For my creative project, I decided to do a drawing of my visual interpretation of Eve at the moment she gave Adam the apple and demonstrate how she was able to seduce Adam with her beauty. I specifically used the lines: With liberal hand: he scrupled not to eat, Against his better knowledge: not deceived, But fondly overcome with female charm (9.997-99) Commiseration: Soon his heart relented, Towards her, his life so late, and sole delight, Now at his feet submissive in distress Creature so fair his reconcilement seeking" (10.921-924) |
Other than the fact that Eve was beautiful, there aren’t too many description of her physical features in "Paradise Lost" so all of Eve’s physical features are my creative work. I decided to overemphasize her incredibly long and flowing hair, really blue eyes, brigh red lips, and pale skin to emphasize how striking her beauty was. I also wanted to show that she was a beautiful yet internally flawed creature. This is displayed through the character traits that are written in her hair including: vanity, envy, selfish, greed pride, and disloyal. Throughout the work we see that despite being in Paradise, Eve displays a significant amount of troublesome character traits such as when she stares at her reflection in the water, says she is more beautiful than Adam, wants to be more powerful than Adam, is envious of Adam’s potential future wife, etc. Despite these flaws, Adam loves her and always gives in to her requests. By including all of the character traits in her long and flowing hair, I wanted to show that Eve was a blatantly flawed character, yet Adam still gave into her requests because he was seduced by her beauty. These traits didn’t matter to him because she was beautiful, so he ate the apple due to her “female charm,” completely regardless of her negative traits.
Throughout this creative work, I discovered that Eve’s beauty did play a very large role throughout the entirety of the work. Many of Adam’s actions occurred because he looked at Eve and saw how beautiful she was. I do lose several aspects of Eve including her autonomy and independence. Eve made many decisions including to work independently in the garden, repent, etc and this work doesn’t show that. It also implies that Eve didn’t have any positive traits, which isn’t necessarily true, but this work shows that her negative traits had a greater effect on the story. This work allowed me to visually show that when we factor in all of Eve’s negative traits, it seems a bit bizarre that Adam ate the apple due to her “female charm,” yet he was in love with her and this love eventually caused the fall.