A recent thread in our forum made me think about the passage where Mary is supposed to play the serpent and to tempt Lyra.
Remember that this is my personal interpretation but certainly it has some truth in it.
According to the allegory Pullman has chosen, Lyra is playing the role of Eve and Will the one of Adam. Also, Mary is the snake who in the Bible leads Eve into temptation. But unlike His Dark Materials the Bible is very explicit:
God does not allow the humans to eat the fruits from the tree of wisdom. The snake then tells Eve that God wants to hide the true aspect of their being from the humans and that to see themself as what they really are they only need to eat the apple, in spite of what God says. There we have the temptation: the forbidden fruit that brings wisdom.
Unfortunately, Pullman is much more subtle. Here we have no forbidden fruits, no tree, no hidden wisdom. Instead, we have two children who listen to a story and while doing so Lyra suddenly feels an odd sensation creeping through her body. The next day as she and Will sit together she offers him a small red fruit, as Mary had been offered a small bit of marzipan in her story. Where is the temptation in that?
To understand this we have to recall what the Church in Lyra's world is doing, what they build Bolvangar for: They want to separate children and their dæmons before they reach adulthood. But that's not the point. In truth they want to prevent adulthood. They want to prevent all children from growing up, want them to stay “innocent” forever.
According to Pullman the process of growing up is the most important in life. In your puberty you learn to question certain things, you learn to question yourself and obviously you become interested in the other sex. So if the Church tries to suppress this they do not less than suppressing the most important part of our human life.
And now there is Mary, telling of her own experience, her being to China. Implicitely (and without meaning to, I am sure of) she tells Lyra and Will to go to China; she is the serpent hissing “Don't listen to the Church. They want to hide something beautiful from you. They don't want you to grow up. Disobey! Go to China!”
And Lyra (as Eve) gets the message. The moment of her understanding is very well described:
“As Mary said that, Lyra felt something strange happen to her body. She felt a stirring at the roots of her hair: she found herself breathing faster. She had never been on a roller-coaster or anything like one, but if she had, she would have recongnized the sensations in her breast: they were exciting and frightening at the same time, and she had not the slighest idea why. The sensation continued, and deepened, and changed, as more parts of her body found themselves affected too. She felt as if she had been handed the key to a great house she hadn't known was there, a house that was somehow inside her, and as she turned the key, deep in the darkness of the buidling she felt other doors opening too, and lights coming on. She sat trembling, hugging her knees, hardly daring to breathe, as Mary went on …”
The red fruit Lyra uses later and the marzipan Mary had used were only symbols of their going to China.
The main ressemblance between the two stories is this promise: the snake promises Eve that the apple will show her her own true aspect, that is to say self-awareness.
Mary does not promise but she makes Lyra understand all the same; she makes her aware of her feelings. These feelings were there all the time but Lyra did not know what they meant. Mary had made her self-aware too, in a different way.
So long,
Konrad -
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