lawrence on hawthorne
In the first place, Adam knew Eve as a wild animal knows its mate, momentaneously, but vitally, in blood-knowledge. Blood-knowledge, not mind-knowledge. Blood-knowledge, that seems utterly to forget, but doesn't. Blood-knowledge, instinct, intuition, all the vast vital flux of knowing that goes on in the dark, antecedent to the mind.
Then came that beastly apple, and the other sort of know- ledge started.
Adam began to look at himself. 'My hat!' he said. 'What's this ? My Lord ! What the deuce ! - And Eve ! I wonder about Eve.'
Thus starts KNOWING. Which shortly runs to UNDERSTANDING, when the devil gets his own.
When Adam went and took Eve, after the apple, he didn't do any more than he had done many a time before, in act. But in consciousness he did something very different. So did Eve. Each of them kept an eye on what they were doing, they watched what was happening to them. They wanted to KNOW. And that was the birth of sin. Not doing it, but KNOWING about it. Before the apple, they had shut their eyes and their minds had gone dark. Now, they peeped and pried and imagined. They watched themselves. And they felt uncomfortable after. They felt self-conscious. So they said, 'The act is sin. Let's hide. We've sinned.'
No wonder the Lord kicked them out of the Garden. Dirty hypocrites.
The sin was the self-watching, self-consciousness. The sin, and the doom. Dirty understanding.
--from Studies in Classic American Literature, Chapter 7 Nathaniel Hawthorne and The Scarlet Letter by D.H. Lawrence (1923)