"paradise Lost" And Milton`s Personal Life

"A dark cellar where social anxieties and sexual fantasies mingle with his [Milton's] creativity" (James Grantham Turner)

The result, the "dark cellar" of Milton's sometimes didactic, sometimes deeply conflicted divorce tracts, can be seen as an expression of the "psychological and aesthetic necessity of giving vent and form to rage, anguish and sexual humiliation" that he felt in his marriage to Mary Powell. We see neither social anxieties nor sexual fantasies resolved, but the process of weaving them into an aesthetic and creative form appears cathartic. Indeed, in Paradise Lost (1667), published at least twenty years after the last of the Divorce Tracts (1643-5), the absence of the vitriolic tone suggests both the erosion of his "rage" by age and time, an apparently successful third marriage, and the individuating process of creativity. The same conflicts, however, remain beneath the surface of the magnificence of his epic poem, the same conflicts that are common to the postlapsarian condition. The social and sexual anxieties concerning marriage and gender relations are particularly divisive in the criticism of Paradise Lost, but I would argue that the reason for this is the conflict that exists in Milton himself. His human inability to understand the Fall within the context of the absolute goodness of Eden has taken the form of the confused gender power relations between Adam and Eve and a morally dubious depiction of dictatorial heavenly decree. Milton's poem epitomizes this "dark cellar" of frustration that is the result of the personal struggle against evil when knowledge of that definition of evil is incomplete.

At the heart of Milton's depiction of the gender relations of Adam and Eve is his own view of marriage as expressed in the divorce tracts. Of course it is impossible to discern how much Milton was "rewriting his own anguish as a national emergency" and how much he was aiming to uncover his male readers' unconscious hypocrisy in their views towards their wives , but it is difficult to imagine that a man in Milton's circumstances would not express something of his own personal feelings in writings so polemic. In The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce, Milton quotes and refutes Mark's gospel:

What therefore God hath joined, let no man put asunder. But here the Christian prudence lies to consider what God hath joined; shall we say God hath joined error, fraud, unfitness, wrath, contention, perpetual loneliness, perpetual discord?

He continues by arguing that incompatibility in marriage is grounds for separation, because "[God's] law tells us he joins not unmatchable things, but hates to join them, as an abominable confusion". For Milton, compatibility is the essence of marriage, rather than its sexual or reproductive functions . This coincides with the Puritan view that matrimony should be a union of spiritual souls, rather than physical bodies, in order to provide comfort through companionship ("It is not good that the man should be alone"(Genesis 2:18)). In essence, marriage is a contract rather than a sacrament, which can be dissolved if it is marked by "perpetual discord". This is the type of marriage that Milton so vehemently vilifies, and laments the hardship of sexual obligation: "O perverseness!...that to grind the mill of an undelighted and servile copulation, must be the only forced work of a Christian marriage"(40). Out of this "dark cellar" of sexual frustration and desperate unhappiness in a non-companionate marriage is born the figure of Eve in Paradise Lost, who is an ideal both of womanhood and of marriage. Grantham Turner argues that we see an "extreme polarization of love and hate for the opposite sex, an extreme "masculinism" that equates the image of God in man with male supremacy"(42). While this has value, I would argue that the love described is more for an ideal companion, who in marriage would, for Milton, have to be of the opposite sex, and the hatred for non-companionate marriage rather than for womankind in general. Both these extremes feed into Milton's depiction of Eve, onto whom is projected the attributes of an ideal spiritual companion, but also the patriarchal sexualisation of women. The creation of Eve is described in Book Eight:

Abstract as in a trance methought I saw (Though sleeping where I lay) and saw the Shape Still glorious before whom awake I stood, Who stooping opened my left side and took From thence a rib with cordial spirits warm And life-blood streaming fresh. Wide was the wound But suddenly with flesh filled up and healed. The rib He formed and fashioned with His hands, Under his forming hands a creature grew (8.462-70)

Eve epitomizes the most perfect of unions: she is formed both of Adam's physical body, his "life-blood" and bones, but also his "cordial [life-giving] spirits warm". She is more than his perfect earthly soul mate: she is the incarnation of part of his very body and soul. Upon seeing her, Adam recognizes this:

I now see Bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh, my self Before me (8.494-96)

At this point, there is no sexual inequality apart from that of prior existence on Adam's part, and this can be disregarded because Eve existed within Adam until God separated them into man and woman. This, then, is Milton's view of perfect companionship: one split into two. God's image in Adam contained both masculine and feminine, and when joined in companionship, the image becomes again complete. This is the only way, it seems, when sexuality can be 'pure'. In complete contrast to Milton's view of sex as "grind[ing] the mill", sex in the prelapsarian world is a natural part of the end of the day:

This said unanimous and other rites Observing none but adoration pure Which God likes best into their inmost bower Handed they went and, eased the putting off These troublesome disguises which we wear, Straight side by side were laid. Nor turned I ween Adam from his fair spouse nor Eve the rites Mysterious of connubial love refused, Whatever hypocrites austerely talk Of purity and place and innocence, Defaming as impure what God declares Pure and commands to some, leaves free to all. (4.736-47)

The use of "handed" instead of the postlapsarian "hand in hand" (12.648) suggests an unbreakable bond that exceeds the physical, and the image of "side by side were laid" is both active and passive, with neither Adam nor Eve seen as the dominant party. The most telling phrase, though, is "the putting off / These troublesome disguises which we wear", which I would argue refers to the physical attributes of gender; thus prelapsarian sex becomes the "pure" (used twice) "connubial" act of the spiritual joining of the physically separate aspects of God's image. Thus, the idealization of Eve as a product of Milton's view of companionate marriage.

On the other hand, there is the patriarchal sexualisation of women. The first descri ption of Eve is in Book Four, when Satan discovers

Two of far nobler shape erect and tall Godlike erect and native honour clad In naked majesty, seemed lords of all. And worthy seemed for in their looks divine The image of their glorious Maker shone (4.288-92, emphasis added)

Here, their equality is emphasized by their both embodying the "image of their glorious maker". But as the passage moves on, and Satan looks more closely and carefully at Adam and Eve, their physical attributes become more apparent, and it is these that cause him to observe that "Not equal as their sex not equal seemed"(296). Satan conclusion that "For contemplation he a valor formed, / For softness she and sweet attractive grace", and "He for God only, she for God in him" is based wholly upon the physicality of their hair, although since Eve's long or Adam's shorter hair is an unsound premise on which to base their differing attributes, the differentiation of their genitalia is the implicit reason for the judgment of dominance and submission ("Nor those mysterious parts were then concealed"(312). The famous first descri ption of Eve is perhaps the clearest example of the eroticism of the voyeuristic male gaze:

She as a veil down to the slender waist Her unadorned golden tresses wore Dishevelled but in wanton ringlets waved As the vine curls her tendrils, which implied Subjection, but required with gentle sway And by her yielded, by him best received, Yielded with coy submission, modest pride, And sweet reluctant amorous delay. (304-11)

Stanley Fish notes Bishop Joseph Hall's view that the symbol for wayward, postlapsarian man was "loose locks erring wantonly over her shoulders" , a woman's hair thus embodying female sexuality and interpreted as a symbol of seduction. Why, then, does Milton choose to use words associated with a seductress such as "disheveled", "wanton" and "coy" to describe this picture of innocence? Fish argues that Milton's purposeful use of this vocabulary shames the reader in the realization of their fallen state, and that their connotations are as a result of being part of an evil postlapsarian world. The concepts are "innocent except for the transgressive mind". In their original meaning, "disheveled" merely means disorder, emphasizing Eve's lack of vanity in her "unadorned" hair, while wanton (unrestrained) is indicative of her innocence of the needfulness of social restraint and reputation. Fish's analysis is accurate, but his focus is too much on Milton as the reader's spiritual superior. While his use of these loaded adjectives might be deliberate, we must not neglect to consider their similar effect on Milton himself. These observations are in the mind of Satan, whose twisted eroticism has already propagated his daughter Sin, and by their incestuous relationship their son Death, so the sexualisation of an innocent is expected. It is easy for the postlapsarian reader, and writer, to do the same: the strength of the sense of sexual fantasy in spying on a naked, beautiful woman, as well as that of masculine sexual dominance ("subjection", "yielded", "yielded", "submission", "reluctance") is as much Milton's erotic interpretation of an ideal woman as that of Pygmalion's in The Metamorphosis of Pygmalion's Image. Eve is at once the ideal spiritual companion and the epitome of feminine beauty. The first time Adam sees her he feels a "spirit of love and amorous delight"; when Eve first sees Adam, she comments that he is "less fair / Less winning soft, let amiably mild / Than that smooth wat'ry image [of herself]" but after he "seized" her hand and she "yielded", "from that time see / How beauty is excelled by manly grace / And wisdom which alone is truly fair" (4.478-80 and 489-91). Eve's quality is beauty, inferior to that of wisdom, and her beauty is constantly sexualized: she is both Adam's spiritual equal and the object of patriarchal sexualisation. The conflict of the two in Milton's idealization of Eve suggests the clash of Milton's unhappiness in the social entrapment of marriage, and his sexual frustration. Grantham Turner describes it as an Escher's staircase in which each opposing trend of egalitarianism and masculinism is blocked by the other. The problem was that while having to create a Paradise in which all things are equal, he also had to obey the biblical parameters.

This is perhaps another reason for the difficult issue of gender relations in Paradise Lost: the confines of Milton's source text. The necessity for Milton of having to produce a truly good world with his creativity while at the same time ensuring there was sufficient reason for the Fall is problematic to the extreme. Why, John Rogers argues Milton asked , would people who know no evil disobey God's perfect order to such an extent that is was ruined? Eve debates after her temptation whether or not to share the fruit with Adam:

But to Adam in what sort Shall I appear? Shall I to him make known As yet my change and give him to partake Full happiness with me? Or rather not, But keep the odds of knowledge in my pow'r Without copartner so to add what wants In female sex, the more to draw his love And render me more equal and, perhaps, A thing not undesirable, sometime Superior: for inferior who is free? (9.817-825)

In her fallen state, Eve recognizes her sexual inferiority to Adam, but, ironically, she believes she is inferior in terms of knowledge, which is then rectified by her eating the fruit. In fact, the only reason for her subjection to Adam is through the fact of her weaker physical strength. The discomfort of Milton's presentation of Eve partially arise through the fact that to remain true to Biblical sources, Eve must be the one to fall, and the only reason Milton can give for the Fall in a truly good world is Eve's sense of her own social inferiority, only realized fully after her temptation. She hopes that by eating the fruit, she can finally coexist in equality with her husband, and be truly "free". Her submissive qualities are constantly emphasized:

In all enjoyments else Superior and unmoved, here only weak Against the charm of beauty's powerful glance, . at least on her bestowed Too much of ornament, in outward show Elaborate, of inward less exact For well I understand in the prime end Of nature her th'inferior in the mind (8.531-33 and 537-41)

Milton's creation of an uncomfortable coexistence between equality and inferiority is based on beauty: as a beautiful woman, Eve has erotic capital, and is also dangerous, being "inferior in the mind", the wielder of "beauty's powerful glance" and finally the temptress to her husband, the vocabulary of which is introduced long before in Book Four. It is thus possible to argue that because of the biblical confines of Paradise Lost, and the lack of understanding a sinful man like Milton has of a place of true goodness like Eden, he has struggled to comprehend the Fall. In attempting to discover some logical progression, he established Eve's vanity and exquisite beauty early on, when she is entranced by her own reflection, and has Satan appeal to her vanity in order to tempt her Fall, a quality which could not have existed in a perfect, prelapsarian world. Eve's image in Paradise Lost thus suffers from the work's Biblical confines.

The confusing gender relations of Paradise Lost are just this: complex, conflicting and contradictory. On the one hand a depiction of the ideal spiritual partner, on the other the over-sexualisation of Eve emphasized by Milton in order to give a logical reason for her Fall. Milton's objectification of Eve's beauty is thus the result of his conflicting beliefs of spiritual equality but physical subjection and the role of woman as a seductress. Milton's narrator displays conflict throughout on this, and I would argue that this very human conflict, the "dark cellar of social anxieties and sexual frustrations" that is indicative of the human condition is as present in Paradise Lost as it is in any other postlapsarian human being.

Biblography

Milton and Gender ed. Catherine Gimelli Martin (Cambridge; 2004)

Corns, Thomas N Regaining Paradise Lost (Longman 1994)

Fish, Stanley Surprised by Sin: The Reader in Paradise Lost 2nd Edtn 1997(Palgrave Macmillan; Basingstoke 1967)

The Cambridge Companion to Milton ed. Dennis Richard Danielson 1999

A Companion to Milton ed. Thomas N Corns, Blackwell 2003

Milton, John The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce p301 Courtesy of Google Books

Milton, John Paradise Lost ed. Gordon Teskey Norton 2005