What if Adam had taken the apple? Not Eve; not the mythologized temptress, the eternal allegory of error, but Adam, the primordial man. If his hand had reached first, if his teeth had broken the skin of that fruit, the story of interpretation would not look the same. For when men transgress, their acts are rarely called sin. They are renamed as valour.
Prometheus stole fire, and his theft became civilization’s gift. Agamemnon slaughtered Iphigenia, and his cruelty was recast as the tragic burden of kingship. Julius Caesar’s ambition collapsed a republic yet ambition itself was remembered as the very engine of Rome. Male overreach is memorialized not as corruption, but as progress. By contrast, Pandora lifts a jar and unleashes suffering upon womankind. Eve bites into knowledge and condemns her sex as the origin of sin.
This double standard is not confined to Greece or Jerusalem; it saturates Indian thought as well. In theRamayana, Sita’s step across the Lakshmana Rekha; an act of generosity, of offering alms to a disguised ascetic; is remembered not as compassion but as lapse, the threshold that invited catastrophe. Yet Rama’s abandonment of her, not once but twice, is sanctified as dharma, his cruelty transfigured into duty. In the Mahabharata, Draupadi’s laughter at Duryodhana is preserved as arrogance, the spark of war. Her humiliation in the dice hall becomes her shame to bear, while the Pandavas’ reckless gambling; the true cause of her suffering; is absorbed into the inevitability of fate. The men act and remain destiny’s instruments; the woman acts and becomes destiny’s error.
History, outside the epics, rehearses the same pattern. Rani Padmini of Chittor is remembered not for life but for death, her “Jauhar” exalted as chastity’s triumph. Her annihilation is virtue; the men who led their people into unwinnable wars are still praised as brave. Rani Lakshmi Bai of Jhansi is celebrated only because she is made exceptional, a deviation from what a woman should be. Meanwhile, emperors who stained entire landscapes with massacre are enshrined as “great.” Women’s choices become morality tales; men’s choices become history.
If Adam had eaten the apple, Paradise would not have been lost. It would have been relinquished; offered up for the higher calling of awareness. His bite would be remembered as the first philosophy, the noble refusal to kneel in ignorance. Sermons would recall his courage, not temptation. Humanity’s exile would be his sacrifice: the willingness to bear pain for the sake of growth. The very same act, performed by Eve, becomes sin.
This is the essence of myth. It does not merely record events; it builds hierarchies. It tells us not only who erred, but who is allowed to err without lasting consequence. From Eve to Sita, from Pandora to Draupadi, the lesson resounds: a woman’s boundary crossed is transgression; a man’s boundary crossed is always a heroic attempt to evolve.
And this lesson bleeds into history. Women who dared to step beyond prescription have been punished not only in life, but in memory. Midwives and healers were burned as witches in Europe, their knowledge erased in flame. In colonial India, women who sought education or rejected child marriage were vilified as corruptors of tradition, while men who negotiated with empire were hailed as pragmatic. Even in modern politics, a woman who asserts authority is called unnatural, while a man’s authoritarianism is accepted as inevitable; even necessary.
To ask “What if Adam had taken the apple?” is to try open the machinery of narrative itself. To recognize that myth is less about divinity than legitimacy. It baptises male failure as progress and codifies female initiative as danger. The apple was never about knowledge or disobedience; it was about authorship. Who tells the story determines who bears the blame.
Until these myths are rewritten; not with new scapegoats, but with new structures; we remain trapped within their architecture. The apple remains uneaten by Adam not because he never bit it, but because the story could not afford to remember it so.
After all, how could the edifice of order stand, if men’s mistakes were called sins and women’s wisdom called progress?
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