You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
This article begins: "For the last three centuries Milton's Eve has been viewed largely through a male lens which sees femininity as vain and seductive, as well as infantile and dependent." The author contends that this Eve is much more complex. Extensive selections from the poem are cited to suggest that Eve was engaged in a struggle for differentiation and selfhood which could only be achieved by simultaneously struggling toward a balance of being with Adam and being without him. After all, she has fusion literally foisted upon her. She is Adam's rib, a reflection of his self. Set against this merger is the option for finding her true self. It begins with a mirroring of her appearance in the water. This episode has been interpreted as evidence of Eve's vanity. Zimmerman offers a footnote to Lichtenstein and views it as a symbol of primary narcissism. She must find herself apart from Adam. She achieves this in her separate viewing of the world. The culmination is her enticement by Satan who is none other than a projection of her autonomous desires. Once she is committed to this path of finding herself, the serpent is an inevitability. The apple of knowledge affords the cognitive structuring for an independent external reality. Eve then feels the isolation of autonomy and superiority. She co-opts Adam's innocence in order to rejoin him. But the old form of merger is no longer possible between two individuated beings.