ABSTRACT
William Blake's decision to depict Adam and Eve's introduction rather than Eve's creation probably relates to the theological orthodoxy of his patron, Thomas Butts. William Blake depicts such an 'Ancient of Days' figure joining and, in terms of compositional arrangement, separating Adam and Eve. William Blake also depicts Eve's creation in his three series of watercolours illustrating Paradise Lost. In the Jerusalem plate, William Blake amplifies the violence of Eve's creation and emphasizes the relationship between the locus of divine agency and the emerging female. In his subsequent pictorial treatments of Eve's creation, William Blake develops the Hermetic view of Adam's original androgyny to posit an alternative, more redemptive locus of divine agency. For William Blake, the contending accounts of Eve's creations and her different creators are progressive stages in a narrative trajectory that internalizes the concept of divine agency, leading to the apprehension that 'All deities reside in the human breast'.
