John Milton's Androgynous Vision in Paradise Lost

Abstract

In Hebrew mythology, there is a story about Adam's first wife, whose name is not Eve, but Lilith. She is almost a counterpart to Eve, and also a proto-Eve. However, unlike Eve, she was created not from Adam's rib with a "crooked nature" (Paradise Lost IX; 885), but from the dust just as Adam was. Therefore, she believed she was just as equal as her partner, Adam. When he insisted on taking a ministering position over her and forced her submission in their marital bed, she felt threatened by his patriarchal power and fled from him to the edge of the Red Sea to reside with demons. This Lilith story shows the plausible possibility that an equal creation myth of the two sexes does exist. Yet, this legend also carries the distortion and deformation of equality by condemning Lilith to live her life with demons. It is interesting how Adam and Eve's unequal creation story has become the most pervasive substitute for the Lilith legend, passing from generation to generation with a good deal of credibility.