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John Milton. (1608–1674).  

 Paradise Lost: the English epic?

Paradise Lost is an Epic Poem in twelve Books. C.S.Lewis argues

it is secondary Epic, the sort of verse a sophisticated society

produces when it wishes to recapture the energy of the heroic

tradition, which he calls primary Epic. Good examples of the

latter, reflecting a more primitive culture and an oral tradition,

might be Homer’s Odyssey and Beowulf. An early example of

secondary epic is Virgil’s Aeneid, written to reflect and celebrate

the magisterial culture Augustus Caesar had produced. But

Milton’s poem is more ambitious than Virgil’s. It incorporates

more than two thousand years of Christian thought and worship;

its avowed aim is to justify the ways of God to man; and whether

it celebrates or ignores the Civil War culture that produced it

remains an open question after more than three hundred years.

Milton toyed with the idea of an Arthurian Epic, befitting an

English patriot. But Romance, which attracted him in youth,

would lock the Epic Poet into the turbulence of war and the

‘artifice’ of endless descriptions of armour. As he says in the

invocation to Book 9 he wants to explore ‘the better fortitude of

patience’ (ll. 31/32), not follow early favourites such as Ariosto

and Spenser ‘to dissect/With long and tedious havoc fabled

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knights/In battles feigned’ (9, 29-31). If Milton did battles they

would be clashes in the heart of man, struggling for freedom to

obey his God; or else between courteous ranks of fallen and

unfallen angels, dwarfing and burlesquing all human conflict that

was ever fought.

Classical Epic had come to be thought of as the grandest of all

forms of poetic composition, and, as his theme expanded, it was

to this form that Milton graduated, though his first thought was

to write

a sacred drama. Virgil’s Aeneid is his immediate model, with

Homer more especially underpinning scenes of combat. Yet, as

with his great pastoral elegy Lycidas, Milton adopts Classical

models only to transform them. Where the theology of classical

epic mixed gods with men in unpredictable episodes, Milton

systematically expounds the key debates that underpin Christian

understanding of the universe. He means to make use of classical

models: boasts before battle, roll-call of adversaries, the ‘wrath

of Achilles’, invocation of his Muse. Yet this Muse is not just one

numbered among the Sacred Nine, but no less than the Holy

Spirit of the Christian Godhead. With her aid he means to soar

‘above th’Aonian mount’ of Helicon, sacred to pagan poets, not

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just to draw upon the classical tradition, but to exceed it too.

Paradise Lost summarised

The first six books of Paradise Lost are unexpectedly and

teasingly symmetrical. The first begins with the fallen angels

rising from a lake of penal fire, testing the length and weight of

their chains, and meditating revenge on ‘th’Omnipotent’ who has

defeated them. Satan (literally, ‘th’ Adversary’) volunteers for a

singlehanded commando raid on God’s newly created human

favourites, Adam and Eve. He penetrates Eden, perches like a

cormorant on the tree of life(4, 196) and squats like a toad in

Eve’s ear (4,800), before a posse of loyal angels intercepts him.

Up to this point, the end of Book 4, the action is sequential. Books

5 and 6 depend (another characteristic of Epic) on flashback. In

them the Archangel Raphael (the ‘sociable spirit’) turns up at a

delicious uncooked meal - fire cannot be used before the Fall -

which Eve serves naked. Between mouthfuls Raphael recounts the

rousing backstory of the war in heaven, where the ‘horrid shock’

of arms and the roar of Satan’s cannon magnify (or simulate, or

even parody) the martial exploits customary in Epic. None of the

angels on either side bears other than mental scars, for the

wounds inflicted heal quickly.

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Thus by the beginning of Book 7 the narrative has circled back to

its starting point. In Books 7 and 8 Raphael takes questions on

the nature of the universe from Adam and Eve. This permits

Milton to present cutting edge seventeenth century knowledge on

theology, cosmology and the nature and purpose of creation,

though no firm choice is made between the Classical (Ptolemaic)

and Modern (Copernican) model of the cosmos for the good

reason that Milton himself had not made up his mind which was

more likely. Book 8 ends with intriguing details about the

digestive and excretory processes and even the sex life of angels.

The crisis of the poem, the fall of humankind at the instigation of

the devil, abruptly follows this retrospective and discursive

sequence, and, as befits its central significance, Book 9 is the

longest in the poem.

Book 10, making use of the preference of Epic for prophetic

visions of the future, supplies a snapshot of every major

character’s attitude in the light of the coming of original sin, and

describes the origins of weather in a newly fallen environment;

while books 11 and 12 provide a summary by the Archangel

Michael of highlights of the Old and New Testaments of the Bible,

with sensible omissions: ‘the rest / Were long to tell.’ Christ’s

appearance as second Adam, atoning for the sin of the first,

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forms the climax of Michael’s prophetic vision. The structural

symmetry of Epic is again maintained: this matches Messiah’s

role at the centre of the poem, where He judges the fallen angels.

The theology of this last sequence of the poem is notably

Protestant, complete with warnings about how the ‘grievous

wolves’ of Rome will one day ‘taint’ the purity of scripture. Adam

is delighted with all he is shown and told, even to the point of

thanking God for his own opportunity to sin so creatively (the

doctrine of felix culpa or the ‘happy sin’). But though he may

retrospectively delight in his fall, Book 12 ends with Adam and

Eve unceremoniously punished for it, and Eden guarded and

barred. They turn to a new world, our world, all before them, and

they enter it with ‘wandering steps and slow’.

While it is useful to have absorbed the structure of Paradise Lost

at full length, the text prescribed for examination is Book 9 of the

poem. The other books of the poem should be regarded as

context, and detailed attention reserved for Book 9.

STRUCTURAL ENGINEERING

Throughout the Epic, as we have seen, Milton binds his material

tautly together, not just matching up major sequences of action,

but also symbolic details. A good example is the description of

the tall trees of paradise in Book 4 (‘insuperable highth of loftiest

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shade’, 4, 138) which at that time bar Satan’s entrance into the

garden. These are the same soaring trees which in Book 9,

1088ff, overcome with dismay at his transgression, Adam begs to

cover him ‘with innumerable boughs’, so he may never again view

his naked body. As Douglas Bush writes, Milton achieved these

effects of parallelism by sustained, meticulous revision. ‘The

more we read [the Epic] the more we see of its architectural

design, not merely in the narrative as a whole but in innumerable

links and contrasts in the smallest details.’ Look for this as you

work through Book 9.

Some terms…

HYPERBATON: A generic term for changing the normal or

expected order of words--including anastrophe, tmesis,

hypallage, and other figures of speech. E.g.,"One ad does not a

survey make." The term comes from the Greek for "overstepping"

because one or more words "overstep" their normal position and

appear elsewhere. For instance, Milton in Paradise Lost might

write, "High on a throne of royal gold . . . Satan exalted sat." In

normal, everyday speech, we would expect to find, "High on a

throne of royal gold . . . Satan sat exalted."

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SYMPLOCE:

Paradise Lost: The Ninth Book

We begin with a summary of what is to come – not of what

has come before - nor ‘in media res’ as we would suspect

knowing that we are about to study book 9 of PL – a tome of

12 books.

THE ARGUMENT.—Satan, having compassed the Earth, with

meditated guile (Transferred epithet) returns as a mist by night

(symbolism of darkness) into Paradise; enters into the Serpent

sleeping (sibilance). Adam and Eve in the morning go forth to

their labours, which Eve proposes to divide in several places,

each labouring apart: Adam consents not, alleging the danger

lest that Enemy of whom they were forewarned should attempt

(temp, entice, seduce) her found alone. Eve, loathe to be thought

not circumspect or firm enough, urges her going apart, the rather

desirous to make trial of her strength; Adam at last yields. The

Serpent finds her alone: his subtle (Serpent chosen because he

moves so quietly?) approach, first gazing, then speaking, with

much flattery (Plays upon pride/hubris) extolling Eve above all

other creatures. Eve, wondering to hear the Serpent speak, asks

how he attained to human speech and such understanding not till

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now; the Serpent answers that by tasting of a certain Tree in the

Garden he attained both to speech and reason (ability to view all

choices then make a decision), till then void of both. Eve requires

him to bring her to that tree, and finds it to be the Tree of

Knowledge forbidden [anastrophe]: the Serpent, now grown

bolder, with many wiles and arguments induces her at length to

eat. She, pleased with the taste, deliberates a while whether to

impart thereof to Adam or not; at last brings him of the fruit;

relates what persuaded her to eat thereof. Adam, at first amazed

[stunned], but perceiving her lost, resolves, through vehemence

[impetuosity; excessive ardour] of love, to perish with her, and,

extenuating [underrating; excusing] the trespass, eats also of the

fruit. The effects thereof in them both; they seek

Note that the lines avoid direct address, to reflect increased distance.

Lines 1-98: Milton consciously strives to shift the tone from one of innocent joy to impending tragedy.

Just to take a backward step for a few moments, looking at what occurs prior to Book 9, we learn, on the authority from both from the narrator and also from Raphael, that Eve is inferior to Adam, and that the social hierarchy of Eden is established as what we can think of as the dominant discourse of the poem. We can think of this as the poem's official doctrine, if a poem can be said to have an official doctrine.

But there's obviously so much more to Paradise

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Lost than the official discourses of Raphael and the narrator. The poem seems continually -- and this is what Yale Professor John Rogers argues in his online lectures --continually to be opening up spaces for ideas other than the official, sanctioned language of the narrator. The angel Raphael was eager to assert the hierarchical worldview when the narrator was speaking about Adam and Eve, but Raphael was willing to loosen the constraints of the notion of hierarchy when he was pondering the subject of astronomy. Raphael's astronomy was marked really wonderfully by a lot of doubt and uncertainty, and he refused to determine whether Ptolemy was right or whether Copernicus was right. There's a way in which the poem's doubt about one kind of hierarchy seemed to bleed over into the other forms of hierarchy with which the poem was also concerned.

Now so far in Paradise Lost, the tension between the poem's official line and what we can think of as its more subversive strains -- this tension has surfaced in Paradise Lost in a kind of contrapuntal fashion. One position is simply juxtaposed without comment with another, but the poem itself never seems explicitly in any way to acknowledge the presence of the conflict or the presence of the contradiction; that is, the poem doesn't seem to acknowledge the presence of the conflict or contradiction until now -- until Book Nine. Book Nine, which is the book of the Fall, is structured by, I think, a far more explicit opposition of that official, dominant discourse, on the one hand, and the much more open-ended critique of that discourse, on the other. The stark opposition between these two competing positions is manifest explicitly, in the argument between Adam and Eve on the morning of the Fall before their separation.

Before we actually look at the content of that absolutely remarkable argument, it's worth musing on the fact that Adam and Eve are having an

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argument – it is a genuine dialogue, a conversation -- well, there may be a very brief exception in Book Five, but we'll set that aside -- that involves two individuals who do not already have in mind the content of the other's speech; a conversation that possesses at least some element of epistemological uncertainty, an element of surprise, or the inability to know exactly what the other person is going to say before he says it.

Now Milton up to this point hasn't been able to represent anything like the genuine dialogue. There are some exceptions. Maybe the dialogue between Satan and Abdiel during the war in heaven, but on earth it's not so clear. Before this moment, all language is more or less ceremonial or ritualistic utterance. Let's think of the Father and the Son in the dialogue in heaven in Book Three. The Father's omniscience, the fact that he knows everything, makes dialogue absolutely impossible. He always knows in advance what the Son is going to say. Even with Adam and Eve before Book Nine -- Adam and Eve seem to know in advance, in some way, the content of the other's speech; and so Adam will begin a speech (and this happens all the time) with some variation of this little formula: "Well thou knowest Eve that blah blah blah" -- in other words, of course you know this, Eve, but I'm going to say it anyway. Eve will tell Adam, "That day I oft remember," and then she will proceed to tell him something presumably that she's already told him a number of times before. Conversation before this point has been ritualistic, it's been ceremonial, and it is essentially unnecessary in these early parts of the poem.

The dialogue between Adam and Eve at the scene of their separation is really different from these ceremonial utterances. For the first time, they're speaking speeches from alien perspectives with purposes and intentions that are foreign to one another. They seem to us familiar -- we recognize

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these people, and in this conversation, and it's actually an argument as much as it is a conversation, Milton is giving us an emblem, finally I think, of what this poem has been doing all along: this poem has been arguing with itself. The dominant official language of hierarchy has been pitting itself against the questioning, subversive language of equality, and here in this conversation Milton gives a dramatic shape to what has been heretofore the abstract, intellectual conflicts that had so textured so many of the earlier books. And so here in Book Nine at the moment of the separation between Adam and Eve, we can see these two world views, these two enormous ways in which Paradise Lost thinks, separate almost to the point of absolute incompatibility. Whether this divergence will be nearly a separation or whether it will be an actual divorce, I think, is an open question.

Now you can think of Milton assigning faces here in Book Nine to a lot of these positions that have heretofore been abstract. Adam represents in this dialogue the nervous voice of the poem's orthodoxy, and Eve represents the questioning voice, the voice that questions and critiques that orthodoxy. To his credit -- and Milton's not often given credit for this -- he goes out of his way to lend a certain authority to Eve's critique, and he does so by structuring her argument as something like a retrospective of his own career as a radical polemicist: so Eve takes up the role of the radical Milton in this, it seems. She's put in the strange and utterly fascinating position of quoting the younger Milton, and you have something like a recap in the speeches of Eve here, in this discussion with Adam, of the great moments in this writer's work.

Now, the first subject of their discussion involves the topic that has been absolutely central, and we know this, to Milton throughout his career, and this

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is the subject of work or labor -- essentially, the value of human activity. The ostensible premise for the separation of Adam and Eve on the morning of the Fall is Eve's desire to work separately from Adam. Eve is arguing that they will be more productive if they divide their labors. Think of the ways in which this resonates for us. Milton has been juxtaposing for years the two accounts of the value of labor that he had found in the New Testament, the parable of the workers in the vineyard and the parable of the talents. As early as Sonnet Seven, written when Milton was twenty-three or twenty-four, he was depicting scenarios in which those two parables could be seen to argue with one another on just this question: on the value and the importance of labor. While the parable of the talents seemed to be chiding Milton for not working hard enough and not working fast enough, the parable of the workers in the vineyard seemed to assure him in some way that he didn't need to work quite so hard, that God didn't require his incessant and laborious efforts. It's a measure of just how difficult Milton wants it to be for us to adjudicate between Adam and Eve in this book that he casts their argument in just this language, the language of political economy and work. It's an argument that involves all of the implications, I think, of what are for Milton those two highly charged parables.

Now I think it's almost impossible for us to come to this scene without some assumption that Eve is wrong. We assume -- and it's understandable -- that because Eve will, as we know, go on to disobey the prohibition of the fruit, she must therefore at this point on some level be wrong or certainly, in some way, mistaken during this conversation. But Milton takes some amazingly interesting steps, I think, to counter what he knows will be our immediate assumptions. He attempts to counter our assumptions by allowing

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Eve to voice that position in a dialogue that most closely resembles the parable of the talents.

A READING OF THE FALL (FROM TEXT: INSIDE “PARADISE LOST”: READING THE DESIGNS OF MILTON’S EPIC)

It takes two, Adam and Eve, to fall in book 9 of PL, just as it takes both of them to reconcile with each other and accept the gift of God’s grace in book 10. Eve falls deceived by the wiles of Satan, failing the test she sets for herself to confront and withstand temptation as a lone individual. Adam knowingly falls with Eve, an act that combines marital love, human solidarity, and Adam’s fear of repeating his earlier loneliness before Eve’s creation: “to live again in these wild woods forlorn” (9.910). Adam’s choice – the choice of death – aligns him with the second Adam, the Son, who will die for and in the place of humanity, and might seem to place Adam on a higher ground, heroic and moral, than his wife, “much deceived, much failing, hapless Eve” (9.404). Milton provides a version of the Genesis story that accords with 1 Timothy 2.14: “And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression.” Paul glosses the divine judgement of Genesis 3.16 – “thy desire shall be subject to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee” – and notoriously uses the deceived and transgressing Eve to subordinate not only wives to husbands, but women to male authority, and to ordain their silence. “Deceived,” a word used sparingly in PL, in any case, reappears in the second of its only two uses in book 9 at the moment when Adam falls: “he scrupled not to eat / Against his better knowledge, not deceived, / But fondly overcome with female charm” (9.997) – 999). One may begin to suspect a pun, especially in light of the privative “dis-“ words that open the book: “distrust, disloyal, disobedience, distance, distaste” (9.6-9): by falling alongside his wife, Adam was not “dis-Eve-d.” Yet, it is due to the nature of Eve’s fall,

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in fact, that human beings owe their chance to be saved.

A Word from Milton…NO MORE of talk where God or Angel Guest [Raphael]

With Man, as with his friend, familiar [fricative] used

Familiar: (1.informal; 2.on a family footing; 3.familiar angel = ‘guardian angel’)

To sit indulgent, and with him partake

Rural repast, permitting him to while

Rural: Georgic, in contrast to the tragic fallen meal to come. Referring to the meal partaken with the angel guest Raphael. Exod. 33:11 authorized the notion of God speaking ‘face to face, as a man speaketh unto his friend.'

Lines 1-4: Described by scholar Ricks (1963) as the least pompous opening anywhere in a divine poem. God talked with Adam (Book 8 lines 316-51), but no common meal is mentioned. Pearce suggests ellipsis – “God or [rather] angel guest.’ Obscurely implying that before the Fall there was some meal with God less tragic than Holy Communion, but that Bk. 9 will bring a very different meal – the disloyal feast with Satan.

Venial [permissible] discourse unblamed [anastrophe]. I

now must change

[Distinct tonal change: we know that humanity will fall]

The alliteration in the underlined words… Note the crescendo: discourse… distrust… disloyal… disobedience.. distance... distaste.

        5

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Those notes to tragic—foul distrust, and breach.

Notes: The mode (notes) is tragic for the remainder of the poem. Among medieval narrative tragedies de casibus virorum illustrium, Adam’s fall, like Lucifer’s, was a common subject; Chaucer, “The Monk’s Tale.”

Distrust: recalling Raphael’s warning, “be not diffident” (Book 8: line 562).

Breach: (1. Breaking of friendly relation 2. Violation of God’s commandment)

Disloyal, on the part of man, revolt

(Adam/Eve ruined if for mankind – hendiadys)

And disobedience; on the part of Heaven,

Putting ‘heaven’ where ‘god’ is expected, and so inserting distance: ‘the distance is now moral and spiritual, and not merely material.’

Note the parallelism: “on the part of Man… foul distrust and breach disloyal… revolt and disobedience.” “On the part of Heaven… distance and distaste, anger and just rebuke and judgement given.” (lines 6 – 10).

Now alienated, distance and distaste, (Ds… alliteration)

“Now alienated” (humanity abandoned God/Heaven

The force of distaste depends on the frequency with which Fall is described as tasting. There is an ‘unspoken pun’. On the part of man, taste; on the part of Heaven, distaste.

Distaste: (1.aversion 2. Disrelish). Keeping up the theme of eating, prominent in the prologue (ix 1-9, 3f, 37-39) and culminating at book 10 line 687f (“At that tasted fruit / The sun, as from Thyestean banquet, turned”).

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Anger and just rebuke, and judgment given,         10

That brought into this World a world of woe

“this World a world of woe ”: is a ploce -  (the repetition of a word functioning as a different part of speech or in different contexts)

Sin [Satan’s daughter] and her shadow Death, and

Misery [Satan’s servant]

Characters: Sin is an allegorical character, met by Satan at the gates of

Hell in Book II of Paradise Lost. She holds the key to Hell's gate and opens the gate so that Satan (her father) can pass through on his way up to heaven. Sin has no mother but was born out of Satan himself at his rebellious assembly in heaven, both an allegorical representation of his sin against God and a parody of God's creation of the Son. Sin is 'woman to the waist' (II.650) and has a fish's tail, but she shifts shape and is constantly re-forming and breeding, giving birth to dog-like young. She has no control over these changes but is held captive by cruel pregnancies in a body in perpetual labour, cursed by her own fertility. Satan raped his daughter in heaven, and she gave birth to Death.

Death is a shadow-like character who appears in Book II of Paradise Lost, but is only mentioned briefly and fleetingly. Allegorically, he is the consequence of Satan's sin. He is not as sad a figure as Sin because he is empowered and in control of his condition. However, Death is malicious and armed, an aggressive character, carrying arrows and darts. Rather than suffering himself, Death takes pleasure in human pain and also in inflicting this pain. The only thing he fears is the Son who is fated to destroy him.

Death’s harbinger. Sad task! [sense of incredible dread]

yet argument

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harbinger [A servant who goes before to prepare the way for his master.]

Not less but more heroic than the wrauth

Of stern Achilles on his foe pursued         15

Thrice fugitive about Troy wall; or rage

Of Turnus for Lavinia disespoused;

Or Neptune’s ire, or Juno’s that so long

(multiple ‘or’s = polysyndeton)

Perplexed the Greek, and Cytherea’s son:

Perplexed: plagued; bewildered

Cytherea’s son: Mythology allusion: Periphrasis, bringing out Juno’s petty motive for persecuting Aeneas (envy of Venus, after Paris’s fatal choice).

Lines 10-19: Achilles, stern in his wrath, refused any covenant with Hector; the more heroic Messiah is not implacable. Although he issued his sole commandment ‘sternly’ (book 8 line 333), once disobeyed, he works for reconciliation. And God’s anger, unlike Neptune’s and Juno’s, unravels perplexity and is just, not revengeful; Bk 12 line 275 (“Erewhile perplexed…now I see”). ‘A characteristic exercise in close discrimination, turning on anger.

If answerable style I can obtain         20

Of my celestial Patroness, who deigns

Her nightly visitation unimplored,

And dictates to me slumb’ring (elison), or inspires

Easy my unpremeditated verse,

Since first this subject for heroic song         25

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Pleased me, long choosing and beginning late,

Milton did not begin Paradise Lost until he was in

his late 40s.

Not sedulous by nature to indite

Wars, hitherto the only argument

Heroic deemed, chief maist’ry [elison] to dissect

With long and tedious havoc fabled knights         30

In battles feigned [anastrophe] (the better fortitude

Of patience and heroic martyrdom

Unsung). Or to describe races and games

Or tilting furniture [equipment for jousting], emblazoned shields,

Impreses quaint, caparisons and steeds,         35

Bases and tinsel trappings, gorgeous knights [hendiadys]

At joust and tournament; then marshalled feast

Served up in hall with sewers and seneshals: [Asyndeton

- check]

The skill of artifice or office mean;

Not that which justly gives heroic name         40

To person or to poem. Me, of these

Alliteration: ‘person…poem’

“poem. Me,” = medial caesura

Nor skilled nor studious, higher argument

Remains, sufficient of itself to raise

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Sibilance: “skilled...studious…sufficient”

Alliteration: “remains…raise”

That name, unless an age too late, or cold

Climate, or years, damp my intended wing

As per provided notes in student text…Lines 44 – 45: Three things may weigh Milton down and keep him from completing his heroic poem: (1) He lives too late in history for such a poem to succeed (2) he lives too far noth, in a cold climate, rather than near the warm Mediterranean sea, where all great epics have hitherto been written and (3) he is himself is too old – He fears he will die before finishing his story.

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Depressed; and much they may if all be mine,

Not Hers who brings it nightly to my ear.

Narrator: (Intro to story: Darkness – “the sun was

sunk”)

The Sun was sunk, and after him the Star

Of Hesperus, whose office is to bring

Twilight upon the Earth, short arbiter         50

’Twixt day and night, and now from end to end

Night’s hemisphere had veiled the horizon round (visual

imagery),

When Satan, who late fled before the threats

Satan (anti-hero introduced in darkness),

Of Gabriel out of Eden, now improved

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Parenthetical Phrase : “who late fled before the threats of Gabriel out of Eden”

In meditated fraud and malice bent         55

On Man’s destruction, maugre what might hap

Alliteration in lines 55-56: five m’s

Of heavier on himself, fearless returned.

Doesn’t care what happens to himself

By night he fled, and at midnight returned

From compassing the Earth—cautious of day

Satan circling in darkness – cannot or will not travel in daylight?

Since Uriel, Regent of the Sun, descried         60

His entrance, and forewarned the Cherubim

That kept their watch. Thence, full of anguish, driven,

The space of seven continued nights he rode

Antithesis to God’s 7 day creation

With darkness—thrice the equinoctial line [equator]

He circled, four times crossed the car of Night         65

From pole to pole, traversing each colure—

On the eighth returned, and on the coast averse

From entrance or cherubic watch by stealth

Found unsuspected way. There was a place

(Now not, though Sin, not Time, first wraught the

change)

        70

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Where Tigris, at the foot of Paradise,

Into a gulf shot under ground, till part

Rose up a fountain by the Tree of Life.

In with the river sunk, and with it rose,

Satan, involved in rising mist; then sought         75

Where to lie hid (hiding). Sea he had searched and land

“Sea he had searched” - Hyperbaton

From Eden over Pontus, and the Pool

Mæotis, up beyond the river Ob;

Downward as far Antartic; and, in length,

West from Orontes to the ocean barred         80

At Darien, thence to the land where flows

Ganges and Indus. Thus the orb he roamed

With narrow search, and with inspection deep

“inspection deep” = Anastrophe: the inversion of the usual order of words or clauses

Exemplum : Lines 76b – 83: Narrator goes to much trouble in listing the places Satan searched (those parts of the land and sea (the known Earth of the 17th Century)) – just as Satan goes to much trouble to find a location in which to hide.

Considered every creature, which of all

Most opportune might serve his wiles, and found         85

The Serpent subtlest beast of all the field.

Him, after long debate, irresolute

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Of thoughts revolved, his final sentence chose

Fit vessel, fittest Imp of fraud, in whom

To enter, and his dark suggestions hide         90

From sharpest sight; for in the wily snake

Whatever sleights none would suspicious mark

(serpent wouldn’t be suspicious)

As from his wit and native subtlety

Proceeding, which, in other beasts observed,

Doubt might beget of diabolic power         95

Active within beyond the sense of brute.

Thus he resolved, but first from inward grief

His bursting passion into plaints thus poured:—

SATAN: “O Earth, how like to Heaven, if not

preferred

Interior soliloquy: Lines 98 – 178

Once entered unseen onto earth, Satan’s first reaction is not quite what we might have been expecting. His opening exclamation (99) shows that, though fallen himself, he is not at all immune to the beauty and variety of Paradise and, if anything, the sights around him whet his sense of loss. Satan is instantly reminded of heaven by what he sees and argues logically that earth, being created after heaven, must by definition be ‘More justly’ (102) ‘preferred’ (101) since ‘what god after better worse would build?’ (102).

       

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More justly, seat worthier of gods, as built  100

With second thoughts, reforming what was old!

For what god, after better, worse would build?

Terrestrial Heav’n [elision], danced round by other

Heavens,

Reference to Galileo

That shine, yet bear their bright officious lamps,

From Satan’s viewpoint, all the stars seem to shed ‘their bright officious lamps’ (104), and this for the benefit of the earth. He employs a faltering metaphor to convey his sense of awe. In the same way that God ‘Is centre, yet extends to all’ (108), Satan says, the earth too is the centre for all the stars and receives ‘all their known virtue’ (110) which is transformed into the chain of life, ‘Productive in herb, plant, and nobler birth . . . all summed up in man’ (111– 13). The metaphor collapses when God is seen as extending, while the earth receives virtue from the heavens. By showing Satan preferring the logic of the chain of being which leads up to man, to the accuracy of his chosen metaphor, Milton may well be exposing Satan’s hypocrisy.

There is certainly a rhythmical pattern to the list that also leads up to the emphatic final ‘man’ (113) as though Satan savours the drama of his own conclusion.

Light above light, for thee alone, as seems,        10

5

24

In thee concentring all their precious beams (Sun made

for Earth)

Of sacred influence! As God in Heaven

Is centre, yet extends to all, so thou

Centring receiv’st from all those orbs; in thee,

[simploce]

Not in themselves, all their known virtue appears,        11

0

Productive in herb, plant, and nobler birth

Of creatures animate with gradual life

Of growth, sense, reason (tricolon: God gives ability to

reason), all summed up in Man.

Logic is evident in the structure of this first lengthy sentence which culminates in the focus of Satan’s parasitic envy in the following sentence: ‘all summed up in man’ (113). The subject of the sentence is the oxymoron ‘Terrestrial heaven’ (103), Satan’s ironic recognition of earth’s rich beauty and of its apparent centrality.

He also uses the second person ‘thou’ (108) and thee’ (114) to address the earth – instead of the more neutral ‘it’ – which has the effect of personalising his sense of grievance further.

With what delight could I have walked thee round,

(If I could joy in aught) sweet interchange

Even as Satan imagines himself enjoying the newly created earth, with all its rich landscape, he knows it is unavailable to him and that all joy is now beyond his reach, ‘If I could joy in aught’ (115).

        11

5

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Of hill and valley, rivers, woods, and plains,

Now land, now sea, and shores with forest crowned,

Rocks, dens, and caves!

Exemplum – setting is a detailed list

But (contrastive conjunction) I in

none of these

Find place or refuge; and the more I see

Pleasures about me, so much more I feel

Lines 119 & 120: Parallel structure

        12

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Torment within me, as from the hateful siege

The impressive list he produces (exemplum) only magnifies his sense of torment at not being able to delight in them and he acknowledges the dreadful reality that, far from easing his pain, the sight of earth’s magnificent landscape only worsens his state. The repetitious rhythm of ‘the more I . . . so much more I . . . ’ and the subtle rhyming of ‘see’ and ‘feel’ in subsequent lines helps drive home his anguish, as though he is attempting to convince an imaginary listener to empathise with him: . . . and the more I see Pleasure about me, so much more I feel Torment within me, (119– 21)

Of contraries; all good to me becomes

Bane, (Satan is bitter) and in Heaven much worse would

be my state. (knows he cannot return)

The very essence of what it is to be Satan, to be

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the archetypal traitor that he is, is captured in his realisation that ‘all good to me becomes/ Bane’ (122– 3). He is eternally trapped in a paradox where, though still able to recognise and admire all that is good, good itself quickly mutates into an agony for him to contemplate.

But neither here seek I, nor in Heaven,

Having indulged himself in his plight, Satan turns quickly to the attack once more and launches into an immensely lengthy sentence (124– 62) which begins with his reminding us that neither heaven nor earth are worthy goals, ‘unless by mastering heaven’s supreme’ (125), that is by destroying God.

To dwell, unless by mast’ring Heav’n’s Supreme;        12

5

Nor hope to be myself less miserable

By what I seek, but others to make such

As I, though thereby worse to me redound.

He is even honest enough to admit that he does not wish nor expect to lessen his torment, ‘Nor hope to be myself less miserable/ By what I seek’ (126– 7), but is rather intent on making others suffer too, because only in such wilful destruction can he ‘find ease/ To my relentless thoughts’ (129– 30).

For only in destroying I find ease

To my relentless thoughts; and him [man] destroyed,        13

0

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Lines 130 – 133: Satan next invites us to appreciate the scale of his design, and it is every bit as ambitious as his immense pride would lead us to expect. Although uncertain of the nature of his success, ‘and him destroyed/ Or won to what may work his utter loss’ (130– 1), Satan hopes that it will lead not just to the destruction of man but to the destruction of the earth which God has made for man too, ‘all this will soon/ Follow, as to him linked in weal or woe’, where ‘weal’ is antithetical to ‘woe’ and infers prosperity or wealth (132– 3). Note the use of alliteration to create a clear emphasis at the end of a line.

Or won to what may work his utter loss,

For whom all this was made, all this will soon

***Follow, as to him linked in weal [happiness] or woe:

In woe then, that destruction wide may range!

Anadiplosis : ("a doubling, folding up") is the repetition of the last word of a preceding clause. The word is used at the end of a sentence and then used again at the beginning of the next sentence.

To me shall be the glory sole among        13

5

The Infernal Powers, in one day to have marred

What he, Almighty styled, six nights and days

Continued making, and who knows how long

Before had been contriving? though perhaps

Not longer than since I in one night freed        14

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From servitude inglorious well nigh half***

Anastrophe (a figure of speech in which the syntactically correct order of subject, verb and object is changed): “servitude inglorious.”

Lines 133 – 141: The pause here really is marked, and not just an effect of the alliterative ending but of the repeated phrase that follows: ‘In woe then’ (134), which simply demands the reader takes stock and moves on to new material.

This new material is Satan’s imaginary best outcome, his ideal version of the future and, although ‘destruction wide’ (134) may be its key manifestation; vanity is its real motivation: ‘To me shall be the glory sole among/ The infernal powers’ (135– 6) is what Satan perceives as reward. A ‘glory’ emanating from his being able to destroy ‘in one day’ (136) what God has taken at least ‘six nights and days’ (137) to create.

Throughout this prolonged diatribe (a forceful and bitter verbal attack against someone or something), Satan again and again reveals his intense enmity for his creator, choosing any name for him but God, and frequently comparing himself with him in stature or achievement. Here he sneers at the idea that it took God so long to create the earth when he himself took merely ‘one night’ (140) to, in his terms, liberate ‘From servitude inglorious wellnigh half/ The angelic name’ (140– 1).

The irony is so obvious, it risks missing its target…so, it is worthwhile reminding yourself just what kind of freedom his followers now enjoy, as well as noting the exaggeration, since we know from a number of places (most notably Book VI, 156) that only one-third of heaven rebelled – not the “nigh half” that Satan states in line 141.

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The Angelic Name, and thinner left the throng

Line 142: Milton’s fondness for the alliterative half-line appears again in ‘and thinner left the throng’

Of His adorers. He, to be avenged,

Line 143a: ‘adorers’ vibrates with petty jealousy.

Line 143b: The medial caesura at ‘He to be avenged’ marks a change of direction and a shocking interpolation by Satan which links the creation of man and earth to God’s desire to avenge Satan’s rebellion.

And to repair his numbers thus impaired—

Whether such virtue, spent of old, now failed        14

5

More Angels to create (if they at least

Are His created), or to spite us more—

Epistrophe : “create” & “created”

Parenthetical Statement : “(If they at least Are His created)” – Questions with distain.

Determined to advance into our room

A creature formed of earth, and him endow,

Exalted from so base original,        15

0

With heavenly spoils, our spoils. What He decreed

Note the difference between ‘he’ and ‘He’ – ‘he’ with a small ‘h’ is referring to man while ‘He’ with

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a capital ‘H’ is referring to God.

Lines 144 – 151: Satan can only see the act of creation in crudely militaristic terms, ‘to repair his numbers thus impaired’ (144) and ‘With heavenly spoils, our spoils’ (151). Or else utterly selfish terms, ‘or to spite us more’ (147) and ‘Determined to advance into our room’ (148).

He lacks the trust and faith that God requires of Adam and of man to see his grand plan worked out to the ultimate glory and salvation of mankind as a whole.

He even casts doubt on his own and the other angels’ origins, ‘if they at least/ Are his creation’ (146– 7).

But perhaps his greatest sense of grievance stems

from, unsurprisingly, his own vanity, because it is man’s baseness, ‘A creature formed of earth . . . Exalted from so base original’ (149– 50), that really exercises him.

He effected; Man He made, and for him built

Magnificent this World, and Earth his seat,

Him Lord pronounced, and, (O indignity!)

Subjected to his service Angel-wings        15

5

Lines 154 – 155: Satan reserves his exclamatory disdain in the parenthetical statement, ‘(oh indignity!)’ (154), for the idea that angels have been ‘Subjected to his service’ (155), as though somehow he has been personally insulted by this new arrangement.

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And flaming ministers, to watch and tend

Their earthly charge. Of these the vigilance

It is also intriguing to note the shift in the way Satan has employed the word ‘earth’ in this diatribe. What began as a rich and beautiful individual, to be admired and addressed intimately as ‘thee’ (105) and ‘thou’ (108), has now become a term of abuse, ‘their earthy charge’ (157).

I dread, and to elude, thus wrapt in mist

Of midnight vapour, glide obscure, and pry

In every bush and brake, where hap may find        16

0

Lines 158 – 160: The mention of the angels guarding Adam has a narrative function as it enables Satan to describe the means by which he enters Eden ‘wrapped in mist/ Of midnight vapour’ (158– 9) in order to avoid detection by them. This shift to his metamorphosis and his quest to find the serpent, re-establishes a sense of drama and immediacy, and the reader is invited to picture Satan transformed into a mist prying into ‘every bush and brake’ (160).

The Serpent sleeping, in whose mazy folds

To hide me, and the dark intent I bring.

Lines 161 – 162: The image of the serpent’s ‘mazy folds’ (161) is wittily appropriate, since it not only describes the visual puzzle of a snake’s coils, but the hidden nature of Satan’s ‘dark intent’ (162).

O foul descent! that I, who erst contended

With Gods to sit the highest, am now constrained

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Into a beast, and, mixed with bestial slime, (visual

imagery)

        16

5

This essence to incarnate and imbrute,

Satan himself is more concerned with the inappropriateness of the metamorphosis, exclaiming ‘Oh foul descent!’ (163) at the idea ‘That I who erst contended/ With gods to sit the highest’ (163– 4), and who is now reduced to the proportions and habits of a snake, ‘and mixed with bestial slime’ (165). But this transformation also provides Milton with an opportunity to contrast Satan with Christ, since the latter selflessly embraces his reduction through incarnation as man, while Satan whines and complains, ‘This essence to incarnate and imbrute’ (166).

That to the highth of Deity aspired!

Lines 168 – 175: The next part, the final section of Satan’s speech is difficult, not so much through complex syntax or vocabulary, as through the perverseness of Satan’s ideology. He starts with a rhetorical question few listeners would respond to as quickly and readily as he imagines they might, ‘But what will not ambition and revenge/ Descend to?’ (168– 169).

But what will not ambition and revenge

Descend to? Who aspires must down as low

As high he soared, obnoxious, first or last,        17

0

Satan produces what sounds like a sententious observation, ‘Who aspires must down as low/ As high he soared’ (169– 70), but which simply doesn’t ring true. Satan appears to be trying to

33

convince himself that there is a direct proportion to be embraced and that the higher one’s ambitions, the lower one’s starting point.

To basest things. Revenge, at first though sweet,

Bitter ere long back on itself recoils.

Yet immediately afterwards he also recognises the much more acceptable belief that revenge is only a temporary pleasure which soon turns sour. ‘Revenge, at first though sweet,/ Bitter ere long back on itself recoils’ (171– 2), the final word ironically connecting him to the serpent.

Let it; I reck not, so it light well aimed,

It is quite possible that Milton is perfectly comfortable with Satan’s inconsistency here, preferring to stress his recklessness when he decides to dismiss any bitter consequences: ‘Let it; I reck not, so it light well aimed’ (173).

Since higher I fall short, on him who next

Provokes my envy, this new favourite        17

5

He is determined to concentrate his aim on God, even though he knows the missile might ‘fall short’ (174) and hit man, ‘on him who next/ Provokes my envy’ (174– 5).

Of Heaven, this Man of Clay, son of despite,

Lines 175-176: The brief list Satan then produces articulates that envy we were talking about perfectly, ‘this new favourite/ Of heaven, this man of clay, son of despite’ (175– 6).

In any discussion about Satan it is important to acknowledge the precise nature of his failings and

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here Milton is completely unequivocal about them. The first is envy: he names it and Satan exemplifies it for us immediately.

Contemporary students would benefit from researching and understanding exactly what envy is and why for Milton’s readers, as for Dante, it was unshakably one of the seven deadly sins.

Whom, us the more to spite, his Maker raised

From dust: spite then with spite is best repaid.”

Lines 177-178: Satan’s second great weakness is pride and Milton

returns finally to his sense of insulted pride to close this speech, ‘Whom us the more to spite his maker raised/ From dust’ (177– 8), as though man’s base origin represented a direct, personal insult that God aimed at him.

In the end, it seems Satan’s logic is merely that of the playground, ‘spite then with spite is best repaid’ (178).

Student EXERCISE : Lines 179– 204. In this brief interval before Adam and Eve are shown discussing how best to divide their labour, Satan finds and enters the serpent. How does Milton depict the serpent before and after its invasion by Satan?

NARRATOR:

So saying, through each thicket, dank or dry,

Like a black mist low-creeping (simile), he held on        18

0

His midnight search, where soonest he might find

35

The Serpent. Him fast sleeping soon he found,

In labyrinth of many a round self-rowled,

His head the midst, well stored with subtle wiles:

Not yet in horrid shade or dismal den:        18

5

Nor nocent yet, but on the grassy herb,

Fearless, unfeared, he slept. In at his mouth

The Devil entered, and his brutal sense.

In heart or head, possessing soon inspired

With act intelligential; but his sleep        19

0

Disturbed not, waiting close the approach of morn.

  Now, whenas sacred light began to dawn

In Eden on the humid flowers, that breathed

Their morning incense, when all things that breathe

From the Earth’s great altar send up silent praise        19

5

To the Creator, and his nostrils fill

With grateful smell, forth came the human pair,

And joined their vocal worship to the quire

Of creatures wanting voice; that done, partake

The season, prime for sweetest scents and airs;        20

0

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Lines 192 – 200: Praising God

Let’s briefly look at the next section beginning at line 201: First of all, it's the narrator here who's opening the subject of work. He's discussing the topic of conversation between Adam and Eve at the beginning of their day: "They cómmune [they converse] how that day they best may ply / Their growing work: for much thir work outgrew / The hands' dispatch of two Gard'ning so wide."

So we learn from the official perspective of the narrator here that Eve will have children. This is incredibly consequential information that according to Milton’s plot, she was to have children even before the Fall. We learn that even before they have children, this garden demands an extraordinary amount of work from Adam and Eve and that the garden seems in some way to be actually spinning out of control. This is a nightmare landscape from the perspective of a house owner! This passage is important because it's the narrator here who validates Eve's initial position in this first speech.

Then com’mune how that day they best may ply

Their growing work—for much their work outgrew

The hands’ dispatch of two gardening so wide:

And Eve first to her husband thus began:—

This next section, which just for an easy state of reference we will call:

‘Eve Persuades Adam to Allow Her to Work in the Garden Alone,’

is one of the most infamous sections of Book 9 of PL that contains the conversation between Adam and Eve. It ends with Eve seen skipping blithely off

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into the trees alone, her husband looking longingly after her (205– 384). In any critical discussion about blame or fault, it inevitably figures highly, and the analysis here will focus on the line of argument each pursues.

EVE: “Adam, well may we labour still to dress       

 205

This Garden, still to tend plant, herb, and flower,

Line 206: Eve opens this conversation with a clear request. Instead of their working together to ‘tend plant, herb and flower’ (206), she wants them to split up so that they work more effectively and stop their garden ‘Tending to wild’ (212).

Our pleasant task enjoined; but, till more hands

Aid us, the work under our labour grows,

Luxurious by restraint [paradox]: what we by day

Lop overgrown, or prune, or prop, or bind,        21

0

One night or two with wanton growth derides,

Tending to wild. Thou, therefore, now advise,

She asks for Adam’s advice, ‘Thou therefore now advise’ (212), but immediately offers her own suggestion, which is a reference to what Adam told Raphael about how he responded to her thoughts and words (VIII, 546– 59): All higher knowledge in her presence falls Degraded, wisdom in discourse with her Looses discount’nanced, and like folly shows; (VIII, 551– 3), and, of course, how Raphael subsequently warned Adam to temper his desire for Eve with reason. Eve’s suggestion points them towards differing plants which have emblematic connotations any decent edition of the poem will detail, but what is unavoidable and more challenging than these emblems is the basis Eve uses for her suggestion. Her view is that, being so

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close, they are inevitably drawn to look at each other and then converse, so that the day ends not just with little work accomplished, but crucially ‘the hour of supper comes unearned’ (225).

Or hear what to my mind first thoughts present.

Let us divide our labours—thou where choice

Leads thee, or where most needs, whether to wind        21

5

The woodbine round this arbour, or direct

Alliteration of w’s

The clasping ivy where to climb; while I

In yonder spring of roses intermixed

With myrtle find what to redress till noon.

Now, the next bit, starting on line 223… Eve suggests that when Adam and Eve work together, their affectionate looks, their absolutely adorable smiles, distract each other from their labor. This is line 223. So all of those intervening looks and smiles, she argues, "intermits / Our day's work brought to little, though begun / Early, and th' hour of Supper comes unearn'd." Eve has clearly embraced the Protestant work ethic, and she displays an intuitive grasp of the importance of the parable of the talents: God only rewards those who exert themselves or who invest their talent in an activity. It's impossible not to ascribe to Eve at least some of the authority that's attached to the parable of the talents here.

For, while so near each other thus all day

        22

0

Our task we choose, what wonder if so near

39

Looks intervene and smiles, or objects new

Casual discourse draw on, which intermits

Our day’s work, brought to little, though begun

Early, and the hour of supper comes unearned!”        22

5

 NARRATOR:

To whom mild answer Adam thus returned:—

ADAM:

“Sole Eve, associate sole, to me beyond

Adam responds initially with loving compliments, playing with the word ‘sole’ (227) to stress their union and assuming from her request that her motive was all to do with good husbandry, ‘to study household good/ And good works in her husband to promote’ (233– 4).

Compare above all living creatures dear!

Well hast thou motioned, well thy thoughts imployed

“well”… “well”

How we might best fulfil the work which here        23

0

Anastrophe : “How we might best fulfil”

God hath assigned us, nor of me shalt pass

Unpraised; for nothing lovelier can be found

In woman than to study household good,

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And good works in her husband to promote.

Role of a wife – according to Milton!

Yet not so strictly hath our Lord imposed        23

5

Labour as to debar us when we need

Refreshment, whether food, or talk between,

Food of the mind, or this sweet intercourse

Of looks and smiles; for smiles from reason flow

To brute denied, and are of love the food—

His rejection of her request is based on his belief that God has not forbidden any of the loving communication, the shared thoughts and food – what he sums up as ‘this sweet intercourse/ Of looks and smiles’ (238– 9) which Eve viewed as time wasted – and he points out that ‘smiles from reason flow’ (240) which distinguishes them from the animals ‘and are of love the food’ (240).

Adam turns Eve’s suggestion about work efficiency into a love test, reminding her that love is ‘not the lowest end of human life’ (241).

        24

0

Love, not the lowest end of human life.

For not to irksome toil, but to delight,

Line 242: He does return to her point, by reminding her that God has created them not for ‘irksome toil, but to delight’ (242).

He made us, and delight to reason joined.

There is something euphemistic about this whole conversation and, although Eve never mentions sex, Adam appears to understand that is what she

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is really talking about, and if that is the case, then what Milton is describing, is a demonstration of the tension between carnality and rationality that Adam told Raphael he felt in Eve’s presence ever since their nuptial union that occurred in Book VIII (lines 530– 53).

In the next two lines, lines 554- 555, Adam makes one more attempt to dissuade Eve when he suggests that her anxiety about the garden’s growing wildness is unfounded: ‘These paths and bowers doubt not . . . Will keep from wilderness with ease’ (244– 5), but then he suddenly acquiesces.

This abrupt leaning Eve’s way could be seen as reinforcing the argument that this entire conversation is euphemistic. Is too much conversation really a credible reason to agree to Eve’s request? That is what Adam implies when he says ‘but if much convérse perhaps/ Thee satiate’ (247– 8). ‘

Satiate’, with its implication of excess, seems infinitely more suited to a discussion about sex than gossip and one doesn’t have to be a schoolboy to take the step from convérse to intercourse.

Let’s look back at line 242 for a few moments. Yale Professor John Rogers addresses one possible way in which Milton looks back at his former interest in work -- at his former interest in the interaction of the two parables, and Professor Rogers believes that he's bending their implications and their meanings in an entirely new way. Here’s his explanation: Now Adam counters Eve with some version of the parable of the workers in the vineyard, claiming that there's more to work than simple productivity. This is line 242. Adam's talking: "For not to irksome toil, but to delight / He made us, and delight to Reason join'd." For Adam,

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one is still serving God when one takes pleasure in one's work. The importance lies more in the willingness to serve and not in the actual amount of work that's been accomplished or in the amount of stuff that's been produced. Milton himself was obviously always wanting to take Adam's side in this debate, but he seems to have been continually fearful -- at least this is my assumption -- that Eve was right: that God requires our continual labor. You can also hear Milton making a distinction between Eve's zeal for labor and his own efforts in writing this very poem. Milton's poem, we remember, had been "long [in] choosing but beginning late." Like the workers in the vineyard, Milton doesn't get around to writing the poem until late in his literary career. Eve's labor is begun early, and there's even a sense here that beginning early isn't good enough for Eve; she seems to be pushing to get up even earlier and to work even harder. Eve is the modern voice of workplace efficiency. She supplies the voice of conscience that chides not only Adam but the voice of conscience that seems always to be chiding the poet himself. Now surely Adam is right – we have to hand it to him – in arguing that they are not in a position to earn their supper as if they were merely wage laborers. That’s not how Milton’s Eden works. None of their labor actually goes into the harvesting or the production of food. They’re fed plenty, but that’s because the fruits simply land in their hands. The work that they perform is all entirely ornamental – it’s ornamental gardening: pruning, cutting back, propping up. It’s never productive in any kind of economic sense or quasi-economic sense. Their gardening is merely a virtuous activity that is entirely divorced from the demands of productivity or the demands of nourishment. So Adam is right; but while Adam is right, in a certain sense he doesn’t address directly the problem that the narrator himself has already

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acknowledged, and that’s the problem that the garden [laughs] seems to be growing at a faster rate than Adam and Eve are able to manage. This is amazing. Look at line 205. This is where Eve notes how excessive [laughs] the growth patterns seem to be in paradise. So, Eve to Adam:

Adam, well may we labour still to dressThis Garden, still to tend Plant, Herb, and Flow’r,Our pleasant task enjoin’d; but, till more handsAid us, the work under our labor grows,Luxurious by restraint; what we by dayLop overgrown, or prune, or prop, or bind One night or two with wanton growth deridesTending to wild.

Eve, here, makes an absolutely central argument. It's not an argument that Adam counters, and that's the idea that the garden is on some level growing out of control, that the vegetation is literally here "tending to wild." It's "tending to wild" because Adam and Eve are continually cutting it back -- that's their "pleasant task enjoin'd": "the work under our labor grows, / Luxurious by restraint…" So Eve isn't simply describing natural growth patterns in the garden: she's examining the effects on nature of the imposition of culture.

We're reminded, here, of the etymological origin of our notion of culture, which involves the cultivation of the land -- it's an agricultural metaphor. In this respect, Eve can be seen to articulate something like a theory of culture, and her theory has everything to do with our understanding of the Fall not as a theological

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problem, but our understanding of the Fall as a cultural problem.

According to Eve, the garden is wilding, it's growing disobedient; but it's not growing disobedient out of any natural necessity but because of Adam and Eve's cultural imposition of restraining. It's that pruning and propping and lopping and binding. If left to itself, -- who knows? I think this is a perfectly reasonable scenario -- the garden might actually grow at a reasonable, moderate, and orderly pace. This new disorderliness in the garden, this wildness, seems to be the result of the unnatural, cultural attempt to restrain that natural order. So, think of what this is. God's command to Adam and Eve to restrain the garden is on some level the miniature version of his much more consequential commandment to refrain from eating the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge. Eve, in this speech, presents us with a reading of the significance of the more important commandment; but of course, this is a reading that is incredibly subversive, and that's why we rely so much on Eve when we read this poem. She is so magnificently the voice of the subversive. If Professor John Rogers is reading Eve correctly here, the imposition of law doesn't control disorder: it produces disorder. There's a sense in which the arbitrary interdiction of the fruit sets in motion an inexorable process whereby the interdiction has to be broken. This is obviously a sense of the Fall that Milton cannot permit within the official parameters of the poem's dominant doctrine even though this theory, Eve's subversive theory, does come actually rather close to a number of Paul's statements in the Epistle to the Romans -- but officially in the poem, the Fall is an act of free will. It's a freely undertaken choice, but according to Eve's embedded prophesy of the Fall, there's no such thing really as free will. The Father's prohibition seems to necessitate in some

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way their disobedience in the same way that pruning a tree -- and we know this to be a fact -- pruning a tree forces or necessitates new growth. It's almost as if Eve were suggesting that there was something like an organic, natural necessity to the Fall.

These paths and bowers doubt not but our joint hands

Will keep from wilderness with ease, as wide        24

5

As we need walk, till younger hands ere long

Assist us. But, if much converse perhaps

Thee satiate, to short absence I could yield [hyperbole];

The paired lines which Adam uses next in lines 249 and 250, to justify a brief sojourn from each other’s company are also quite noticeably lyrical: For solitude sometimes is best society And short retirement urges sweet return (249– 50). There is a quite clearly lyrical balance created between ‘solitude’ and ‘society’ which is then paralleled by ‘retirement’ and ‘return,’

and, if you examine these two lines more closely, you will see a permeating use of assonance gives them a memorable, sententious feel.

For solitude sometimes is best society,

And short retirement urges sweet return.        25

0

The next stage in their argument is clearly signalled by the phrase ‘But other doubt possesses me’ (251), and Adam now openly refers to the danger they both know they face from Satan, ‘for thou knowst/ What hath been warned us’ (252– 3). Even Adam understands that envy is motivating Satan. This is evident when he says, ‘Envying our

46

happiness’ (254), and, so acute is his sense of danger, that he predicts accurately the idea of Satan watching them to find an occasion to make his attempt on Eve alone.

His essential point is that together they are safer, and he appears to use their mutual happiness as a rhetorical device to win Eve over to his view. Adam doesn’t know whether Satan’s aim is to break their faith with God, destroy their shared joy ‘or worse’ (265), but, whichever it might be, his argument melts into something more akin to pleading when he says ‘leave not the faithful side/ That gave thee being, still shades thee and protects’ (265– 6).

Again there is a note of sententiousness in the way Milton constructs his final three lines (267– 9), as though Adam were Eve’s teacher, and draws from their particular dilemma a truth about wives in general: a bizarrely anachronistic tactic for the only husband on earth to employ and one which reveals how tightly bound by seventeenth-century social mores and his own Puritan faith Milton was.

But other doubt possesses me, lest harm

Befall thee, severed from me; for thou know’st

What hath been warned us—what malicious foe,

Envying our happiness, and of his own

Despairing, seeks to work us woe and shame        25

5

By sly assault and somewhere nigh at hand

Watches, no doubt, with greedy hope to find

His wish and best advantage, us asunder,

Hopeless to circumvent us joined, where each

To other speedy aid might lend at need.         26

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Whether his first design be to withdraw

Our fealty from God, or to disturb

Conjugal love—than which perhaps no bliss

Enjoyed by us excites his envy more—

Or this, or worse, leave not the faithful side        26

5

That gave thee being, still shades thee and protects.

The wife, where danger or dishonour lurks,

Safest and seemliest by her husband stays,

Who guards her, or with her the worst endures.”

In his acceptance that his role is to guard her, or ‘with her the worst’ (269) endure, you see prolepsis (def: a figure of speech in which a speaker raises an objection and then immediately answers it), heavy irony and even a hint of courage.

NARRATOR:

To whom the virgin majesty of Eve,

        

270

As one who loves, and some unkindness meets,

The simile Milton employs to describe the way Eve now replies, ‘As one who loves, and some unkindness meets’ (271), is both subtle and provocative. It certainly implies that, however we as readers respond to Adam’s argument, Eve is hurt. The question most readers now face becomes: is Eve right to leave her husband’s side? However, the simile isn’t unsupported and if you also take into account the frame Milton places

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around it, ‘the virgin majesty of Eve’ (270) that speaks ‘with sweet austere composure’ (272), the answer to the key question is far from clear cut. Does Eve compose herself because she feels she has to? And what, in Eve, does Milton point us to by using the oxymoron ‘sweet austere’? How on earth does she suddenly become a virgin and what does Milton want us to understand from his use of this apparently inappropriate adjective? Is chastity an attitude of mind or a sexual fait accompli? Possible answers to these questions start to form themselves once we look at Eve’s words and the line of argument she now pursues with Adam. In a series of noticeably terse sentences that seem designed to match her ‘sweet’ austerity, she starts by praising Adam in a way which emphasises his superiority, calling him ‘all earth’s lord’ (273), then agrees that they are in danger, but how she knows this is in itself intriguing. She says she learned this not just from what Adam has told her, ‘by thee informed’ (275), but also by overhearing Raphael, ‘As in a shady nook I stood behind’ (277). Eve then expresses clear disappointment in Adam by telling him that just because ‘an enemy we have, who seeks/ Our ruin’ (274– 5) does not mean that he should ‘doubt’ her ‘firmness’ (279). She even spells out for Adam why she is disappointed, explaining that since they are immortal, ‘not capable of death or pain’ (283), he has no reason to fear Satan’s ‘violence’ (282) and therefore he can only be afraid of Satan’s ‘fraud’ (285) and consequently of her inability to resist it. The lines are so vital they merit reproducing here: His fraud then is thy fear, which plain infers Thy equal fear that my firm faith and love Can by his fraud be shaken or seduced; (285– 7) This idea is what she finds so objectionable. But the way she sums up her feeling abandons the syllogistic logic she has so far pursued. She says she simply cannot understand how Adam entertained such thoughts, ‘how found they harbour in thy breast’ (288), since they were ‘misthought of her to thee so dear?’ (289). Put in a colloquial fashion that makes the point about her abandonment of logic very succinctly, she argues that he thought . . . wrong.

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*****(Provide students with Syllogisms handout. )*****

With sweet austere composure thus replied:—

EVE:

“Offspring of Heaven and Earth, and all Earth’s lord!

That such an Enemy we have, who seeks

Our ruin, both by thee informed I learn,        27

5

And from the parting Angel overheard,

As in a shady nook I stood behind,

Just then returned at shut of evening flowers.

But that thou shouldst my firmness therefore doubt

To God or thee, because we have a foe        28

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May tempt it, I expected not to hear.

His violence thou fear’st not, being such

As we, not capable of death or pain,

Can either not receive, or can repel.

His fraud is, then, thy fear; which plain infers        28

5

Thy equal fear that my firm faith and love

Can by his fraud be shaken or seduced:

Thoughts, which how found they harbour in thy breast,

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Adam! misthought of her to thee so dear?”

In the next section, It’s clear that Adam sees that Eve is hurt since when he next responds, it is with ‘healing words’ (290), and, just as Eve addressed him, he addresses her in placatory terms, adding very markedly his belief that she is ‘from sin and blame entire’ (292), where ‘entire’ carries the meaning, unmarked or untouched.

NARRATOR:

To whom, with healing words, Adam replied:—

       

 

290

ADAM: “Daughter of God and Man, immortal Eve!—

For such thou art, from sin and blame entire—

Not diffident of thee do I dissuade

Thy absence from my sight, but to avoid

The attempt itself, intended by our Foe.        29

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What is evident here, in these last couple of lines, is that Adam directly refutes Eve’s charge that he doubts her, instead stating that his wish is ‘to avoid/ The attempt itself, intended by our foe’ (294– 5). To Adam, then, there seems no reason to put themselves in danger or to invite ‘dishonour foul’ (297) which would be the result of even allowing Satan an opportunity to tempt Eve.

For he who tempts, though in vain, at least asperses

The tempted with dishonour foul, supposed

Not incorruptible of faith, not proof

Against temptation.

Let’s take a brief look at the next section -Lines 299 – 308: Will someone please read these lines?

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Thou thyself with scorn

And anger wouldst resent the offered wrong,        30

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Though ineffectual found; misdeem not, then,

If such affront I labour to avert

From thee alone, which on us both at once

The enemy, though bold, will hardly dare;

Or, daring, first on me the assault shall light.        30

5

Nor thou his malice and false guile contemn—

Subtle he needs must be who could seduce

Angels—nor think superfluous others’ aid.

Thank you. In these lines, Adam, appealing then to Eve’s own potential feelings, tells her that ‘thou thyself with scorn/ And anger wouldst resent the offered wrong’ (299– 300), even were it to be futile, ‘Though ineffectual found’ (301). This gives him the opportunity to respond directly to her charge of mis-thinking as he asks Eve not to ‘misdeem’ (301) his desire to protect her from ‘such affront’ (302) when he is prepared to suffer any assault himself. Adam believes, rightly as it turns out, that Satan will not attempt anything while they are together and that, even if he did, it would give Adam the chance to defend Eve by taking the brunt of any such attack himself. He adds a new warning; not to underestimate Satan’s ‘malice’ or ‘false guile’ (306), since anyone who could ‘seduce/ Angels’ (307– 8) is to be feared, and he pleads with Eve not to undervalue the help he offers, ‘nor think superfluous others’ aid’ (308).

At this point the dialogue takes yet another direction and, having in his mind clearly refuted all her charges, he turns to flattery and shared love to

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try and persuade her to stay. In her presence, ‘in thy sight’ (310), Adam tells her he becomes ‘More wise, more watchful, stronger’ (311) and the fear of shame, were he to fail any test in her presence, would spur him on, ‘would utmost vigour raise’ (314) and, through being shared, would unite them. Adam ends this speech with what he hopes is a rhetorical question, asking Eve why she does not feel exactly the same and choose to face any trial with Adam beside her, since he is ‘best witness of thy virtue tried’ (317). You need only reflect on the ambiguity in ‘virtue’ to appreciate why Eve may not respond as he hopes.

I from the influence of thy looks receive

Access in every virtue—in thy sight        31

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More wise, more watchful, stronger, if need were

Of outward strength; while shame, thou looking on,

Shame to be overcome or overreached,

Would utmost vigour raise, and raised unite.

Why shouldst not thou like sense within thee feel        31

5

When I am present, and thy trial choose

With me, best witness of thy virtue tried?”

Lines 318 – 322: So far this dialogue has proceeded largely unnarrated, but at this moment Milton’s narrator steps in, and he does so with both feet. The narrator supplies two strong leads as to how he wishes us to react to Adam’s argument, ‘domestic’ (318) and ‘matrimonial love’ (319), both hinting at Adam’s selflessness and familial care, before fielding a powerful ‘but’ (319) that instantly undermines Eve by implying she has neither

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understood nor valued these qualities in Adam. When the narrator states ‘but Eve, who thought/ Less attribúted to her faith sincere’ (319– 20), he is intervening directly on Adam’s behalf by depicting Eve as failing to listen. Prosaically, the effect is like saying: in spite of all Adam has said, yet Eve still felt he didn’t trust her. This apparent subjectivity also appears in the ‘accent sweet’ (321) with which she takes up the argument. Yet the series of three questions she now asks are so intelligently worded and incisive that the narrator’s interpolation itself sounds ill thought out and unhearing.

Milton explores, in his writings prior to PL, this uneasy relationship of God’s approbation and fame in the eyes of men, specifically the fame that Milton hoped for his own poetry. Consider Eve’s declaration of her spiritual ambition and desire for divine recognition in the Separation Scene. Adam tells Eve that he is trying to avoid Satan’s affronting or dishonoring her by the act of temptation, and adds that he is made stronger when she is looking on. Why should not thou like sense within thee feel When I am present, and thy trial choose With me, best witness of thy virtue tried. (9.315– 17). We should do this together, Adam argues, but Eve claims a still better witness than her husband, and argues that the devil’s assault provides them with a spiritual opportunity: Who rather double honour gain From his surmise proved false, find peace within, Favour from heaven, our witness from the event. (9.332– 34) Like a very good student of the kind that John Milton undoubtedly was, Eve wants to be tested, and she chooses God as her witness and as the giver of his extra credit— redoubled honour and favour.

NARRATOR: So spake domestic Adam in his care

And matrimonial love; but Eve, who thought

Less attributed to her faith sincere,         32

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Lines 320 – 341: Masculinist though he may be, Milton invests a large part of himself in the character of Eve. Her temptation and fall in book 9 recapitulates Milton’s earlier dramatizations of individuals tested by the world and its evils and confirmed in their spiritual purity by divine approbation. Her feelings hurt by what she takes to be Adam’s questioning of her ability to resist the temptation of Satan—“ Less attributed to her faith sincere” (9.320)— Eve, according to the prose argument of book 9, was “the rather desirous to make trial of her strength.” Eve justifies facing their enemy on her own. If this be our condition, thus to dwell In narrow circuit straitened by a foe, Subtle or violent, we not endued Single with like defense, wherever met, How are we happy, still in fear of harm? But harm precedes not sin: only our foe Tempting affronts us with his foul esteem Of our integrity: his foul esteem Sticks no dishonour on our front, but turns Foul on himself; then wherefore shunned or feared By us? Who rather double honour gain From his surmise proved false, find peace within, Favour from heaven, our witness from the event. And what is faith, love, virtue unassayed Alone, without exterior help sustained? Let us not then suspect our happy state Left so imperfect by the maker wise, As not secure to single or combined; Frail is our happiness, if this be so, And Eden were no Eden thus exposed. (9.322– 41) Eve is right to assert that God has created Adam and Eve “Sufficient to have stood”: yes, Adam admits even as he cautions her, God left nothing “deficient” in his creation. Eve underestimates, however, the “hap” or contingency in Adam’s and her happiness, for they are also “free to fall” (3.99). It is in the name of individual freedom that she asks what is the good of her faith, love, and virtue if it is “unassayed / Alone.”

Now, a little earlier on, we looked at Professor Rogers’ idea of one way in which Milton looks back at his former interest in work -- at Milton’s former

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interest in the interaction of those two parables, and that he's bending their implications and their meanings in an entirely new way. But, Professor Rogers suggests that there's another way in which the separation dialogue looks back at and essentially uses the essential material from Milton's earlier career. Look, here, at line 320 of Book Nine. Now, Adam has claimed that they can best pass the trial of Satan's temptation if they're together -- a perfectly reasonable position. If Adam is there to guide Eve and to protect her, the Fall is less likely to happen; but to Eve -- and this is Eve's argument -- this sounds as if Adam were attempting to censor her environment, as if he were trying to protect her from the potentially dangerous speech of the tempter. Of course, that is what he's trying to do, and so she responds to what she hears to be Adam's paternal solicitude. This is Eve at line 322:

If this be our condition, thus to dwellIn narrow circuit strait'n'd by a Foe,Subtle or violent, we not endu'dSingle with like defense, wherever met;How are we happy, still in fear of harm?

This is a devastating question. Eve issues a powerful critique of what she takes to be Adam's act of censorship. When she suggests that she is living in an increasingly "narrow circuit straight'n'd [or constrained] by a Foe," it's almost as if she's alluding to Milton's declaration in Areopagitica; you remember these lines: "I cannot praise a fugitive in cloistered virtue, unexercised and unbreathed, that never sallies out and sees her adversary." "What is virtue?" Milton had asked in Areopagitica. What is it if it's never tested? What is virtuous resistance if there's nothing there actually to resist, if the information one is being given is continually being licensed and censored and controlled? Eve refuses to accept the idea that

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Eden might be structured like an authoritarian state, like the Stuart monarchy.

At line 337 she lets loose. This is a searing criticism of a paradise in which an individual cannot be relied upon to choose freely her own actions, line 337: "Let us not then suspect our happy State / Left so imperfect by the Maker wise, / As not secure to single or combin'd." Now the syntax is a little difficult there. She's saying, "Let's not imagine that we're unsafe here. Let's not doubt that the maker created us secure," by which she means "safe," "whether we're on our own or whether we're together." Then she continues: "Frail is our happiness, if this be so, / And Eden were no Eden thus expos'd." Eve here is exposing an ideological contradiction at the heart of Milton's Eden. At the center of her argument is a powerful alternative to the official line of Milton's poem. Eve is pronouncing -- this is the structure of a theological argument, this is a theodicy: she's justifying the ways of God to men as she sees them. This is the logic, I take it, of what she's just said: "If I am not free to resist temptation alone, then this is not a justifiable world. If I am not free to resist temptation alone, God is not a justifiable God. Eden were no Eden, thus exposed. Therefore," she concludes, "I must be free to resist temptation alone." That's her logical conclusion.

Now Eve's claim for the true state of Eden is a lot like Milton's claim some twenty years earlier in Areopagitica for the true state of England. There is at base a state of equality among human individuals, and the individual himself, singly and not combined, should be empowered to resist temptation alone. The poem has gone to great lengths to make the official case for God -- how could it not? This is a version of Genesis -- for God's imposition of an arbitrary set of hierarchical distinctions and for God's ability to impose arbitrary law. Milton is supporting that throughout

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the poem; but Paradise Lost is also willing to identify just those arbitrary hierarchies as something like the source for Eden's imperfection, and he does that even as he celebrates God's ability to impose these arbitrary distinctions. It's this exposure of Milton’s Eden's structural flaws, I think, that best helps us understand the internal dynamics of the temptation scene. When Satan tempts Eve, he invariably tempts her with some version of all of those desires and all of those aspirations that Eden's hierarchical culture has struggled, and struggled mightily, to suppress.

Let’s take a close look at Eve’s questions in Lines 322 – 346 : (Students, you may wish to check the rhetorical device for a series of questions). The series of three questions Eve now ask are so intelligently worded and incisive that the narrator’s interpolation itself sounds ill thought out and unhearing. The first (322– 6) challenges the foundation of all Adam’s objections, that they are happy. How can they be happy, Eve asks, if their life is lived in fear, under the constraints imposed by their enemy, however violent or cunning he may be, and if they are not equally able to defend themselves? Her second question (327– 32) asks why they should fear or avoid their enemy when any assault on them he might attempt is merely an affront on their integrity and can neither dishonour them nor lead directly to sin. In effect (she adds to this question) by repelling their enemy they ‘double honour gain’ (332) by proving him false, find peace for themselves and earn God’s favour as he is their ultimate witness. The third and final question is the most challenging of all, since it is God’s own (III, 103– 11). What value or use are ‘faith, love, virtue’ (335) if never tested by external forces? In attempting to draw a conclusion from these three questions, Eve now makes a huge and dangerous assumption. She asks Adam to assume, as she does, that God has not

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made their world so ‘imperfect’ (338) that they need to act jointly to secure it. If that were the case, she states, their happiness would indeed be ‘Frail’ (340) and, in a final rhetorical flourish, ‘Eden were no Eden thus exposed’ (341). One of Milton’s great achievements in Paradise Lost is the rich characterisation he achieves from such intransigent raw materials and in this lengthy dialogue we can see how he does it. They may be the first man and woman on earth and be immortal, but, as they exchange views here, we see them behaving in ways any married couple would recognise, or even wryly acknowledge as representative of the condition. When Adam replies ‘fervently’ (342) his anxiety is growing, a condition captured in his addressing Eve now simply as ‘O woman’, as he firmly rejects her assumption by reminding her that nothing God makes is imperfect, ‘much less man’ (346).

Thus her reply with accent sweet renewed:—

EVE: “If this be our condition, thus to dwell

In narrow circuit straitened by a Foe,

Her cloistering, which in Eve’s words are the “narrow circuit” that turns the enclosed garden of Eden into a fortress-prison, suggests the nunnery that protects young women (a “youngling”) from sexual knowledge. Milton depicts Satan’s temptation of Eve as a kind of erotic seduction. He thinks of pure faith and virtue as a kind of spiritual chastity that not only depends on the typology of Hosea, where an apostatizing Israel is figured as God’s wife whoring after strange gods, but on Milton’s own cultivation of physical chastity with its accompanying fantasy of bodily inviolability and transformation into undying soul—“Till all be made immortal” (Comus 462).

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Subtle or violent, we not endued

Single with like defence wherever met,        32

5

How are we happy, still in fear of harm?

But harm precedes not sin: only our Foe

Tempting affronts us with his foul esteem

Of our integrity: his foul esteem

Sticks no dishonour on our front, but turns        33

0

Foul on himself; then wherefore shunned or feared

By us, who rather double honour gain

From his surmise proved false, find peace within,

Favour from Heaven, our witness, from the event?

And what is faith, love, virtue, unassayed        33

5

Alone, without exterior help sustained?

Lines 335 – 336: “Unassayed alone.” Eve is right to assert that God has created Adam and Eve “Sufficient to have stood”: yes, Adam admits even as he cautions her, God left nothing “deficient” in his creation. Eve underestimates, however, the “hap” or contingency in Adam’s and her happiness, for they are also “free to fall” (3.99). It is in the name of individual freedom that she asks what is the good of her faith, love, and virtue if it is “unassayed / Alone.” (9.335-336). Virtue has no use unless it is tested, Eve asserts, and emphasizes the test’s solitary nature: “Single,” (9.339) “Alone,”(9.336) each adjective emphasized

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by enjambment and placement at the beginning of the verse, the first additionally by metrical inversion. Faith, Milton’s Protestantism insists, has to be established by each individual believer. Adam and Eve have just heard, moreover, from Raphael the story of Abdiel, who resisted the temptation of Satan and the pressure of his peers, “Though single” (5.903; cf. 6.30), his only care “To stand approved in sight of God” (6.36). So Eve similarly aspires.

Later, in PR, the devil’s conclusion echoes what the overconfident Eve predicts for herself, answering Adam’s objection that the very act of being tempted would dishonor her, in the Separation Scene in book 9.26 “only our foe Tempting affronts us with his foul esteem Of our integrity: his foul esteem Sticks no dishonour on our front, but turns Foul on himself; then wherefore shunned or feared By us? Who rather double honour gain From his surmise proved false, find peace within, Favour from heaven, our witness from the event. And what is faith, love, virtue unassayed Alone, without exterior help sustained?” (PL 9.327– 36).

Let us not then suspect our happy state

Left so imperfet by the Maker wise

As not secure to single or combined.

Frail is our happiness, if this be so;        34

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And Eden were no Eden, thus exposed.”

 NARRATOR: To whom thus Adam fervently

replied:—

ADAM: “O Woman, best are all thigs as the will

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Of God ordained them; his creating hand

Nothing imperfet or deficient left        34

5

Of all that he created—much less Man,

Or aught that might his happy state secure,

Secure from outward force. Within himself

The danger lies, yet lies within his power;

Against his will he can receive no harm.        35

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The nature and subtlety of free will has occupied us elsewhere in this book and in lines 348-350, it receives one of the most valuable treatments in the entire poem. Rejecting danger from ‘outward force’ (348), Adam spells out for Eve exactly where the danger for her is, ‘within himself/ The danger lies, yet lies within his power’ (348– 9). If there was a single line from the poem which every student should memorise and be prepared to exploit, in either written or verbal debate, it is Adam’s assertion that ‘Against his will he can receive no harm’ (350).

Adam now returns to logic as a tool, connecting free will to the faculty of reason since ‘what obeys/ Reason, is free’ (351– 2) and explaining to Eve that this relationship necessitates the possibility that reason may be fooled ‘by some fair appearing good surprised’ (354). Which in turn means there is always a risk that reason may ‘dictate false, and misinform the will’ (355) such that man disobeys God. Adam then breaks off from his ‘fervent’ words and adopts a more intimate, loving tone, assuring Eve that he is not mistrustful of her at all and that it is out of ‘tender love’ (357) that he desires to protect her, and that he expects the same from her. The paired lines (357– 8) form a single sentence where the opening terse phrase, ‘Not then mistrust’, is sharply contrasted with the

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gentle fluency of ‘tender love enjoins’ (357) and the harmonious balancing of minds in ‘That I should mind thee oft, and mind thou me’ (358).

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,

Lest, by some fair appearing good surprised,

She dictate false, and misinform the Will        35

5

To do what God expressly hath forbid.

Not then mistrust, but tender love, enjoins

That I should mind thee oft; and mind thou me,

Firm we subsist, yet possible to swerve,

Since Reason not impossibly may meet        36

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Some specious object by the foe suborned,

And fall into deception unaware,

After this brief, lyrical appeal, Adam picks up the thread of his argument to restate that they risk falling ‘into deception unaware’ (362) if they do not, as they were warned, keep ‘strictest watch’ (363). Given that is the case, it is better that Eve should not ‘seek temptation’ (364) which will be more likely if they separate, and, in a clearly ominous note, Adam assures her that temptation will inevitably come, ‘trial will come unsought’ (366).

Ironically, it is enormously tempting to wish that Adam had left off there, since what he now says is guaranteed to fuel Eve’s intent but it also

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reinforces the critical view that admires Milton’s ability to humanise his key characters. If you wish to prove your ‘constancy’ (367), the very thing Eve took deepest exception to his having impugned, he says, prove you are obedient first. Which leaves the reader with the thorniest of questions: does he mean obedience to him or to God? It is easy to prove obedience, he concludes, but constancy has to be tested; and he has not witnessed Eve being tested: ‘who can know’ (368) whether or not she is able to resist?

Not keeping strictest watch, as she was warned.

Seek not temptation, then, which to avoid

Were better, and most likely if from me        36

5

Thou sever not: trial will come unsought.

Wouldst thou approve thy constancy, approve

First thy obedience; the other who can know,

Not seeing thee attempted, who attest?

Let’s look closely at lines 370 – 384:

But, if thou think trial unsought may find

        37

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Us both securer than thus warned thou seem’st,

Go; for thy stay, not free, absents thee more.

Go in thy native innocence; rely

On what thou hast of virtue; summon all;

For God towards thee hath done his part: do thine.”        37

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  So spake the Patriarch of Mankind; but Eve

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Persisted; yet submiss, though last, replied:—

  “With thy permission, then, and thus forewarned,

Chiefly by what thy own last reasoning words

Touched only, that our trial, when least sought,        38

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May find us both perhaps far less prepared,

The willinger I go, nor much expect

A Foe so proud will first the weaker seek;

So bent, the more shall shame him his repulse.”

In this section, the final exchanges between the couple (370– 84) are some of the most fiercely disputed lines in Paradise Lost. This is partly because the language is so richly ambiguous, and partly because the couple seems to have abandoned listening to each other.

Syntax is also an issue, but if you connect ‘If thou think . . . us both securer’ (370– 1) with ‘seemst’ (371), Adam appears to be acquiescing and saying something along these reductively prosaic lines: ‘If you think that the coming and unsought for trial will find us both more secure than you seem to think, given the warning I have given you, then go’. But he adds a confusing reason, ‘for thy stay, not free, absents thee more’ (372). If we lose the latter phrase then it does seem entirely consistent with everything Adam has said about free will.

Were she to stay it would be under duress and without the free will so crucial to their happiness and relationship with God. But ‘absents thee more’ sounds almost petulant and risks making Adam’s tone weakly reluctant. He also repeats the imperative ‘Go’ on subsequent lines, in a manner which invites critics to see him ultimately as the positive agent, a view reinforced by his final words, which are equally imperative, ‘do thine’ (375).

Yet, simultaneously, Adam seems willing to accept

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that God has made Eve sufficient for whatever trial awaits her, ‘For God towards thee hath done his part’ (375). If all that were not enough to exercise the reader, the narrator steps in once more with two lines that seem precision engineered to criticise Eve. ‘So spake the patriarch of mankind’ (376) invests Adam with near biblical authority, but that authority is instantly undermined by the challenging ‘but Eve/ Persisted’ (376– 7) and the paradoxical ‘yet submiss, though last’, as though Eve is determined to have the final word, whatever Adam’s advice or commands. And when Eve utters those last words, they are no less puzzling and provocative than Adam’s. She assumes, first of all, that Adam has granted her permission, ‘With thy permission then’ (378), an assumption inviting challenge.

She adds that she has understood his warning, ‘and thus forewarned/ Chiefly’ (378), but her understanding goes only so far as ‘Chiefly’ takes her, and that is to an agreement that they are both likely to be most vulnerable when least seeking temptation.

A key question is: does Eve believe that she is leaving at this point expecting a trial and is therefore more secure? But perhaps the most challenging idea here is her confident assertion ‘The willinger I go’ (382), which implies that, after hearing everything Adam has had to say, she is even more certain that her decision to work apart is right. ‘Go in thy native innocence’ (373) was the valedictory injunction Adam used, and something of that innocence may be what we hear in her confident, final belief that their enemy is far less likely to seek the weaker out, since his shame in being defeated would be so much greater.

Student EXERCISE: Lines 385 – 566. One of the richest sections of the poem in terms of sensual description combined with classical allegory, Satan, disguised as a serpent, searches for Adam and Eve and is delighted when he discovers Eve alone. There is nothing rushed or cheaply dramatic about the way Milton handles the narrative here, and a lot of poetic effort goes into preparing Eve

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for the trial she and Adam agreed was inevitable. Read the section as a whole and consider how Milton couches Satan and Eve’s entire encounter as a seduction. Look carefully at how Satan reacts to Eve and the various stages he moves through before she starts to speak to him.

Thus saying, from her husband’s hand her hand        38

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Note the lack of a caesura in line 385 where you would expect to find one: “from her husband’s hand[,] her hand soft she withdrew…” indicating that it was a quick motion. How does it change the way “soft” is meant?

Soft she withdrew, and, like a wood—nymph light,

Oread or Dryad, or of Delia’s train,

Betook her to the groves, but Delia’s self

In gait surpassed and goddess-like deport,

Considering lines 386 – 389: Milton imitates Homer’s narrator in The Odyssey, who compares Nausikaa to Artemis in an extended simile (6.102– 9) when he compares Eve, at her departing from Adam, to “a wood-nymph light / Oread or dryad, or of Delia’s train, / … but Delia’s self / In gait surpassed and goddess-like deport” (9.386– 89), to a follower of Artemis or Artemis herself.

Though not as she with bow and quiver armed,        39

0

But with such gardening tools as Art, yet rude,

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Guiltless of fire had formed, or Angels brought.

Lines 390 – 392: After comparing Eve to Delia-Artemis, Milton’s narrator seems to correct himself: “Though not as she with bow and quiver armed / But with such gardening tools as art yet rude, / Guiltless of fire had formed” (9.390– 92), and there is some pathos in Eve’s being an unarmed rustic as she goes to be found by Satan.

To Pales, or Pomona, thus adorned,

Likest she seemed—Pomona when she fled

Vertumnus—or to Ceres in her prime,        39

5

Yet virgin of Proserpina from Jove.

Her long with ardent look his eye pursued

Delighted, but desiring more her stay.

Oft he to her his charge of quick return

Repeated; she to him as oft engaged        40

0

To be returned by noon amid the bower,

And all things in best order to invite

Noontide repast, or afternoon’s repose.

O much deceived, much failing, hapless Eve,

Of thy presumed return! event perverse!        40

5

Thou never from that hour in Paradise

Found’st either sweet repast or sound repose;

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Such ambush, hid among sweet flowers and shades,

Waited, with hellish rancour imminent,

To intercept thy way, or send thee back        41

0

Despoiled of innocence, of faith, of bliss.

For now, and since first break of dawn, the Fiend,

Mere Serpent in appearance, forth was come,

And on his quest where likeliest he might find

The only two of mankind, but in them        41

5

The whole included race, his purposed prey.

In bower and field he sought, where any tuft

Of grove or garden-plot more pleasant lay,

Their tendance or plantation for delight;

By fountain or by shady rivulet        42

0

He sought them both, but wished his hap might find

Eve separate; he wished, but not with hope

Of what so seldom chanced, when to his wish,

Beyond his hope, Eve separate he spies,

Veiled in a cloud of fragrance, where she stood,        42

5

Half-spied, so thick the roses bushing round

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About her glowed, oft stooping to support

Each flower of tender stalk, whose head, though gay

Carnation, purple, azure, or specked with gold,

Hung drooping unsustained. Them she upstays        43

0

Gently with myrtle band, mindless the while

Herself, though fairest unsupported flower,

From her best prop so far, and storm so nigh.

Nearer he drew, and many a walk traversed

Of stateliest covert, cedar, pine, or palm;        43

5

Then voluble and bold, now hid, now seen

Among thick-woven arborets, and flowers

Imbordered on each bank, the hand of Eve:

Spot more delicious than those gardens feigned

Or of revived Adonis, or renowned        44

0

Alcinoüs, host of old Laertes’ son,

Or that, not mystic, where the sapient king

Held dalliance with his fair Egyptian spouse.

Much he the place admired, the person more.

As one who, long in populous city pent,        44

5

70

Where houses thick and sewers annoy the air,

Forth issuing on a summer’s morn, to breathe

Among the pleasant villages and farms

Adjoined, from each thing met conceives delight—

The smell of grain, or tedded grass, or kine,        45

0

Or dairy, each rural sight, each rural sound—

If chance with nymph-like step fair virgin pass,

What pleasing seemed for her now pleases more,

She most, and in her look sums all delight:

Lines 445 – 454: Milton has framed the scene of the temptation with a modernized version of the pastourelle in the simile that describes Satan’s first view of Eve in her flowery plat.

Such pleasure took the Serpent to behold        45

5

This flowery plat, the sweet recess of Eve

Thus early, thus alone. Her heavenly form

Angelic, but more soft and feminine,

Her graceful innocence, her every air

Of gesture or least action, overawed        46

0

His malice, and with rapine sweet bereaved

His fierceness of the fierce intent it brought.

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That space the Evil One abstracted stood

From his own evil, and for the time remained

Stupidly good, of enmity disarmed,        46

5

Of guile, of hate, of envy, of revenge.

But the hot hell that always in him burns,

Though in mid Heaven, soon ended his delight,

And tortures him now more, the more he sees

Of pleasure not for him ordained. Then soon        47

0

Fierce hate he recollects, and all his thoughts

Of mischief, gratulating, thus excites:—

  “Thoughts, whither have ye led me? with what sweet

Compulsion thus transported to forget

What hither brought us? hate, not love, nor hope        47

5

Of Paradise for Hell, here to taste

Of pleasure, but all pleasure to destroy,

Save what is in destroying; other joy

To me is lost. Then let me not let pass

Occasion which now smiles. Behold alone        48

0

The Woman, opportune to all attempts—

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Her husband, for I view far round, not nigh,

Whose higher intellectual more I shun,

And strength, of courage haughty, and of limb

Heroic built, though of terrestrial mould;        48

5

Foe not informidable, exempt from wound—

I not; so much hath Hell debased, and pain

Infeebled me, to what I was in Heaven.

She fair, divinely fair, fit love for Gods,

Not terrible, though terror be in love,        49

0

And beauty, not approached by stronger hate,

Hate stronger under show of love well feigned—

The way which to her ruin now I tend.”

  So spake the Enemy of Mankind, enclosed

In serpent, inmate bad, and toward Eve        49

5

Addressed his way—not with indented wave,

Prone on the ground, as since, but on his rear,

Circular base of rising folds, that towered

Fold above fold, a surging maze; his head

Crested aloft, and carbuncle his eyes;        50

0

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With burnished neck of verdant gold, erect

Amidst his circling spires, that on the grass

Floated redundant. Pleasing was his shape

And lovely; never since the serpent kind

Lovelier—not those that in Illyria changed        50

5

Hermione and Cadmus, or the God

In Epidaurus; nor to which transformed

Ammonian Jove, or Capitoline, was seen,

He with Olympias, this with her who bore

Scipio, the highth of Rome. With tract oblique        51

0

At first, as one who sought access but feared

To interrupt, sidelong he works his way.

As when a ship, by skilful steersman wrought

Nigh river’s mouth or foreland, where the wind

Veers oft, as oft so steers, and shifts her sail,        51

5

So varied he, and of his tortuous train

Curled many a wanton wreath in sight of Eve,

To lure her eye. She, busied, heard the sound

Of rustling leaves, but minded not, as used

To such disport before her through the field         52

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0

From every beast, more duteous at her call

Than at Circean call the herd disguised.

He, bolder now, uncalled before her stood,

But as in gaze admiring. Oft he bowed

His turret crest and sleek enamelled neck,        52

5

Fawning, and licked the ground whereon she trod.

His gentle dumb expression turned at length

The eye of Eve to mark his play; he, glad

Of her attention gained, with serpent-tongue

Organic, or impulse of vocal air,        53

0

His fraudulent temptation thus began:—

  “Wonder not, sovran mistress (if perhaps

Thou canst who art sole wonder), much less arm

Thy looks, the heaven of mildness, with disdain,

Lines 533 – 534: “Best quitted with disdain”: but Eve will succumb to Satan’s assault on her spiritual purity—“ much less arm / Thy looks, the heaven of mildness, with disdain,” the serpent pleads with courtly accent— that makes Eve, wedded matron though she may be, virginal like the country maid in the simile. WHERE IS THE SIMILE?????

Displeased that I approach thee thus, and gaze        53

5

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Insatiate, I thus single, nor have feared

The word “gaze” clusters six times in the scene of Eve’s temptation. The serpent, who has first approached Eve, “as in gaze admiring,” (earlier in PL) and who expresses his desire to “gaze / Insatiate” (9.535– 36), “to come / And gaze” (9.610– 11) on her, claims to transfer this gaze to her from the tree of the forbidden fruit itself—“ I nearer drew to gaze” (9.578)— a tree that is feminized by its breastlike “fair apples” (9.581; 9.585) and as the “Mother of science” (9.680), and which is already in the Genesis account “pleasant to the eyes” (Gen. 3: 6). The pattern is deliberate: Milton has used it before in the corresponding scene of the dream that Satan has sent to Eve in book 5, where Eve is first told that all of heaven’s eyes “gaze” on her (5.47), and then sees an angelic figure standing before the forbidden fruit: “on that tree he also gazed” (5.57). It now becomes Eve’s turn in book 9: “Fixed on the fruit she gazed, which to behold / Might tempt alone” (9.735– 36); she looks upon a tree that has somehow in Satan’s terms become a double or mirror of herself. Eve is tempted not only to return to the narcissism of the pool of book 4, but also to a further regression to a mother whom she has never had, figured now in the tree and earlier in the womblike cave (4.454) from which that pool issued. 20 A similar identification is suggested by means of verbal quibble, when, after eating the fruit, Eve speaks inwardly to herself and addresses the tree at the same time: “Thus to herself she pleasingly began. / O sovereign, virtuous, precious of all trees” (9.794– 95). By the end of the scene, she has bowed down to the tree as a substitute for God (9.835– 37), an anticipation of Canaanite tree worship (Deut. 12: 2; Hosea 4: 13; Ezek. 6: 13), and like all idolatry, a worship of, or confusion with, the idol-making self. Satan’s terms suggest how the individual’s testing of his or her faith in God, central to the poet’s Protestantism, can devolve into a form of pride, a self-idolatry that here, as

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elsewhere in Paradise Lost, the blind poet describes as a particularly visual condition, of seeing and wishing to being seen. Adam’s increasingly exasperated recriminations of Eve in books 9 and 10 after the Fall spell out the moral. “Let none, henceforth seek needless cause to approve / The faith they owe” (9.1140– 41). In retrospect, Adam asserts, Eve’s desire to test her faith was a form of overreaching, an unnecessary spiritual ambition and overconfidence that led to her fall. So, in his next exchange, he accuses Eve of having wished “to find / Matter of glorious trial” (9.1176– 77): Adam had earlier warned her that “trial will come unsought” (9.366). Ambition to prove her faith has now become a quest for the glory that God might confer on her, and it becomes difficult to distinguish from the pride that Adam will go on reductively to ascribe to Eve in his misogynistic outburst in book 10. thy pride And wandering vanity, when least was safe, Rejected my forewarning, and disdained Not to be trusted, longing to be seen Though by the devil himself” (10.874– 78).

Thy awful brow, more awful thus retired.

Next, let’s take a look at line 538 of Book Nine: Our first encounter with Eve involved, you'll remember, the suppression of her admiration of that beautiful image that she saw in the pool -- or the suppression of what came later to be interpreted as something like her narcissism. Eve was created with what seemed to be a natural, beautiful, and instinctive admiration for the image that she found in the pool. That admiration was, of course, entirely innocent because Eve had no way of knowing that that was her own image; but with the onset of that mysterious warning voice, Eve was turned away from that image of herself, and her behavior became branded as narcissism thereafter. It wasn't, of course, true narcissism, but the imposition of that new restraint upon her seems to

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have produced in Eve, or created in her, something like a true narcissism. It's this culturally produced -- this is a character flaw that we can identify as a culturally produced one, and it's one that Satan is able to exploit with utter ingenuity at the temptation scene. So this is Satan at line 538 to Eve:

Fairest resemblance of thy Maker fair,Thee all living things gaze on, all things thineBy gift, and thy Celestial Beauty adoreWith ravishment beheld, there best beheldWhere universally admir'd.

So Eve's affection for a responsive image, for a sympathetic gaze -- that's all she was getting out of the pool -- was denied her at the pool. This restraint seems to have produced in her something like a self-love, a self-love that has grown luxurious by restraint, and Satan knows that. The tendency to narcissism was only one component of her character that was exposed in the scene at the poolside. The pleasure that Eve was deriving from the answering smiles, those beautiful, sympathetic looks in the pool -- that pleasure is akin in many ways to the pleasure that a lot of infants derive from the first moments of their existence. I'm thinking of the infant's pleasure in its initial interaction with the mother. This shouldn't be surprising: one of the things that Milton tries to accomplish in the narrative of Eve's development is something like a larger theory of human development in general.

But of course, unlike all the rest of us, Eve doesn't have a mother. It's the role of the mother both in culture and in nature that has been systemically excluded, necessarily but nonetheless systematically excluded, from Paradise Lost. Whatever experience of a kind of maternal affection that Eve may have felt in the answering looks and the sympathetic smiles is summarily cut off with the warning voice. Just as he did with her narcissism, Satan tempts Eve with precisely

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that natural phenomenon, that natural instinct that's been denied her. Look at Satan, line 578. He describes his first glance at the "goodly Tree far distant to behold," and we, of course, know what that goodly tree is. The serpent says:

I nearer drew to gaze;When from the boughs a savory odor blown,Grateful to appetite, more pleas'd my senseThan smell of sweetest Fennel, or the TeatsOf Ewe or Goat dropping with Milk at Ev'n,Unsuckt of Lamb or Kid, that tend thir play.

There is a surprising and a strange simile here. In comparing the smell of the forbidden fruit to mother's milk, Satan is offering Eve an embedded image of the mother, and by placing the scene in the evening or what he calls "Ev'n," Satan is able to insert Eve's actual name into the expression of a natural desire to suckle at the mother's breast.

But what's at stake here isn't simply Eve's longing for the mother that she never had. The situation is a lot more radical than that because at the scene at the pool, in so many ways, Eve was actually mothering herself. At least on an experiential level, Eve seemed to have been -- this is the way she must have felt it subjectively: she was the source of her own creation much as Satan claimed that he had raised himself by his own quickening power. Eve had represented the possibility for the poem of something like an absolute self-possession and an absolute self-containment. You'll remember that Adam had informed Raphael in Book Eight (this was at line 547 of Book Eight) that he had been struck by this incredible air of self-contained-ness that Eve had. He tells Raphael, "[W]hen I approach / Her loveliness, so absolute she seems / And in herself complete," and Raphael, of course, hastened to warn Adam against the attraction to female self-sufficiency.

There's a sense in which Eve is absolutely

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independent. She's mother and daughter united in one self-determining being, and it is just this maternal self-sufficiency that the law of the garden has denied Eve -- and so like clockwork it returns here in Satan's temptation. The third element of Satan's temptation involves the taboo that was established by Raphael -- this is the taboo of speculation. Raphael had told Adam, "Don't concern yourself and don't worry so much about speculating about the cosmos because the structure of the cosmos simply doesn't concern you." "Be lowly wise," Raphael told Adam, and "know to know no more." How on earth could Milton, the author of Areopagitica, put those words in the mouth of the archangel? It's too troubling even to speculate about. But look down at line 602 of Book Nine. (This is page 392.) The serpent argues that one of the effects of the fruit was the awakening (and of course, he's lying) in him of the power of reason, wakening in him his capacity for speculation.

Thenceforth to Speculations high or deepI turn'd my thoughts, and with capacious mindConsider'd all things visible in Heav'n,Or Earth, or Middle, all things fair and good...

No form of speculation has been licensed or censored for the serpent, according to Satan. He gets to think whatever he wants. This is exactly the vision of the liberal, Miltonic universe represented so majestically and so compellingly in Areopagitica. Again the temptation to speculate is intimately linked with this cultural law against speculation and the restraint of speculation.

Fairest resemblance of thy Maker fair,

Thee all things living gaze on, all things thine

By gift, and thy celestial beauty adore,         54

80

0

With ravishment beheld—there best beheld

Where universally admired. But here,

In this enclosure wild, these beasts among,

Beholders rude, and shallow to discern

Half what in thee is fair, one man except,        54

5

Who sees thee (and what is one?) who shouldst be seen

A Goddess among Gods, adored and served

By Angels numberless, thy daily train?”

We have learned that Eve may be confident that she is capable of resisting Satan, but her notions about Satan are strikingly, and of course tragically, ill judged.

Lines 547 – 567: Let’s consider this section where the Serpent converses with Eve: Satan first gains Eve’s attention through his lavishly sensual physical appearance and then through extreme flattery, ‘A goddess among gods’ (547), before his gift of speech engages her in conversation. When she asks him how he came to be able to speak when all other animals are mute, he constructs a skilfully baroque deceit (567– 612). The flattery in Satan’s opening ‘Empress’ is clear, but he is also eloquent, as the rhythm invites a heavy stress on the ‘splendidness’ of ‘resplendent’ and on the final ‘Eve’ (368). Satan is also tactically subservient, acknowledging her command and ironically professing obedience. Milton reminds us that Satan is the ‘guileful tempter’ (567) and that guile is put to work immediately as he takes the first opportunity available to shift their conversation towards his ultimate object, the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge.

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  So glozed the Tempter, and his proem tuned.

Into the heart of Eve his words made way,        55

0

Though at the voice much marvelling; at length,

Not unamazed, she thus in answer spake:—

  “What may this mean? Language of Man pronounced

By tongue of brute, and human sense expressed!

The first at least of these I thought denied        55

5

To beasts, whom God on their creation-day

Created mute to all articulate sound;

The latter I demur, for in their looks

Much reason, and in their actions, oft appears.

Thee, Serpent, subtlest beast of all the field        56

0

I knew, but not with human voice endued;

Redouble, then, this miracle, and say,

How cam’st thou speakable of mute, and how

To me so friendly grown above the rest

Of brutal kind that daily are in sight:        56

5

Say, for such wonder claims attention due.”

  To whom the guileful Tempter thus replied:—

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“Empress of this fair World, resplendent Eve!

‘Empress’ – at line 568: Satan invites Eve to enter such a society of publicity as its queen and goddess— Satan will shortly address her as “Empress” (9.568; 9.626), “Sovereign of creatures, universal dame” (9.612), “Queen of this universe” (9.684)— where she will be “adored and served / By angels numberless, thy daily train.” Satan tempts the sylvan Eve to aspire to royalty, transferring to her his own monarchical ambition: here, too, desire for worldly monarchy motivates a Fall.

Easy to me it is to tell thee all

What thou command’st, and right thou shouldst be

obeyed.

        57

0

Before analysing the various steps in his temptation of Eve, we shouldn’t overlook the most obvious but least frequently commented on strategy that Satan uses: deceit. Lies trip off the serpent’s forked tongue at a bewildering pace, and with not the least sign of self-consciousness. The serpent tells Eve that he was like all other grazing animals, ‘of abject thoughts and low’ (572), a life he reinterprets for her as one driven essentially by food and sex, ‘nor aught but food discerned/ Or sex’ (573– 4), and then pursues his tale in an almost jovial manner: Till on a day roving the field, I chanced A goodly tree far distant to behold (575– 6) choosing images and words drawn from a distinctly pastoral palette. Besides the richness, colour and odour of the fruit, he refers with equal savour to the milking of sheep and goats. He relates how powerfully the fruit played on his appetite, describing the sensation as a ‘sharp desire’ (584) he is unable to resist as ‘hunger and thirst at once’ (586) urge him on. The now familiar use of alliteration in the latter half of a line is reversed to produce ‘Powerful persuaders’ (587) and his lurid account is designed to stimulate a similar response in Eve. So persuasive is he, it is

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easy to forget that God has not invested the fruit of the Tree with any such qualities at all. His words are all lies.

I was at first as other beasts that graze

The trodden herb, of abject thoughts and low,

As was my food, nor aught but food discerned

Or sex, and apprehended nothing high:

Till on a day, roving the field, I chanced        57

5

A goodly tree far distant to behold,

Loaden with fruit of fairest colours mixed,

Ruddy and gold. In nearer drew to gaze;

When from the boughs a savoury odour blown,

Grateful to appetite, more pleased my sense        58

0

Than smell of sweetest fennel, or the teats

Of ewe or goat dropping with milk at even,

Unsucked of lamb or kid, that tend their play.

To satisfy the sharp desire I had

Of tasting those fair Apples, I resolved        58

5

Not to defer; hunger and thirst at once,

Powerful persuaders, quickened at the scent

Of that alluring fruit, urged me so keen.

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In the next section, lines 589 – 593, in an image that echoes the way he weaves language around Eve, Satan describes how he then wound himself around the Tree in order to reach the fruit, ‘About the mossy trunk I wound me soon’ (589). There is a touch of Satan’s overweening arrogance in his depicting the scene as witnessed by ‘All other beasts’ (592) and of his own trademark weakness in imagining them ‘Longing and envying’ (593). A wittier Eve might have responded by asking where the giraffe was.

About the mossy trunk I wound me soon;

For, high from ground, the branches would require        59

0

Thy utmost reach, or Adam’s; round the Tree

All other beasts that saw, with like desire

Longing and envying stood, but could not reach.

Amid the tree now got, where plenty hung

Tempting so nigh, to pluck and eat my fill        59

5

I spared not;

Rhyming ‘got’ (594) with ‘not’ (596) punctuates the action dramatically and allows a moment’s pause before he can wax even more lyrical about how delicious the fruit was, ‘for such pleasure till that hour/ At feed or fountain never had I found’ (596– 7). Intriguingly the alliteration ‘feed or fountain’ occurs again in the first half of the line, as though Milton were singling out the serpent’s speech. Undoubtedly, in comparison with the earlier sophisticated exchanges between Adam and Eve, his conversation is mundane, even crude, but nonetheless serves its purpose superbly. So seductive is his account, Eve even fails to notice the obvious use of ‘Tempting’ (595) which less well

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hidden should have rung deafening alarm bells given the dream she related to Adam (V, 28– 93).

for such pleasure till that hour

At feed or fountain never had I found.

Maintaining the parallel between food and sex which underpins his story, Satan enjoys a moment of post-coital satisfaction, ‘Sated at length’ (598), before he relates how he then felt the growth ‘Of reason in my inward powers’ and realised he had the power of speech, though still a serpent, ‘though to this shape retained’ (600).

Sated at length, ere long I might perceive

Strange alteration in me, to degree

Of Reason in my inward powers, and Speech        60

0

Wanted not long, though to this shape retained.

Let’s consider the next section – lines 602 – 616.

Play cd.

Thenceforth to speculations high or deep

I turned my thoughts, and with capacious mind

Considered all things visible in Heaven,

Or Earth, or Middle, all things fair and good.        60

5

But all that fair and good in thy Divine

Semblance, and in thy beauty’s heavenly ray,

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United I beheld—no fair to thine

Equivalent or second; which compelled

Me thus, though importune perhaps, to come        61

0

And gaze, and worship thee of right declared

Sovran of creatures, universal Dame!”

Student EXERCISE : Lines 613– 678. The success of Satan’s deceit is immediately evident as Eve asks the serpent to show her the tree which has had such a miraculous effect on him. Milton concentrates on the serpent’s actions and behaviour in this short interlude before recommencing his temptation. How does this focus on Satan and impact on the dramatic tension?

So talked the spirited sly Snake; and Eve,

Yet more amazed, unwary thus replied:—

  “Serpent, thy overpraising leaves in doubt        61

5

The virtue of that Fruit, in thee first proved.

In these lines, when the serpent turns his new found intellect to ‘speculations high or deep’ (602) the reader is meant to recall the advice Raphael gave Adam (VIII, 172– 8) which included the apposite phrase ‘Think only what concerns thee and thy being’ (VIII, 174) – which, of course, is difficult to do if you are only studying Book 9. Nevertheless, the point here is, that the serpent’s idle speculation is of course neither speculation nor idle, since it never took place and is merely a ploy to flatter Eve further. The hyperbole is obvious, as his ‘capacious mind/ Considered all things visible’ (603– 4) not just in heaven but on earth and ‘middle’ (604) by which we must assume

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he means everything between them. In contemplating all creation, ‘all things fair and good’ (605), he concludes with the blasphemy that Eve is the epitome of everything beautiful and good, ‘no fair to thine/ Equivalent or second’ (608– 9). This allows him to account for his presence and their conversation, while flattering her even further. Knowing what he now knows, he was ‘compelled’ (609) to seek Eve out to ‘worship thee’ (611), ‘Sovereign of creatures, universal dame’ (612), which is of course more blasphemy. So outrageous is his hyperbole, that Eve herself reacts to it as soon as he ends his speech, although not with the condemnation Raphael’s warning (had it been heeded) would have rendered. Instead Eve jokes with him in a way that signals how successful his flattery has been. ‘Serpent, thy overpraising leaves in doubt/ The virtue of that fruit, in thee first proved’ (615– 16).

But say, where grows the Tree? from hence how far?

For many are the trees of God that grow

In Paradise, and various, yet unknown

To us; in such abundance lies our choice        62

0

As leaves a greater store of fruit untouched,

Still hanging incorruptible, till men

Grow up to their provision, and more hands

Help to disburden Nature of her bearth.”

  To whom the wily Adder, blithe and glad;—        62

5

“Empress, the way is ready, and not long—

Beyond a row of myrtles, on a flat,

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Fast by a fountain, one small thicket past

Of blowing myrrh and balm. If thou accept

My conduct, I can bring thee thither soon.”        63

0

  “Lead, then,” said Eve. He, leading, swiftly rowled

In tangles, and made intricate seem straight,

To mischief swift. Hope elevates, and joy

Brightens his crest. As when a wandering fire,

Compact of unctuous vapour, which the night        63

5

Condenses, and the cold invirons round,

Kindled through agitation to a flame

(Which oft, they say, some evil Spirit attends),

Hovering and blazing with delusive light,

Misleads the amazed night-wanderer from his way        64

0

To bogs and mires, and oft through pond or pool,

There swallowed up and lost, from succour far:

So glistered the dire Snake, and into fraud

Led Eve, our credulous mother, to the Tree

Of Prohibition, root of all our woe;        64

5

Which when she saw, thus to her guide she spake:—

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  “Serpent, we might have spared our coming hither,

Fruitless to me, though fruit be here to excess,

The credit of whose virtue rest with thee—

Wondrous, indeed, if cause of such effects!        65

0

But of this tree we may not taste nor touch;

God so commanded, and left that command

Sole daughter of his voice: the rest, we live

Law to ourselves; our Reason is our Law.”

  To whom the Tempter guilefully replied:—        65

5

“Indeed! Hath God then said that of the fruit

Of all these garden-trees ye shall not eat,

Yet lords declared of all in Earth or Air?”

  To whom thus Eve, yet sinless:—“Of the fruit

Of each tree in the garden we may eat;        66

0

But of the fruit of this fair Tree, amidst

The Garden, God hath said, ‘Ye shall not eat

Thereof, nor shall ye touch it, lest ye die.’“

  She scarce had said, though brief, when now more bold

The Tempter, but, with shew of zeal and love        66

5

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To Man, and indignation at his wrong,

New part puts on, and, as to passion moved,

Fluctuates disturbed, yet comely, and in act

Raised, as of some great matter to begin.

As when of old some orator renowned        67

0

In Athens or free Rome, where eloquence

Flourished, since mute, to some great cause addressed,

Stood in himself collected, while each part,

Motion, each act, won audience ere the tongue

Sometimes in highth began, as no delay        67

5

Of preface brooking through his zeal of right:

So standing, moving, or to highth upgrown,

The Tempter, all impassioned, thus began:—

Back to chunking this poem in order to make it easier to keep in our minds, this next section might be called,

THE SEDUCTION OF EVE Perhaps the first thing to remind ourselves when

looking closely at the way Satan persuades Eve here to follow his example and eat the fruit (679– 732), is that everything he says is predicated on a fundamental deceit. Eve is not conversing with a serpent and neither has that serpent eaten the fruit. Given the almost tortuous lengths Milton’s God has gone to in order to warn them and pave the way for the temptation of Adam and Eve to take place on a free will footing, it is mildly surprising that Eve doesn’t seem to even entertain

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the possibility that a talking snake is a tad suspicious. However, Milton has to work with his chosen material, at least to some extent, and it is precisely where he chooses to elaborate on his source that a lot of the critical interest lies. In the preamble to Satan’s carefully structured argument, Milton uses an elaborate simile to describe the way the serpent prepares himself to speak: As when of old some orator renowned In Athens or free Rome, where eloquence Flourished, since mute, to some great cause addressed, (670– 2). He pursues the simile in some detail, describing the serpent summoning all his oratorical skill and indignation in a zealous determination to pursue truth. It is full of irony which works on a number of levels. The main point to make is that, in acting in this way, Satan cleverly disarms Eve because he treats her as an intellectual equal. He opens his assault on her by pretending that the power of the fruit, which he apostrophises as ‘O sacred, wise, and wisdom-giving plant,/ Mother of science’ (679– 80), is operating there and then, in front of Eve. He is also far from reserved in estimating the power it gives him, telling Eve it affords him the godlike power to ‘discern/ Things in their causes’ (681– 2), but, more cunningly, that it has given him the ability not just to understand God, but actually to question his omnipotence, ‘to trace the ways/ Of highest agents, deemed however wise’ (682– 3). Flattering her further, ‘Queen of this universe’ (684), he tackles God’s word head on by asserting that the threat of death he made is a lie and that if Eve eats the fruit as he has done, she will not only live but gain the immense knowledge he has done. He does this in a series of briefly phrased questions that are designed to convince as much by their simplicity as their appeal to the evidence of Eve’s senses, ‘ye shall not die:/ How should ye? By the fruit?’ (685– 6), ‘By the threatener?’ (687). Between these comes the potentially difficult sentence, ‘It gives you life/ To knowledge’ (686– 7), where ‘to’ simply means ‘in addition to’. The way he chooses to diminish God as ‘the threatener’ after reinterpreting his ‘sole command,/ Sole pledge of his obedience’ (III, 94– 5) as ‘rigid threats’ (685) is equally a clever, yet bold strategy,

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especially when followed up by his appeal to Eve to see for herself. ‘Look on me’ (687), he advises, and the mere fact that he is still very much alive and apparently able to converse with her on such a demanding level is proof that God is, indeed, merely a threatener. The serpent doesn’t let the momentum lapse, embellishing his argument with a wonderfully well targeted enticement to Eve: that by eating he has ventured ‘higher than my lot’ (690). Another example of Satan using alliteration in the first half of a line, ‘Shall that be shut to man, which to the beast/ Is open?’ (691– 2), invites Eve to feel not just neglected, but duped. The heavy irony connected to Satan’s use of ‘beast’ is possibly more modern than historical, but nonetheless present for today’s readers. Having built up a head of rhetorical steam, the serpent speeds on, firing more questions at Eve (there are no fewer than twelve in this speech) designed progressively to undermine her belief in God’s power over her. We can chart this movement very easily. The serpent suggests that far from displaying anger, ‘For such a petty trespass’ (693), God will ‘praise/ Rather your dauntless virtue’ (693– 4), which is as fine an example of bathos as one will find in the entire canon of English poetry, original sin being reduced to a ‘petty trespass’. The parenthetic ‘whatever thing death might be’ (695) interrupts his flow for a moment but is equally bathetic, trivialising the hugely significant as unknown (he has after all met Death) in comparison with the known benefit of the ‘knowledge of good and evil’ (697) to be gained from eating the fruit. Knowledge of good, he argues, has to be ‘just?’ (698) while knowledge of evil he discounts as fictitious, ‘if what is evil/ Be real’ (698– 9), and surely something more easily avoided if known, ‘why not known, since easier shunned?’ (699). This barrage of seemingly self-evident logic now brings him to the climax of his assault, ‘God therefore cannot hurt ye, and be just’ (700). It is here now that Satan finally names ‘God’ (700) but only to negate his authority and power ‘Not just, not God’ (701). If God is not, then Eve has no reason to either fear or obey him and, with something of the Greek about him, perfectly

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matching the simile Milton used to introduce this speech, Satan produces the quite brilliantly rhetorical conclusion, ‘Your fear itself of death removes the fear’ (703). It is a simple step from there to surmise as to why God issued Adam and Eve with this single command, ‘why then was this forbid?’ (703). The serpent’s deduction is pure Satan. Unable to see beyond selfish gain and vanity it has to be because God wished to keep them ‘low and ignorant’ (704) in order that they may worship him. If they eat the fruit, they will gain the knowledge of good and evil that distinguish the ‘gods’ (note the plural) from man, ‘and ye shall be as gods’ (708). In order to reinforce this, the serpent returns to himself as the example, suggesting it is only right and proper, ‘but proportion meet’ (711), since through eating the fruit, a serpent has become man: that men, through eating the fruit, should become gods, ‘I of brute human, ye of human gods’ (712). That might be interesting, had the serpent ever eaten the fruit, but as we stressed earlier Satan’s entire assault on Eve is predicated on this one, potent lie.

SATAN:

“O sacred, wise, and wisdom-giving Plant,

Mother of science! now I feel thy power        68

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Within me clear, not only to discern

Things in their causes, but to trace the ways

Of highest agents, deemed however wise.

Queen of this Universe! do not believe

***Those rigid threats of death. Ye shall not die.        68

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How should ye? By the Fruit? it gives you life

To knowledge. By the Threatener? look on me,

Me who have touched and tasted, yet both live,

And life more perfect have attained than Fate

Meant me, by venturing higher than my lot.        69

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Shall that be shut to Man which to the Beast

Is open? or will God incense his ire

For such a petty trespass, and not praise

Rather your dauntless virtue, whom the pain

The serpent transforms Eve’s seeking to assay her virtue and be approved and witnessed by God into a more general, heroic quest— God should, Satan perversely argues, “praise / Rather your dauntless virtue” (9.693– 94)— to become the (divinized) object of a universal regard: “Thee all living things gaze on.”

Of death denounced, whatever thing Death be,        69

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Deterred not from achieving what might lead

To happier life, knowledge of Good and Evil?

Of good, how just! of evil—if what is evil

Be real, why not known, since easier shunned?

God, therefore, cannot hurt ye and be just;        70

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Not just, not God; not feared then, nor obeyed:

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Your fear itself of death removes the fear.

Why, then, was this forbid? Why but to awe,

Why but to keep ye low and ignorant,

His worshipers? He knows that in the day        70

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Ye eat thereof your eyes, that seem so clear,

Yet are but dim, shall perfectly be then

Opened and cleared, and ye shall be as Gods,

Knowing both good and evil, as they know.

That ye should be as Gods, since I as Man,***        71

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Lines 685 – 710: HYPOPHORA: Question and answer

of the orator.

Internal Man, is but proportion meet—

I, of brute, human; ye, of human, Gods.

Note how in lines 713 – 714, Satan’s rhetorical fireworks continue as he then tells Eve that this may indeed be death, ‘So ye shall die perhaps’ (713), but it is a ‘death to be wished’ (714) if it renders them gods.

So ye shall die perhaps, by putting off

Human, to put on Gods—death to be wished,

Though threatened, which no worse than this can bring!        71

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The questions now come thick and fast. Apart from the profound reductionism in referring only to

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‘gods’ in the plural in line 714, Satan challenges the very concept of their pre-eminence, denying that they are creators when it is evident that the earth itself, ‘Warmed by the sun’ (721), is the more fertile. And if they were the creators of everything, who ‘enclosed/ Knowledge of good and evil in this tree’ (722– 3), making it possible for anyone who eats the fruit to gain the wisdom he has gained, ‘without their leave?’ (725). Satan makes the error of assuming that the fruit has the power he imagines when God has never said so. God only ever requests Adam and Eve’s obedience. Why would eating the fruit cause offence? How can the tree give out its power ‘against his will if all be his?’ (728).

The lapse back into the singular possessive pronoun may be a deliberate choice by Milton to expose Satan’s deceit, before he transfers to God his own, self-destructive flaw, envy, ‘Or is it envy, and can envy dwell/ In heavenly breasts?’ (729– 30). As Milton explained before the serpent gathered himself for this rhetorical tour de force, he would exploit every trick and strategy employed by classical orators, and the repetition, ‘These, these’ (730), with its lengthy stresses, combined with the alliterative sentence ending, give greater force to his suggestion that Eve actually needs ‘this fair fruit’ (731).

So confident is he, that in his final sentence Satan even risks a joke and uses the dangerously witty oxymoron, ‘Goddess humane’, as he exhorts her to ‘reach then, and freely taste’ (732). The oxymoron flatters in two directions by raising Eve’s status and acknowledging her compassion, but the heaviest irony by far falls on his encouragement to taste ‘freely’. Having worked so hard to persuade her and remove all doubt, fear or caution from Eve’s mind, in the end Eve is as God intended, free to choose.

And what are Gods, that Man may not become

As they, participating godlike food?

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The Gods are first, and that advantage use

On our belief, that all from them proceeds.

I question it; for this fair Earth I see,        72

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Warmed by the Sun, producing every kind;

Them nothing. If they all things, who enclosed

Knowledge of Good and Evil in this Tree,

That whoso eats thereof forthwith attains

Wisdom without their leave? and wherein lies        72

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The offence, that Man should thus attain to know?

What can your knowledge hurt him, or this Tree

Impart against his will, if all be his?

Or is it envy? and can envy dwell

In Heavenly breasts? These, these and many more        73

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Causes import your need of this fair Fruit.

Goddess humane, reach, then, and freely taste!”

Line 732: These last words of Satan, “Goddess humane,” echo his first words to Eve. Satan begins with flattery and already suggests that Eve is made for better things. “Wonder not, sovereign mistress, if perhaps Thou canst, who art sole wonder, must less arm Thy looks, the heaven of mildness, with disdain …Fairest resemblance of thy maker fair, Thee all things living gaze on, all things thine By gift, and thy celestial beauty adore With

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ravishment beheld, there best beheld Where universally admired; but here In this enclosure wild, these beasts among, Beholders rude, and shallow to discern Half what in thee is fair, one man except, Who sees thee? (And what is one?) Who shouldst be seen A goddess among gods, adored and served By angels numberless, thy daily train. (9.532– 34; 9.538– 48)

What is a beautiful girl like you doing in a place like this? The provincial “enclosure wild” that Satan describes reminds us of Eve’s own feeling of being confined in the “narrow circuit” of Eden, and behind it the cloister that confines the inexperienced virtue in Areopagitica. In spite of his assertion that all living things already gaze with wonder on her, Satan suggests that Eve should be seen by a better class of beings, like one of the city and court ladies at the end of that early poem, whose “bright eyes / Rain influence” (121– 22) on their knights and barons. Eve, Satan proposes, should be taken to a heavenly Hollywood from her small-town drugstore counter in Eden and turned into a star or goddess at a truly universal studio. She could leave behind her rube of a husband— one man— who, the serpent insinuates, doesn’t appreciate the half of her any more than the beasts do: Satan the snake’s over-the-top flattery already suggests as much. The facetiousness and updating of my critical description matches the tone of the passage and of its models: the encounter of the roué with the innocent to whom he promises a higher life and social standing, Milton knows, is a hackneyed, repeated story. He takes it back to the beginning of history at the Fall itself.

In order to chunk the next section of the poem, we could label it as: ‘Eve Succumbs’ In this section of Book 9 of Paradise Lost, the serpent has just ended his assault on Eve. Milton

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then allows us access to her immediate thoughts and the reasoning that brings her to the point where she chooses to eat. Eve is left with the serpent’s words ringing in her ears, ‘With reason, to her seeming, and with truth’ (738), while the sensory appeal of the fruit is heightened by her noontide hunger. Yet she does not immediately eat, instead she reflects on what she has heard, ‘Pausing awhile, thus to herself she mused’ (744). The efficacy of Satan’s chief lie is clear as Eve doesn’t question the idea that the fruit is responsible for the serpent’s gift of speech but sees it as evidence of the fruit’s power. God’s naming and ‘forbidding’ (753) is equally proof to her that the fruit has the power the serpent says it has, but what is new is Eve’s then reasoning that God’s forbidding them to eat is in itself an enticement, ‘his forbidding/ Commends thee more’ (753– 4), because it confirms the fruit’s virtue. In addition, she asks herself what good there is in knowing the virtue of the fruit without enjoying or benefiting from it. That is tantamount to not knowing it exists at all. You may already have noticed Eve makes no mention now of evil but acts as though the Tree were named the Tree of Knowledge of Good. She deduces, unaided by the serpent, that in essence then God has simply forbidden them to know what is good, and therefore it follows that he also ‘forbids us to be wise?’ (759).

NARRATOR:

He ended; and his words, replete with guile,

Into her heart too easy entrance won.

Fixed on the Fruit she gazed, which to behold         73

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Might tempt alone; and in her ears the sound

Yet rung of his persuasive words, impregned

With reason, to her seeming, and with truth.

Meanwhile the hour of noon drew on, and waked

An eager appetite, raised by the smell        74

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So savoury of that Fruit, which with desire,

Inclinable now grown to touch or taste,

Solicited her longing eye; yet first,

Pausing a while, thus to herself she mused:—

EVE: “Great are thy virtues, doubtless, best of Fruits,

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Though kept from Man, and worthy to be admired,

Whose taste, too long forborne, at first assay

Gave elocution to the mute, and taught

The tongue not made for speech to speak thy praise.

Thy praise he also who forbids thy use        75

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Conceals not from us, naming thee the Tree

Of Knowledge, knowledge both of Good and Evil;

Forbids us then to taste. But his forbidding

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Commends thee more, while it infers the good

By thee communicated, and our want;        75

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For good unknown sure is not bad, or, had

And yet unknown, is as not had at all.

Lines 756-757: SYMPLOCE: Spoken by Eve – suggestive that she mimics Satan’s logic.

In plain, then, what forbids he but to know?

Forbids us good, forbids us to be wise!

In the next 20 lines: 760 – 780, Eve appears to have picked up the serpent’s trait of avoiding God’s name too and consequently is less afraid of concluding that ‘Such prohibitions bind not’ (760). Let’s listen to them, read.

Such prohibitions bind not. But, if Death

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Bind us with after-bands, what profits then

Our inward freedom? In the day we eat

Of this fair Fruit, our doom is we shall die!

How dies the Serpent? He hath eaten, and lives,

And knows, and speaks, and reasons, and discerns,        76

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Irrational till then. For us alone

Was death invented? or to us denied

This intellectual food, for beasts reserved?

For beasts it seems; yet that one beast which first

Hath tasted envies not, but brings with joy         77

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The good befallen him, author unsuspect,

Friendly to Man, far from deceit or guile.

What fear I, then? rather, what know to fear

Under this ignorance of Good and Evil,

Of God or Death, of law or penalty?        77

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Here grows the cure of all, this fruit divine,

Fair to the eye, inviting to the taste,

Of virtue to make wise. What hinders, then,

To reach, and feed at once both body and mind?”

In these lines, for a moment, Eve rediscovers her fear of death (760– 2) but immediately relinquishes it because the serpent is alive and he has eaten, proof perfect it appears.

You will note that throughout this interior monologue, Eve uses quite short, simple sentences clearly connected to the preceding ideas, but the list she produces, held together by ands, ‘He hath eaten and lives,/ And knows, and speaks, and reasons, and discerns’ (764– 5), which undermines the quality of her reasoning because it sounds very much as though she is trying to convince herself.

She also asks herself a number of rhetorical questions, the most poignant of all being her next one, ‘For us alone/ Was death invented?’ (766– 7), because while assuming the rhetorical answer to be ‘Of course not’ she has unknowingly, amidst a welter of deceit, uttered an absolute truth. God did create death for man (III, 208– 16). We can see too that the serpent’s words have struck home when Eve voices frustration at being ‘denied/ This

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intellectual food’ (768). There is more heavy irony on show as she assumes

from the serpent’s eagerness to share his good fortune that he is not envious but joyful, and is in fact ‘Friendly to man, far from deceit or guile’ (772). With some speed, Eve’s reasoning has brought her to the point where she is genuinely unafraid, ‘What fear I then’ (773), because knowing nothing of good and evil she paradoxically has nothing to fear. Again a list exposes the shallowness of her reasoning and the influence of the serpent, since she rejects not just fear of God, but of ‘death, of law or penalty?’ (775). In Eve’s mind, God has become merely one of a number of potential influences on her. Having reasoned thus, nothing remains to hinder Eve from feeding ‘at once both body and mind?’ (779) and ‘in evil hour’ (780) she reaches for the fruit and eats it. You will be able to find ample evidence of Milton’s desire to signal the scale of this disastrous act in the reaction of nature: Earth felt the wound, and nature from her seat Sighing through all her works gave signs of woe, That all was lost. (782– 4) But how explicit the criticism is, in his description of ‘her rash hand’ (780), may be less straightforward.

 

NARRATOR:

So saying, her rash hand in evil hour

Forth-reaching to the Fruit, she plucked, she eat.

Earth felt the wound, and Nature from her seat,

Sighing through all her works, gave signs of woe

That all was lost.

In the short upcoming section, lines 785 – 794, you should be able to locate plenty of words that stress

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Eve’s greed and pleasure. Back to the thicket slunk

The guilty Serpent,

The caesura in line 784 puts an abrupt end to the dramatic tension that has been building since Eve left Adam’s side; and Satan exits unceremoniously: ‘Back to the thicket slunk/ The guilty serpent’ (784– 5). Eve is left to relish the fruit and Milton allows her ample space to indulge herself while emphasising her self-deception, before we are once more party to her thoughts.

and well might, for Eve,

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Intent now only her taste, naught else

Regarded; such delight till then, as seemed,

In fruit she never tasted, whether true,

Or fancied so through expectation high

Of knowledge; nor was Godhead from her thought.        79

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The most damning indication that Eve has indeed been seduced by the serpent’s skilful words is the idea that ‘nor was godhead from her thought’ (790) as ‘Greedily she engorged without restraint’ (791).

Note, in the next section where Milton’s puritanical taste settles on drunkenness as the dominant image.

Greedily she ingorged without restraint,

And knew not eating death. Satiate at length,

And hightened as with wine, jocond and boon,

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Thus to herself she pleasingly began:—

EVE:

“O sovran, virtuous, precious of all trees

        

795

In Paradise! of operation blest

To sapience, hitherto obscured, infamed,

And thy fair Fruit let hang, as to no end

Created! but henceforth my early care,

Not without song, each morning, and due praise,        80

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One question ought to surface above many potential ones, here, and that is: Why does Eve not experience utter disappointment, since the fruit does not have the power the serpent claimed? Such is her conviction in its virtues that she praises it in hymn-like terms, promising to tend and care for it ‘Not without song, each morning’ (800), an action which is near blasphemous since it supplants their worship of God that begins each day.

Shall tend thee, and the fertil burden ease

In the next short section, lines 802 – 815, Eve anticipates being very liberal with the Tree’s fruit, intending to offer it ‘free to all’ (802), and imagines that the more she eats, the more she will achieve divine status: Till dieted by thee I grow mature In knowledge, as the gods who all things know; (803– 4). She curiously praises ‘Experience’ (807), personified as though a mentor or guide who has led her out of ‘ignorance’ (809) to wisdom, yet that wisdom does not preclude her using ‘perhaps’

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twice in the space of three lines (811– 13) as she wonders whether or not ‘Our great forbidder’ (815) has seen her disobedience.

Of thy full branches, offered free to all;

Till, dieted by thee, I grow mature

In knowledge, as the Gods who all things know,

Though others envy what they cannot give—        80

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For, had the gift been theirs, it had not here

Thus grown! Experience, next to thee I owe,

Best guide: not following thee, I had remained

In ignorance; thou open’st Wisdom’s way,

And giv’st access, though secret she retire.        81

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And I perhaps am secret: Heaven is high—

High, and remote to see from thence distinct

Each thing on Earth; and other care perhaps

May have diverted from continual watch

Note the next section: Lines 815 – 822:

Our great Forbidder, safe with all his Spies

        

815

About him. But to Adam in what sort

Shall I appear? Shall I to him make known

As yet my change, and give him to partake

Full happiness with me, or rather not,

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But keep the odds of knowledge in my power        82

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Without copartner? so to add what wants

In female sex, the more to draw his love,

In these lines, Eve’s adoption of the serpent’s reductive vocabulary is taken further in the use of ‘spies’ (815) for angels, but she betrays the real effect of eating the fruit most shockingly in her questioning what she is to tell Adam. Instantly she perceives a dilemma which before eating would not have occurred to her. On the one hand she could tell Adam in order that he can share ‘Full happiness with me’ (819); on the other hand, she could withhold the truth and ‘keep the odds of knowledge in my power/ Without copartner?’ (820– 1). Eve considers, in effect, exchanging love for superior knowledge, and the speed with which she adds a reason, ‘the more to draw his love’ (822), only serves to expose it as an afterthought.

And render me more equal, and perhaps—

A thing not undesirable The questions in the next section reveal a growing

uncertainty as well as the onset of an impulsive jealousy: “Then I shall be no more And Adam wedded to another Eve, Shall live with her enjoying, I extinct; A death to think” (827– 30).

—sometime

Superior; for, inferior, who is free?        82

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For the first time Eve expresses a sense of inferiority, ‘And render me more equal’ (823), and ambition, ‘sometime, Superior’ (824– 5), but her deduction that a hierarchy by definition negates

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freedom, ‘for inferior who is free?’ (825), is entirely fallacious – a fallacy.

This may be well; but what if God have seen,

And death ensue? Then I shall be no more;

And Adam, wedded to another Eve,

Shall live with her enjoying, I extinct!

The caesura in line 831, marks the moment of her appallingly selfish decision to ensure Adam shares her fate, whatever it may be, “Adam shall share with me in bliss or woe,” all signs of the wisdom only moments before she was so proudly exhibiting, gone.

A death to think! Confirmed, then, I resolve

      830

Adam shall share with me in bliss or woe.

It is worth noting, as well, the final two lines of this section -– lines 832 and 833 -- since they will be so poignantly echoed by her husband: “So dear I love him, that with him all deaths I could endure, without him live no life.”

So dear I love him that with him all deaths

I could endure, without him live no life.”

Student Exercise: Lines 834– 95. In this relatively short episode, Adam encounters Eve on his way to find her, returning from the Tree with a branch laden with the fruit for him to eat. She explains that she has eaten the fruit and suggests Adam now does the same. That is a deliberately neutral precis of a moment in the epic which is loaded with dramatic significance and power. Read through it and consider carefully both the way Eve delivers her difficult message and the way Adam responds

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to it.

NARRATOR:

So saying, from the Tree her step she turned,

But first low reverence done, as to the Power        83

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That dwelt within, whose presence had infused

Into the plant sciential sap, derived

From nectar, drink of Gods.

And here is where the reader might note another chunk in the narrative: Adam’s Free Will.

As in the moments after Eve has tasted the fruit, Milton opts for an interior monologue to detail Adam’s first thoughts on learning that Eve has disobeyed God. The reversal in their joint fate is captured in the build-up to this monologue by his symbolic dropping of the garland of flowers he had made to crown her with and its instant withering, ‘and all the faded roses shed’ (893).

Adam the while,

Waiting desirous her return, had wove

Of choicest flowers a garland, to adorn        84

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Her tresses, and her rural labours crown,

As reapers oft are wont their harvest-queen.

Great joy he promised to his thoughts, and new

Solace in her return, so long delayed;

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Yet oft his heart, divine of something ill,        84

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Misgave him. He the faltering measure felt,

And forth to meet her went, the way she took

That morn when first they parted. By the Tree

Of Knowledge he must pass; there he her met,

Scarce from the Tree returning; in her hand        85

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A bough of fairest fruit, that downy smiled,

New gathered, and ambrosial smell diffused.

To him she hasted; in her face excuse

Came prologue, and apology to prompt,

Which, with bland words at will, she thus addressed:—        85

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EVE:

“Hast thou not wondered, Adam, at my stay?

Thee I have missed, and thought it long, deprived

Thy presence—agony of love till now

Not felt, nor shall be twice; for never more

Mean I to try, what rash untried I sought,        86

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The pain of absence from thy sight. But strange

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Hath been the cause, and wonderful to hear.

This Tree is not, as we are told, a Tree

Of danger tasted, nor to evil unknown

Opening the way, but of divine effect        86

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To open eyes, and make them Gods who taste;

And hath been tasted such. The Serpent wise,

Or not restrained as we, or not obeying,

Hath eaten of the Fruit, and is become

Not dead, as we are threatened, but thenceforth        87

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Endued with human voice and human sense,

Reasoning to admiration, and with me

Persuasively hath so prevailed that I

Have also tasted, and have also found

The effects to correspond—opener mine eyes,        87

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Dim erst, dilated spirits, ampler heart,

And growing up to Godhead; which for thee

Chiefly I sought, without thee can despise.

For bliss, as thou hast part, to me is bliss;

Tedious, unshared with thee, and odious soon.        88

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Thou, therefore, also taste, that equal lot

May join us, equal joy, as equal love;

Lest, thou not tasting, different degree

Disjoin us, and I then too late renounce

Deity for thee, when fate will not permit.”        88

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NARRATOR:

Thus Eve with countenance blithe her story told;

But in her cheek distemper flushing glowed.

On the other side, Adam, soon as he heard

The fatal trespass done by Eve, amazed,

Astonied stood and blank, while horror chill        89

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Ran through his veins, and all his joints relaxed.

From his slack hand the garland wreathed for Eve

Down dropt, and all the faded roses shed.

Speechless he stood and pale, till thus at length

First to himself he inward silence broke:—        89

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The symbolic dropping of the garland of flowers motif is picked up by Adam in his first thoughts where Eve becomes a perfect creature ‘on a sudden lost’ (900). Adam apostrophises Eve as ‘the last and best/ Of all God’s works’ (896– 897) and lists her good qualities before asking himself what

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looks like the most pertinent question: “How art thou lost, how on a sudden lost, Defaced, deflowered, and now to death devote!” (900– 1), but which is in effect a statement of incontrovertible fact. The harshly alliterative line sounds almost as though Milton designed it to be quoted. His language contrasts starkly with that used by the serpent and Eve, ‘transgress’ (902) and ‘violate’ (903) evoking the gravity of her fault while the fruit itself is ‘sacred’ (904). Adam then makes the most revealing of deductions, ‘Some cursèd fraud/ Of enemy hath beguiled thee, yet unknown’ (904– 5), not just because it is correct, but because it exposes the depth of his love for Eve. Given the accuracy and subtlety of their marital conversations this far, the reader could be forgiven for expecting Adam to launch into either anger, blame or both, but Milton invests his first man with immense generosity and civility. His assumption is that Eve has been tricked.

Lines 896 – 934: Obvious though it may seem, Adam’s mind is made up before he ever speaks to Eve, removing her from any further accusations of influence and therefore blame. Considering the words he chose to praise Eve with in his opening apostrophe (896– 899), Adam is more objective now, calling her ‘adventurous Eve’ (921) and addressing her in terms more appropriate for a heroic figure returning from a quest.

It is in this speech to Eve that Adam is faced with, and fails, his own test. Like Eve, he runs through a list of rationalisations which we can extract here, although each will reward closer study. For example, at first he tells Eve what she has done cannot be changed either by God or fate. Is this in fact true? And if not, what does it imply about Adam’s faith? He grasps at the hope that maybe Eve will not die because the serpent tasted the fruit first and may have lessened the crime, using the same conditional adverb Eve employed to

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bolster her desire, ‘perhaps the fact/ Is not so heinous now’ (928– 9). With no evidence beyond Eve’s words, like her, he views the serpent’s survival as evidence that Eve too might live and follows the same ambitious route she took. If the serpent has gained a ‘Higher degree of life’ (934) then it follows that they too will win a ‘Proportional ascent’ (936), making them ‘gods, or angels demigods’ (937). Adam’s choice of the phrase ‘inducement strong’ (934) is especially culpable since it is so radical a travesty of what he is really proposing: disobeying God.

We might call the next part of the story:

ADAM AND EVE: ONE FLESH

ADAM:

“O fairest of Creation, last and best

Of all God’s works, creature in whom excelled

Whatever can to sight or thought be formed,

Holy, divine, good, amiable, or sweet!

How art thou lost! how on a sudden lost,        90

0

Defaced, deflowered, and now to death devote!

Rather, how hast thou yielded to transgress

The strict forbiddance, how to violate

The sacred Fruit forbidden? Some cursed fraud

Of enemy hath beguiled thee, yet unknown,         90

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5

Lines 906 – 911: Still part of his monologue, Adam’s second assumption appears equally generous: And me with thee hath ruined, for with thee Certain my resolution is to die (906– 7). The highly organised use of sound and rhythm of these two lines provides a strong example of Milton’s poetic skill at work. The rhyme between ‘me and ‘thee’, and that between the stressed syllable of ‘ruined’ and resolution’ glue the two lines tightly together, while the tight enjambment from ‘thee’ to ‘Certain’ forces the reader to pause before ‘my’ and puts all the stress on the dire consequences and immutability of Adam’s decision. It is clearly Adam’s love for Eve that drives this decision and he cannot imagine replacing her even ‘Should God create another Eve’ (911).

And me with thee hath ruined; for with thee

Certain my resolution is to die.

How can I live without thee? how forgo

Thy sweet converse, and love so dearly joined,

To live again in these wild woods forlorn?        91

0

Should God create another Eve, and I

Another rib afford, yet loss of thee

Would never from my heart.

Yet what seems initially noble and generous, even touching, is fraught with difficulty. In lines 914 and 915, Adam calls Eve “flesh of my flesh,/ Bone of my bone,” but this is an overt anachronism and Eve is a separate being with a free will, and Adam’s will is

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every bit as free as hers. A valuable topic for discussion is to consider all the

options open to Adam at this point, particularly given the easily overlooked fact that he has not fallen and remains completely free to obey or disobey God.

As Adam reaches the end of this interior monologue, it is clear he has gone beyond the point where he understands this himself, ‘from thy state/ Mine never shall be parted, bliss or woe’ (915– 16).

No, no! I feel

The link of nature draw me: flesh of flesh,

Bone of my bone thou art, and from thy state        91

5

Mine never shall be parted, bliss or woe.”

Lines 912 – 916: After Eve falls, the force of his love causes Adam to stay by her side: he restates the formula at the end of his internal monologue, in which he resolves to fall with Eve, and again at the end of his vocal declaration of his choice to her. Yet loss of thee Would never from my heart; no no, I feel The link of nature draw me: flesh of flesh, Bone of my bone thou art, and from thy state Mine never shall be parted, bliss or woe. (9.912– 16) Our state cannot be severed, we are one, One flesh; to lose thee were to lose my self. (9.958– 59) “Not deceived, / But fondly overcome with female charm” (9.998– 99), remarks the censorious narrator. 31 Adam has left “soul” out of these inner and outward speeches. Given his admission to Raphael one book earlier of the “Commotion strange” that Eve arouses in him, critics have suggested that Adam may be taking the figure of “one flesh” too literally and carnally; Milton complicates his hero’s motives. 32 But Eve quickly supplies the missing terms in her response “And

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gladly of our union hear thee speak, / One heart, one soul in both” (9.966– 67). In his silent soliloquy, moreover, Adam has himself stated that he cannot live without Eve’s “sweet converse and love so dearly joined / To live again in these wild woods forlorn” (9.909– 10).

NARRATOR:

So having said, as one from sad dismay

Recomforted, and, after thoughts disturbed,

Submitting to what seemed remediless,

Thus in calm mood his words to Eve he turned:—        92

0

The narrator steps in here for just a moment with another helpful simile that conveys simultaneously Adam’s demeanour and the reality of his state: “So having said, as one from sad dismay / Recomforted, and after thoughts disturbed / Submitting to what seemed remediless, / Thus in calm mood his words to Eve he turned” (917– 920).

ADAM:

“Bold deed thou hast presumed, adventrous Eve,

And peril great provoked, who thus hast dared

Had it been only coveting to eye

That sacred Food, sacred to abstinence;

Much more to taste it, under ban to touch.         92

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5

But past who can recall, or done undo?

Not God Omnipotent, nor Fate! Yet so

Perhaps thou shalt not die; perhaps the fact

Is not so hainous now-foretasted Fruit,

Profaned first by the Serpent, by him first        93

0

Made common and unhallowed ere our taste,

Nor yet on him found deadly. He yet lives—

Lives, as thou saidst, and gains to live, as Man,

Higher degree of life: inducement strong

To us, as likely, tasting, to attain        93

5

Proportional ascent; which cannot be

But to be Gods, or Angels, Demi-gods.

Nor can I think that God, Creator wise,

Though threatening, will in earnest so destroy

Us, his prime creatures, dignified so high,        94

0

Set over all his works; which, in our fall,

In the next section, lines 942 – 950, Adam’s determination to justify what he has already made up his mind to do, now extends to anticipating God, whom he decides will not destroy them because to do so would destroy the natural world too, since it was ‘For us created’ (942). This would

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be ‘Not well conceived of God’ (945) since, although he could recreate everything, he would also be allowing Satan an opportunity to challenge his authority: lest the adversary Triúmph and say; Fickle their state whom God Most favours, who can please him long? Me first He ruined, now mankind; whom will he next? (947– 50) One has to admire Milton for the rational contortions Adam performs to reach the point where he is able to justify disobedience on the grounds that he is protecting God from Satan!

For us created, needs with us must fail,

Dependent made.

Adam’s determination to justify what he has already made up his mind to do, now extends to anticipating God, who he decides will not destroy them because to do so would destroy the natural world too, since it was ‘For us created’ (942). This would be ‘Not well conceived of God’ (945) since, although he could recreate everything, he would also be allowing Satan an opportunity to challenge his authority: lest the adversary Triúmph and say; Fickle their state whom God Most favours, who can please him long? Me first He ruined, now mankind; whom will he next? (947– 50)

One has to admire Milton for the rational contortions Adam performs to reach the point where he is able to justify disobedience on the grounds that he is protecting God from Satan! When he finally ceases listing the various reasons why eating the fruit would be a good thing, or in other words justifying his disobedience, his use of the simple conjunction, ‘However’ (952), seems to dismiss it all as so much froth. At the heart of it all is his love for Eve. He adopts a heroic tone himself, ‘if death/ Consort with thee, death is to me as life’ (553– 4). We know from Book 2 (790– 95) that Sin

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is Death’s consort and so by wedding himself to Eve in this way Adam is embracing sin. In the end he makes the same crucial error he made earlier (914– 15) in failing to perceive Eve as a separate being and maintaining himself as a free individual: Our state cannot be severed, we are one, One flesh; to lose thee were to lose myself. (958– 9)

Before we leave this key moment in the poem, there is another aspect of Adam’s thinking well worth your further thought. Is it love he is describing when he says the following? So forcible within my heart I feel The bond of nature draw me to my own, My own in thee, for what thou art is mine; (955– 7).

So God shall uncreate,

Be frustrate, do, undo, and labour lose—

Not well conceived of God; who, though his power        94

5

Creation could repeat, yet would be loth

Us to abolish, lest the Adversary

Triumph and say: ‘Fickle their state whom God

Most favours; who can please him long? Me first

He ruined, now Mankind; whom will he next?’—        95

0

Matter of scorn not to be given the Foe.

In the next line, line 952, when Adam finally ceases listing the various reasons why eating the fruit would be a good thing, or, in other words, justifying his disobedience, his use of the simple conjunction, ‘However’ (952), seems to dismiss it all as so much froth.

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However, I with thee have fixed my lot,

Certain to undergo like doom. If death

Consort with thee, death is to me as life;

So forcible within my heart I feel        95

5

The bond of Nature draw me to my own—

My own is thee; for what thou art is mine.

Our state cannot be severed; we are one,

One flesh; to lose thee were to lose myself.”

Lines 960– 1133. Once Adam has vowed to endure the same fate as Eve, she expresses her delight in a way that shows she has herself taken all of Adam’s reasoning as proof of his love. Man’s love for God, his creator, has been noticeably absent throughout the temptation of Eve and beyond, so it should not surprise us that, once Adam too has eaten the fruit, Milton ‘Thus it shall befall’ (1182) sounds weakly hollow and motivated more by shame than wisdom. 

Lines 960– 1133. Once Adam has vowed to endure the same fate as Eve, she expresses her delight in a way that shows she has herself taken all of Adam’s reasoning as proof of his love. Man’s love for God, his creator, has been noticeably absent throughout the temptation of Eve and beyond, so it should not surprise us that, once Adam too has eaten the fruit, Milton ‘Thus it shall befall’ (1182) sounds weakly hollow and motivated more by shame than wisdom.

        

960

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NARRATOR:

So Adam; and thus Eve to him replied:—

EVE:

“O glorious trial of exceeding love,

Illustrious evidence, example high!

Ingaging me to emulate; but, short

Of thy perfection, how shall I attain,

Adam? from whose dear side I boast me sprung,        96

5

And gladly of our union hear thee speak,

One heart, one soul in both; whereof good proof

This day affords, declaring thee resolved,

Rather than death, or aught than death more dread,

Shall separate us, linked in love so dear,        97

0

To undergo with me one guilt, one crime,

If any be, of tasting this fair Fruit;

Whose virtue (for of good still good proceeds,

Direct, or by occasion) hath presented

This happy trial of thy love, which else        97

5

So eminently never had been known.

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Were it I thought death menaced would ensue

This my attempt, I would sustain alone

The worst, and not persuade thee—rather die

Deserted than oblige thee with a fact        98

0

Pernicious to thy peace, chiefly assured

Remarkably so late of thy so true,

So faithful love unequalled. But I feel

Far otherwise the event—not death, but life

Augmented, opened eyes, new hopes, new joys,        98

5

Taste so divine that what of sweet before

Hath touched my sense flat seems to this and harsh.

On my experience, Adam, freely taste,

And fear of death deliver to the winds.”

NARRATOR:

So saying, she embraced him, and for joy

        

990

Tenderly wept, much won that he his love

Had so ennobled as of choice to incur

Divine displeasure for her sake, or death.

In recompense (for such compliance bad

Such recompense best merits), from the bough        99

5

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She gave him of that fair enticing Fruit

With liberal hand. He scrupled not to eat,

Adam’s fondness for Eve (synonymous with foolishness) is evident on a number of occasions, most significantly when the narrator, in the briefest of digressions, tells us: he scrupled not to eat Against his better knowledge, not deceived, But fondly overcome with female charm. (997– 9) That fondness Adam now regards as a culpable fault because it led to his overmuch admiring What seemed in thee so perfect, that I thought No evil durst attempt thee, (1178– 80) which in a moment of confession he calls ‘my crime’ (1181). It is clear from this that Adam has more to learn before he can begin the long journey back to redemption for himself and all mankind. Following a pattern set earlier (1140– 2), from the specific case he tries to draw a sententious conclusion but only succeeds in making himself seem weaker and grudging. His ‘Thus it shall befall’ (1182) sounds weakly hollow and motivated more by shame than wisdom.

The next part we could label,

THE IMMEDIATE AFTERMATH OF SIN

As on other occasions, Milton precedes a passage of speech (1134– 89) with a comparison designed to set the atmosphere or tone, in this case it is a storm metaphor that dictates the way both Adam and Eve speak, conveyed in phrases like ‘high winds’ (1122) and ‘tossed and turbulent’ (1126), culminating in Adam’s ‘distempered breast’ (1131).

Against his better knowledge, not deceived,But fondly overcome with female charm.

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Earth trembled from her entrails, as again        10

00

In pangs, and Nature gave a second groan;

Sky loured, and, muttering thunder, some sad drops

Wept at completing of the mortal Sin

Original; while Adam took no thought,

Eating his fill, nor Eve to iterate        10

05

Her former trespass feared, the more to soothe

Him with her loved society; that now,

As with new wine intoxicated both,

They swim in mirth, and fancy that they feel

Divinity within them breeding wings        10

10

Wherewith to scorn the Earth. But that false Fruit

Far other operation first displayed,

Carnal desire inflaming. He on Eve

Began to cast lascivious eyes; she him

As wantonly repaid; in lust they burn,        10

15

Till Adam thus ’gan Eve to dalliance move:—

ADAM:

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“Eve, now I see thou art exact of taste

And elegant—of sapience no small part;

Since to each meaning savour we apply,

And palate call judicious. I the praise        10

20

Yield thee; so well this day thou hast purveyed.

Much pleasure we have lost, while we abstained

From this delightful Fruit, nor known till now

True relish, tasting. If such pleasure be

In things to us forbidden, it might be wished        10

25

For this one Tree had been forbidden ten.

But come; so well refreshed, now let us play,

As meet is, after such delicious fare;

For never did thy beauty, since the day

I saw thee first and wedded thee, adorned        10

30

With all perfections, so enflame my sense

With ardour to enjoy thee, fairer now

Than ever-bounty of this virtuous Tree!”

NARRATOR:

So said he, and forbore not glance or toy

Of amorous intent, well understood         10

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35

Of Eve, whose eye darted contagious fire.

Her hand he seized, and to a shady bank,

Thick overhead with verdant roof imbowered,

He led her, nothing loth; flowers were the couch,

Pansies, and violets, and asphodel,        10

40

And hyacinth—Earth’s freshest, softest lap.

There they their fill of love and love’s disport

Took largely, of their mutual gilt the seal,

The solace of their sin, till dewy sleep

Oppressed them, wearied with their amorous play.        10

45

  Soon as the force of that fallacious Fruit,

That with exhilarating vapour bland

About their spirits had played, and inmost powers

Made err, was now exhaled, and grosser sleep,

Bred of unkindly fumes, with conscious dreams        10

50

Incumbered, now had left them, up they rose

As from unrest, and, each the other viewing,

Soon found their eyes how opened, and their minds

How darkened. Innocence, that as a veil

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Had shadowed them from knowing ill, was gone;        10

55

Just confidence, and native righteousness,

And honour, from about them, naked left

To guilty Shame: he covered, but his robe

Uncovered more. So rose the Danite strong,

Herculean Samson, from the harlot-lap        10

60

Of Philistean Dalilah, and waked

Shorn of his strength; they destitute and bare

Of all their virtue. Silent, and in face

Confounded, long they sat, as strucken mute;

Till Adam, though not less than Eve abashed,        10

65

At length gave utterance to these words constrained:—

ADAM:

“O Eve, in evil hour thou didst give ear

To that false Worm, of whomsoever taught

To counterfeit Man’s voice—true in our fall,

False in our promised rising; since our eyes        10

70

Opened we find indeed, and find we know

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Both good and evil, good lost and evil got:

Bad Fruit of Knowledge, if this be to know,

Which leaves us naked thus, of honour void,

Of innocence, of faith, of purity,        10

75

Our wonted ornaments now soiled and stained,

And in our faces evident the signs

Of foul concupiscence; whence evil store,

Even shame, the last of evils; of the first

Be sure then. How shall I behold the face        10

80

Henceforth of God or Angel, erst with joy

And rapture so oft beheld? Those Heavenly Shapes

Will dazzle now this earthly with their blaze

Insufferably bright. Oh, might I here

In solitude live savage, in some glade        10

85

Obscured, where highest woods, impenetrable

To star or sunlight, spread their umbrage broad,

And brown as evening. Cover me, ye pines!

Ye cedars, with innumerable boughs

Hide me, where I may never see them more!         10

130

90

But let us now, as in bad plight, devise

What best may, for the present, serve to hide

The parts of each other that seem most

To shame obnoxious, and unseemliest seen—

Some tree, whose broad smooth leaves, together sewed,        10

95

And girded on our loins, may cover round

Those middle parts, that this new comer, Shame,

There sit not, and reproach us as unclean.”

NARRATOR:

So counselled he, and both together went

Into the thickest wood. There soon they choose        11

00

The fig tree—not that kind for fruit renowned,

But such, as at this day, to Indians known,

In Malabar or Decan spreads her arms

Braunching so broad and long that in the ground

The bended twigs take root, and daughters grow        11

05

About the mother tree, a pillared shade

High overarched, and echoing walks between:

There oft the Indian herdsman, shunning heat,

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Shelters in cool, and tends his pasturing herds

At loop-holes cut through thickest shade. Those leaves        11

10

They gathered, broad as Amazonian targe,

And with what skill they had together sewed,

To gird their waist—vain covering, if to hide

Their guilt and dreaded shame! O how unlike

To that first naked glory! Such of late        11

15

Columbus found the American, so girt

With feathered cincture, naked else and wild,

Among the trees on isles and woody shores.

Thus fenced, and, as they thought, their shame in part

Covered, but not at rest or ease of mind,        11

20

They sat them down to weep. Nor only tears

Rained at their eyes, but high winds worse within

Began to rise, high passions—anger, hate,

Mistrust, suspicion, discord—and shook sore

Their inward state of mind, calm region once        11

25

And full of peace, now tost and turbulent:

For Understanding ruled not, and the Will

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Heard not her lore, both in subjection now

To sensual Appetite, who, from beneath

Usurping over sovran Reason, claimed        11

30

Superior sway. From thus distempered breast

Adam, estranged in look and altered style,

Speech intermitted thus to Eve renewed:—

ADAM:

“Would thou hadst hearkened to my words, and stayed

With me, as I besought thee, when that strange        11

35

Desire of wandering, this unhappy morn,

I know not whence possessed thee! We had then

Remained still happy—not, as now, despoiled

Of all our good, shamed, naked, miserable!

Let none henceforth seek needless cause to approve        11

40

The faith they owe; when earnestly they seek

Such proof, conclude they then begin to fail.”

In Adam’s speech, his opening accusation takes them both back to the pivotal moment of their separation, now replete with irony since Adam’s decision to eat the fruit was based on his belief that ‘Our state cannot be severed, we are one’ (958). The first thing that might strike you is how mundane and human Adam’s

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complaint is. Gone is the intense thinking, the logical connection of ideas to form a single argument that both Adam and Eve employed in the build up to her departure. In its place is the simplest of complaints: I wish you had listened to me. Yet however mundane, Adam chooses some unpredictable words, describing Eve’s departure as ‘that strange/ Desire of wandering’ (1136), a word she challenges in her response, ‘or will/ Of wandering, as thou callst it’ (1145– 6). There is a hint of jealousy in the term and of weakness in his futile reminder, ‘as I besought thee’ (1135), and even comedy, ‘I know not whence possessed thee’ (1137), which is uncomfortably like ‘I don’t know what came over you’, in our modern, colloquial equivalent. Resignation and bitterness permeate his whole speech as he seeks to draw a sententious conclusion from Eve’s behaviour that sounds pitifully inadequate: Let none henceforth seek needless cause to approve The faith they owe; when earnestly they seek Such proof, conclude, they then begin to fail. (1140– 2) The last word, ‘fail’ (1142), like ‘wandering’, barely masks a barbed, personal criticism.

NARRATOR:

To whom, soon moved with touch of blame, thus Eve:—

Eve is quick to respond to the charge, dismissing it on the grounds that her separation was not the cause and that the same, miserable outcome might have taken place had she stayed. In the true spirit of marital conflict everywhere, she not only refutes the charge but issues one of her own, ‘thou couldst not have discerned/ Fraud in the serpent, speaking as he spake’ (1149– 50), adding that she had no reason to imagine his evil intent, ‘No ground of enmity between us known’ (1151).

EVE:

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“What words have passed thy lips, Adam severe?

Imput’st thou that to my default, or will        11

45

Of wandering, as thou call’st it, which who knows

But might as ill have happened thou being by,

Or to thyself perhaps? Hadst thou been there,

Or here the attempt, thou couldst not have discerned

Fraud in the Serpent, speaking as he spake;        11

50

No ground of enmity between us known

Why he should mean me ill or seek to harm;

Was I to have never parted from thy side?

Eve’s pragmatic question here exemplifies how mundane this squabble is: ‘Was I to have never parted from thy side?’ (1153). The charge Eve makes which is most likely to stimulate excitable debate is her accusation of weakness in Adam, ‘Being as I am, why didst not thou the head/ Command me absolutely not to go’ (1155– 6). One response might be to ask Eve what chance was there of her heeding Adam when she failed so spectacularly to follow God’s sole command. But building on her accusation, she insists not only did Adam fail to prevent her, but in fact he ‘didst permit, approve, and fair dismiss’ (1159), which is an interesting interpretation of the words they exchanged earlier (364– 84). Eve closes the first round of this bruising encounter by hurling the blame fully back in Adam’s face, telling him that had he ‘been firm and fixed in his dissent’ (1160) neither of them would have ‘transgressed’ (1161),

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a word noticeably absent from her interior monologue but precisely the one Adam chose in his, on learning she had eaten the fruit (902).

As good have grown there still, a lifeless rib.

Being as I am, why didst not thou, the Head,        11

55

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.

Hadst thou been firm and fixed in thy dissent,        11

60

Neither had I transgressed, nor thou with me.”

NARRATOR:

To whom, then first incensed, Adam replied:—

Milton tells us that this quarrel has intensified, ‘To whom then first incensed Adam replied’ (1162), and Adam’s anger is evident both in his repetition, ‘Is this the love, is this the recompense’ (1163), and in the epithet he chooses, ‘ingrateful Eve’ (1164). Such is Adam’s frustration, he is moved to remind Eve that, unlike her, he ‘willingly chose rather death with thee’ (1167), when he might have ‘lived and joyed immortal bliss’ (1166). The rhythm places considerable emphasis on the key fact coming at the end of the line, ‘when thou wert lost, not I’ (1165).

ADAM:

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“Is this the love, is this the recompense

Of mine to thee, ingrateful Eve, expressed

Immutable when thou wert lost, not I—        11

65

Who might have lived, and joyed immortal bliss,

Yet willingly chose rather death with thee?

Lines 1168 – 1173: For Adam it now seems infuriatingly unjust to have Eve accuse him of being ‘the cause/ Of thy transgressing?’ (1168– 9). In his ‘Not enough severe,/ It seems, in thy restraint’ (1169– 70) one can almost hear the mockery underneath the ‘seems’. A caesura in subsequent lines (1169– 70) breaks up any rhythm and fluency, rendering this part of Adam’s speech, however poetic, startlingly close to credibly angry speech. ‘What could I more?’ (1170) he asks, almost in desperation before accurately listing the steps he took to try and persuade Eve to stay, using repetition as a vocal weapon: I warned thee, I admonished thee, foretold The danger, and the lurking enemy That lay in wait; (1171– 3).

And am I now upbraided as the cause

Of thy transgressing? not enough severe,

It seems, in thy restraint! What could I more?        11

70

I warned thee, I admonished thee, foretold

The danger, and the lurking Enemy

That lay in wait; beyond this had been force,

And force upon free will hath here no place.

It is central to Milton’s entire theodicy that both

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Adam and Eve act freely and this study has identified numerous examples of where Milton exerts himself to weave this concept throughout the entire epic. Recalling their exchange in more detail, Adam reminds Eve that in the end she was supremely confident, and left his side expecting either not to encounter danger or, in the event, ‘to find/ Matter of glorious trial’ (1176– 7). This may be a particularly bitter pill for Eve to swallow, but it is a fair account of how she finally resolved their difference (330– 6).

But confidence then bore thee on, secure

        

1175

Either to meet no danger, or to find

Matter of glorious trial; and perhaps

I also erred in overmuch admiring

What seemed in thee so perfet that I thought

No evil durst attempt thee, But I rue        11

80

That error now, which is become my crime,

And thou the accuser. Thus it shall befall

Him who, to worth in women overtrusting,

Lets her will rule: restraint she will not brook;

And, left to herself, if evil thence ensue,        11

85

She first his weak indulgence will accuse.”

NARRATOR:

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Thus they in mutual accusation spent

The fruitless hours, but neither self—condemning;

Lines 1187 – 1188: Book 9 ends with the unedifying spectacle of the couple continuing their ‘mutual accusation’ (1187) endlessly, neither prepared to admit their essential guilt. And with somewhat surprising wit, Milton renders the scene even more pitiful with a pun on ‘fruitless hours’ (1188) that reaches right back to the book’s opening lines and Eve’s ardent interest in efficient gardening.

And of their vain contest’ appeared no end.

Book 9 ends with the unedifying spectacle of the couple continuing their ‘mutual accusation’ (1187) endlessly, neither prepared to admit their essential guilt. And with somewhat surprising wit, Milton renders the scene even more pitiful with a pun on ‘fruitless hours’ (1188) that reaches right back to the book’s opening lines and Eve’s ardent interest in efficient gardening.

The marital union of Adam and Eve itself dissolves, after the initial intoxication of sin, into mutual accusation and potentially endless discord by the last lines of the book: “And of their vain contest appeared no end” (1189). Their marriage of minds had been founded, more perhaps than Adam realized, on their shared love and obedience to God, “unanimous” in their common prayer. The Son’s charity reopens the channel between humans and divinity that Adam’s charity had broken off, and, in doing so, also reopens the possibility of human love. Adam’s charity is heroic and tragic, the opening of book 9 announces: he is an Achilles, knowingly hastening his own death (“Certain my resolution is to die” [907]); Odysseus giving up the substitution of Calypso and immortality (“ Should God create another Eve” [line 911]), in order to return to Penelope; an anti-Aeneas (“ Astonied stood and blank, while horror chill / Ran through his veins and all his joints relaxed” [lines 890– 91]) who will not leave a

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Creusa or Dido behind. But this proem, less dismissive than its tone suggests, notes that such epic heroism later in human history is itself tragic, the inheritance of the world of death and divine wrath—“Neptun’s ire or Juno’s” (9.18)— into which Adam and Eve plunged humanity, a classical heroic world without the Son’s saving charity, where heroism itself takes the form of Achilles’s wrath rather than Adam’s love. Again, the effect is ironic: Book 9 closes and comes around to where it started with Adam’s discovering anger—“ first incensed” (9.1162)— in his heated rebuke to Eve.

to cover their nakedness; then fall to variance and accusation of

one another.

 There are two tasks which you can complete that will further your understanding of the poem considerably in this section. The first is to focus wholly on the narrator’s voice and from it, adduce the judgements the reader is encouraged to make about Adam and Eve’s relative culpability. The second is to contrast the period immediately following Adam’s eating of the fruit with the past-coital dawn when they both awake to face the real consequences of having disobeyed God.