North Woods

North Woods brims with references to apples, Adam and Eve, and Eden; one of the novel’s central themes is Paradise Lost. The reason this is so prominent concerns the cultural perception of the US as the new Eden. This idea is deeply ingrained in European consciousness, going back as far as the Renaissance and carrying through in American arts and letters well into the present.

European artists and writers of the 16th century were fond of depicting an ideal pastoral setting, which they called Arcadia. This derives from the ancient Greek region of the same name that held an association with simple rural life. Elizabethan literature is full of references to unspoiled nature and Arcadia. A century later, Marie Antoinette retreated to a fabricated rural village on the grounds of Versailles known as The Queen’s Hamlet.

As the US was actively being settled in the 1600s, the Puritans came to Massachusetts with the intention of creating a pure theocracy untainted by the corruption of old-world religion. While they were deeply suspicious of nature in its wild form, their descendants were not. These conflicting attitudes play out through the persecuted lovers in the novel’s initial chapter.