One thing of importance needs to be noted about the early Genesis narrative: it is not a human drama. In one sense--in keeping with the teachings of Jesus--this is no surprise, since Jesus treats the conditions of mankind "in the beginning" as normative, not as the playing-out of individual characters' lives. The only aspect of drama to the narrative is added by us later, and an honest appraisal of the narrative would entail an understanding that all we might attribute emotionally to the narrative is futility punctuated by despair.
From the creation of Adam to the curse upon Ham/Canaan (and the sequel to that curse in the Dispersal) the tendency of the narrative is unremittingly negative. Leaving the obviously bad parts aside, even the good parts are bad. Adam's initial delight with Eve is self-centered; their lack of shame arises from ignorance, not purity; their reprieve from physical death is accompanied by the deaths of innocent creatures.
The first recorded birth was a curse, and it led grindingly to Cain's seventy-seven-fold-vengeful descendant Lamech. Even the birth of Seth to Eve was befouled by self-centeredness, as if one child might be swapped for another. And this was the Seth with whom (anachronistically?) the use of "the name of the Lord" is associated--though it could never be less than tragic that the ineffable omnipresence of God is encapsulated by us in an uttered name, no matter how carefully chosen.
The best of Seth's descendants (the best of surmises about "the sons of God," unless they were fallen angels) were drawn down by lust, and the best of the best--Noah--drew down upon humanity the curses of oppression, slavery, and racism in a fit of diabolical vengeance.
There is only misery "in the beginning," when everything of substance is accounted for, and there is only the misery of self-denial ("losing one's life") to address the matter now.
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