eve's place in paradise lost
TRANSCRIPT
-
8/18/2019 EVE's PLACE in Paradise Lost
1/2
126 MILTON QU RTERLY
Milton, John. Complett Poems nd Ma~m rose. Ed. Mer-
ritt
Y.
Hughes. New York: Odyssey, 1957.
Rudat, Wolfgang E. H. “Back to the Thicket Slunk’:
Another Look
at
Milton’s Serpent.*AmericanNotes
nd
mks
22 1983): 7-9.
“Milton, Freud, St. Augustine: P m d e Lost and
the History of Human Sexuality.”Msaic 15 1982):
109-21.
“Milton’s Dido and Aeneas: The Fall in
Para-
dise Lost and the Vergilian Tradition.”Clasual
nd
M o h
Lhature
2 1981): 33-4 6.
“Milton’s
Paradisc Last:
Augustinian Theology
and Fantasy.* American Imago 42 1985): 292-313.
“Virgil, St. Augustine, and Man’s Psycho-
machia in
Paradise Lost.”
The utual
Commerce:
ature. Heidelberg: Carl Winter Universitatsver-
lag, 1985. 59-87.
Virgil. E r pU i
Maronis
Opera Ed.
F. A
Hirtzel.
Ox
ford: Clarendon, 1963.
Wasserman,
Earl R .
“The Limits of Allusion in
The
Rape
o
the Lock ” o u d
o English
nd Germanic
Philology
o
C h i d
Allucrbn n E?@ift and
L h
65 1966): 425-44 .
Zimmerman, Shari A. “Milton’s
Paradire
Lost:Eve’s Strug-
gle for Identity? American Z k g o 38 1981): 247-67.
ve’s
Pla
in
Paradis
ost
Kay Gilliland Stevenson
William Shullenbergeis vigorous opening ar-
ticle in
Q 0
October, 1986) evokes not only the
pleasurable “yes, yes” with which a convincing
argument is acknowledged, but also the even more
affirmative response, “and furthermore.” To Shul-
lenberger’s analysis of ways in which Milton “ dig
nifies Eve”
71)
and complicates “his placement of
Eve in the hierarchies of earth and heaven” 72),
one might add immediately:
1) Eve’s special place
in
Paradise
2) the inversion of male-female stereotypes
3) the order of the final speeches in Book 12
in Book 9
1
Eve’s special place in Paradise.
It
is an
eighteenth-century critical point, succinctly made
in Thomas Newton’s edition London, 1749). Eve
is associated with Paradise in a particularly close
way; she is its only aborigine. In his notes to Book
11, Newton comments on Eve’s lament after the
loss of Eden has been formally announced by
Michael:
270.-natiuesoil,] Natale solum, as the Lat-
ins say,
Nescio qua natale solum dulcedine
tangit Humanos animos.[Ovid, Ex POT ,
I.iii.35-361
[Paradise was the native place of Eve, but
Adam was formed out of the dust of the
ground, and was afterwards brought into
Paradise.]
Earlier, less explicitly, some families of medieval
hexameral miniatures illustrate indeed, illumi-
nate) the association of Eve and Eden. Stylized
backgrounds for the earlier works of creation give
way to lovingly detailed views of Paradise in the
miniature depicting Eve being taken from Adam’s
side. Spanning several centuries, countries, and
iconographies are such manuscripts as Bodleian
MS Junius XI English, eleventh century), Bib-
liothcque Nationale MS Lat. 8823 French, end
of the twelfth century), and Turin Biblioteca Reale
Cod. varii 175 Italian, second half of the four-
teenth century).
2 Masculine and feminine: reason and relation-
ship.
If
Milton and his readers have clear views
on “gender differences masculine rationality and
attention to principle, feminine attention to natur-
al process and the sustenance of relationship”
Shullenberger 75), contrasting motives for the de-
cisions Adam and Eve take in Book ll become all
the more striking. Early in the book he argument
before they separate turns on a variant of the stan-
dard gender-linked values. Eve argues, reasona-
-
8/18/2019 EVE's PLACE in Paradise Lost
2/2
MILTON
QUARTERLY 127
bly enough, that they will accomplish more by
working apart, undistracted
by
sociability. Adam’s
position is that accomplishment, although a good
thing, is not the highest aim, and “Love not the
lowest end of human life” 9.241). That is, one
might think, a feminine view; Milton makes clear
that it is a valid one.
Conversely, when the two again act contrary to
assumptions about male and female motivation,
Eve takes the more approved path. The basis on
which she decides to taste the fruit is, on the Pla-
tonic scale of understanding, will, and appetite,
higher than that of Adam, and more typically or
stereotypically masculine. She responds to temp-
tation more rationally than Adam, Adam more
emotionally than Eve. In Book 3, the justification
given by God the Father for the different treatment
of Satan and of mankind is that “Man falls de-
ceiv’d” 3.130). Properly speaking, however, only
Eve is deceived. Granted that she is criticized as
“unwary” 9.614) and “credul~us’~9.644), granted
that at the end of Satan5 speech of persuasion the
narrator comments that “his words replete with
guile Into her heart too easy entrance won”
9.733-34), granted that noon awakes hunger,
nonetheless she is primarily concerned with the
tempter‘s “persuasivewords, impregn’d With Rea-
son, to her seeming, and with Truth” 9.737-38).
In contrast, Adam is explicitly, emphatically
But fondly overcome with Female charm.
not deceiv’d,
9.998-99)
The sting of those last two words does not obscure
the fact that Eve engages in a debate with Satan,
whereas Adam leaps impulsively from recogniz-
ing the fact that “some cursed fraud Of Enemy
hath beguil’d” her 9.904-05) to his own decision
to eat, undeceived but self-indulgent in his unwill-
ingness to part from her.
Paradise Lost is a poem in which few things hap-
pen only once, and almost never without signi-
ficant variation. When Milton twice, in Book 9,
inverts rationality and concern with relationships
as
the feminine and masculine basis for decision,
he implies
a
freedom from fixed gender roles the
more free, the more positive, in that when act-
ing contrary to expectations, Eve and Adam both
choose once a worse and once a better course.
3) The order of the h l speeches in Book 12.
Before the narratois epilogue, Adam, Michael,
and Eve speak in turn. Taking the long view, some-
times felt to be a masculine talent of mind, Eve
defines her place in the story without vaunting or
shrinking:
though all by mee is lost
Such favor I unworthy am voutsaft,
By mee the Promis’d Seed shall all restore.
12.621-23)
How rigidly patriarchal is the poet who gives Eve
the last word, and that the crucial thematic word
“restore”?
University of Essex
tymology of dward
King’s
Name
J.
Karl Franson
In
LyiCkLF
Milton assigns Edward King‘s depart-
ed spirit the post of “Genius of the
[North
Wales]
shore” where he drowned
in
1637, to warn voyagers
of hazards in “that perilous flood” 183, 185). Mil-
ton editors correctly define “genius” o mean “pro-
tecting deity” Hughes, Cbmplete P o r n and Major
Prose
[1957], 125n) or ”local protective deity”
Carey, Shorter m 1971], 253n), but no
one has commented on the etymological relation-
ship between this fanciful function and King‘s
Christian name. Milton was ‘an inveterate etymol-
ogist” Edward S. LeComte, N w n s
1
[1954]: 246;
Carey 415), and his designation of Edward King
as guardian of the coast constitutes a noteworthy
example of his fascination with name histories.