inferior to her husband and easily guided by him. That is how God created her from Adam’s rib. And God explicitly ordered Adam to guide her, and Eve to obey and serve him.
Auerbach reads the rib narrative as the literary-theological foundation for Eve’s constitutive inferiority and submissiveness within medieval dramatic tradition.
, Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature, 1953supporting
years fell away and her face began to glow with the freshness of Eden’s garden. ‘You know,’ she said with a little shrug and a girlish laugh reminiscent of Eve
Nichols evokes the Eden myth atmospherically through the Popess’s persona, alluding to Eve’s archetypal freshness without directly engaging the rib symbolism.
, Jung and Tarot: An Archetypal Journey, 1980aside