The relationship between Satan and Eve is one I think we as readers put together for ourselves. I think they seem so similar to us because they have such human characteristics. They both have issues with authority. Satan clearly cannot handle bowing down to more than one part of the trinity: “fraught/With envy against the Son of God that day/…could not bear/ Though pride that sight and thought himself impaired.” (125); Eve cannot stand to be kept from the fruit and questions God’s plan: “In plain then what forbids He but to know,/Forbids us good, forbids us to be wise?/Such prohibitions bind not!” (217). They also both feel a sense of duty through servitude to those who have fallen with them even though the others (angels and Adam have fallen by choice. They are both leaders in these “falling” situations and they want to keep those that followed them happy. Satan says, “that word/Disdain forbids me and my dread of shame/Among the spirits beneath whom I seduced” (80), and Eve imparts the same emotion on page 255, “There with my cries importune Heav’n that all/The sentence from thy head removed may light/On me, sole cause to thee of all this woe…” Their main difference comes in the degree to which they lament their situation and of course in their attempts at redemption.
If being flawed is human, and therefore easier for us to relate to, it is no wonder that we understand and somewhat root for Satan. He is flawed like us for the entirety of the poem. We see him exhibit human traits that we value in our society like being a leader, questioning authority and sticking to his moral code. Eve’s temptation and desire in the middle of the poem makes her more like us as well; she is much harder to understand when she is perfect and frolicking around in Paradise. We see less of those admirable traits in Eve; she is painted as subservient and weak, so it is easier for us to translate her fall as being worse because she is already less worthy in our eyes.
Despite it being human nature for us to gravitate toward the familiar, I don’t believe that Milton (from what I know about him) would have purposely positioned the two so we would believe Satan was less guilty or less flawed than Eve. I also don’t believe that the two are being used or cited as scapegoats for anything. They are the guilty parties in the Bible and I am sure that is why Milton positioned them as such. Satan seems very human, but I think that might be just because we know no other way to write about the emotions, movement, etc. Milton was just adapting the character to his own perspective of emotionality. Milton’s judgment of Eve seems so much harsher, in my opinion, because Milton feels much more linked to her fall. It makes me wonder how much Milton blamed his wives/women in general for the bad things that befell him in life. Despite the level of blame that might or might not be placed upon them, I think it is pretty impossible not to notice the similarities between their characters and to wonder how likely one’s fall would have been without the other’s.