The Garden of Eden is a well talked about object in the literary world. This wondrous entity brings out imagination of what it looked like, how it smelled, what it meant to Adam and Eve, and what it now means to humanity today. The biblical garden serves as an excellent symbolic device, which can serve many differing purposes depending on the need of the author. An illustration of this point lends itself to two poems from the eighteenth century; "Poets Have Most Pleasure in This Life" by Margaret Cavendish and "The Garden" by Andrew Marvell. These two poems use the Garden of Eden in critically different ways, one a solitary haven and the other, a place of bliss and ignorance. At the same time, both authors use Eden to blame the other sex for foolishly eating the forbidden fruit and the banishment from paradise.
             The Cavendish poem has a light-hearted tone, which leads the reader down a seemingly happy path into the heart of nature. A balance between ignorance and knowledge shows through with the comparison of gardens versus forests. Gardens, especially the Garden of Eden, represent the elements of bliss and unawareness of objects outside of the immediate radius related to a person. Forests, on the other hand, represent "knowledge," "strong judgment," a "smooth-tongue," and "honesty" (Cavendish 28-32). She also describes the forest as a place of plentiful resources, such as game for hunting. Existence of the garden merely supplies a place of peaceful rest with no interruptions from intelligent matters. The forest provides a place to build character, to establish a position on the food chain, and to exalt one's knowledge against nature. With her metaphor of gardens to bliss, Margaret Cavendish associates all gardens to the Garden of Eden (Cavendish 11). This association equates regular gardens to the paradise of Eden, therefore all gardens equal to paradise. The garde...