Identity Beyond Social Norms In Scarlet Letter, And Gilgamesh

When Satan planned his rebellion, his head burst into flames. The serpent woman, also known as his daughter Sin, grew out of Satan’s head because of his revolt. Sin can be compared to the creation of Eve in that both women are created from their partners. Eve was created from Adam’s rib and Sin was created from Satan’s head. Paradise Lost infers that women, who are symbolized by Eve and Sin, could not have originated nor prosper without the help of a man and that women are dependent on their male counterparts.

However, evil soon entered the garden in the form of a serpent. One day when Eve was walking in the garden she encountered the evil serpent who encouraged her to take a fruit from one of God’s forbidden fruit trees. The serpent succeeded in deceiving Eve to take a fruit; she then ate the fruit and shared it with Adam. Then God became angry with Adam and Eve for betraying Him. To punish Adam and Eve, he ejected them from the garden and subjecting them to mortality, painful childbirth, sin and shame.

Since the beginning of Paradise Lost, a reader can witness the dramatizing power possessed by Satan, and how he takes advantage of this very power in order to satisfy his own causes. One such property of Satan's fantastic powers is his ability to manipulate any individual into a false belief of who he really is, and therefore prevent a habitant of paradise from discovering his true purpose that is hidden behind his actions. One such example of this, and one of the most major in the epic, are the events that occur in Book IX involving Satan and Eve around the forbidden tree. Here, Satan uses, what is to Eve, excellent reasoning to convince her to eat the forbidden fruit, thereby exploiting

The serpent eventually persuades Eve to eat from the “Tree of Knowledge”. After she eats from it, she has Adam eat from it. Shortly after, they finally notice they are naked and become self conscious and cover up. God then asks about what they have done and Eve blames Adam, while Adam blames the Serpent. God curses them, and makes Eve suffer through labor and banishes both of them from the Garden of Eden.

Eve’s hunger to become independent from Adam and all she is commanded to do is similar to Satan’s situation in that their yearn for power and singular identity lead them to revolt against their creator. Her desire to separate from Adam is first seen when she is introduced to the audience in her state of narcissism. She sees a reflection of herself in a pond and is in awe of her beauty “of sympathy and love,” (IV, 465) which shows the parallelism to Satan’s own arrogant vanity. He catches on to this similarity they share and decides she will be an easy target of persuasion. He quickly takes charge and plans how he will lead her to eat the apple from the “Tree of Knowledge,” which is the only tree that God prohibited to pick fruit from. Satan first catches her attention by being a serpent who speaks; something she had never encountered before. He smooth talks her into really listening to him by focusing his words around her and how much better life could be if she just took a bite

Milton’s Paradise Lost has been praised as being the greatest English epic of all time, most stunningly in its author's depiction of the parents of humanity, Adam and Eve. How Milton chose to portray the original mother and father has been a focus of much criticism with contemporary readers. One of the main subjects of these comments is in reference to Eve, who, according to many, is a trivial character that is most definitely inferior to her mate. Nonetheless, many do not recognize that, after the fateful Fall, she becomes a much more evolved character. When Eve is introduced to the storyline of the epic, her character is shallow and extremely undeveloped, meant simply for display. She is quite firmly set as being inferior to her mate

maker of wine, since I have seen your face do not let me see the face

“...in the hope of eternal life, which God, who cannot lie,...” (Titus 1:2). The Bible gives the exact account of the history of the world.  John Milton’s Paradise Lost is a play off of the account given in The Bible of the war in Heaven, the creation of the world, and the fall of mankind.  He used the Bible as his inspiration and altered the events told in Genesis.  Though The Bible and Paradise Lost tell different accounts of the same story, they have many things in common, such as: Satan’s fall from Heaven, Adam and Eve’s fall from Paradise, and Adam and Eve’s dismissal from the garden.

    The seventeenth century poet, John Milton, takes the attitude common to the time period while portraying Eve in Paradise Lost.  This epic, telling of Adam and Eve's fall from Paradise and the story of creation, constantly describes Eve as a weak individual, while Adam is often compared with God.  The idea of women's inferiority has been fixed through time, making Milton's characterization of Eve not surprising, but rather expected and accepted.  However, Milton shows a suggestion of women's inner strength while describing the control Eve has over Adam.  Nevertheless, except for this instance, Eve is depicted as subordinate to Adam.  This is evident through Adam and Raphael's treatment

Unfortunately, human nature only lends itself to the assumption of certain abstract concepts such as `natural law', an assumption Milton develops in Paradise Lost. Throughout Paradise Lost, Milton expands upon the teaching that human actions affect human freedom and that this is a consequence of the assumption of the natural law that the Creator owns the created. Moreover, the

Milton's purpose in Paradise Lost is nothing less than to assert eternal providence and justify the ways of God to men - a most daunting task.  For Milton to succeed in his endeavour, he has to unravel a number of theologiccal thorns that have troubled christian philosophers for centuries.  Since his epic poem is, essentially, a twelve book argument building to a logical conclusion - the 'justification of the ways of God to men' - he will necessarily have to deal with these dogmatic problems, and, in doing so, reveal his own take on the Christian theology.

Although Aemilia Lanyer and John Milton were both writing on the Fall of humanity, their approaches to this topic were vastly different. Lanyer wrote “Eve’s Apology in Defense of Women,” in order to combat the widely-believed cultural idea of the time that placed the fault of the Fall entirely on Eve. Milton, on the other hand, is attempting to explore this biblical story in Paradise Lost to prove that Adam and Eve had free will, thus absolving God of responsibility for the fall. Lanyer and Milton differ in their portrayal of the fall through their depiction of Adam and Eve’s relationship and their ideas about the free will of each of the characters. These factors ultimately lead Milton to present a portrait of the fall that seems more balanced and accurate.

     In Paradise Lost, the consequences of the fall and the change in relations between man and nature can best be discussed when we look at Milton's pre-fall descriptions of Eden and its inhabitants. Believing that fallen humans could never fully understand what life was like in Eden and the relationships purely innocent beings shared, Milton begins his depiction of Paradise and Adam and Eve through the fallen eyes of Satan:

In the 19th century, a new ideology called Romanticism emerged, pushing back against strict conformist beliefs and relying on nature, individualism, and emotion. Many writings from this time period are still being discussed because of their relatability to modern societal problems. Of the many Romantic writers, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Herman Melville effectively explain the negative effects of society on individuals. In The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne narrates a Romantic story of a young woman in the Puritan Era who is convicted of adultery and has to face being a social outcast. On the other hand, in “Bartleby, the Scrivener” Herman Melville examines the story of Bartleby, a copyist who mysteriously refuses to work and is, therefore, put in jail. Both Hawthorne and Melville use the characterization of Hester Prynne and Bartleby as nonconformists to critique the effect society’s evils have on the Romantic ideal of individualism in order to remind their readers that despite the human inclination to conform to one’s society, self-reliance is more important than the status quo to support progress for humanity.

Milton predecessors portray Eve as deficient in virtuous enterprise. They blamed Eve for the woes of the world and their concept of Eve rooted in dualism, a view that is not depicted by Milton in the book 'Paradise Lost'. Milton, represent Eve as a literary figure separating her from primitive conception by those who hold on tradition yet they are unconscious of prime examples of Eve in the society.