Like Pieces in a Puzzle

Early in the text we gain knowledge that Satan does feel genuinely guilty for losing the paradise of Heaven, he has no intentions of returning to servitude. After a presentation of ideas at Pandemonium, he and his brethren have agreed upon their next motion, which is to corrupt God’s newest and most favored creation: the race of man. Once they have come to this agreement, Satan himself decides that it is his responsibility to begin the corruption of man. “Intermit no watch against a wakeful foe while I abroad through all the coasts of dark destruction seek deliverance for us all! This enterprise none shall partake with me” (Book Two: 462-5). It is this gesture that suggests that Satan will take responsibility for all of their guilt. He believes that because it was originally his plan to deviate from God’s will that he must embark upon this mission.

In order to exercise this plan, Satan must corrupt Eve and have her question God’s authority, and in order to do so his malevolence must penetrate Eve’s insipid character. Eve is a creature primarily concerned with her own vanity, and it is to this aspect that Satan entertains. Be delivering his seed of evil, Eve becomes guilty of questioning God’s authority just like Satan. The difference though is that Eve can’t fathom taking sole responsibility for her transgression. “But what if God have seen and death ensue? Then I shall be no more and Adam wedded to another Eve shall live with her enjoying, I extinct: a death to think! Confirmed then I resolve Adam shall share with me in bliss or woe” (Book Nine: 826-31).

In Milton's Paradise Lost, Satan and Eve are more like puzzle pieces that when together represent the responsibility of guilt. Since Milton’s text is overtly misogynistic, Satan would be the piece that resembles the phallic symbol, with Eve being penetrated, which is the constant theme throughout the text. Eve is penetrated in a multitude of ways, the most noticeable being sexually, psychologically, or ethically, further entrenching Milton on his position of women being the lesser of the human race. He positions men as having power to which women yield; that men are in excess of knowledge to which they fill women with.