The biblical Eve shows us what we need to do in this time of female bravery and vicious misogyny

I've been obsessed with Eve my whole life - it was once my name, and has served as an eternal warning. But I'd like to present you with another story

I am nearly 70 years old, and I have been looking back on my life in activism and art for my new book, Reckoning. As I pored over my previously unpublished diaries, monologues, plays and poems, I realised that all my life I have been haunted by one woman - a woman I believe has the power to show us what we need to do now, in this time of unparalleled female bravery and vicious misogynistic backlash. So let's go back to Eve, the first woman, Adam, serpent, apple, garden, God.

I have been obsessed with Eve my whole life. First of course, it was once my name, and for a six-year-old it seemed ridiculously impossible to be named Eve. She was responsible for not only the downfall of paradise, expulsion, sin, shame but death itself. Names, like myths, determine a lot, and this story was like a tectonic plate at the bedrock of my consciousness, engendering how I saw myself and how I behaved in the world.

V (formerly Eve Ensler) is a playwright and author, most recently, of Reckoning (Bloomsbury).