Franz von Stuck's The Sin is a significant Symbolist artwork among the many paintings on the theme of the Femme Fatale, symbolizing the dangers of the destructive female temptation. Here, a huge black snake coils around a sensuous naked woman. Her face is in the dark, and almost the entire background is black. The snake has a threatening open mouth, while the woman looks provocatively at the viewer. The symbolic content implies the danger of sexual desire as personified by the mysterious seductress. The title invokes a reminder of the repression of sexual desire caused by religious mandate.

At the turn of the century, the psychological understanding of sexuality was unknown and overt expression of sexuality was considered dangerous or sinful. The awareness of the importance of the human sexual drive was developing as Freud's theories were emerging. The move from theories on sexuality to changes in thinking that would affect daily life, however, would have to wait until the 1960s with its sexual revolution, and the women's liberation movement of the 1970s. Only since then has a gradual decrease in men's fear of female seduction occurred, paralleling the emergence of greater equality between women and men.

In Christian imagery, the serpent has been a powerful symbol of evil. The biblical serpent in the Garden of Eden led Eve, who eventually enticed Adam, to disobey God’s commandment not to eat the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. Unlike the Church, for the Gnostics the serpent, the symbol of knowledge (gnosis) and of wisdom, is warning Eve of the Creator's deceptiveness in claiming to be the ultimate divinity.

Being both a satanic curse in one tradition and a divine blessing in another shows the extreme ambiguity of the symbolic serpent. Of cosmic duality, the serpent symbol is present in depiction of basic opposite pairs such as good and evil, life and death, yin and yang, masculine and feminine, day and night.

More recently, Jungian psychology pegged the snake as a major symbol of repressed psychic energy, an energy dating back to the earliest ages of human race. Freudian psychology saw the snake more as a phallic symbol associated with the fertility rites of primitive man. If the serpent's symbolic complexity were not frightening enough, the snake's venom adds the presence of real imminent danger. Combining a seductress with a threatening serpent in a pairing creates a disturbed and fearful feeling in the viewer.

The woman with the serpent in The Sin represents the dark side of female energy. She is Lilith incarnate, Adam's first wife and fiery sexual partner. With the advent of greater equality between men and women in the 20th century, the world is ready for a more harmonious template for romantic consummation.

On the following page, Lilith is shown paired with Eve in a synthesized archetypal image, which I have titled simply Eve and Lilith.