Lisa Peters
Bible as Literature
December 1st
Wanda as Mary
In reading the slave, I became interested to realize that Jacob was not the only one who could be called a slave. Wanda too is stuck in a village she hates, bound by social expectation and tradition and unable to escape and held hostage by the love she feels for Jacob. Only when they act upon their love do either Jacob or Wanda feel free.
Jacob’s slavery is mentally and physically enforced. “There was an agreement among them [the villagers] that any who saw him on the other side of the stream should immediately kill him” (pg 7). An earlier quote indicates Jacobs’s resignation to his fate. “There had been a time when Jacob had planned to run away, but nothing had come of it” (pg7). Like Jacob, Wanda is forced to remain in with her family, though she has little liking for them. “Stach’s death had brought her humiliation. She had been forced to return to her parents and again sleep with them and Basha in one bed…The hut stank. Her family conducted themselves like animals” (Pg 30).
Even more emotionally wrenching, Wanda is deeply in love with Jacob, but he refuses any advances she makes. “She had fallen in love with the salve at first sight, and though over the years they had been much together, he had stayed remote…but the strength of the attraction he exerted upon her did not abate…she was unable to free herself” (Pg 16).
After Jacob and Wanda lay together, they develop a deep intimacy that goes beyond lust. “Jacob in the old days would have considered himself ridiculed if anyone had ever suggested to him that a time would come when he would discuss such matters as the freedom of will, the meaning of existence, and the problem of evil with a peasant woman. But one never knows where events are leading. He lay closed to Wnada in the granary, the same blanket covering them both, seeking to explain in a strange tongue those things he had studied in the holy books” (Pg81). Wanda even manages to pry Jacob loose from the intense attachment he has to his religion. “He had changed since he had cohabited with Wanda…He prayed but without concentration” (pg85).
Later in the book, when ransomed by others from Josefov, Jacob goes to fetch Wanda from the village after dreaming of her, even though he believes it is wrong to do so. “Jacob’s longing for Wanda made him willing to brave any risk…even thought the journey must result in sin” (pg 133). In their love together, Jacob and Wanda find something precious and liberating. Becoming absorbed by Wanda, Jacob gives himself from the necessary distance to began to examine his slavery to his religion.
In The Slave, Wanda fits Frye’s description of a redeeming feminine mythological symbol. Frye speaks of the way the sexual female in society represents Eve, who seduced Adam into sin. Yet by being the symbol for humanities downfall, Eve also sets up the proper method for humanity’s salvation; the Virgin Birth. Mary, a second Eve as Frye refers to her in pg 192, becomes the symbol for the new birth of humanity, one untainted by “the perversion of sexuality” a phrase found on pg 193. As the mother of Christ, Mary helps complete the full circle of humanity’s redemption.
Wanda is the Eve and Mary of The Slave. In the book itself she is referred to as Eve.“Sarah was like Mother Eve, who had been formed from Adam’s rib, her husband her only relative” (pg 160). Like Eve, Wanda tempts her husband into sinful lust. Yet Wanda also fulfils the myth by redeeming him with her love.
