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Emme Lopez

Professor Swann

English 312

12 Dec 1999

The Happy Family

Judeo-Christianity being the major religious tradition of the west, most readers are

familiar with the Genesis story which, for many, defines gender relations in Western society.

Genesis explicitly lays out male/female relations in that it establishes woman must follow man:

“…And thy [Eve’s] desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee” (King James

Bible Genesis 3.16). Indeed, God made Eve specifically as “an help meet” (Genesis 2.18) for

Adam.

Through retelling the Genesis story in his epic poem Paradise Lost, Milton cannot help

but expand upon the male/female relationship at the story’s center. Despite his premise of

“justif[ying] the wayes of God to men,” (bk. 1, line 26), Milton is unable to keep his writing as

tightly controlled as he perhaps intends; it gets away from him. Milton embellishes upon the

biblical story making it and its characters his own. Milton’s own writing involves a much more

complex question regarding male/female relationships than does the Genesis story as read in the

King James Bible. In attempting to make logic of this parable about the origin of human species,

Milton only makes it problematic, especially in regards to Adam and Eve’s interpersonal

relationship.

To refuse to interpret the relationship between Adam and Eve and fail to place Milton’s

depiction of their relationship in a broader perspective historically and socially seems folly given

the explicit gender focus, intentional or not, of the piece. However, Diane McColley, in her
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article, “Eve and the Arts of Eden,” does just that. She too easily glosses over the gender

question, particularly the engendering of the male. In refusing to address the question that truly

stands at the locus of Milton’s work, McColley almost cannot read Paradise Lost effectively.

McColley urges the reader to “reconsider the modern notion that the meaning of literature has

little to do with words” (100), insisting that the reader simply swallow Paradise Lost whole like a

pill: “Milton offers to repair the world we know and the selves we are as he says his and our aims

is” (101).

McColley’s reading too much transcends the bounds and aims of literature and historical

reality. Neither an apostle nor a saint, but an author, Milton wrote from a perspective—his own

—as influenced by his society and time. Milton’s rewriting of scripture undeniably interprets that

scripture which, in turn may be interpreted. Although McColley raises a valid point in reminding

the reader to focus on the beauty of the written word, she negates that which makes writing like

Milton’s great. Many aspects of literature are just as or more important than beautiful

construction. Meaning and perception are also crucial to literary merit. Otherwise, all writing

would be like “Jabberwocky,” all form and no function. The truly skilled artist couches a deeper

meaning in a well-constructed way. Thus, analyzing male/female relationships in the context of

the poem becomes extremely important, if not imperative.

Milton constructs a complex formula for gender relations. Male/female relations are not

smooth, even in Paradise. The Edenic Adam and Eve have many difficulties with their perceived

and proscribed roles. Milton’s description of Adam and Eve’s individual creations mirrors the

process of socialization by which engendering occurs. First, each individual is sexed, as at birth,

male or female. Next, both Adam and Eve learn from their society how to behave as masculine

and feminine. Adam knew not “who [he] was, or where, or from what” (bk. 7, line 907) until
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God (the only society Adam knows) dictates Adam’s self to him. God calls Adam, “first Man, of

men innumerable ordain’d / First Father” (bk. 7, lines 934-35) and makes Adam lord of the earth.

Adam did not know innately of his power and position until his society (God) told him what it

meant to be a man and explained what it was to have the power to name.

Language plays an important part in engendering and creation in this context. Adam’s

desire for an equal, a “consort” who, in effect, speaks his same language, spurs god to create Eve

(bk. 7, lines 994-1108). God’s power to name Adam and so classify him, and Adam’s power to

name all lowlier beasts than he (including Eve), symbolizes dominion over the named.

Verbalizing Eve in God’s words makes her feminine. Like Adam, Eve first exists, and then

society’s language engenders her as feminine. In her un-socialized state, Eve prefers her own

image in the mirror of the lake (bk. 4, lines 477-80) to Adam in the flesh.

Eve must learn her gender and her place through the language of her society: “there I had

fixt / Mine eyes till now, and pin’d with vain desire, / Had not a voice thus warnd me, What thou

seest, / …fair Creature, is thyself (bk. 4, lines 465-68). Her society conditions Eve to love Adam

and place him above herself. Regardless of whether Milton intended to convey this message, his

representation of the process of engendering seems revolutionary and not quite in keeping with

his stated purpose.

Christine Froula tackles gender issues head on in her article, “When Eve Reads Milton:

Undoing the Canonical Economy.” Froula essentially takes Milton to task for his part in the

established male-centric literary canon. Contrary to McColley’s fundamentalist reading, Froula’s

feminist Reading focuses on Adam, God, and Milton’s blatant repression of Eve:

The cultural economy erected upon Eve’s credence exists on

condition that Eve can “read” the world in only one way, by
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making herself the mirror of the patriarchal authority of Adam,

Milton’s God, Milton himself, and Western culture that the voice

tells her she is. Indeed, the poem’s master plot is designed

precisely to discourage “Eve” from reading this authority in any

other way. (Froula 329)

However, Froula goes so far in the opposite direction of McColley that the two almost meet.

Where McColley treats the poem too delicately, Froula refuses to engage with the text. Like

McColley, Froula swallows the pill whole and accepts Milton and Paradise Lost at face value.

Rather than dissecting the text and finding it radical in nature (especially for the late 1600’s),

Froula seeks to critique her own socio-historical moment as somehow epitomized by Milton’s

stated intent in writing Paradise Lost. Froula removes Milton too far from his place and time to

create and effective reading. Closer study of the text shows the radical and challenging nature of

Milton’s writing. One need only read at a surface level to begin to see Milton’s departure from

strict essentialism. For example, Adam and Eve’s amorous romp in the bower, pre-fall, cleaves

from the standard theology of Milton’s time (Class Notes, 26 Nov. 1999).

Adam proves conspicuous by his absence from both McColley’s and Froula’s works.

McColley’s scope widens only enough to include Eve as an analogy of poesy, saying, “Milton

revises… [the] allegorizing of scripture that makes Adam reason, mind, or soul; Eve passion,

sense, or flesh” (104). After this, Adam, for the most part, drops out of McColley’s paper.

McColley very much fails here; she points out Milton’s departure from the standard prescription

of masculinity/femininity, and then refuses to address the issue of gender. Including Adam in her

argument would have forced McColley to act as critic to Milton’s piece. Such a critique would

have run counter to McColley’s thesis. The unproblematic reading of Eve as tender of the garden
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and artist figure seems too easy. Despite the fact that “it is unheard of before Milton to show

[Adam and Eve] gardening, and especially to make Eve a gardener even more committed and

original than Adam” (104), there is more at work in Paradise Lost than Adam and Eve making

flower arrangements. McColley sets herself up to address the larger issues, such as gender, but

never does.

Froula, too, denies Adam’s importance, as though only the female of the species

experiences the process of engendering. Froula too quickly equates God’s speech with Adam’s

purpose when, through Adam’s dream of Eve’s nativity, “Adam attributes to Eve her secondary

status” (330). This reading fails to recognize the continuing process by which Adam and Eve

must both be reprogrammed constantly to accept their ordained roles. For instance, Eve must

speak God’s words before yielding to a request Adam makes of her rather than obeying

naturally, without thought: “My Author and Disposer, what thou bidst / Unargu’d I obey; so God

ordains. / God is thy Law, thou mine” (bk. 4, lines 635-37).

Adam also doubts his role. He appears uneasy with his socialized position of superiority

over Eve.

Here onely weake

Against the charm of Beauties powerful glance.

Or Nature faild in mee, and left some part

Not proof enough such Object to sustain,

Or from my side subducting, took perhaps

More then enough; at least on her bestow'd

Too much of Ornament, in outward shew

Elaborate, of inward less exact.

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For well I understand in the prime end

Of Nature her th' inferiour, in the mind

And inward Faculties, which most excell,

In outward also her resembling less

His Image who made both, and less expressing

The character of that Dominion giv'n

O're other Creatures; 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

Degraded, (bk. 7, lines 1169-89)

Froula's discussion of womb envy in relation to this passage as a justification for Adam’s

qualms, though in line with her thesis, seems incomplete. Froula fails to recognize Adam’s

struggle within himself over his place and Eve’s. The passage reads like a question about God’s

lessons; Adam understands Eve’s inferiority because of God’s teachings. Adam speaks of Eve’s

innate inferiority in God’s words while the discussion of Eve’s beauty and intelligence comes

straight from Adam. Thus, one wonders what Eden would have been like without God’s

interference; perhaps Adam would have followed Eve.

Froula too readily settles upon the solution of womb envy as an answer to Adam’s feeling

of incompleteness; however, the matter appears to be more complex than that. Upon returning to

the nativity scenes, it becomes evident that Adam has always viewed himself in pieces, even
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prior to the loss of his rib: “My self I then perus’d, and Limb by Limb / Survey’d” (bk. 7, line

904). In contrast, in Eve’s introduction to herself, she appears as a whole being: “As I bent down

to look, just opposite, / A Shape within the watry gleam appeered, / Bending to look on me” (bk.

4, lines 460-62). Regardless of the social roles Eve acquires, she harbors a complete and

attractive vision of her self. Unfortunately, these brief moments are all Milton writes about male

and female in their natural state before induction into society and its norms.

In the context of the work, it almost seems unnatural that the sexes would relate to one

another at all. Woman exists as a reflection of a reflection of God and, thus is furthest from God.

Her presence in the previously homo-gendered world seems an anomaly. Woman’s appearance

finally negates the need for asexual reproduction in which God and Satan engage. After the fall,

Adam asks himself this question: “O why did God, / Creator wise, that peopl'd highest Heav'n /

With Spirits Masculine, create at last / This noveltie on Earth, this fair defect / Of Nature, and

not fill the World at once / With Men as Angels without Feminine, / Or find some other way to

generate / Mankind?” (bk. 9, 888-94). Unfortunately, Adam addresses himself to the wrong

deity. The female and heterosexual reproduction first appear “Likest to [Satan] in shape and

count'nance bright, / … / Out of thy head I sprung: amazement seis'd / All th' Host of Heav'n;

back they recoild affraid / At first, and call'd me SIN” (bk. 2, lines 756-60). Sin’s eventual

coupling with Satan who “becam’st enamoured” with his image in Sin, produces Death: man’s

eventual fate. This succession closely parallels Adam and Eve’s own story thereby intimately

linking them with Satan’s family.

The theme of self-love projected onto another becomes too strong to ignore. Milton’s

writing seems to negate love without narcissistic love entirely. God’s original narcissism, in first

creating the angels then man in His own image, carries over into all the relationships in Paradise
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Lost. The narrative states “Hee for God only, shee for God in him” (bk. 4, line 299); however,

the rest of the story seems to contradict this recipe for easy faith. Perhaps a truer statement would

be God for Him in Adam, Adam for him in Eve.

For his own glory God created first the angels and, later, man. God admires what he sees

of Himself in Adam and distinguishes Adam from the rest of creation based on that image: “My

Image, not imparted to the Brute, / Whose fellowship therefore unmeet for thee” (bk. 7, lines

1078-79). Here Adam’s lonely fate mirrors God’s; without an equal, no real companionship can

flourish. Perhaps it is to combat this loneliness that God keeps generating images of himself.

Like Sin sprung from Satan’s head, God molds Eve from a rib out of Adam’s side. Also,

like Satan with Sin, Adam loves this reflection of himself, Eve: “Manlike, but different sex, so

lovly faire, / That what seemd fair in all the World, seemd now / Mean” (bk. 7, lines 1108-09).

Adam finally sees himself whole in Eve as Eve sees herself whole in the reflecting pool.

Since God prohibits Eve from loving her own reflection, Eve must reproduce

heterosexually to create her own image of herself. Sin serves as the template for heterosexual

reproduction, generating inbred images of herself “with sorrow infinite” (bk 2, line 797),

consequently foreshadowing Eve’s condemnation to the pain of childbirth after her original sin.

Neither Sin nor Eve finds the kind of joy in their “reflections” that Adam, Satan, or God does.

Thus, regardless of its intent, Milton’s text questions the very nature of heterosexual,

male/female relations, especially in regards to it rewards for women. Milton illustrates Eve’s

(and woman’s) bind quite well and, almost, sympathetically.

Milton’s complex work leaves a great deal of room for interpretation, particularly as

Milton grounded his endeavors in such a loaded context. The subtlety and beauty with which

Milton constructs his epic cry out for ever closer reading and examination of the text. Milton’s
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injunction to read Paradise Lost in a certain way might work for a more cut and dried, sin-and-

salvation piece such as Spenser’s The Faerie Queene; however, Milton’s complexity of situation

and depth of character development deny his own intentions. Perhaps Milton overshot himself in

trying to rationalize the story of “our mother Eve” and our “first father” Adam and their inter-

relations to God, each other, and everything.

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Works Cited

"King James Bible". Portland. Web. (16 Dec. 2007): King James Bible Online. 11 Dec.

2009. <http://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/>.

Froula, Christine. "When Eve Reads Milton: Undoing the Canonical Economy." Critical

Inquiry 10 2 (1983): 321-47. Print.

Milton, John. "Paradise Lost". Charlottesville, VA, 1667. Web. The Modern English

Collection. 1 (1993): University of Virginia Library. December 9 2009.

<http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/ >.

McColley, Diane. "Eve and the Arts of Eden." Milton and the Idea of Woman. Ed.

Walker, Julia M. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1988. 100-19. Print.