Rice University

Milton's Creation of Eve

Author(s): Anne Ferry
Source: Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900, Vol. 28, No. 1, The English Renaissance
(Winter, 1988), pp. 113-132
Published by: Rice University
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/450718 .
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 SEL 28 (1988)
ISSN 0039-3657

Milton's Creation of Eve

ANNE FERRY

The critical debate referred to in the 1960s as "the Milton

controversy" has disappeared so completely from current discussions
of his poetry that it has to be recovered for students of Milton now as a
piece of distant literary history.'1His poetry has not ceased to provoke
debate, however. A newer controversy has since come to occupy the
attention and stir the various sympathies of writers about Milton.
The issues of this debate have recently been explored in a helpfully
inclusive essay by William Shullenberger called "Wrestling with the
Angel: Paradise Lost and Feminist Criticism."2 His discussion
summarizes and responds to the attacks on Milton's treatment in
Paradise Lost of Eve and her marriage to Adam which have been
written by feminist critics in approximately the last fifteen years.3
Central to the debate, as is pointed out in a recent article by Douglas
Anderson, is whether the language of hierarchy in Paradise Lost can
be assumed to prove that Milton "simply believed in the sexual
subordination of women."4
The issue of what constitutes belief is of course far too complex to
be explored here, but one tenet of faith we can be simply sure that
Milton held with passionate conviction is that the Bible is a record of
divinely inspired truth which it is the Christian's duty to interpret
and follow, not to contradict or ignore. When we question Milton's
ways of treating the material of Paradise Lost, we therefore have to
take into account the givens, the fixed points of interpretation that
he was unavoidably compelled to work with or to work around. In
his presentation of Eve and her marriage to Adam, then, we have to
think about what was dictated to Milton by their story in Genesis and
its interpretations in the New Testament, how he shaped what he
could not change, what decisions he made where some choices were
allowed him.

Anne Ferry, Professor of English at Boston College, is the author of Milton's

Epic Voice, Milton and the Miltonic Dryden, All in War with Time, The
"Inward" Language, and a book about sixteenth-century poetic language, The
Art of Naming, to be published in 1988.

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114 MILTON'S EVE

Considering the account in Genesis, stripping away for present

purposes many centuries of theological commentary and artistic
representation known to Milton, the opening three chapters narrate
several events to be taken into account in his presentation of Eve.5
These episodes in the story of the first man and woman were
considered to be factual history by all Englishmen when Paradise
Lost was written (with the possible exception of Hobbes, who at least
pretended to believe they were historically true). As sacred history the
events in Genesis could not be changed in a telling of the story, nor
could they be wholly ignored. An index of these fundamental,
unalterable facts is given in the summaries placed before the chapters
in the stoutly protestant Geneva Bible: God "createth man and
giueth him rule ouer all creatures"; "He createth the woman";
"Mariage is ordeined"; "The woman seduced by the serpent";
"Enticeth her housband to sinne"; "They thre are punished"; "Man
is cast out of paradise."6 This is the unalterable outline elaborated
in the actual chapters with some details which were also fixed points
for Milton to work with or to work around.
Let us consider first how Milton used the details in the earlier parts
of the story, according to which Eve was not only created after Adam,
but was made for him, because God said: "It is not good that the man
shulde be him selfe alone: I wil make an helpe mete for him"
(Genesis 2:18). Eve was not only made for Adam, but from him:
"Therefore the Lord God caused an heauie slepe to fall vpon the
man; & whiles he slept, he toke one of his rybbe, and closed vp the
flesh in steade thereof. And the rybbe which the Lord God had taken
from the man, made he a woman, and broght her to the man"
(Genesis 2:21-22). From this origin the bond of marriage was
established: "Then the man said, This now is bone of my bones, and
flesh of my flesh. She shalbe called woman, because she was taken
out of man. Therefore shal man leaue his father and his mother, and
shal cleaue to his wife, and they shalbe one flesh" (Genesis 2:23-24).
Milton of course assumes this order of events and incorporates all
of them into his narrative. His presentation of them is also dictated
by the fact that the history recounted in Genesis was interpreted in
the epistles of St. Peter and St. Paul. As parts of the New Testament
these passages were also held by all Christians to be divinely inspired
truth which could not be ignored as, for instance, a Protestant with
sympathies like Milton's could choose to avoid the misogynistic
opinions of St. Jerome. To Puritans especially the Apostle to the
Gentiles provided the crucial model of a Christian reading the letter
of the Old Testament in the light of the spirit.7 His pronouncements
and those of St. Peter had inescapable authority in interpretations of

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 ANNE FERRY 115

the story of Adam and Eve, and therefore of the divinely ordained
relationship between man and woman. For this reason their sayings
were included in all kinds of writing about marriage, and were
quoted in the English service solemnizing holy matrimony in the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Milton was married according
to this rite in 1642.
The prayer book follows the order of creation in first addressing
man: "Heare also what Saint Peter the Apostle of Christ, which was
himself a married man, saith unto them that are married: Yee
husbands, dwell with your wives according to knowledge, giving
honour unto the wife, as unto the weaker vessell, and as heires
together of the grace of life, so that your prayers be not hindred."8
Next in the wedding service, St. Paul's words are called to the
attention of women:

Yee women, submit your selves unto your owne husbands, as

unto the Lord: For the husband is the wives head, even as
Christ is the head of the Church, and hee is also the Saviour
of the whole body.
Therefore as the Church or Congregation is subject unto
Christ, so likewise let the wives also be in subjection unto
their own husbands in all things. And againe hee saith, Let
the wife reverence her husband. .. . And Saint Paul giveth
you this short lesson: Ye wives, submit your selves unto your
owne husbands, as it is convenient in the Lord.

Another authoritative passage which figures in discussions of the

divinely appointed relation between man and woman is not quoted
in the wedding ceremony because it is about conduct in church, not
in marriage, but Milton follows common practice in applying it to
Adam and Eve. The text is from the first epistle to the Corinthians:

For a man oght not to couer his head: for asmuche as he is

the image and glorie of God: but the woman is the glorie of
the man.
For the man is not of the woman, but the woman of the
man.
For the man was not created for the womans sake: but the
woman for the mans sake.

Doeth not nature it self teache you, that if a man haue long
heere, it is a shame vnto him?
But if a woman haue long heere, it is a praise vnto her: for
her heere is giuen her for a couering.
(1 Corinthians 11:7-15)

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116 MILTON'S EVE

The events in Genesis are the necessary materials for Milton's

story; these texts from the New Testament are their most authoritative
interpretation. The ways they assume the facts of Eve's creation to
define her nature and place as distinct from Adam's are echoed in a
number of passages in Paradise Lost, beginning with the opening
description of Adam and Eve in Book IV. They are first described
together:

Two of far nobler shape erect and tall,

Godlike erect, with native Honour clad
In naked Majestie seemd Lords of all,
And worthie seemd, for in thir looks Divine
The image of thir glorious Maker shon,
Truth, wisdome, Sanctitude severe and pure,
Severe but in true filial freedom plac't;
Whence true autoritie in men.
(IV.288-95)9

Then the narrator begins to differentiate between Adam and Eve:

though both
Not equal, as thir sex not equal seemd;
For contemplation hee and valour formd,
For softness shee and sweet attractive Grace,
Hee for God only, shee for God in him:
His fair large Front and Eye sublime declar'd
Absolute rule; and Hyacinthin Locks
Round from his parted forelock manly hung
Clustring, but not beneath his shoulders broad:
Shee as a vail down to the slender waste
Her unadorned golden tresses wore
Dissheveld, but in wanton ringlets wav'd
As the Vine curles her tendrils, which impli'd
Subjection, but requir'd with gentle sway,
And by her yielded, by him best receivd,
Yielded with coy submission, modest pride,
And sweet reluctant amorous delay.
(IV.295-3 11)

Many details here echo the New Testament readings of the events in
Genesis. Once Adam and Eve are distinguished from each other by
the wording "though both / Not equal," they are then presented in
the order of their creation, with Adam first, expressing his superior
dignity: "Hee for God only." The husband's position as head of the
wife is represented by Adam's broad forehead and "Eye sublime"

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 ANNE FERRY 117

which "declar'd / Absolute rule." Eve's secondary creation, '"sheefor

God in him," is reflected by her secondary place in the passage. Her
nature as the weaker creature is expressed in the comparison of her
ringlets to a vine which "impli'd / Subjection" to the husband who
must support her with his strength, although the comparison had
other suggestions, recalling Psalm 128 which was used as part of the
marriage ceremony in the prayer book: "Thy wife shall be as the
fruitfull Vine: upon the wals of thine house." Even the different
hair-styles of Adam and Eve follow the prescriptions of St. Paul,
signifying that the man should not hide the image of God by
covering his head, whereas the woman should veil hers in token of
submission to her Lord who is her husband.
Yet even in this passage there are slight modifications of the
Pauline interpretation, which foreshadow much more radical treat-
ment of biblical materials to be shown in later parts of the poem.
Here, for instance, Milton begins by describing Adam and Eve in
identical terms, both radiantly displaying "The image of thir
glorious Maker," whereas St. Paul says that the man "is the image
and glorie of God; but the woman is the glorie of the man." The
Pauline distinction is traditionally imposed, for instance, in the
headings summarizing the first and second chapters in the King
James version of Genesis. They say of Adam's creation that God
made "Man in the Image of God," but call Eve's merely "The
making of woman."'0 Milton, however, dims this distinction in the
beginning of the passage. He does so again in the line most often
quoted to prove his interest in the subordination of women: "Hee for
God only, shee for God in him.""1 Milton's rewording here brings
Eve closer to her divine creator than St. Paul's formula that man "is
the image and glorie of God: but the woman is the glorie of the man."
At the end of the passage is another instance where Milton echoes but
adjusts the effect of St. Paul's words, here the imperative that women
"be in subjection unto their own husbands in all things." Milton
says that Eve's vine-like ringlets "impli'd / Subjection, but requir'd
with gentle sway, / And by her yielded, by him best receivd." Eve's
subjection has its own authority to require gentleness. The balance
of phrasing in "by her yielded, by him best receivd" also suggests a
gracious reciprocity, granting Eve dignified choice in a courteous
exchange. Yet even more striking than what is said here is what is not
said, for in the whole of Milton's important introductory description
of Adam and Eve there are two telling omissions. There is not the
slightest echo here either of the passage in Genesis declaring that Eve
was formed from Adam's rib, or of God's statement that Eve was
created to make a "helpe mete for" Adam.

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118 M I L T O N'S EVE

The pointedness of Milton's silence on those two episodes in this

introductorydescription can be measuredby contrastwith a sermon
preached by John Donne at an actual wedding ceremony about
twenty years before Milton's first marriage. Donne weaves into his
sermon the biblical passages quoted in the prayer book rite itself,
echoing Genesis, St. Peter, and St. Paul when he addresseswomen
with reminderspresumablyintended specifically for the brideon this
happy occasion. Donne enjoins wives to remember

that they are the weaker vessell, and that Adam was not
deceivedbut the woman was... and it implies a weaknessein
the woman, and an occasion of soupling her to that just
estimation of her self, That she will be content to learn in
silence with all subjection.... that she is... but a Help: and
no body values his staffe, as he does his legges.... Since she
was taken out of his side, let her not departfrom his side, but
shew her self so much as she was made for, Adjutorium, a
Helper. 12

Bycontrastwith Donne's archetypalwife-weaker vessel, temptress,

dispensable staff or rib-Milton's Eve is first introduced as a regal
figure sharing with Adam in "Majestie" signifying their joint
position as "Lordsof all."
Donne's sermon can be a measure of Milton's rendering of the
same authoritative biblical passages in still other ways, for instance
by contrast with the earliest lines where Milton does refer to Eve's
formation from Adam's rib at the end of her first speech, where she
tells the story of her creation. There she repeats Adam's earliest
address to her, echoing the biblical words that consecrated their
marriage. We know we are to approve Adam's unfallen speech,
which teaches Eve the gracious yielding praised in the narrator's
introduction of her. Eve remembersAdam's words:

Return faire Eve,

WhomHi'st thou? whom thou fli'st, of him thou art,
His flesh, his bone; to give thee being I lent
Out of my side to thee, neerest my heart
Substantial Life, to have thee by my side
Henceforth an individual solace dear;
Part of my Soul I seek thee, and thee claim
My other half: with that thy gentle hand
Seisd mine, I yielded.
(IV.481-89)

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 ANNE FERRY 119

Here Eve's origin from the side nearest Adam's heart makes her part
of his soul, not as Donne says, an expendable staff to which any man
would prefer his own legs. She is by his side as "an individual solace
dear," not as a subordinate forbidden to leave the place where she is
meant to serve him.
Milton expands on the other biblical text avoided in his intro-
ductory description of Adam and Eve, the making of Eve as a "helpe
mete for" Adam, in the story of Adam's creation which he tells to the
Angel Raphael in Book VIII. Adam's account builds on the episode
where God brings the creatures to man to receive their names, among
whom "founde he not an helpe mete for him" (Genesis 2:20). Milton
makes this an occasion for Adam to tell God what sort of mate he
seeks, what ideal he has of marriage. As in Genesis, Adam finds no fit
consort among the creatures presented to him, for reasons which
Milton allows him to elaborate:

Among unequals what societie

Can sort, what harmonie or true delight?

Of fellowship I speak
Such as I seek, fit to participate
All rational delight, wherein the brute
Cannot be human consort.
(VIII.383-92)

Adam desires "By conversation with his like to help, / Or solace his
defects" (VIII.418-19). He wants what he calls "Social communi-
cation" (VIII.429), impossible with the creatures because

I by conversing cannot these erect

From prone, nor in thir wayes complacence find.
(VIII.432-33)

We know that Adam has the right idea of marriage because God
praises him for rejecting the creatures to seek a mate who, God says,
bears

My image, not imparted to the Brute,

Whose fellowship therefore unmeet for thee.
(VIII.441-42)

God then explains the test that Adam has just passed:

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120 M I LT O N'S EVE

I, ere thou spak'st,

Knew it not good for Man to be alone,
And no such companie as then thou saw'st
Intended thee, for trial onely brought,
To see how thou could'st judge of fit and meet:
What next I bring shall please thee, be assur'd,
Thy likeness, thy fit help, thy other self,
Thy wish exactly to thy hearts desire.
(VIII.444-51)

What Adam wants in a mate is what God brings him in Eve-which

both God and Adam in this dialogue define by terms like "societie,"
"fellowship," "conversation," "Social communication," "com-
panie." This kind of union cannot take place, they say, between
"unequals," but only between human beings both made in the
image of God and therefore "fit to participate" in "All rational
delight." The solace this union will offer to alleviate human
loneliness is expressed in "conversation," which meant the whole
conduct of life, but also specifically mutual speech.13 The emphasis
Milton gives to his ideal makes a pointed contrast between the mate
God brings to Adam and the traditional ideal of wifely behavior
preached by Donne to the bride, "That she will be content to learn in
silence with all subjection."
Adam's definition of marriage in this scene extends the pattern
shown earlier in the narrator's introduction of Adam and Eve, and in
Eve's retelling of Adam's first words to her. Yet here Milton more
radically reshapes or works around the New Testament texts which
constitute the most authoritative interpretation of Eve's nature and
place as given in Genesis. Milton used these parts of the story-the
naming of the creatures and the making of Eve-to put into the
mouths of God and Adam a view of woman and marriage different
from St. Peter's and St. Paul's, but very close to his own in his divorce
tracts, written twenty years earlier to argue his radical view that
divorce should be granted not solely for sexual misconduct.14
Milton's opposing position was that marriage should be dissolved
when there is between husband and wife none of what he calls in the
tracts "cherfull conversation," "meet and happy conversation,"
"cheerfull society," "conjugall fellowship" with a "fit conversing
soul," when there is no "fit union of their souls . . . where no
correspondence is of the minde."'5 Passages in the divorce tracts
show the same pattern that can be seen in the parts of Paradise Lost so
far discussed: Milton's efforts to work with but also to work around
the facts given in Genesis and their interpretations in the New
Testament.

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 ANNE FERR 2Y 121

One passage from Tetrachordon can illustrate these efforts. Its

movement parallels the first description of Adam and Eve in Paradise
Lost by the way it accepts the authority of St. Paul's pronouncements
but adjusts them to conform more comfortably to a different sense of
man and woman in marriage. Milton's explicit subject is one
commonly discussed in this period, whether Eve as well as Adam was
made in the image of God:

But St. Paul ends the controversie by explaining that the

woman is not primarily and immediatly the image of God,
but in reference to the man. The head of the woman, saith he,
I Cor. 11. is the man: he the image and glory of God, she the
glory of the man: he not for her, but she for him. Therefore
his precept is, Wives be subject to your husbands as is fit in
the Lord, Coloss. 3. 18. In every thing, Eph. 5. 24.16

Here Milton defers to Pauline authority, but then he immediately

begins to work around it or away from it as the passage continues:
"Neverthelesse man is not to hold her as a servant, but receives her
into a part of that empire which God proclaims him to, though not
equally, yet largely, as his own image and glory: for it is no small
glory to him, that a creature so like him, should be made subject to
him." In that sentence Milton sounds like the narrator of Paradise
Lost who declares that Adam and Eve are "not equal" while at the
same time he has made Eve a regal figure reigning in "Majestie" with
Adam as "Lords of all," rather than declaring her a help or a missing
rib. As the prose passage continues Milton's next sentence moves still
farther from the Pauline definition of marriage as the subjection of
wives to the absolute rule of their husbands according to the divinely
established order of nature recorded in Genesis: "Not but that
particular exceptions may have place, if she exceed her husband in
prudence and dexterity, and he contentedly yeeld, for then a superior
and more naturall law comes in, that the wiser should govern the
lesse wise, whether male or female."
The distance between Milton's position here and traditional
interpretations of Genesis can again be measured by Donne's
marriage sermon in a passage where he also contemplates the
exceptions when a wife may seem to be her husband's superior:

I know there are some glasses stronger then some earthen

vessels, and some earthen vessels stronger then some wooden
dishes, some of the weaker sexe, stronger in fortune, and in
counsell too, then they to whom God hath given them; but

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122 M ILTON'S EVE

yet let them not impute that in the eye nor eare of the world,
nor repeat it to their own hearts, with such a dignifying of
themselves, as exceeds the quality of a Helper. S. Hierome
shall be her Remembrancer, She was not taken out of the
foot, to be troden upon, nor out of the head, to be an overseer
of him; but out of his side, where she weakens him enough,
and therefore should do all she can, to be a Helper.'7

Donne's sentences illuminate Milton's efforts by contrast. For when

Donne is confronted with actual experience which seems to contradict
biblical views of woman's nature and place, he shapes the exception
into a moral lesson supporting the authority, whereas what Milton
does at the end of this passage, and in Adam's descriptions of the fit
partner he seeks in marriage, is to reshape or work around the
biblical texts inimical to his own deeply felt position about
marriage.
The passages from Paradise Lost discussed up to this point, all
treating events before the fall, show consistent efforts by Milton to
acknowledge scriptural definitions of woman's nature and place,
while elevating Eve above them to a stature that would make her a fit
companion for Adam in marital conversation.'8 Yet there is hardly
any disruptive conflict or confusion between his presentation of
Adam and Eve and his use of biblical passages until the end of the
scene where Adam tells the story of his creation and marriage at the
close of Book VIII. Just before Milton begins to recount the
temptation and fall of Eve and then Adam, he makes Adam describe
to the Angel Raphael his feelings about his consummated marriage:

here passion first I felt,

Commotion strange, in all enjoyments else
Superiour and unmov'd, here onely weake
Against the charm of Beauties powerful glance.
Or Nature faild in mee, and left some part
Not proof enough such Object to sustain,
Or from my side subducting, took perhaps
More then enough; at least on her bestow'd
Too much of Ornament, in outward shew
Elaborate, of inward less exact.
For well I understand in the prime end
Of Nature her th' inferiour, in the mind
And inward Faculties.
(VIII.53.342)

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 ANNE FERRY 123

Up to this point Adam defers to the facts of Genesis as St. Paul

interprets them, but then he goes on to admit their discord with his
feelings for Eve:

yet when I approach

Her loveliness, so absolute she seems
And in her self compleat, so well to know
Her own, that what she wills to do or say,
Seems wisest, vertuousest,discreetest,best;
All higher knowledge in her presence falls
Degraded, Wisdom in discourse with her
Looses discount'nanc't, and like folly shewes;
Authority and Reason on her waite,
As one intended first, not after made
Occasionally; and to consummate all,
Greatnessof mind and nobleness thir seat
Build in her loveliest, and createan awe
About her, as a guard Angelic plac't.
(VIII.546-59)

We are meant to understand that Adam is not valuing Eve rightly

here. He should not admire her "As one intended first, not after
made" because that view contradicts sacred history recounted in
Genesis. He should not think that "Authority and Reason on her
waite" because that image does not coincide with interpretationsof
her nature and place in the New Testament. Just as we expect, the
listening Angel reproves Adam for allowing passion to distort his
vision. Raphael preachesSt. Paul's view of woman's relation to man:

Accuse not Nature, she hath don her part;

Do thou but thine, and be not diffident
Of Wisdom, she desertsthee not, if thou
Dismiss not her, when most thou needst her nigh,
By attributing overmuch to things
Less excellent, as thou thyself perceav'st.
For what admir'st thou, what transportsthee so,
An outside? fair no doubt, and worthy well
Thy cherishing, thy honouring, and thy love,
Not thy subjection: weigh with her thy self;
Then value: Oft times nothing profits more
Then self esteem, grounded on just and right
Well manag'd;of that skill the more thou know'st,
The more she will aknowledge thee her Head,
And to realities yield all her shows.
(VIII.561-75)

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124 MILLTON'S EVE

If the dialogue between Adam and the Angel ended here, it would
simply conform to the readings of this scene usually given in critical
discussions of the poem.'19Adam's speech could be said to foreshadow
his fall, when his passion for Eve betrays him, while the Angel's
reply would constitute a just and timely reminder of Eve's true nature
and place by recalling events of Genesis in language echoing St.
Paul. Yet Milton chose not to end the dialogue with this reproof by
the Angel. He allows Adam to reply to it with what is not an apology
or an excuse, but a correction of the Angel's view of human marriage.
Adam, only "half abash't," restates his feelings for Eve:

Neither her out-side formd so fair, nor aught

In procreation common to all kindes
(Though higher of the genial Bed by far,
And with mysterious reverence I deem)
So much delights me as those graceful acts,
Those thousand decencies that daily flow
From all her words and actions mixt with Love
And sweet compliance, which declare unfeign'd
Union of Mind, or in us both one Soule;
Harmonie to behold in wedded pair
More grateful then harmonious sound to the eare.
Yet these subject not; I to thee disclose
What inward thence I feel, not therefore foild,
Who meet with various objects, from the sense
Variously representing; yet still free
Approve the best, and follow what I approve.
(VIII.596-61 1)

Adam's reply is a lesson in human marriage, which closely resembles

language used by Milton in the divorce tracts to praise the "sweet and
mild familiarity of love," the "fit union of their souls" between man
and wife.20 Adam rephrases his feelings for Eve to make clear that
they "subject not." What he wants the Angel to understand is that his
marriage is a "Union of Mind, or in us both one Soule," a
"harmonious" conversation between worthily matched rational
beings. Adam's speech is therefore the culmination of Milton's
efforts to lift Eve's unfallen nature out of the place assigned to it in
the Old and New Testaments.
These adjustments allow Milton to present his own ideal of
marriage, which is at the heart of his whole view of experience. The
expression of this ideal in his presentation of unfallen Adam and Eve
works in the poem to give tragic proportions to the temptation and
fall of both Eve and Adam, for both are considerable figures.2' Eve's

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 ANNE FERRY 125

stature before she eats the fruit makes her fall important in itself, not
only as it occasions Adam's. Their marriage is the fulfillment of ideal
human experience; its near destruction is an image of human
damnation. Milton of course follows the dictates of Genesis in
making Eve the temptress of Adam, but by contrast with centuries of
fiercely misogynistic renderings of the story, Milton's in Book IX is
balanced in the presentation of their falls. He expresses toward both
Eve and Adam a mixture of sorrow and anger, sympathy and
judgment.22 They fare equally in his account of Eve's deception by
the serpent, Adam's seduction by Eve, their mutually debasing
sexual play, their later recriminations.
In Book X, however, Milton's balanced presentation of Adam and
Eve is surprisingly disturbed, and in ways that invite questions
because the disruption shows clearly in two important scenes in this
later part of the poem. It is marked in the episode based on Genesis
when God questions whether Adam and Eve have eaten the
forbidden fruit, and also in the later scene of their reconciliation,
which has no biblical prototype.
According to the episode in the third chapter of Genesis, when
God questions the guiltily hiding pair he first asks Adam:

Hast thou eaten of the tre, whereof I commanded thee that

thou shuldest not eat in no case?
Then the man said, The woman which thou gauest to be
with me, she gaue me of the tre, and I did eat.
And the Lord God said to the woman, Why hast thou done
this? And the woman said, The serpent beguyled me, and I
did eat.
(Genesis 3:11-13)

The marginal commentary printed in this translation points to the

sinfulness of both human replies. About Adam's it is said: "His
wickednes & lacke of true repentance appeareth in this that he
burdeneth God with his faute, because he had giuen him a wife."
The gloss on Eve's reply makes a parallel accusation: "In stead of
confessing her sinne, she increaseth it by accusing the serpent."
In Milton's version of the episode, God asks Adam whether he has
eaten the forbidden fruit, "To whom thus Adam sore beset repli'd"
with a long speech much more tortuously accusing of both God and
Eve, more deviously self-exonerating than anything suggested in
Genesis:

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126 MILTON'S EVE

O Heav'n: in evil strait this day I stand

Before my Judge, either to undergoe
My self the total Crime, or to accuse
My other self, the partner of my life;
Whose failing, while her Faith to me remaines
I should conceal, and not expose to blame
By my complaint; but strict necessitie
Subdues me, and calamitous constraint
Least on my head both sin and punishment,
However insupportable, be all
Devolv'd; though should I hold my peace, yet thou
Wouldst easily detect what I conceale.
This Woman whom thou mad'st to be my help,
And gav'st me as thy perfet gift, so good,
So fit, so acceptable, so Divine,
That from her hand I could suspect no ill,
And what she did, whatever in it self,
Her doing seem'd to justifie the deed;
Shee gave me of the Tree, and I did eate.
(X. 125-43)

After this burlesque of a confession, Milton's God rebukes Adam in

the same Pauline terms that the Angel used to scold him earlier,
reminding him that Eve was given to attract

Thy Love, not thy Subjection, and her Gifts

Were such as under Government well seem'd,
Unseemly to beare rule, which was thy part.
(X. 153-56)

After God questions the woman, as in Genesis, Milton's narrator

then describes Eve's response:

To whom sad Eve with shame nigh overwhelm'd,

Confessing soon, yet not before her Judge
Bold or loquacious, thus abasht repli'd.
The Serpent me beguil'd and I did eate.
(X. 159-62)

Milton here has already forgiven Eve for her sin because he accepts
her words as humbly penitent, not "Bold or loquacious," which
would describe Adam's speech. By contrast with the commentator of
the Geneva Bible, who finds hardness of heart equally in both

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 A N E FE R RY 127

replies, Milton's view is not so balanced.23Forhe exaggeratesAdam's

devious excuses to the point of ridiculing him, while he elevates
Eve's accusation of the serpent to a form of truly penitent "Con-
fessing," directly reversing the interpretation of the Geneva
commentary.
The disruption of balancedjudgment and sympathy in this scene
might be explained partlyby saying that Milton, like Milton's God,
seems to take Adam's sin more seriously here, because man was
createdthe guide and head of woman. Yet while this may illuminate
the severejudgment of Adam here, it does not explain why Milton
elevates Eve in spiritual dignity above any suggestion in the biblical
episode, a question compounded in his treatmentof the latersceneof
reconciliation between the fallen pair, where Eve is again made
Adam's spiritual superior. This episode has no biblical model, and
thereforeno requirementsfor Milton to take into account.
In the later part of Book X Adam delivers an immensely long and
bitter complaint for his lost innocence, which is overheardby Eve:

Whom thus afflicted when sad Eve beheld,

Desolate where she sate, approaching nigh,
Soft words to his fiercepassion she assay'd:
But her with stern regardhe thus repell'd.
Out of my sight, thou Serpent, that name best
Befits thee with him leagu'd, thy self as false
And hateful.
(X.863-69)

He goes on railing at length against Eveand against God for creating

her, a "noveltie" in an otherwise masculine universe, and begins to
generalize absurdly about the misery inevitably brought to man in
marriage, of which there has so far been only one example:

He never shall find out fit Mate, but such

As some misfortune brings him, or mistake,
Or whom he wishes most shall seldom gain
Through her perversness,but shall see her gaind
By a farrworse, or if she love, withheld
By Parents, or his happiest choice too late
Shall meet, alreadie linkt and Wedlock-bound
To a fell Adversarie,his hate or shame:
Which infinite calamitie shall cause
To Humane life, and houshold peace confound.
(X.899-908)

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128 M I LTO N'S EVE

This tirade carries Adam's attention ludicrously far from recognizing

his own sinful state, as Eve's conduct in response emphasizes:

He added not, and from her turn'd, but Eve

Not so repulst, with Tears that ceas'd not flowing,
And tresses all disorderd, at his feet
Fell humble, and imbracing them, besaught
His peace, and thus proceeded in her plaint.
(X.909-13)

The religious suggestions in Eve's "humble" posture, evoking Mary

Magdalene, are intensified in her next speech of self-sacrifice.24 As
Joseph Summers was the first to point out, her moving words here
resonate with echoes of Christ's speech in Book III where he offers
himself for mankind's salvation:25

Forsake me not thus, Adam, witness Heav'n

What love sincere, and reverence in my heart
I beare thee, and unweeting have offended,
Unhappilie deceav'd; thy suppliant
I beg, and clasp thy knees; bereave me not,
Whereon I live, thy gentle looks, thy aid,
Thy counsel in this uttermost distress,
My onely strength and stay; forlorn of thee,
Whither shall I betake me, where subsist?
While yet we live, scarse one short hour perhaps,
Between us two let there be peace, both joyning,
As joyn'd in injuries, one enmitie
Against a Foe by doom express assign'd us,
That cruel Serpent.
(X.914-27)

She then confesses herself to have sinned more gravely than Adam,
which is a sterner judgment of herself than Milton has made of Eve:
"both have sin'd, but thou / Against God onely, I against God and
thee" (X.930-31). Finally she offers to sacrifice herself for Adam in
words which directly reverse Adam's earlier excuse for blaming Eve
to God

Least on my head both sin and punishment,

However insupportable, be all
Devolv'd.
(X. 133-35)

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 ANNE FERRY 1
129

Eve ends her speech in admirablecontrast to this excuse of Adam's,

with echoes in her words also of Christ's sacrificial offering:

And to the place of judgment will return,

There with my cries importune Heaven, that all
The sentence from thy head remov'd may light
On me, sole cause to thee of all this woe,
Mee mee onely just object of his ire.
(X.932-36)

Milton here invents Eve'sdeclarationof repentanceand self-sacrifice

with no pressure for it from biblical authority, following it with
lines in which he also chooses freely to make Eve the instrument of
grace in man's restoration:

She ended weeping, and her lowlie plight,

Immoveable till peace obtain'd from fault
Acknowledg'd and deplor'd, in Adam wraught
Commiseration;soon his heart relented
Towards her, his life so late and sole delight.

As one disarm'd, his anger all he lost,

And thus with peaceful words uprais'd her soon.
(X.937-46)

One line of speculation about why Milton becomes so strongly of

Eve's party in these two scenes is suggested by the pattern tracedin
earlierpassages. In orderto elevate unfallen Eve as a worthy partner
in maritalconversation, Milton has been in a senseherdefenderfrom
her first introduction, making repeatedeffortsto rescueher from the
place assigned to woman's nature on inescapablebiblical authority.
It may be that the pressure of Milton's sympathetic attitudes grew
strongest at the point in the story most encouraging to severe
judgment of Eve, aftershe has successfullyseducedthe husband from
whom she was formed, for whom she was made.
Another, different kind of impetus behind Milton's special
sympathy for Eve is also suggested by his ways of working with
biblical definitions of woman in relation to man. As Milton's
introduction of them acknowledges, man is the headof woman. This
is declaredin Adam'sbroadforeheadand authoritativeeye. He is said
to be formed for "contemplation . . . and valour," and is therefore
associated with the ruling rational powers of the soul. Yet Eve,
Milton saysoften in the poem, is also partof that samesoul. If not the

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130 MILTO N'S EVE

rational part, with what powers is she especially associated?She is

said to be formed for "softness... and sweet attractiveGrace."This
phrase, echoing praise of the poet Sidney's "sweet attractiue kinde of
grace" in "An Elegie" appended to Spenser's "Astrophel," attributes
to her the gifts of receptivity and a persuasivenesswhich is at once
sensuous and divinely endowed.26Her beauty is said to imply rather
than to declare its meaning. She is also describedby the poet in less
declarative terms, in more figurative, pictorial, musical language
than Adam, qualities which also characterizeher own mellifluous,
descriptivespeeches,by contrastwith Adam'stypically moreabstract
arguments.What these patternssuggest is that Eve is associatedwith
those powers of the soul that belong especially to poetry, with
imagination, sensation, and feeling. That association may suggest a
reasonwhy she is the poets chosen instrumentin man's redemption,
and why Milton at that point in the story shows a special sympathy
for her.27Eve's "Soft words" may represent what Milton in Of
Education calls the distinctively "more simple, sensuous, and
passionate" language of poetry.28

NOTES
'For discussions of the earlier Milton controversy see, for example: Bernard
Bergonzi, "Criticism and the Milton Controversy.' The Living Milton, ed.
Frank Kermode (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1960), pp. 162-80; Anne
Ferry, Milton's Epic Voice: The Narrator in "ParadiseLost" (Cambridge, Mass.:
Harvard Univ. Press, 1963), pp. xi-xv; Christopher B. Ricks, Milton's Grand
Style (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963), pp. 1-21.
2William Shullenberger, "Wrestling with the Angel: Paradise Lost and
Feminist Criticism," MiltonQ 23 (1986):69-84.
Important articles in the more recent Milton controversy are: Barbara
Lewalski, "Milton on Women-Yet Once More," MiltonS 14 (1980):3-24,
responding to Marcia Landy, "Kinship and the Role of Women in Paradise
Lost," MiltonS 4 (1972):3-18;Joan Webber. "The Politics of Poetry: Feminism
and Paradise Lost," MiltonS 14 (1980):3-24, responding to Sandra Gilbert,
"Patriarchal Poetry and Women Readers: Reflections on Milton's Bogey,"
PMLA 93 (1978):368-82.A later stage of this controversy about Milton's views on
women is the exchange of Christine Froula, "When Eve Reads Milton: Undoing
the Canonical Economy," Critl 10 (1983):321-47, followed by Edward Pechter,
"When Pechter Reads Froula," and Christine Froula, "Pechter's Specter:
Milton's Bogey Writ Small," Critl 10 (1984):163-70and 171-78.
4Douglas Anderson, "Unfallen Marriage and the Fallen Imagination in
Paradise Lost," SEL 26 (1986):141.
5Fora recent discussion of examples of such commentary and representation
see Diane K. McColley, Milton's Eve (Urbana: Univ. of Illinois Press, 1983),
pp. 1-21.

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 ANNE FERRY 131

6All citations to the Bible unless otherwise indicated are to the Geneva
translation, The Geneva Bible: A facsimile of the 1560 edition, ed. Lloyd E.
Berry (Madison: Univ. of Wisconsin Press, 1981). Quotations are from the
headings for the first three chapters of Genesis. Contracted forms have been
expanded throughout.
7Forthe importance of St. Paul to Puritan thought, especially the epistle to the
Romans, see William Haller, The Rise of Puritanism (New York: Columbia
Univ. Press, 1938), pp. 186-88. An example of such a Pauline reading is Romans
2.29: "But he is aIewe which is one within, &the circumcision is of the heart, in
the spirit, not in the letter, whose praise is not of men, but of God."
8"The forme of solemnization of Matrimony," The Book of Common Prayer
(London, 1638). All citations to the rite of matrimony refer to this edition.
9John Milton, The Works of John Milton, ed. Frank Alien Patterson, 18 vols.
(New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1931), 2. All citations to Paradise Lost by
book and line refer to this edition.
10TheHoly Bible. An Exact Reprint of the Authorized Version Published in
the Year MDCXI (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1833).
llThe fact that Milton's wording of this line "assigns more dignity to Eve than
was usual" is noted by McColley, Milton's Eve, p. 40.
'2John Donne, Sermon 17: Preached at Sir Francis Nethersole's Marriage
(shortly before February 12, 1619/20), on Genesis 2:18 (No. 2 in Fifty Sermons),
The Sermons of John Donne, ed. George Potter and Evelyn Simpson (Berkeley:
Univ. of California Press, 1955), 2:344-46.
"Milton's use of "conversation" is placed in the context of a discussion of
Puritan tracts and courtesy books on marriage by John G. Halkett, Milton and
the Idea of Matrimony (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1970), p. 58.
'4For discussion of Milton's position on divorce in relation to those of
continental reformers and of the canon law adhered to by the English church see
William and Malleville Haller, "The Puritan Art of Love," HLQ(1942):235-72.
"5John Milton, The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce, Complete Prose
Works of John Milton, 8 vols., gen. ed. Don M. Wolfe (New Haven: Yale Univ.
Press, 1959), 2:328, 246, 251, 326. All citations to Milton's prose are to this
edition and volume.
'Milton, Tetrachordon, Prose, 2:589.
'7Donne, Sermon 17, p. 346.
"That this view is representative of the attitudes toward the relation between
women and men of Puritan writers on marriage is argued by William Haller,
"Hail Wedded Love," ELH 13 (1946):79-97.
"For examples of this way of reading the episode see Halkett, Milton and the
Idea of Matrimony, pp. 121-23; Joseph H. Summers, The Muses's Method: An
Introduction to "Paradise Lost" (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press,
1962), p. 148. The fact that Adam in his reply to Raphael "does not really admit"
that he is guilty of uxoriousness is noticed by Webber, "The Politics of Poetry,"
p. 15.
2?Milton, Tetrachordon, Prose, 2:603; The Doctrine and Discipline of
Divorce, 2:326.
"That "few writers of any era-including our own-have taken women so
seriously" as Milton is argued by Lewalski, "Milton on Women," p. 5.
22Idiscuss this mixture of judgment and sympathy in the presentation of the
falls of Adam and Eve in Milton's Epic Voice, pp. 56-65.

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132 MILTON'S EVE

23ThatMilton is more lenient than the Geneva commentators not only to Eve
but also to Adam is the different interpretation of the scene of confession argued
by Anderson, "Unfallen Marriage," p. 138.
24Eve's"feminine posture of supplication" as a "redefinition of heroism"
substituted by Milton for "a masculine stance of heroic defiance" is argued by
Maureen Quilligan, Milton's Spenser: The Politics of Reading (Ithaca: Cornell
Univ. Press, 1983), pp. 174, 242.
25Summers,The Muse's Method, pp. 176-85.
26EdmundSpenser, The Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser, ed. J. C. Smith
and E. De Selincourt (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1912), p. 557.
27I argue this association of Eve with poetry in a different context in Milton
and the Miltonic Dryden (Cambridge, Mass. Harvard Univ. Press, 1968), pp.
106-109.
28Milton, Of Education, Prose, 2:403.

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