By: Morgan Gerlach
We know the biblical Eve as the mother of all of humanity, the first woman, and the perpetrator of the original sin. In Paradise Lost, we get a new view of her. She appears to show more attraction to women than men. Instead of classifying her as any particular sexuality, I will simply argue that she was queer (in that she experienced same sex attraction) and sapphic (meaning she felt attraction to women). She does, however, also show a lack of attraction or distaste for men. Eve, despite being created explicitly for Adam, resists and appears to have little interest in him. While this could be simply attributed to Adam not being her type, we see in the text that it seems to be more on the shortcomings of men compared to women. When Eve first comes to being, she sees herself in the reflection of the lake, and catches her reflection (which she was unaware was herself) and said “pleased it returned as soon with answering looks/Of sympathy and love; there I had fixed/Mine eyes till now, and pined with that vain desire” (4, 464-466). We see from this that in her reflection, we see not only sympathy, presumably from the presence of another woman, but love. The kind of love is not clear; it could be aesthetic, romantic, sexual, or platonic. However, the next line follows with “pined” and “desire.” The vain in this case does not mean the expected self absorbed, it is cited as meaning futile. Female same sex/romantic attraction carries this same weight and connotation. Even unaware that it is simply a reflection, she is aware that her love for this fellow female being is futile. To be a woman who loves women is a complicated web of relationship with gender and attraction. You find women attractive while trying not to view them as a commodity as men tend to do, and you create a simultaneous separation and closeness of self as a woman when experiencing this attraction. Eve desires and pines after this woman she has fallen in love with, and is immediately aware to an extent the difficulty of the situation even outside of society’s expectations. This is an inherent and exclusive part of the sapphic experience.
We see Eve later not just with an attraction to women, but with the lack of attraction to men. When she first sees Adam, she thought he was “less fair/Less winning soft, less amiably mild,/Than that smooth wat’ry image; back I turned (4, 478-480). The traits she recognizes in Adam as lesser are ones that are not simply about aesthetic attractiveness. Eve was created to be the woman that society has long expected: pretty, gentle, and mild temper. She prefers these things, and Adam is fulfilling the other end of the spectrum, as expected, is not what she desires. She wants the soft, gentle woman she saw before, and attempts to flee Adam back to her. She says “back I turned,/Though following cried’st aloud, ‘Return fair Eve,/Whom fli’st thou? Whom thou fli’st'” (4, 48-483) He prevents this and makes her yield to him, saying “‘Part of my sould I seek thee, and the claim/My other half'” (4, 487-489), claiming her as his property (not as a person to love as an equal). While she does accept this, it is clear that her strongest attraction lies with women, not men. This was very likely not Milton’s intention with Eve as a character, but the way he portrays Eve inadvertently made her come across as a sapphic woman, making the first biblical woman sapphic, which is generally not approved of by the Catholic church.
Milton, John. Paradise Lost. The Norton Anthology of English Literature: The Sixtennth Century The Early Seventeenth Century, edited by Stephen Greenblatt,W. W. Norton & Company, 2018, 1493-1727.