The Rise and Fall of Adam and Eve: The Story That Created Us

by Stephen Greenblatt

How weird it is, Augustine thought, that we cannot simply command this crucial part of the body. We become aroused, and the arousal is within us—it is in this sense fully ours—and yet it is not within the executive power of our will. The stiffening of the penis or its refusal to stiffen depends on the vagaries of a libido that seems to be a law unto itself. It was characteristic of Augustine and indeed of his whole age to think about sex in male terms, but he was certain that women must have some equivalent experience to male sexual arousal. That is why in Genesis, in the wake of the first transgression, the woman as well as the man felt shame and covered herself. “It was not a visible movement the woman covered, when, in the same members, she sensed something hidden but comparable to what the man sensed, and they blushed at the mutual attraction.”