Behind the Scenes of Chapter 4: Constructing Eve Through Embodied Research

Chapter 4 of my current project, Designing Women: The Iconography of Charles Perrault, centers on an overlooked gem in Perrault’s oeuvre: his poetic retelling of Genesis, titled Adam ou la création de l'homme (1697). Though best known for his fairy tales, Perrault was a consummate designer—of images, spaces, books, and ideological worlds. His production methods often underscored a major theme he was trying to express through his multi-media work. I wondered if the choice to print the retelling of Genesis instead of having it illuminated or engraved echoed the poem's themes. Chapter 4 explores how Perrault's rendering of the creation of Eve reveals a deeply layered vision of femininity, divinity, and design. But to fully grasp its impact, I had to go beyond the text.

I turned to embodied research methods—a creative-critical approach that uses the body to recover lost, silenced, or unarchived dimensions of meaning. Specifically, I recreated aspects of the historical printing process at the University of Reading's Historical Presses Workshop, setting type, inking plates, and operating a two-pull press like those used in Perrault’s day. The decision to work hands-on with these materials was not merely illustrative. It was interpretive.

What I discovered was startling: the tools of early printing were feminized in both language and function. The engraved plate is called a matrix—from the Latin for “womb.” The press forces ink from the matrix onto the paper, producing image after image, child after child. But this reproduction occurs only through what seemed to be mechanical violence—compression, repetition, pressure, silence, helplessness. In that sense, the press mirrors the curse of Genesis 3:16. It is a mechanical woman, productive but constrained—her labor yielding art, yet only under male control. However, in operating the press and setting the type myself, I realised that each pull and each setting required gentleness and fine motor skills, qualities that are usually associated with women. The press made a male body's natural upper-body strength obsolete. Rather, the press man had to treat the press almost like a prosthesis. His entire physical body had to feel the press's movement in a somatic and empathetic way. The process became one of re-integration of male and female bodies, almost like a slow penance and redemption of reltionship.

Through embodied experimentation, I could feel the gendered dynamics of production not only on the page but in my own body. The press demanded grace over force, gentleness over brute strength. The labor was not masculine. It was intimate.

These methods offered more than historical context—they provided somatic and emotional data that corrects assumptions. They revealed how grief, constraint, and artistry coexisted in the early modern imaginary. Through the body, I read the archive anew. And in doing so, I found that Eve was never lost—only waiting to be remade.