The Mower against Gardens (Marvell)

The Mower against Gardens is a curious title that proposes a few questions. First, what is a mower? Second, What are gardens? And, third, why is the mower against gardens, all the while remembering "against" is to oppose or to be versus?
 The book gives us the definition of a mower: One who cuts grass with a scythe.


Now, What are gardens?


 A garden is a place that is specifically groomed for the display and showing of plants or environment. It is a manicured decoration, adorned with ornamental features of nature. A garden is how humans attempt to control nature for aesthetic.


Who is the mower and why would "the mower" want to be opposed to gardens? Maybe we can attempt to speculate some ideas on the answers to those questions by covering a little more ground.


If I've learned anything over the course of this semester it's that when writing about an age old troupe such as a garden the caveat is that it comes with quite a bit of baggage that must be considered.


As most people in the Western world know the garden is always associated with Adam and Eve and the Garden of Paradise. The story goes that Adam and Eve lived in a paradise that the two eventually fell out of due to indulging from the fruit of knowledge of good and evil. The fruit from this tree represented temptation.


 But, let's look at this Garden of Paradise. This is the first garden. This is the garden that God created for man and woman. Following the logic of humans are made to serve God then the garden is ultimately for God. But, this garden was perfection. This garden was pure and of the earth. Yes, premeditated but not clipped and groomed like the gardens of woman and man. The first garden represents an untouched natural world. The Garden of Eden is nature in its purest form.


 Alright, now about that forbidden fruit. It is always represented with an apple. Reviewing the narrative we discover that Eve was persuaded by the serpent to pluck the fruit from the tree and eat it, then she offered it to Adam after some convincing, then he ate it as well. Once the fruit was eaten Adam & Eve now had the knowledge of Good & Evil but this vision was obtained in disobedience to God. For punishment for this disobedience God banished man, woman, and serpent from the garden. The serpent would be left in the dust as the enemy of man and crawl on its belly. The woman would bare the pains of bringing a new life into the world and man would have to survive in the world by the sweat of his brow.


What do we do with this information in regards to this poem.


Well maybe this gives us insight on who the mower is.


The mower in the Garden of Eden was obviously the serpent. The snake used it's tongue as the scythe to cut down the first Garden by persuading Eve to eat the apple.


So, man and woman were banished from the first garden because they ate the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. This fruit is temptation and represents the original sin. Man and Woman choose their fate from their inherent sinful nature because they were persuaded by the serpent or "mower" to disobey God and "cut" from the garden. It was the first attempt of woman and man at making their own garden separate from God by taking the fruit from the tree and changing the original plans for the garden. In do this, a series of events were set into motion like a chain reaction and the snip of the apple from the tree was the catalyst for these events.


Why is the mower against gardens?


Well if the Garden of Eden was paradise and it was humans original home maybe humans create gardens of their own to mimic or pay homage to the original garden but since the garden is made by humans it is not like the pure garden of paradise which is nature but manipulated to their liking due to the fact that man and woman are susceptible to succumbing to sin. Maybe the mower is against gardens because gardens are created to serve humans and humans are created to serve God but if the serpent can prove that humans can't serve God because all that want to do is serve themselves then maybe humans would fall out of favor with God. The mower is arguing that humans mess up what God creates, that humans want to have their own garden of their own creation by manipulating the garden they were originally given so that essentially a human made garden is a perversion of the natural world.


We see in the poem in the first lines what the mower thinks of man,


"Luxurious man, to bring his vice in use, Did after him the world seduce,"


This is the mower right off the bat saying, "Look how man is all into themselves and look at all the bad things they do."


The poem goes on to speak, "And from the fields the flowers and plants allure, Where Nature was most plain and pure, He first enclosed within the gardens square A dead and standing pool of air, And a more luscious earth for them did knead, Which stupefied them while it fed."


This is the mower literally saying that woman and man had a garden with the "First" garden not only was it more than they needed but the whole arrangement stupefied them. As the narrative goes humans get banished from this garden so the mower is saying that humans already had a garden and they didn't know how to treat it because they messed it up."


The mower is using the poem as a case to go against the gardens humans create and ultimately humans in general. This is used to justify why the mower should be oppose gardens built by man or more specifically opposed to the entire species of humans.


The mower uses the rest of the poem building the case against humanity and why the mower should cut down human life by dragging humans into the dirt with how they manipulate the pure natural world to their sinful nature.


The tree of knowledge is paralleled to the tree of life as in humans have a family tree from Adam and Eve. That is where mankind began. The mower addresses this in the poem and argues that the fruit from our tree has been tainted and that sin and temptation has created some of the fruit from our proverbial family tree. The poem reads,


Forbidden mixtures there to see, No plant now knew the stock from which it came; He grafts upon the tame, That the uncertain and adulterate fruit Might put the palate in dispute His green seraglio has its eunuchs too.