In The Garden of Eden, David Bourne retreats into his writing to escape the complications of his life, complications located primarily in the actions and moods of his young wife, Catherine . He keeps his own space in which he writes; a daily regime regulates his work practices. He reflects: “If you can't respect the way you run your life, then by all means respect your craft. You at least know your job” (148). It's comforting to have something of his own that he understands well and can control. However, Catherine tries at every moment to undermine this one thing he has, to devalue it or to appropriate it for herself. Marita, however, appreciates and respects David's work; she is neither jealous nor threatened by his talent. With Marita, he no longer has to protect himself against incessant insecurity and jealousy; he willingly shares the orderly, insular world of his writing with her and makes himself vulnerable in a new way. His understanding of people and how best to interact with others in the world is altered, if only temporarily, and he is able to exploit a part of his writing that was previously unknown to him. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an original essay In Africa, David learned to “never say anything to anyone” (181). Anything cannot be entrusted to others, as people tend to use whatever is given to them to pursue only personally beneficial ends, often destroying something meaningful or beautiful in the process. Thus, at the opening of the novel, David is on his guard; he is not free from the world he has created for himself, where nothing exists except the landscapes and characters he creates. Through writing he achieves pure agency; he doesn't let anyone into this world, even peripherally. “. . . [David] wrote from an inner core that could not be split or even marked or scratched” (183): because it is exclusively his, no one can corrupt or destroy his writing. His art is the logical extension of his philosophy. David desires total autonomy and he found it in literature. Catherine is threatened by this part of David that she cannot touch. David is hers – and she has no one else, no friends, no family – and so she must completely transform him to bear witness to it, to exercise her free will. She manipulates David into changing his appearance; it changes their sexual dynamic. She and David are “against all others,” she says (37), and so they must be together and equal in all things, or at least (contradictorily) be together and equal as she envisions. David's criticisms of her latest book, her "cuts", make her furious. She blames David for keeping and reading them, as if he were obsessive. News clippings are something she's not a part of; they belong solely to David and are part of his work. She approves of the “story” he is writing, an account of their time together in Europe, because she sees it as a monument to herself. She fears that when she dies, everything she did and felt will collapse: “. . . I don’t want to die and have it go away” (53). David's story is the solution. She gradually tries to make the story her own, making plans and, in her last letter to David, calling it “my book” (237). Catherine despises her short stories inspired by the African experiences of her youth. Not only are these writings that he doesn't want her to read or engage in in any way, but they are very almost autobiographicaland therefore immediately personal to David, which, of course, Catherine cannot tolerate. She said: “. . . [T]he stories are just your way of escaping your duty” (190), his duty, apparently, to her, and to document their lives and experiences. Finally, she burns her stories and clippings to illustrate this and refocus her work on the story. Catherine wants to take away from David everything that is exclusively his – press clippings, writing, individual identity, virility – and she almost succeeds. Marita is firstly another complication caused by Catherine. David finds her beautiful, but is opposed to her presence in their small hotel, thinking it would further separate him and Catherine; “To hell with her,” David said repeatedly. He wants Catherine to take him. However, as Catherine drifts deeper into herself than ever and becomes more eccentric and moody, David grows closer to Marita, finally realizing his love for her: "Geez, it was good to finish [the second story of the 'Africa] today and to have her there. Marita is there without damn work jealousy and let her know what you were looking for and how far you went. She really knows it and it's not wrong. I love him. . .” (204) Marita loves her stories about Africa and expresses some very complex feelings about them, where Catherine's reaction is simply disgust - a feeling that is really a disguise for her jealousy and annoyance that David has chosen to work on these stories rather than on the narrative. Marita is confident and kind, and David senses it. Unlike Catherine, she does not wish to “destroy” David or the products of his art, she admires his talent and wishes him everything David wishes. Her affection for David's African stories and her relative disinterest in the narrative make her the metaphorical opposite of Catherine: she sees a special kind of truth and power in the African stories, David's deeply personal ones. His control over this literary world is not a place of contestation, but of appreciation. Its control generates high-caliber work and therefore deserves respect. Catherine is too selfish and too determined to see this, or at least to express it; the fact that the stories are distant from her is enough for her to dismiss them as evidence of David's betrayal. David's time with Catherine only confirms his ideas about not telling anyone. At the heart of such a philosophy is the belief in innate human selfishness, or rather the fear that human selfishness will lead to the ruin of something important. Indeed, in David's case, Catherine's selfishness and inability to accept her autonomy over one aspect of her life leads to the destruction of two of her best stories, the product of weeks – even months – of work. However, Marita and David's blossoming relationship calls this philosophy into question. Catherine's departure allows David and Marita's romance to begin to fully come to fruition. Her gentleness contrasts directly with Catherine's cruelty. She comforts him and feels the same pain as him from the loss of his stories. At a crucial moment after finishing his second short story about Africa, he sits and reads with Marita while she reads: "He had never done this before and it was against everything he believed in terms of writing. . . . He couldn't help but want to read it with her and he couldn't help but share what he had never shared and what he thought couldn't and shouldn't be shared. (203) He willingly shares with Marita the part of himself that he has kept most carefully guarded for so long: his writing. It is a symbolic affirmation of the difference between his relationship with Marita and his.