Drawing from Milton's Paradise Lost:
Book 1.34-53 Satan’s fall
Book 9.679-732 Satan tempting Eve
Book 9.856-85 Eve tempting Adam
Book 10.332-36 Satan Eve parallel
Book 10.890-94 Eve falling to Adam’s feet
I drew on similarities between Satan and Eve as I reimagined both of their falls in one. This drawing depicts a female Satan, or an angelic Eve just after falling from God’s grace and paradise. The apple symbolizes the strongest similarity between the characters, each playing the role of the tempter: Satan in Book 9.679-732 and Eve in Book 9.856-85 (Satan notes this parallel in Book 10.332-36). The apple’s placement, just out of reach, is meant to signify what has been lost, being ironically also that which was wrongly taken and coveted. As an artistic choice, I clothed the fallen angel in tattered, dirtied garments as if in the fall she was battered. These reflect her new state of sin and evil and the damage done to herself by working against God. The position of the figure draws on Milton’s description of Satan’s fall to hell (1.34-53) and of Eve throwing herself at Adams feet (10.890-94). The twisted posture suggests pain and misery as well as the pitiful state to which the angel is rendered in her fall.
In creating this piece, I looked for Eve in Satan and Satan in Eve, trying to understand how the twisted beast I see in Satan can pair with the misguided innocence of Eve. Looking at both of them in their weakest state, a tortured moment of pure pain and loss, seemed like a fitting way to examine the internal self and the motivations for their condemnable acts. This drawing plays more on the sympathetic and agonized sides of the characters, showing their loss and suffering more so than the evils done to warrant the Lord’s retribution. In Book 1 we are shown the sympathetic nature of Satan’s rationale for his violation of Heaven’s laws, yet throughout the epic he behaves in such a loathsome way that many a reader withdraws their empathetic understanding of him as he repeatedly chooses evil. Conversely, at least to the modern (female) reader, Eve seems more consistently relatable and worthy of our pity, with one great wrong doing and later penitence. When these characters are bereft of their sinister guise, they are revealed for what I believe to be the true core of their beings: a tortured and twisted creature that cannot see the means for good, perhaps too afraid of the repercussions of the past to be able to change the pattern of the future. By marrying the plights of these two characters in an image of utter vulnerability and despair, sorrow and pain, I’ve reemphasized the tender victim in each of these characters. Yet… the object of their misdeeds is not far off, that inescapable damnable act they can never completely cast from their minds.