PARADISE LOST: Gender & Temptation

Question 1

“And Eve first to her husband thus began: ‘Adam…’”

Answer 1

1. a) Eve speaks first, breaking gender rituals/hierarchy

b) John Rogers:
-> First “genuine conversation” on earth: it forgoes ceremonial “ritualistic utterance”
- C.S. Lewis would reject the notion of it being vacuous, arguing it must be viewed through C.17th lens
- Nevertheless, Milton surely shows Eve asserting herself through the conscious rejection of superfluous address?

c) She espouses work, becoming the voice of the Protestant work ethic
-> Parable of the Talents: “Our day’s work brought to little…the hour of supper comes unearned”
-> ++ authority, subverts expectation she will be wrong

• ADAM REJECTS ‘unorthodox’ dynamic:
  a) Reestablishes traditional gender roles: “nothing lovelier can be found in woman, than to study household good”
  b) “Daughter of God and man” - simultaneously ritualistic and controlling -> frames ‘birth’ as masculine
  c) Parable of the Vineyard: “For not to irksome toil, but to delight // He made us”

-> THEREFORE, Eve grows ‘luxurious by restraint”?

Question 2

EVE’S BEAUTY:
1. “goddess-LIKE” / “spot more delicious than… OR of… OR renowned Alicnous… OR that”
2. “The smell of grain…rural sight…rural sound…in her look sums all delight”

Answer 2

1. Failure of language to capture the beauty (also Classical epic imagery -> elevated/mythologised)
   2.
   a) Pastoral -> beautiful, sensory, visceral, Satan as literature’s first romantic
   b) Her beauty almost tempts Satan away from the fall (duplicated but reversed later in Adam’s fall -> falls FOR her)
   -> “That space the evil one abracted stood // From his evil”
   - Prototypical language - all evil “disarmed”
   - Mirror lines -> rhythmically slow, lexical space emphasising the narrative space for alternative possibilities

Question 3

SATAN TEMPTS EVE:
1. “[He] turned at length // The eye of Eve to mark his play”
2. “sovereign mistress…who art sole wonder”

• Courtly
• Sensory/Sexual
• Maternal
• Idolatrous
• Indirect
• Egalitarian
• Chivalric

Answer 3

1. ‘Looking’ as the first stage of temptation - the idolatrous gaze
   -> Looks, hears, internalises (“Into the heart of Eve his words made way”)
2. a) TEMPTATION = SEXUAL DESIRE -> Eve tempted through AESTHETIC FLATTERY
   * “sovereign”
   -> Queen in a Masque, beauty, decadence (yet a prototype?)
   -> Restoration = Puritans :(
   b) “wonder”
   -> Christopher HILL: “[Satan’s] approach to Eve is a parody of the rituals of Courtly Love”
   -> Validates her - was told not to wonder at her beautiful reflection by a disembodies voice in Book IV
   -> Plays on her culturally induced narcissism…
   (- “thy celestial beauty” / “a goddess among gods…served by angels” - both idolatrous and WHAT HE HATES! Shows his deception)
   -> …which has grown “luxurious by restraint”
   - Told not to gaze at her own reflection by the disembodied voice in Book IV

Question 4

THE TREE
1. “Till on a day roving the field, I chanced // A goodly tree”
2. “Odour… more pleased my sense than… the teats of ewe or goat dropping with milk at even”

Answer 4

CAP = Satan gives Eve the things she DESIRES

1. • Satan lies, pretends to be a chivalric (SPACIAL) WANDERER
     -> Similar imagery to when he describes Eve -> linguistically connects Eve and the tree
     -> He presents himself as a chivalric prototype she can imitate
   • Then the tree gives him the freedom to INTELLECTUALLY WANDER
     -> “Thenceforth to speculations high or deep // I turned my thoughts”
     -> Knowledge as an arsenal in feminine autonomy

2.
- Sexualised
- MATERNAL - gives her the thing she never had (given she was ‘born’ from Adam’s rib - masculine)
- Every sense engaged
- The chivalric epic Satan presents Eve with is intensely feminised
-> ‘Milk’ as the object of the quest, vs. the ‘blood’ that comes with knighthood in chivalric epics

Question 5

THE TREE
Eve internalises the temptation:
1. “O sacred, wise, and wisdom-giving plant…
2. “…Mother of science”
3. “O sovereign, virtuous, precious of all trees”

Answer 5

1. Apostrophe - idolatrous
   2.
   a) “Mother” - the thing she craves
   b) Knowledge (typically masculine) made feminine -> she becomes “more equal” in terms of intellectual wandering?
2. Parallel of Satan’s words earlier - the temptation has been fully internalised

Question 6

ADAM’S TEMPTATION
a) (EVE) “For bliss, as thou hast part, to me is bliss”
b) (EVE) “that equal lot // May join us, equal joy, as equal love”
c) “Bone of my bone thou art”
d) “Bold deed thou has presumed, adventurous Eve” / “But to be godS, or angels demi-godS”
e) “Fondly overcome with female charm”

Answer 6

1. While Eve seeks autonomy, Adam seeks unity

a) Unified through the symmetry of the line
-> Even in sin! “one guilt, one crime”

b) Repetition - temptation

c) Sinful cycle:
- Begins in UNITY (Eve, Adam + God) -> Morning Prayer
- Eve WANDERS, FALLS (Loses God)
- End in sinful UNITY (Eve, Adam - God)

d) HOWEVER
* “The voice of the poem’s orthodoxy” (Rogers) would say Adam is not!
-> He is just claiming a part of himself (Renaissance lens, marriage), and so isn’t tempted by dependence
-> “To lose thee were to lose myself”
- Calvinist, pre-determined, forced to fall?
-> Eve validates this: “Adam, from whose dear side I boast me sprung”

e) Chivalric Epic language (the genre of temptation/fall?)
-> NOT GRADUAL
- Therefore, is he tempted, or does he choose to ensure their unity?
- “To lose thee were to lose myself”

f) Eve’s FEMININE EXCESS causes the fall:
* “That strange desire of wandering”
-> Creation = masculine
-> Growth = feminine
- What is restrained, and left to grow excessive -> “luxurious by restraint”
- JR: Arbitrary hierarchies cause the fall
- CSL: No hierarchies