One of the most shocking scenes in Paradise Lost is when Eve falls in love with her own image. She has just been created from Adam's rib and has woken to consciousness. She hasn't seen Adam yet. The first thing she sees is a gorgeous figure reflected on the surface of a lake

It is love at first sight. Eve has no prior experience so she doesn't know it's her own image. She looks lovingly at her reflection and it returns "answering looks". She tells Adam later that she would have gladly "fixed/Mine eyes till now and pined with vain desire" forever

It takes divine intervention to prevent Eve from dying, like Narcissus, of desire. God speaks to her and explains the concept of mirrors. God entices her away from the lake with the promise of something more substantial: Adam, who can embrace Eve in reality and not just in images

God sweetens the deal by promising that Eve will bear offspring thanks to Adam's embraces. Eve still sounds reluctant but she agrees to leave the image in the lake: "What could I do/But follow?" she says halfheartedly. Then God brings her to Adam. And she is NOT impressed!

For Adam it's love at first sight. But not for Eve. She admits that Adam is "fair indeed and tall". Yet she finds him "less fair... than that smooth watery image." So immediately she turns to go back to the lake. Eve swipes left! There's only one man on earth and she rejects him

Adam, poor sod, tags along behind her & begs for her to come back. He reasons with her about the manner of her creation, he portrays himself as her generous benefactor (I gave up a whole rib for you!), he even throws in a bit of Plato: you're "my other half". Eve's not impressed.

Even after these weighty and weird arguments, Eve keeps heading straight to the lake to find her true love. At that, Adam "seizes" her hand - admittedly, he seizes it "gently". And only now does Eve "yield" to him. It's not violence or coercion exactly, but still.

As she relates this episode later, Eve tells Adam that from that time she has learned that "manly grace" and "wisdom" are even better than beauty. Paradise Lost is all about the education of the first human beings. And the first part of Eve's education is learning to desire a man

Eve learns to desire Adam (it's not fake: she truly comes to desire him) but she herself tells Adam that this is a learned behaviour, less instinctive and immediate than her infatuation with the image in the lake.

Eve also needs to learn the connection between gender and desire. Her attraction to the figure in the lake is not exactly gendered. Eve refers to the image as an "it", not a "she". Both God and Adam present arguments about gender and about the link between desire and procreation

As an analysis of primordial erotic desire, there is so much that's surprising and unsettling in this episode. But one takeaway point seems to be that erotic attraction, by itself, has an inherent tendency toward delusion. Eros loses its way without the addition of logos, reason

There's an asymmetry between Eve's desire and Adam's. Eve doesn't "need" Adam in quite the same way that he needs her. This forms part of Milton's attempt at a rational explanation of the fall. Eve is seduced by fantasy, while Adam is drawn after her by "the bond of nature"