No Middle Ground The Patriarchal Environment In Miltons Paradise Lost
No Middle Ground: The Patriarchal Environment In Milton’s Paradise Lost
On the relationship between Adam and Eve in Paradise Lost, Susanne Woods perhaps states it best when she argues that Milton, for the most part, appropriates his culture’s views on the inferior position of woman. Milton is in the awkward predicament between following cultural and biblical authority while attempting to give Eve a semblance of dignity, respect, and intelligence—a situation which motivates some Milton scholars to work around Milton’s often ambiguous message by asserting that the first marriage is both equal in some aspects while identifying a patriarchal hierarchy in other aspects of the work. A situation particularly difficult to assess are the prelapsarian and postlapsarian conditions of Eve’s inferiority to Adam.
Margaret Thickstun emphasizes Milton’s stance, which in The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce emphasizes that woman was created for the needs of man. As Thickstun contends, this inferior role reveals itself even in the prelapsarian Eden. She suggests that even though Eve departs yet sinless from Adam in Book IX to tend the garden on her own, it is “the independence of Eve’s action, not just the sinfulness of it, for which she is guilty” (74). Thus, Eve’s separation is the disobedience towards Adam before the disobedience of eating the fruit, for Adam clearly warns her to “leave not the faithful side / that gave thee being, still shades thee and protects”/ (9. 265-6). Mary Nyquist argues that many apologetic feminist scholars’ intentions of Adam and Eve’s equality are misplaced in light of the “man/men” noun discrepancies in chapters I and II of Genesis. She also frames her argument around Rachel Speght’s defense of Eve and “the spiritual equality of the sexes” (107) regardless of Eve being the second human formed. Diane McColley comes close to a middle-ground view of the Edenic marriage while foregrounding her argument within an almost apologetic framework. She argues that Adam and Eve are merely growing and responding individuals under a benevolent God, and that Eve’s submission is beneficial to both her and Adam. McColley does pose an important question, however: what is Eve’s motive in the separation scene? Is it obstinacy or productivity? In other words, does one see Eve’s disobedience before or after eating the fruit? Much like McColley, Kristin McColgan contends that Paradise Lost is an intricate “interplay between hierarchy and reciprocity through language and structure” that reveals how both Adam and Eve “exalt[s] not self but other in an idyllic, dynamic relationship” (76). It would be Desma Polydorou, however, who comes closest to my opinion of Paradise Lost as a purely patriarchal masterpiece, as it were. Like Nyquist, Polydorou refers to Speght in her article and contends that Milton frequently overlooks Speght’s biblical examples that depict the marriage as equal. Polydorou examines the pre and postlapsarian conditions of inequality and concludes that “Milton does not share Speght’s commitment” to promoting woman’s equality to man (30). I argue that the first marriage was depicted by Milton in Paradise Lost as a purely patriarchal construct in both pre and postlapsarian modes. As Woods emphasizes, Milton closely adheres to Pauline doctrine as it pertains to the subjugation and inferiority of women in regards to men. As Anne Ferry asserts, Milton was a man who “held with passionate conviction…that the Bible is a record of divinely inspired truth [and] it is the Christian’s duty to interpret and follow, not to contradict and ignore” (113). As Indeed, Milton’s according absolute authority to the Pauline scriptures directly influences the verse in Paradise Lost, and as I will show, Milton is expert at returning again and again to the hierarchical Pauline context of patriarchy, be it subtly or overtly. Through this analysis I will illustrate how Milton designed the epic to conform to a biblical patriarchal hierarchy.
Mary Nyquist describes the last line of the following verse as “stridently masculinist”:
…though both
Not equal, as their sex not equal seemed;
For contemplation he and valor formed,
For softness she and sweet attractive grace,
He for God only, she for God in him…(IV.295-299)
This verse points to a hierarchical concept of Adam and Eve’s paradisal marriage. Line 299 suggests Adam’s superior standing with God alone, while Eve must somehow touch God through Adam. Eve is made of and for Adam; therefore she is subordinate to him. Indeed, Milton even tells us that they are not equal in line 296, and while Adam is replete with intellectual prowess and valor, Eve is for Adam’s eyes a comfort. Line 298, then, refers back to Milton’s Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce wherein woman is created for the needs of man, be they physical or mental. Later (in IV.490) Eve says she sees “How beauty is excelled by manly grace / And wisdom, which alone is truly fair.” These lines not only imply the superiority of “manly grace,” but that man’s wisdom is good enough without the aid of woman’s intellect. Nevertheless, Adam has an answer to Eve’s admission of “inferiority” wherein he declares his knowledge of Nature’s intention to make Eve “th’ inferior,” yet he is in awe of her wisdom and beauty, “As one intended first, not after made…/ (VIII.540-555). In an answer to this evaluation by Adam, Raphael tells Adam in so many words to be wise and self-assured, thus “The more she will acknowledge thee her head” (VIII.574). What we have here is Milton using a character, (Adam) to interrupt the hierarchy that Milton wishes to impose. In comes Raphael to shore up Milton’s efforts. This divergence of wills can be seen frequently in Paradise Lost, especially between Raphael and Adam, and Adam and Eve. To this end, we see Milton playing with the idea of Eve’s subjection between characters. Eve is amenable to the idea while Adam cannot quite grasp the idea because he finds her so perfect. It is only when Raphael admonishes Adam of his folly that Milton’s own patriarchal adherence becomes clear, even though Adam dismisses Raphael’s concern:
So much delights me as those graceful acts,
Those thousand decencies that daily flow
From all her words and actions mixed with love
And sweet compliance, which declare unfeigned
Union of mind, or in us both one soul;
Harmony to behold in wedded pair
More grateful than harmonious sound to the ear. (VIII.600-606)
This verse reveals Adam to be ardently besotted with Eve, and indeed can find no wrong in her person. Milton does, of course, defend his stance on patriarchy in line 603 where Eve is depicted as a loving, compliant woman. Yet he has Adam declare that he and Eve are but one soul, harmonious in marriage. This reciprocity refers to McColgan’s assertion that Adam and Eve complete each other in “an idyllic, dynamic relationship” (76). Even so, the reader can almost taste the disaster to come due to Adam’s wish to be equal with Eve, while Milton adroitly, and repeatedly, tips the scales in favor of patriarchy.
According to Ferry, Milton accomplishes this by taking Genesis and certain New Testament scripture, “shape[s] what he c[an] not change,” and makes decisions on choices that are allowed him (113). It would seem, then, that Milton competently molds his epic to follow closely those scriptures that enjoin patriarchy. A biblical verse that perhaps influenced Milton, for he “was married according to this rite in 1642” (Ferry 115), is the Pauline doctrine addressed to married couples:
Ye women, submit your selves unto your own husbands,
as unto the Lord: for the husband is the wives head, even
as Christ is the head of the Church…so likewise let the
wives also be in subjection unto their own husbands in
all things…let the wife reverence her husband…ye wives,
submit your selves unto your own husbands… (KJV)
And the Pauline doctrine continues,
For the man is not of the woman, but the woman of the
man.
For the man was not created for the woman’s sake: but
the woman for the man’s sake. (1 Cor. 11:10-13)
Of course, this last verse correlates with the poem’s most oft quoted line, according to Ferry, “He for God only, she for God in him” (IV.299). As I mentioned earlier, this is a direct implication of Eve’s “second in line” status, and does indeed reflect back to the Corinthian scripture above. While Adam appears to accede to this doctrine, “For well I understand in the prime end / Of Nature her th’ inferior, in the mind / And inward Faculties…” (VII.540-42), when it comes down to it, Adam does not want to believe it,
yet when I approach
Her loveliness, so absolute she seems
And in her self compleat, so well to know
Her own, that what she wills to do or say,
Seems wisest, vertuousest, discreetest, best;
All higher knowledge in her presence falls… (VIII. 546-551)
As Ferry contends, after this verse Raphael reproofs Adam for his vagaries, and had the discussion ended with the reproof, we would not get what Ferry refers to as a reflection of Milton’s “divorce tracts [which] praise the ‘sweet and mild familiarity of love,’ the ‘fit union of their souls’ between man and wife” (124). This verse to which Ferry refers is Adam’s answer to the angel’s reproof wherein “Adam rephrases his feelings for Eve to make clear that they ‘subject not’” (124). Ferry contends that “Adam’s speech is therefore the culmination of Milton’s efforts to lift Eve’s unfallen nature out of the place assigned to it in the Old and New Testaments” (124). It is also an effort by Milton to express his own views of marriage in the poem, according to Ferry, and while Adam and Eve’s marriage is “the fulfillment of ideal human experience” (125), I suggest that Milton only reveals this ideal in order to show in Book IX how damning the Fall really is.
If the paradisal marriage of Adam and Eve is patriarchal, the postlapsarian one is even more so. Full of blame and self-serving verses of confession, Books IX and X bring to fruition the true status of women during Milton’s time. Both blaming the other for their inadequacies, Adam and Eve quarrel as Eve asks Adam why he let down his guard,
Being as I am, why didst not thou the head
Command me absolutely not to go,
Going into such danger as thou saidst?
Too facile then thou didst not much gainsay,
Nay, didst permit, approve, and fair dismiss.
Had thou been firm and fixed in thy dissent,
Neither had I transgressed, nor thou with me. (IX. 1155-1161)
Her blame is met with certain disdain from Adam, who rues the day he trusted her to work alone,
Thus it shall befall
Him who to worth in women overtrustingLets her will rule; restraint she will not brook,
And left to herself, if evil thence ensue,
She first his weak indulgence will accuse. (IX. 1182-1186)
The last verse depicts woman as irresponsible, weak, and too curious for her own good. One may also question whether Milton was familiar with Joseph Swetnam’s 1615 publication of The Araignment of Lewde, idle, froward, and unconstant women which determined that women had an “inherent evil nature” (Polydorou, 24). Swetnam’s misogynistic treatise was not lost on Rachel Speght, whose 1617 publication A Mouzell for Melastomusi directly responded to his rant. Swetnam’s contention that women are inherently evil leads me full circle to address McColley’s query as mentioned earlier—what is Eve’s real motive for separating from Adam as they worked the garden? Is it obstinacy or productivity? I would argue that it is a bit of free will combined with curiosity, for Eve knows they will be tempted, and she knows of the Tree of Knowledge. Her curiosity can only be resolved if she disobeys Adam’s first command to not go and this she does. As Adam says, she is free to exercise her will, but she will be better served if she uses her God given reason,
But God left free the will, for what obeys
Reason, is free, and reason he made right,
But bid her well beware, and still erect,
Least by some fair appearing good surprised
She dictate false, and misinform the will
To do what God expressly hath forbid. (IX. 351-356)
Thus, Eve transgresses not only God, but her husband as well. This is the first disobedience; eating the fruit is the second.
In this paper I have attempted to show how Adam and Eve’s relationship in Paradise Lost is not an egalitarian one, before or after the Fall. Middle ground analyses do not explain Milton’s defense of the biblical Pauline doctrine of marriage, and feminist versions do little to persuade those who view Paradise Lost as a work reflecting the culture of Milton’s time. To this end, I would argue that Milton artfully designed his epic to conform to biblical patriarchal hierarchy while making sure that readers of Paradise Lost acknowledged that the work could be read as a scriptural truth.
Work Cited
Anderson, Douglas. “Unfallen Marriage and the Fallen Imagination in Paradise Lost.” Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900. 26.1, The English Renaissance. (Winter, 1986), pp. 125-144.
Ferry, Anne. “Milton’s Creation of Eve.” Studies in English Literature (Rice). 28.1 (Winter, 1988), p. 113, 20 p.
McColgan, Kristin Pruitt. “Abundant Gifts: Hierarchy and Reciprocity in Paradise Lost.” South Central Review, 11.1 (Spring, 1994), pp. 75-86.
McColley, Diane Kelsey. “Free Will and Obedience in the Separation Scene in Paradise Lost.” Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900, 12.1, The English Renaissance (Winter, 1972), pp. 103-120.
Milton, John. Paradise Lost. The Complete Poetry and Essential Prose of John Milton. Ed. William Kerrigan, John Rumrich, & Stephen Fallon. New York: Modern Library, 2007. Print.
Nyquist, Mary. “The genesis of gendered subjectivity in the divorce tracts and inParadise Lost. Re-membering Milton: Essays on the Texts and Traditions.Ed. Mary Nyquist and Margaret W. Ferguson. New York: Methuen, 1987. 99-127. Print.
Polydorou, Desma. “Gender and Spiritual Equality in Marriage: A Dialogic Reading of Rachel Speght and John Milton.” Milton Quarterly, 35.1 (Mar. 2001), p. 22 11 p.
Thickstun, Margaret O. Fictions of the Feminine. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1988. Print.
Woods, Susanne. “How Free are Milton’s Women?” Milton and the Idea of Woman. Ed. Julia M. Walker. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1988. Print.
