Milton would be proud

Satan and Eve’s strongest connection, apart from probably being synonyms in Milton’s eyes— hmm… awkward— anyway their strongest connection would be the level of subversion they lend to Adam’s character. Adam would not have had his fall from paradise had Satan not fallen from Heaven, not decided that he wanted to get back at God, and not decided that the best way to do that was to take God’s creation of man from Him. There is an opportunity here to talk about God’s plan and how Satan could really just be a pawn in Paradise Lost but, for the sake of simplicity, let’s go ahead and say that Satan, acting on his own accord, was the main reason behind Eve’s temptation in the garden of Eden. So with Satan as the driving force behind Adam’s eventual fall, Eve, essentially, is just the catalyst.

Naturally Adam is not going to make the statement, “We are one, / One flesh: to lose thee were to lose myself” (217 L. 958-959), about Satan. From what we can tell, Eve is the only one who make Adam decide to give up paradise. We’re given the impression (ya think) that Eve has a much weaker resolve than Adam, and so it’s hard to say that if it had only been Adam in the garden that Satan’s results would have been the same. Satan needed Eve to convince Adam that eating the fruit was a good idea (also, since Eve refers to herself as the fruit (217 L.245) and Adam eats the fruit, and then he has sex with Eve, you see where I’m going with this).

So although there are plenty of other comparisons that could be made when it comes to comparing Satan and Eve, I find this one the most potent. Both Satan and Eve were required to enact the eventual fall of man. Eve could not have convinced Adam to eat the fruit if she had not eaten it herself, an act which required Satan. And Satan couldn’t have convinced Adam to eat the fruit if he wouldn’t have had Eve to show Adam what he had to lose. Bam!