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'SHE FOR GOD IN HIM ': A COMPARATIVE
EVALUATION OF PARADISE LOST AND MILTON'S
APPROACH TO WOMAN

presented by
Richard Eugene Ziegelmann

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'SHE FOR GOD IN HIM': A COMPARATIVE EVALUATION OF PARADISE
LOST AND MILTON'S APPROACH TO WOMAN

BY

Richard Eugene Ziegelmann

A THESIS
Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulﬁllment of the requirements
for the degree of
MASTER OF ARTS
Department of English

2003

ABSTRACT
'SHE FOR GOD IN HIM': A COMPARATIVE EVALUATION OF PARADISE
LOST AND MILTON'S APPROACH TO WOMAN
BY
Richard Eugene Ziegelmann
Milton is renowned widely by many for being one of the ﬁrst proponents of

"companionate marriage", a marriage in which the man and woman are equal
partners. Many recent critics have denounced these evaluations as the product
of the patriarchal society in which Milton wrote and in which his works have been
criticized over the centuries. Using various critical sources in addition to the
works of Milton himself, we are able to construct a more complete idea of Milton's
contributions to his age as well as the critical canon as a whole. Attempting to
reconcile the two notions of Milton as either misogynist or early woman's right
advocate, this work creates a conception of Milton somewhere between these
two polarities. Many critics overlook the inherent complexity and contradictions
in Milton's life and works and create an incomplete picture of Milton, when the
contradictions themselves are most indicative of a man attempting to challenge
societal conceptions of marriage and womanhood, and, in turn force the reader
to confront his/her own beliefs. This work is an attempt to brieﬂy canvas Milton's
historical and critical evaluations in the context of the present day reader and

introduce new conclusions based on this research.

Copyright by
RICHARD EUGENE ZIEGELMANN
2003

Dedicated to my family

iv

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The author wishes to thank the following individuals for their assistance in
the preparation and completion of this thesis: my advisor, Professor Jyotsna
Singh for her guidance and instruction, numerous other individuals for their
patience and honesty in evaluating my work, including Matt Bowman, Nathan
Burgan, and my other colleagues in the Department of English. Finally, my

family, for accepting nothing but my absolute best.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................... 1
PART I ................................................................................................................. 1 1
PART II ................... A ............................................................................................. 22
PART III ............................................................................................................... 24
PART IV ............................................................................................................... 25
PART V ................................................................................................................ 27
CONCLUSION ..................................................................................................... 3O
WORKS CITED .................................................................................................... 32

Introduction

Freely they stood who stood, and fell who fell.
Not free, what proof could they have giv’n sincere
Of true allegiance, constant Faith or Love,
Where only what they needs must do , appear’d
Not what they would? What praise could they receive?
What pleasure I from such obedience paid,
When Will and Reason (Reason also in choice)
Useless and vain, of freedom both despoil’d
Made passive both, had serv’d necessity,
Not mee.

~Paradise Lost (lll 102-11 1)

It is ironical that the popular image of Milton to-day is of an austere
Puritan who advocated the subordination of women. For his
contemporaries it was chieﬂy Milton's sexual libertinism which
made them link him with the radicals . . . Both are caricatures, and I
do not wish to replace the later caricature by the earlier one.
Somewhere between the two we must set the bold if unlucky
thinker . . .

"Christopher Hill (Milton 117)

Milton struggled within Paradise Lost to construct an idea of God and man
that would both absolve God of any responsibility for man's failures and justify to
man the reason behind God's actions. Milton takes great pains to express how
Adam and Eve were both consciously able to make a decision of their own
volition, yet they failed to utilize their capacity for reason. Milton imposes the
idea that ,if God had not given them the choice to make their own decisions
based on reason and obedience, he could not have collected any praise as a
result of their allegiance. In Paradise Lost God speaks:

So will fall,
Hee and his faithless Progenie: whose fault?
Whose but his own? ingrate, he had of mee

All he could have; I made him just and right,
Sufﬁcient to have stood, though free to fall. (III 95-99)

In Book IV, Milton reiterates, 'While time was, our ﬁrst-Parents had bin warnd/
The coming of thir secret foe" (67). And later, ample warning is demonstrated
when Raphael says, ". . . take heed lest passion sway I Thy Judgement to do
aught, which else free Will I Would not admit . . ." (VIII 635-637). Indeed, Adam
and Eve should have been amply prepared for the temptation that was to come.
And yet, they fell. However fortunate their fall may have been, as it leads to the
"one greater Man" who is able to "Restore us, and regain the blissful Seat" (I 4-
5), Milton insists they nonetheless must take responsibility for bringing death into
the world.

Milton's works have always been the subject of controversy, but late
criticism has caused a re-evaluation of Milton and the place his prose and poetry,
particularly Paradise Lost, have occupied in the history of Western literature.
While no one claims that Milton's works are not of historic importance, much
debate has centered on the idea that many critics have overemphasized Milton
as an early advocate of women's rights and equality in marriage. Milton's
understanding of women is as debatable as his deﬁnition of marriage. An early
advocate of divorce, Milton arduously plots out a speciﬁc idea of the marriage
that God intended. Loudly debased as a libertine, many contemporaries of
Milton claimed he mystiﬁed God's deﬁnition of the "holy union" to serve his own
needs as the husband in at least one apparent mismatch in matrimony. Milton's
ﬁrst marriage, in particular, was so unsuccessful as to cause the man to test his

own faith and examine more closely biblical text and canonical law. Milton's On

the Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce is most useful (for obvious reasons) in
criticizing his search to excuse divorce.

Milton's claim, above all, was that God did not intend man to adhere
blindly to marriage vows when spiritual or intellectual incompatibility left both
parties miserable. His view was that the canonical law in this case more often
lead to lascivious and lewd behavior. Because a man was bound to his wife
despite their differences, he could ﬁnd no legitimate release for his passions, be
they sexual, emotional or intellectual. This fact could only lead to affairs, causing
adultery and illegitimate children. Milton believed that God was practical in many
ways, and would have allowed for divorce and remarriage if it was best for both
parties and not simply a whimsical act of anger or lust. The intractable canonical
marriage laws severely impeded the freedom that Milton supposes God must
have intended. Milton says, "They will know better when they shall hence learn
that honest liberty is the greatest foe to dishonest license" (Divorce 698). God
would rather allow a man to divorce his wife openly and honestly than allow for
repeated "debaucheries" while hidden inside the institution of marriage. But
Milton's deﬁnition of marriage goes beyond the simple wishes or desires of men.
Instead, he claims, ". . . God in the ﬁrst ordaining of marriage taught us to what
end he did it, in words expressly implying the apt and cheerful conversation of
man with woman . . . " (Divorce 703). It is here where we can see the notions of
Milton's companionate marriage taking shape. He does not claim man had
complete rule over women, but that marriage consisted of a mutual union. Later,

Milton elaborates, "God's intention a meet and happy conversation is the chlefest

and the noblest end of marriage" (Divorce 707). Again, Milton iterates that
marriage is a mutual engagement meant to enforce the beneﬁts of a blessed
union, far from the lifetime curse that the tradition of church fathers imposed.
While Milton nevertheless gives favor to man over woman in the case of
marriage and divorce, he nonetheless extends his deﬁnition to the mutual beneﬁt
of both man and woman in matrimony. Marriage is not something in Milton's
mind only to be enjoyed by men, but, rather, both parties must take part in this
happy "conversation". Milton continues, "Marriage is a c0venant the very being
wherof consists not in forced cohabitation and counterfeit performance of duties,
but in unfeigned love and peace" and ". . . love in marriage cannot live nor
subsist unless it be mutual" (Divorce 711).

Nonetheless, those who proclaim Milton as the ﬁrst proponent of
companionate marriage overlook Milton's biases towards men, and explicit
equality is not something he intended to include in his deﬁnition, but Milton
nevertheless understands that at least equality in love and happiness must exist.
In other words, unless both sexes are happy in the marriage, then either the man
or the wife had the right to dissolve the union. In this way, Milton certainly goes
much further than traditional Biblical canonical law, and so far as to be ridiculed
by other Christian scholars of his era. Milton's thoughts on marriage and
woman's role within it are expanded in The Christian Doctrine. In it, he says,
"Marriage, therefore, is a most intimate connection of man with woman, ordained
by God . . . (994 italics mine). Milton elaborates that 'With regard to marriage, it

is clear that it . . . consisted in the mutual love, society, help, and comfort of the

husband and wife, though with a reservation of superior rights to the husband"
(Christian 994). While Milton's emphasis on patriarchal rights based on Biblical
text may be debated, it is clear he was working within the constraints of a Biblical
text that (he believed) privileged the rights of man over woman, though not
exclusively, for he later amends that . . there can be no love or good will, and
consequently no marriage, without mutual consent" (Chn'stian 1000). And later,
he continues that the Bible ". . . allows the wife to leave her husband on the most
reasonable of grounds, that of inhumanity and unkindness" (Chn'stian 1002).
Milton's deﬁnition of marriage is one in which equality and mutuality exist on at
least a basic level. Woman may not enjoy a completely equal partnership, but
God's truest and holiest understanding of marriage is one in which love,
happiness, and solace exist for both man and woman. It is not one based solely
in sensual pleasures, but one In which man and woman must enjoy the beneﬁts
of a marriage that God has ordained.

Paradise Lost is rich and complex on many other levels, and Milton’s
argument is not simply one based on theology. He is also constructing a social
and political argument. There is little question that Milton's text is response to
present-day events that swept the nation. Christopher Hill asserts, "I believe that
Milton's ideas were more directly inﬂuenced than is usually recognized by the
vents of the English Revolution in which he was an active participant: and that
the inﬂuences brought to bear on him were much more radical than has been
accepted" (Milton 4). The execution of Charles II and the subsequent

Restoration certainly played no small part in the construction of his great epic.

Hill asserts that poem likely was conceived in two parts, one before and one after

the Restoration. He writes:
The political allusions in Paradise Lost, veiled though they had to
be, are not indecipherable. The poem was no doubt planned as a
whole before the Restoration of May 1660. Nonetheless there must
have been a break in 1660, when Milton was in danger of life and
forced to go into hiding; and further interruption when he was in
prison” (Hill, Paradise Lost, 15).

Hill even asserts that the last six books of Paradise Lost demonstrate Milton's

acceptance of God’s will in restoring Charles and cause Milton to evaluate his

own rebellious tendencies (Hill, Paradise Lost 18).

While present day scholars have done much to evaluate Milton on many
fronts, they often construct Milton in a polarity of positions. Whether asserting
Milton's misogyny or proclaiming his forwardness in thinking about women, these
views are strongly supported by Milton's own words, whether in poetry or prose.
What we should draw from this is not that Milton is difﬁcult to evaluate as a
Seventeenth Century thinker, but that the world in which he lived was
complicated in many ways, and Milton himself was conﬂicted about his own
attitudes towards women. Indeed, Milton was, and is, a man deeply imbedded in
his own age. While a revolutionary in a social and political sense, he is also still
closely tied to the chauvinist thinking that pervaded his age. Stanley Fish asserts
that Milton is intentionally trying to trouble the reader, in so much as he may call
the reader to doubt his own interpretive abilities. Fish says, ". . . Milton
consciously wants to worry his reader, to force him to doubt the correctness of

his responses, and to bring him to the realization that his inability to read the

poem with any conﬁdence in his own perceptions is its focus" (Surprised 4). In

the Fish analysis, Milton, troubled by his own feelings of inadequacy in explaining
his understanding of God's position, chooses to compel the reader to this same
troubling realization. In not understanding the will of the Creator, man may better
understand himself and, paradoxically, his role in God's plans. In this
interpretation, Milton is not seeking reduce the intentions of God into a simple
formula, but, rather, much as Raphael explains to Adam, illustrate how the
fundamental complexity of God is far too intricate for man to comprehend.
Likewise, we may further conclude, that Milton's relations with the ﬁgurative,
domestic, political, and Biblical ﬁgures cannot be reduced to any number of
components. Thus, to place Milton too far at either end of an ideological
spectrum is to negate any relevance he had inside or outside of his age.

In addition to social and political statements, Milton is seeking to construct
a poem in English that would equal the efforts of Classical poets like Homer. At
the same time, Paradise Lost is a lesson in biblical history melded with classical
mythology. He masterfully weaves pagan imagery with Christian doctrine to
create "Things unattempted yet in Prose or Rhime" (Milton Paradise Lostl 16).
Yet, the centerpiece of this work is his dedication to the idea of free will and
God's willingness to leave to man his own destiny. In Book IX, Adam asserts, .
. force upon free Will hath here no place" (1174). This is the basic principal
which rules Satan, Adam, Eve, and the Son yet to come. Rejecting assertions of
predetennination, Milton makes plain both the responsibility of man for his fate,
and the choice each man and woman still has in eternity. Free will is both the

controversy and proclamation of the epic.

Some would exclude Eve as an equal participant in the fall of man; they
wish to either assert her blame for Eden's catastrophe, or her unwitting betrayal
of the promise between God and man. But Eve's role is far more complicated
than either of these two. She, like Adam, had been warned not to partake of the
forbidden tree. She, too, ultimately refused to obey God and his commandment.
Adam follows her into temptation, rather than demanding that she submit to her
punishment. Many would argue that Eve's eagerness to both part from Adam in
the garden and her unwillingness to listen to reason when Adam tries to warn her
is indicative of Milton's warning for women to obey their husbands. But this
ignores the fact that Adam, too, did not allow reason to govern his actions. If
anything, this indicates that both man and woman must be held intellectually
responsible for the decisions they make, and, sometimes, women and men must
be allowed the freedom to make the wrong decision.

Milton's complex use of the role of women is but another essential
component of the story. Examined without taking in to account the larger
constraints of Milton's struggle, both traditional and feminist evaluations of the
work can undermine that elaborate relationship each component of the poem had
with each other.

Milton's concept of woman has traditionally rested on the idea that Milton,
himself, injected much of his own misogyny into his works. While seemingly
encouraging the idea of a companionate marriage within Paradise Lost, he also

embues the great Christian epic with notion of Eve's frailty, vanity, and stupidity.

Mary Nyquist ﬁnds fault with recent criticism that attempts to use Paradise Lost
as a defense of Milton's misogyny. She says,
Because much academic criticism on Paradise Lost, especially that
produced in North America, has been written within a liberal-
humanist tradition that wants Milton to be, among other things, the
patron saint of companionate marriage, it has frequently made use
of a notion of equality that is both mystiﬁed and mystifying" (99).
The crux of Nyquist's argument rests on the idea that too much weight has been
given to Milton as a man ahead of his time when it comes to the role of women.
While many praise Milton's compromise of the two creatiOn stories, the ﬁrst which
states God created man and woman at the same time, the second which
elaborates on if not contradicts the ﬁrst, saying that man was created ﬁrst and
then woman was created out of man. Nyquist asserts that many female critics
have proposed alternative compromises that offer a far less patriarchal view of
the Genesis creation myth. These authors displace a literary tradition which
privileges one creation myth over the other, giving rise to the masculinist
assumptions of female subjugation. Nyquist articulates that this tradition allows
for the ﬂourishing of "an entire network of of misogynistic or idealizing
stereotypes, relating, indifferently, to Genesis and to this institutionally privileged
text by Milton, English Iiterature's paradigmatic patriarch" (101). Nyquist follows
with an elaborate analysis of Milton's exegetical practices within the context of his
own literary age. Nyquist goes on to assert that modern critics have
manipulated Milton's texts while ignoring certain obvious contradictions with this

view. In her evaluation, the blame falls as much on the masculine traditions with

English literature as with Milton himself. This represents a type of criticism that

seeks to reiterate those ideas of Miltonic interpretation that have been glossed
over by proto-feminist critiques. If one accepts these interpretations as more or
less accurate, then it is little wonder why contemporary feminist critics ﬁnd Milton
3 source for the fodder of their criticism. Ironically, while naming Milton as a
premium example of the "dead white male" that pervades literary history, he also
is the fuel that enables feminist critics to produce a resonance within their
criticism. Thus, Milton is an important cog in the machinery of both traditional
and contemporary literary criticism. While not presuming to discredit their
notions of Milton and his possible misogynous tendencies, I would assert that
Milton can be read and interpreted in a variety of ways that do not necessarily
suppose a notion of him as chauvinist and misrepresent many of the opinions
within his works, particularly Paradise Lost.

It is little wonder, then, that Milton is the center of the debate which largely
concerns a masculinist interpretation of the canon. Milton, more so than
Shakespeare, most completely represents an age in which the new "modern"
man was seeking to identify ways in which genders were to function in a new
English society. Paradise Lost most explicitly portrays the complications of a
man and his age. Because the patriarchal tradition absorbed Milton and used
him as the essential author (and Paradise Lost as the essential text), it is Milton
who most often appears as either a saint to protectors of the canon, and the most
avid sinner to those who attack the canon as the backbone of a culture and
tradition that subordinated women. The complexities we see in Milton are

perhaps more debatable today than they have ever been, for the debate over the

10

canon is as heated now as it has ever been. We should note, however, that
Miltonic conclusions are less a product of Milton himself than those who have
criticized him over the centuries. With a closer evaluation of the role of women
within Milton's age we might more fully understand the gender problems and
complexities which Milton faced in Paradise Last.
Part I

If Paradise Lost is examined closely within the larger context of all of
Milton's works, both prose and poetry, religious and political, one will ﬁnd that
many contradictions exist within the oversimpliﬁed idea of Milton as misogynist.
Certainly gender representations played a large part in the world and society in
which Milton wrote. The role of women was largely limited to the domestic
sphere in the Seventeenth Century. Milton often had to espouse his own radical
political, religious and philosophical ideas with a prudish and constraining British
society. Christopher Hill asserts, "Soto criticize Milton because he stated a
theory of male superiority ls like criticizing him because he did not advocate
votes or equal pay for women" (Milton 118). Milton carefully placed his own
radical ideas within a dense and structured framework (most obviously
represented in Paradise Lost). Milton "shocked his contemporaries by being
prepared to contemplate a situation in which the wife may 'exceed her husband
in prudence and dexterity, and he contentedly yield'" (Hill Milton 119). Only the
discerning and knowledgeable Seventeenth Century reader would have been
able to identify the all contradictions within Paradise Lost, and only the most

unbiased Twenty-ﬁrst Century reader is able to read past their own societal

11

biases and understand Milton as a man both ahead of his time and desperately
tied within it.

David Boocker connects the idea of various interpretations as one that
challenges that any single view can be in itself accurate. They are far too
dependent on the time and place of the critic, and how he or she chose to use
Milton's text. Boocker absolves Milton of any blame by declaring, . . it is
unclear whether it was Milton's poetry or the commentator on woman's role in
society who used Milton's poetry who was most responsible for the inferior
position suggested [of Eve]. . ." (55). Rather than accepting one notion over the
other, it is perhaps the contradictions within Paradise Lost which most accurately
convey Milton's view of women. Perhaps Milton's representation of Eve is one
that understands both the potential for conﬂict within a society where notions of
womanhood were drastically changing. At the same time, Milton reiterates both
socially and biblically constructed roles of woman as inferior. Hill states:

Posterity has remembered 'He for God only, she for God in
him.‘ On the basis of this line, taken out of context, the poet has
been blamed for failing to rise above his age in this one respect . . .
Posterity has forgotten too that this line is only a poetical version of
St. Paul's 'wives submit yourselves unto your own husbands as
unto the Lord'; 'the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ
is the head of the church.‘ Given Milton's assumptions, it is difﬁcult
to see how he could have rejected St. Paul's clear and explicit
statements. What Milton says about the subordination of women is
strictly Biblical . . (Milton 117).
Milton's idea of woman is one that chooses neither to proclaim her equality nor
inferiority. She is a subject in a society where most of the men are also subjects.

Megan Matchinske says, ". . . processes of state formation in the sixteenth and

seventeenth centuries . . . affect men, determining acceptable forms of behavior

12

for them as well as for women" (17). A ﬁrm grasp of the subjugation and
development of both genders in English society is essential to understanding the
world in which Milton lived. In illuminating the role of woman from several angles
in this biblical text, Milton constructs a history of women that is complete in its
treatment. The point is not to radically alter the position of the female subject,
but to organize a text in which a more accurate view of woman (as seen through
Eve) is available to the reader. What the reader does with the information is up
to the individual, but Milton lays a map in which the frailties of gender roles are
exposed. What we encounter here deals largely with Milton's notions of women
within Paradise Last, but also brieﬂy examines a few of his prose works to
expose the connection between Milton's radical prose statements and their
dramatization in Paradise Last. I do not mean to be reductive in the sense that
only the views and ideas represented within are accurate, rather, I seek to
identify and reiterate Milton's works as magniﬁcently complex, illustrating the
contradictions and struggles within the mind of one of English Literature's most
pervasive and proliﬁc writers.

Following the path of Milton criticism from the Nineteenth Century up to
present day, several clear shifts in focus occur. While early Milton critics were
largely male, later female critics have also examined Milton in useful ways. The
results of an examination of Milton criticism reveal that, more often than not,
critics tend to confuse their own ideological motivations with their critical
responsibilities. Much as proto-feminist critics may claim that Milton's misogyny

comes not from Milton but from a largely male critical body that appropriates

13

Milton into their own misogyny, feminist critics have often misrepresented
Milton’s intentions by focusing on this appropriation rather than the text itself.
Joseph Wittreich says:
Recent feminist criticism is also likely to be rebuked for confusing its
critical obligations with its ideological commitments, which involve the
raising up of certain texts and the relinquishing of others—and in the case
of Milton, the relinquishing of the one text that is itself a promoter of
ideological and ideologically rigorous criticism and that is therefore a
potent ally in the feminist cause. It is as important for feminist criticism to
reinterpret the canon as it is for it to redress the canon” (138).
Wittreich astutely points out that feminists can be guilty of the same critical
oversight and prejudice that many traditional male critics have committed. As we
discover from textual examinations, Milton’s works, Paradise Lost in particular
are far more rife with contradictions than any masculinist or feminist scholar
would like to admit. It is these contradictions, in and of themselves, which are
our most important clue as to the mind and intent of Milton. Richard Corum
asserts that a reevaluation is necessary both on the part of female and male
scholars. He says:
For men readers the choice is either to stand with those who have worked
to extend a patriarchal idea of woman throughout an inﬁnite male universe
as unalterable, orthodox truth, or to ally oneself with those who have
struggled to reduce this patriarchal structure of imperial signiﬁcation to a
concept in the minds, and in the practice, of one’s predecessors, however
brilliant or inﬂuential (140).
The following examination of criticism serves to expose not only feminist
misreadings, but also the masculinist assumptions that predicated their similar
fall from germane critical evaluations.
A look at even one passage from Paradise Lost reveals the crux of the

problem: "Hee for God only, shee for God in him" (IV 298). Traditional

14

patriarchal interpretations tend to support their own hierarchy of gender relations.
To them, this passage alludes that while man (Adam) may speak directly with
God, woman (Eve) must receive her divine instruction through her husband. This
conclusion is simply and readily discernable from this passage. And yet, as
others have noted, this line is strictly drawn from St. Paul's ideas on the views of
women. Yet further examination into the passage indicates that it is not quite as
simple as this interpretation implies. Milton's suppositions support the position
that one could easily conclude that woman's allegiance to man would end if man
were not honest or open to the true message of God. Eve's submission to Adam
remains only so long as man himself is obedient to God’s will. This notion could
extend far beyond the realm of Eden to Seventeenth Century England. A woman
should remain subservient only so long as she understands her husband to be
obeying the will of God. Milton asserts that in this case, "a superior and more
natural law comes in, that the wiser should govern the less wise" (Milton 119-
120). Either interpretation is possible, and I do not mean to suppose one over
the other. The important conclusion here is that Milton perhaps intended to admit
this contradiction without necessarily providing the answer to the dilemma. How
is woman to know the will of God if she is only meant to receive it through man?
How then could she determine when and if she is to be obedient to her husband
without some degree of thought and communication with her Father on her own?
One could conclude that these contradictions exist precisely because that is what

the English woman was faced with in this era of political and social instability.

15

Milton’s justiﬁes the ways of God to man while subtly introducing the problems of
the ways of Seventeenth Century man.
An equally debatable passage is used at the end of Book XII. Eves says:
Who for my wilful crime art banisht hence.
This further consolation yet secure
I carry hence; though all by mee is lost,
Such favour l unworthie am voutsaft,
By mee the Promis'd Seed shall all restore. (618—623)
Eve here refers to her original sin that prompted the fall of mankind. She accepts
full responsibility for the act, leaving none to her male counterpart. Many feminist
critics would argue that Milton here and always allows Eve to represent all of guilt
in the fall. Yet we know, and any reader would also conclude, that Eve is not
alone responsible for the fall. Eve did not compel Adam to partake of the fruit, it
was his own weakness which predicated his fall. Milton seems to acknowledge
the debate by having Eve herself hyperbolize both her guilt and her absolutlon.
In Book IX she states:
Was I to have never parted from thy side?
As good have grown there still a liveless Rib.
Being as I am, why didst not thou the Head
Command me absolutely not to 90, (1153-1156)
And later, in Book XI, she states, ". . . to mee reproach / Rather belongs, distrust
and all dispraise" (165-166). Milton allows Eve herself the ﬁrst antifeminist and
feminist responses to her action. But here Adam and Eve must share
responsibility for their choices. Milton provides many examples of this mutual

responsibility and tests the reader to understand the most appropriate

interpretations.

I6

Yet another passage indicates a common problem in Miltonic
interpretation, that which put too much emphasis on mutuality and companionate
idea of marriage, making Milton the patron saint of equality in marriage. In Book
IV, Milton writes:

So hand in hand they passd, the Iovliest pair

That ever since in loves imbraces met,

Adam the goodliest man of men since borne

His Sons, the fairest of her Daughters Eve. (320-324)

Many modern scholars and students who wish to absolve Milton of his misogyny
most often misuse passages like this to explain that Milton is laying the plans for
a marriage of equality. It would be easy to collect these passages (it happens
again at the end of the epic) to overlook the many contradictions within the text
that dismiss this idea of social, emotional or intellectual equality. Hill says,
"Milton is not so reductive as to limit his work to one interpretation; instead he
lays the groundwork for the reader to be left to his own devices (and prejudices)"
(Paradise 14)

David Boocker provides a useful examination of the ways in which the
Sarah Grimke, the prominent Nineteenth Century woman's rights advocate, used
Milton, or rather, masculine appropriations of Milton to explain the position of
antebellum women. Boocker's piece, entitled “Women Are lndebted to Milton”
supposes that traditional critical evaluations of Milton allowed women such as
Grimke to expose the patriarchal system of female subjugation for what it was.

Using Milton as a map, Grimke goes back further to the masculinist assumptions

about Biblical treatments of women, particularly Eve. Boocker writes:

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Thus, for woman’s rights activists, Milton was for their patriarchal society
a spokesman whose word was good “holy writ,” and attacking him was
necessary not just to establish a feminist reading of a great literary work,
but because attaining equal status in an extreme patriarchal society
depended on it (62).
Traditional interpretations of women compared “the condition of woman in the
mid-nineteenth century to that of the slave who was kept ignorant because
knowledge was either the source of unhappiness or liberty” (Boocker 55). It is
not then surprising that the early suffragists reacted violently to these Miltonic
assertions, as he represented the most often reviewed literary ﬁgure. In fact,
Boocker writes, “This point cannot be emphasized enough; Americans framed
Milton’s picture of marital bliss, and writers of the period used the picture to teach
women proper “manners and morals" (58). Boocker's conclusion is that women
are indebted to Milton for allowing them to expose the hegemony of a patriarchal
society through one of its most proliﬁc writers. The important asterisk on these
assertions is that it is the way Milton is conveyed to a generation of female
readers rather than Milton himself who is guilty of the misogyny. What other way
could women react, but with scorn, to a man who’s work were passed on with as
much reverence as the Bible, and with an equal disdain for divergent
interpretations? Boocker summarizes, “For these women, Milton was as guilty as
Paul of providing generations of antifeminists with the fodder they need to
develop elaborate arguments against equal rights for women” (Boocker 52).
While these women are not to blame for their outraged reactions, their remarks

need to be qualiﬁed and directed against the body of the patriarchy most

responsible—not Milton himself.

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Later women authors referred to this dilemma (Virgina Woolf would later
allude to it as “Milton’s Bogey"). The phantom of male appropriation of Milton left
them feeling dismissed and subjugated again and again by the same system of
patriarchy. Sandra Gilbert provides a useful analysis of Woolf’s concept of
“Milton’s Bogey”. She writes, “. . .it may refer to another ﬁctitious spectre, one
more bogey created by Milton: his inferior and Satanically inspired Eve, who has
also intimidated women and blocked their view of possibilities both real and
literary" (Gilbert 58-59). Gilbert’s view of Woolf is that, while Milton may not have
intended his work to be used as exclusively as it has been by the hierarchy of
male critics and scholars, Woolf indicates that “Milton’s bogey” is something that
women readers and writers must contend with anyway. She writes, "Milton’s
bogey, whatever else it may be is ultimately his cosmology, his vision of ‘what
men thought’ and his powerful rendering of the culture myth that Woolf, like most
other literary women, sensed at the heart of Western literary patriarchy” (Gilbert
61). Milton's bogey is quite real to generations of women who had to contend
with his oppressive interpretations. In fact, Gilbert asserts, interpretations of
Milton are as much responsible for latter day subjugation of women as they are
indicative of women as the Seventeenth-Century subject. Far from absolving
Milton, Gilbert implies that is not so much Milton’s intent as it is the intent of the
exclusively male keepers of the canon who force this view of Eve down women's
throats. These men, Gilbert claims, “teach us that Milton’s most repressive
attitudes towards women are so basic to ‘the seventeenth-century mind’ as to be

beyond criticism. We must accept them, we are told, with an earnest appeal to

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our historical sense, if we are ever to appreciate the Great Work in the context of
its age” (67). It is these misinterpretations that provide an inaccurate sense of
Milton’s portrayal as the exclusive representation of Seventeenth-Century
woman.

Janet Halley attacks this exclusiveness explicitly in her work. It is those
who see Milton’s representations as somehow indicative of a homogenized view
of women that continuously restore and reiterate the falsities of women’s roles in
the Seventeenth-Century. Much like today, the Seventeenth-Century woman
cannot be simply and concretely reduced to one role, positive or negative. Halley
says:

Milton's antifeminist and liberal feminist readers repeatedly charge that it

is a-historical to approach his work with reading assumptions invented

after the seventeenth century - Webber even asserts that the modern
reader of Milton should study his representation not of woman but of
humanity, because seventeenth-century women did not see their interests

as distinct from men's” (233).

Here again, a critic points to the tendency for critical analysis to tend to be
reduce and exclude rather than augment and include. Any reader should realize
that no work can be so inclusive as to cover the gamut of possible
interpretations. Much as Milton constructs his view of the fall, a hundred other
authors would have constructed in a different way, lending themselves to a
hundred different interpretations. Modern criticism would sometimes like to limit
itself to a few rather than many and numerous interpretations of a text or era.

Certainly, the Seventeenth-Century notion of women acted upon Milton as his

representation of Eve, but this in no way requires that the reverse is true; one

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cannot work backwards from Paradise Lost to create a homogeneous idea of
woman.

The notion of the contradictions within Milton’s text are effectively
discussed by David Aers and Bob Hodge. Numerous critics erroneously “have
presented a homogenized Milton and a homogenized seventeenth century,
resolving all tensions, blind to all contradictions and dissidence in Milton or his
society. They are certainly not inspired by any disinterested regard for the truth
or historical fact, so sadly and reluctantly we must suspect them of ideological
motivation” (Aers and Hodge 68). Here Aers and Hodge assert that any critic
who blindly reduces Milton to any one ideological interpretation are too subject to
their own biases, rather than relying on the text itself for a possible
understandings of the work. Their impetus rests in the prejudices they bring with
them to their “scholarly” approach. Neither the masculinist or feminist critic is
absolved in this analysis. If either suggest that Milton is able to be approached
exclusively from one angle or another, they exhibit a reckless regard for the truth
which Milton himself so tirelessly struggled to ﬁnd. Instead, “His attitudes to
women and sex entailed contradictions which he never fully resolved” (Aers and
Hodge 68). The point that must be constantly reinforced is that Milton himself
was highly conscious of the paradoxes within his text and within British society.
His epic efforts were not to reduce them to one view or another, but to point the
reader to the contradictions that exist, and, in doing so, leave the reader with
ability to decipher their implications on his/her own. It is in this way that Milton is

able to at once make “ new demands on the marriage relationship and weakened

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the repressive forms of the basic ideology in this area, he did not bring himself to
renounce an exploitationary relationship which he as a male beneﬁted from in
seventeenth-century society (as his descendants of male gender in the twentieth
century continue to beneﬁt). (Aers and Hodge 72), While at the same time he
“carefully denies that Eve is unintelligent or uninterested, yet (as so many of our
women students have pointed out to us) still gives the impression that she is
both” (Aers and Hodge 72).

As this brief review of Milton criticism has indicated, the critics themselves
have often highlighted the crux of the Miltonic problem; Milton is neither
misogynist or feminist, monster or savior, he, like any great literary mind, is able
to construct the issue in such a way that it can readily be absorbed and debated
by a great many people, religious or secular, male or female. If one ﬁnds his
argument lacking in any regard, this lack is often accentuated by the reader's
own biases and opinions.

Part II

The ﬁrst, and perhaps most obvious, of Milton’s assertions is the idea of
free will. While we all recall the struggles between doctrines of Calvinistic
predestination and Puritanical free will, we should be quick to point out how these
struggles are not linked to Adam, or men alone. If we may begin with a basic
and overt idea, even the most ardent critic would concede that Milton's portrayal
of Eve is not so severe as to make her appear to have no intellectual capacity, or

at least the capacity to make a decision of her own volition.

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She, like Adam, was given amply warning not to partake of the forbidden
tree of knowledge. Eve gives a lengthy argument in Book IX as to why she
should be allowed to ﬁnd her own way in the garden and wonders aloud why
Adam should doubt her. She says, "But that thou shouldst my ﬁrmness therfore
doubt / To God or thee, because we have a foe / May tempt it, I expected not to
hear" (279-281). She later condemns God's and Adam's instruction, claiming
that they could not be destined to hide from Satan and temptation forever. She
says, "If this be our condition, thus to dwell / ln narrow circuit strait’nd by a
Foe"(322-323). Adam fears her weakness will leave her unable to resist
temptation by invoking passion rather than reason. Adam retorts:

F irm we subsist, yet possible to swerve,

Since Reason not impossibly may meet [ 360]

Some specious object by the Foe subornd,

And fall into deception unaware (359-362).
But Eve insists that she must have the choice on her own, reiterating the Miltonic
idea that virtue untested is no virtue at all. She says, "that our trial, when least
sought, I May ﬁnde us both perhaps farr less prepar'd" (380-381). Faith
untested wanes and atrophies. Stella Revard takes it a bit further by intimating
that Eve's questioning of Adam forces him to fully realize the implications of his
views. Revard says "Yet the point is that Eve's passionate defense of the liberty
of the individual ﬁnally provokesAdam to a fully comprehensive to the answers
she has raised" (277). In other words, Adam spouts advice to Eve without fully
comprehending himself exactly what is meant by the statements. It is not a

question of who has the weaker intellect, but who is more willing to encounter the

full implications of both thoughts and actions. Eve is ﬁnally allowed to walk on

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her own, but only after Adam has exhausted all of his arguments. Yet,
disregarding her instincts, she gives into Satan's temptation based on a twisted
but sound logic. Adam, on the other hand, given an equal amount of preparation,
gives in to temptation based not on his intellectual capacity, but his capacity for
lust. And this lust goes beyond a crude form of adultery, but a step further in
what Milton would call inﬁdelity to the ultimate bridegroom, the one to whom
loyalty was owed more than a wife. This kind of lust bordered on idolatry, what
Milton saw as the greatest danger to the Christian man. Milton is contrasting
mere physical adultery with the graver offence of spiritual adultery.
Part III

This idea of woman as sexual object is masterfully reviewed by David
Hawkes in his book Idols of the Marketplace. Hawkes asserts that Milton's epic
was a way in which he could confound the Seventeenth Century notion of the
woman as subject. It is a representation of woman that does not allow man and
woman to fully realize the extent of their marriage. When woman becomes a
simple object, she is separated from God, and, when man makes her into a false
representation—a sexual object, if you will-he makes himself a subject. Woman
was reduced to an idol and, as Hawkes says, . . Milton was impelled to
construct a theory of idolatry as false consciousness, which he later imported,
substantially unchanged, into his opinions on politics and religion" (170).
Hawkes's assertion is that Milton was aware of a problem within Seventeenth
Century society, and wished to challenge this convention in Paradise Lost. What

naturally follows from this argument is that lust takes the places of love. While

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Eve and Adam may enjoy nuptial bliss unashamed initially, Adam's view of Eve
as an idol reduces her to an object of lust. Unchecked lust for woman is a
repeated theme in Milton's works (Samson Agonr'stes, for example), it does not
detract from the idea that Eve at least had to be intellectually persuaded to
disobey God's commandment. While one could still lay blame on Milton for
Eve's diminished capacity, this does not mean he intended to reduce her
portrayal to one of simple pawn in a game between God and Satan.
Part IV

The notion of the "fortunate fall" is one of the key positions of Paradise
Lost. Adam rejoices when he hears the news, "High in the love of Heav'n, yet
from my Loynes / Thou shalt proceed, and from thy Womb the Son I Of God
most High; So God with man unites" (Xll 380-382). While this is centrally located
in the idea of man's fall allowing Jesus to come into the world—and ultimately to
redeem all mankind, this idea can extend far beyond this Christian notion. The
fortunate fall also allows man to exist in state of total free will, allowing her/him to
know the evils of the world, but, at the same time, knowing the ultimate good
achievable on earth. The fall to which Milton alludes allows for man and woman
to come to a state whereby they may fully enjoy the freedom which God
intended. In one sense, the fall allows a savior to come into the world, but, in
another sense, in puts man and woman on equal footing before the lord, as
equals in their act of disobedience. While Milton may have placed more blame
on Eve, the sin that they committed in Eden also allows the two to realize their

dependence on each other for their destination in eternity. Man and woman both

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have failed on their own, but, perhaps out of their failure may come the
realization that they may "hand in hand" ﬁnd a place in heaven. While Adam and
Eve exist in a state of total happiness and joy in Eden, this paradisiacal state is
tempered by the strange aloofness in which Adam and Eve enjoy Eden. While
they exist in nuptial bliss, their ultimate happiness is one that is limited by their
lack of complete understanding. It is a sort of semi-angelic existence, in which
Adam and Eve obviously have choice, but this choice is limited to one object; the
Tree of Knowledge. They know no suffering of pain and therefore cannot truly
appreciate the happiness that they feel.

The choices of Adam and Eve, which Milton takes great pains to indicate
are a matter of free will, are nonetheless only a limited part of the existence that
Milton would call crucial to human volition. The fall is predicated by God's (and
the reader's) pre-knowledge of the event. Both God and the reader know that
Adam and Eve will sin, but neither put it in man's nature to do so. The post-fall
situation is immediately one of shame and misery, but this nonetheless enables
Adam and Eve to imagine human existence in its entirety. This notion is
exempliﬁed by God's prediction that man and woman will know misery on this
earth, but, at the same time, they will ultimately prevail over Satan.

While Adam and Eve may have existed forever in Paradise, their fall
allows for all of men to enjoy the extremes of the human condition. The
knowledge of good and evil in the world allows for each man and woman to make
their own choice with complete awareness of the results of their actions. Eve

may know the pain of childbirth, and Adam may know the pains of hard labor, but

26

they will each ultimately achieve greater pleasure from the nuptial union. Though
death and sin enter the world, they eventually allow Adam and Eve to have the
ability to live for eternity in heaven with God, rather than two individuals existing
in a state of semi-separation from God. Satan's hate and anger may haunt man
for thousands of years, bit, ultimately, they are able to enjoy the fruits of love with
God forever. In the end, man exists in a state of total responsibility for his
actions, an idea Milton mentions continuously and is the foundation for most of
his prose works.
Part V

Before we can fully conclude our examination Milton's notions of women in
the Seventeenth Century, we must also discuss how Seventeenth Century ideas
of woman existed in England. While an analysis of this kind certainly does not
absolve Milton's alleged misogynous tendencies, it provides a more complete
analysis of how society constrained, to a certain extent, what Milton could
portray. Much as society constrains how women may live and function in the
Twenty-ﬁrst Century, Milton's portrayal of Eve was most certainly affected by
societal expectations.

While some women had challenged assumptions (most notably Elizabeth
I), for the most part, women were still expected to behave in certain socially
constructed ways. These notions were certainly changing within England during
this time (as they were around the world), but, largely due to the pressures of a
burgeoning capitalist society, women were still largely wives and caretakers.

They were expected to make little, if any, intellectual contributions to society or

27

the marriage. Indeed, because a capitalist society demanded a constantly
growing labor force, the pressures of a woman to bear children were, if anything,
heightened in Milton's day. A woman's refusal to participate in the marriage
system was tantamount to subverting the nation state. Because "pressures"
existed on men to govern society and forge a new England (especially as the role
of the monarchy was challenged), any progressive notions of womanhood were
placed as secondary to this revolutionary change in British society.

Indeed, much has been made of the fact that Milton was radical in so
many other respects, but notably silent when it came to progressing the rights of
women in society. Critics speculate the exact nature of such refusal of an
otherwise seemingly enlightened mind to except and assert progressive notions
of womanhood. While one could assume this refusal rests on Milton's own sex
bias, one could also easily maintain that Milton was simply acting within a system
that repressed women. This may offer little solace to present day feminist critics,
but, as Christopher Hill points out, "Subjection of wives to husbands was
conventionally accepted in the seventeenth century . . ." (Milton 126). While
societal ideas may have been progressive enough to allow the removal of sitting
monarch or even divorce, they were not progressive enough to allow one man,
no matter how inﬂuential, to radically redeﬁne notions of womanhood. Milton did
his best, acting within societal boundaries, to put forth a new idea of womanhood
and marriage.

In addition to societal constraints, Milton also had to deal with structuring

an idea of woman in accordance with Biblical interpretations. While there is room

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for Milton's individual interpretation, Milton also had to construct an idea of
woman that would not compromise the greater mission of his work, to justify the
ways of God to man. Biblical mythology clearly places Eve as secondary to
Adam, made for his beneﬁt as a help-meet. Thus, the Bible thoroughly
constrained Milton's possibilities for interpretation. How could he assert woman's
equality without confounding the Judeo-Christian idea in the Bible?

Milton, much as he did in his divorce tracts, took a great deal of risk in a
drastically altering a traditional biblical story in the book of Genesis. While
present day critics may take issue with his interpretation, they nonetheless
should give Milton a little credit for at least attempting a reasonable alternative to
Biblical traditions. Milton gives Eve a far greater voice in Paradise Lost than she
had in the Bible. Unlike Genesis, in which Eve is given barely a footnote in the
creation myth, Paradise Lost allows for a fuller more complete understanding of
Eve and for Eve to generate a voice for herself. Most notably, Eve responds with
her willingness to put her faith to the test. While Adam is hesitant to allow her to
go, he nonetheless bends to her arguments. Eve says:

If this be our condition, thus to dwell

In narrow circuit strait'n'd by a Foe

Subtle or violent, we not endu'd

Single with like defense, wherever met.

How are we happy, still in fear of harm? (IX 322-326)
Eve is fully aware, however arrogantly, of the possibility of temptation apart from
Adam. She persists in her belief that God had not intended them to wander

together for eternity. Free choice is an essential part of the matter. No "narrow

circuit" in which they build a wall around themselves could allow them the full

29

privilege of Eden. Neither should they allow Satan to keep them pinned to only a
small part of Paradise. No true happiness can exist when they are conﬁned in a
prison built by the "Foe" around them. If they exist in a state of perpetual fear,
then they cannot truly be happy. Eve refuses to believe this is what God
intended for them. Finally Adam relents, and Eve continues to the foreseen, but
not pre-destined temptation of Satan.
Conclusion

Milton is neither the ﬁrst advocate of companionate marriage nor the ﬁrst
of the white orthodoxy to assert woman’s submissive role. While a bit of each is
included in his intricately constructed Epic Paradise Lost, a review of the entire
body of his works indicates a career rife with this contradiction. Milton promoted
divorce on the basis of intellectual or spiritual incompatibility. He condemned
adultery to one's God over one's wife. He allowed for women, albeit in rare
cases, to understand the will of God better than their husbands. The potential for
Milton to be absorbed by the masculinist tradition is no greater than any other
writer, including Shakespeare. It is a patriarchal tradition that appropriated Milton
for its use and, in turn, put a level of oppression on women and women writers
during and after the Seventeenth Century. The fact that Milton is continuously
attacked as a misogynist and defended as an early promoter of women's rights is
more of a judgment of our own biases than it can be a condemnation of Milton
and his work. Milton exposes the problems inherent in the life of the early
modern woman while mapping the system of patriarchal control that is still in

place to this day. The fact that little has changed in this regard is evidence that

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Milton was far ahead of his time in the understanding of sex and gender roles. It
should be the mission of the modern critic neither to build his works up nor to tear
them down, but to look for ways in which an examination of Milton can lead to a

greater understanding of our own, as well as Milton’s, age.

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Works Cited

Aers, David and Hodge, Robert. Literature, Language and Society in England,
1580-1680. Dublin: Gill and MacMillan, 1981.

Bennet, Joan S. "Dalila, Eve, and the "Concept of Woman" in Milton's Radical
Christian Humanism. Arenas of Conﬂict. Ed. Kristin Pruitt McColgan and
Charles W. Durham. Cranbury: Susquehanna UP. 251-260.

Boocker, David. "'Women are Indebted to Milton': Milton and Woman's Rights in
the Nineteenth Century." Arenas of Conﬂict. Ed. Kristin Pruitt McColgan
and Charles W. Durham. Cranbury: Susquehanna UP, 1997. 51-64.

Corum, Richard. "In White Ink: Paradise Lost and Milton's Ideas of Women."
Milton and the Idea of Woman. Ed. Julia M. Walker. Chicago: University
of Illinois Press, 1988. 120—147

Fish, Stanley. How Milton Works. London: Harvard UP, 2001.

Gallagher, Phillip J. Milton, the Bible, and Misogyny. Columbia: University of
Missouri Press, 1987.

Gilbert, Sandra M. "Milton's Bogey: Patriarchal Poetry and Women Readers."
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Martin's, 1999. 58-66.

Halley, Janet E. "Female Autonomy in Milton's Sexual Poetics." Milton and
the Idea of Woman. Ed. Julia M. Walker. University of Illinois Press,
1988. 230-254.

Hawkes, David. Idols of the marketplace : idolatry and commodity fetishism in

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English literature, 1580-1680. New York: Palgrave, 2001

Hill, Christopher. Milton and the English Revolution. London: Faber, 1977.

Hill, Christopher. "Paradise Lost and the English Revolution." New Casebooks:
Paradise Lost. Ed. William Zunder. New York: St. Martin's, 1999. 15-27.

Matchinske, Megan. Writing, Gender and State in Early Modem England. New
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McColley, Diane Kelsey. Milton's Eve. Chicago: University of Illinois Press,
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Milton, John. Paradise Lost. Complete Poems and Major Prose. Ed. Merritt Y.
Hughes. New York:: MacMillan, 1957.

Nyquist, Mary. "The Genesis of Gendered Subjectivity in the Divorce Tracts and
in Paradise Lost". Remembering Milton: Essays on the Texts and
Traditions. Ed. Mary Nyquist and Margaret W. Ferguson. New York:
Methuen, 1987. 99-127.

Revard, Stella P. "Milton's Dalila and Eve: Filling in the Spaces in the Biblical
Text. Arenas of Conﬂict. Ed. Kristin Pruitt McColgan and Charles W.
Durham. Cranbury: Susquehanna UP, 1997. 271-281.

Walker, Julia M. "The Idea of Milton and the Idea of Woman". Milton and the
Idea of Woman. Ed. Julia M. Walker. Chicago: University of Illinois
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Wittreich, Joseph. Feminist Milton. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1987.

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