Though Eve has historically been deified as a symbol of motherhood, in Milton’s Paradise Lost she is presented as a beautiful, sinful temptress whose ignorance causes the downfall of humanity. Following the Biblical tale, we first meet Eve as an extension of Adam, his rib made into a separate but not equal being. Describing how “true authority [lies] in men” (Milton 4.295), Milton purposefully dehumanizes her and puts her barely above the animals God created to be under Adam’s command. As his companion, she is given some special status, but she is still inherently inferior to him. She is literally ordained from God to be subservient to her husband, and Milton draws upon vapid female stereotypes to craft a character more interested in observing…show more content… He is presented as an ideal if somewhat boring figure, obedient to God in every way. Yet from her first moments on Earth, Eve is less pliant and more individualistic, refusing to conform to the secondary role set out for her. Satan senses this weakness and exploits it by observing her have sex and sending her sinful dreams. It’s no coincidence that Satan sees parts of himself in the first woman - both were predestined to fall from grace due to dissatisfaction with their current position and curiosity over what could be. Milton chooses to pair Eve with Satan and Adam with God and Raphael in many of their defining scenes; in doing so, he parallels the characters, and personalizes the conflict between Satan and God without losing its sense of scale. Satan’s narrated descriptions of Eve may reveal a sense of conflict and self loathing within him. They are almost always negative, describing her “disheveled” and “wanton” hair in contrast to Adam’s “Hyacinth locks” which “manly hung / Clustring” (4.300-306) . This double standard is reinforced by the fact that Eve is one of only two women we meet in the first half of Paradise Lost. The other is literally Sin - Satan’s daughter and lover, who guards the gates of hell. Their meeting in Book II foreshadows Eve’s fall and punishment; she too falls victim to Satan’s manipulations, and is cursed by constant fertility,…show more content… Drawing parallels between her and Pandora, her fall is motivated by a wholly understandable curiosity about the world and desire to rise above her supposedly predestined subservience, a concept that would take hold as the Enlightenment began to revolutionize Western Europe in the coming years. In The Golden Compass, Philip Pullman’s Lyra would draw on these same themes of knowledge and unholy curiosity as she examined the alethiometer, an apple from the tree of knowledge by any other name. But unlike Milton, Pullman’s heroine would not doom the world with her curiosity - she would save
