"Eve's temptation of Adam to sin, by proferring him a forbidden apple from the Tree of Knowledge, was generally interpreted as sexual; St. Augustine and others speculated on the nonsexual means of reproduction available to human kind before the fall. In pictorial representations Eve often holds the apple close to her breast, and the couple invariably hides their genitals after the fall. She is closely associated with the serpent, which in the bronze doors of Hildesheim (1015) inserts itself between her legs. The horizontal pubescent figure of Eve from the Cathedral of Autun, showing a repentance that is appropriate to the portal where sinners petitioned for pardon, is nonetheless conflated with the serpent gliding on its belly through the garden as its punishment. By the thirteenth century Eve may be somewhat voluptuous, but her face is often mirrored in that of the serpent, into which she gazes with homosexual desire."
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Sources
Women and Gender in Medieval Europe: An Encyclopedia, edited by Margaret Schaus, Routledge, (2006), "Depictions of Eve"; p. 83.
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Eve
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