Like Spenser, Milton presents Eve narratively in medias res but later allows Eve to restore chronological coherence through the narration of her birth. Eve's mirror is not symbolic of revelation but rather of temptation. Through Eve, Milton dramatizes the human dilemma of interpreting divine ontology. Eve cannot recognize the difference between sanctioned love and sinful self-absorption without God's guidance. Eve's narcissism is particularly problematic since self-love is consistently associated with Satan and with lust in general.
Satanic lust is self-directed and subversive of hierarchy.
Throughout the earlier Books the distinctions between chaste love, which fulfills the Biblical mandate even as it individually satisfies human beings, and sinful lust, which leads to self-destruction, death, and hell itself, are clear. The fall in Book IX especially, and its foreshadowing events suggest an inevitable collapse of these definitions. Adam's distinction recalls Spenser's and suggests that thoughts of seduction do not necessarily taint the thinker with lust itself. The thinness of this division is exposed and ultimately shattered as Adam and Eve move inexorably to the fall. Milton appears to blame Adam's and Eve's vulnerability on uxoriousness and feelings of inferiority repectively.