Before we examine his Tahitian representations of Eve, let us begin by looking at the depictions of Eve that Gauguin created in Europe. In 1896, Gauguin traveled to Brittany on a search for his ideal primitive paradise. It is here that his pattern of portraying Eve first emerges as Gauguin paid special attention to the Bréton peasant women in particular as models — a throwback to artists such as Jean-Francois Millet and Jules Bastien-Lepage who represented peasant women as having a close, intimate relationship with nature and their simplistic peasant lives (Harrison 22). As he originally depicted the Bréton women in their daily costumes, Gauguin literally de-civilizes these women by increasingly portraying his female subjects in the nude and by placing them in what he 
envisioned as more “primitive” positions (Harrison 24). Therefore, based on his interest in the primitive, it is only natural that he began to portray Eve, the most primitive (as in first) woman, in his art. As Gauguin was still in Europe at this time, however, these early Eves reflected the Judeo-Christian image of guilt and temptation, which physically kept them down and stripped them of their dignity.
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When we first see Eve in Gauguin’s 1888 painting Human Miseries and Eve: Don’t Listen to the Liar (Breton Eve) of 1889 (both painted in Brittany), she is still cowering and full of guilt. Although it may not be apparent to the viewer that this slouching woman in Human Miseries is a representation of Eve the pose that she holds is extremely important in manifesting the distress that Eve philosophically experienced as a result of centuries of scrutiny in Judeo-Christian doctrine. This famous position also resurfaces in future representations of Eve, while being a link back to actual primitivism as Gauguin modeled his sitting Eve’s pose on a skeleton of a Peruvian Mummy whose body is positioned in the same fashion (Barskaya 30). Again, it is this position that is so crucial to how the Eve is viewed in Human Miseries. Frédérique de Gravelaine writes about this painting and those to come: “Eve, in the posture of the mummy will soon stand, disrobe, and be free from the guilt that, before Tahiti, continues to weigh on her” (Gravelaine 64). This prediction is a perfect summary of how Eve’s posture is indicative of how she is being portrayed in her society. In Eve: Don’t Listen to the Liar, she is sitting in the same position; however, she is now naked (as de Gravelaine remarked) and is actually covering her ears in response to Gauguin’s plea not to “listen to the liar,” or in other words, not to give in to the temptation of the serpent behind her. In Brittany, Eve is still a part of the modern Europe where she remains a temptress. As she disrobes, however, she is not only emancipating herself of this European guilt, but she is more importantly preparing to guide Gauguin into a more “primitive”, sin-free world.