In "Eve to Her Daughters," Eve states that it was not she who "began it." She and her family were forced to live in cold and uncomfortable caves. They went hungry and had to work for their food. Eve often heard her children whining, but she wasn't unhappy during this time because she was fairly content to follow her husband Adam. Eve adapted herself to their punishment, accepting the family's new life.
Eve insinuates that Adam could not accept their situation. She states that her husband continuously agonized over what happened, taking the trick played on the couple by their divine superiors as a personal insult. Adam had discovered a flaw in himself for which he felt the need to compensate.
In the third stanza, Eve describes the imperfections of the outside world as compared to Eden. In the outside world, the seasons changed, the animals were fast and difficult to hunt, and Adam had to work for a living, which he detested. Eve recounts how Adam even complained about her cooking, but that it was hard to compete with the delicious standards set forth by Heaven.
Adam began working obsessively to recreate Eden in the outside world. Improvements would be made, including having central heating, domesticated animals, mechanical harvesters, combustion engines, escalators, refrigerators, and modern means of communication. In addition, there would be "multiplied opportunities for safe investment / and higher education," meaning that wealth and education became top priorities. Eve looks at all this as evidence that Adam's pride had been hurt.
In this process, Adam had to unravel everything by learning the mechanism of how things worked. He believed that understanding the internal mechanism of things would provide the secret of life in this universe. Whenever he "got to the very inside of the whole machine" he would exclaim, "So that is how it works!" By understanding how things worked, he figured himself as their inventor. Because God and Satan could not be demonstrated, Adam decided that this meant they didn't exist. Eve determines that this shows Adam's jealousy.
In the sixth stanza, Eve states that Adam reached the center where nothing at all can be demonstrated. In this center, Adam himself does not exist, but he refuses to accept this conclusion. Eve tells her daughters that Adam had always been an egotist.
Eve remembers how it was warmer back in the caves they first lived in after the expulsion from Eden. There was none of this fall-out. Eve suggests to her daughters that for the sake of the children, it's time they took over and settled into leadership roles. However, Eve's daughters inherited Eve's own faults of character: they are submissive, following Adam "even beyond existence." However, Eve states that Abel and Cain are proof that faults of character have their own logic, and things always work out.
Eve goes on to wonder whether the whole elaborate fable of the Bible, right from the beginning, is meant to demonstrate this. Perhaps this is the whole secret that Adam so desperately sought. Perhaps nothing is real but people's faults of character. At least, Eve says, faults of character can be demonstrated. In the very last stanza, Eve states that it is useless to suggest this to Adam. He had "turned himself into God" because of his egotistical self-idolization, and as God is faultless, this proves he doesn't exist.
