Milton's Socratic Rationalism by David Oliver Davies

Author:David Oliver Davies
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Lexington Books, a division of Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.

Chapter 4

An Interlude

A Question of Ends

There is reason to think that Adam would have been both pleased and yet at a loss for what to say to Eve when, days after they first met, she now began to speak with him. Only now did it seem the promise of the Divine Presence—“What next I bring shall please thee, be assured\ Thy likeness, thy fit help, the other self,\ Thy wish, exactly to thy heart’s desire” (8.449–451)––might be fulfilled. Adam, as he later told Raphael, had spoken to that Presence of his “single imperfection” that was “the cause of his desire\ By conversation with his like to help,\ Or solace his defects” (8.417–419). But when, after his dream-induced desire—seeing his own flesh and bone taken then rendered in such a lovely form—began to dissipate, he gradually began to think that this was not after all what he had asked for.1 So Eve herself had occasion to note (4.447–448). But now she was talking, but what was she talking about? For the moment “in delight\ Both of her Beauty and submissive Charms” (4.497–498) he merely smiles.

With the touch of Adam’s hand the day they met Eve had more reason to be pleased and grateful to that Power that Adam tells her made them both. But that granted, Eve’s talk just now was all about Adam. Her talk of herself, and of “That day I oft remember” (4.449), was intended to offer solace to Adam by the example of her own brief experience of him several days before. She too had sought a “like consort” to herself. She as well had had her fair hopes raised by a voice at the pool only to be at first disappointed. But now, days later, she reminds him of the appeal he had made to her: “to have thee by my side\ Henceforth an individual solace dear;\ Part of my soul I seek thee” (4.485–487). And with that touch of his hand, she tells him, these words of his were fulfilled for her. The voice at the pool that day had spoken of, “he\ Whose image thou art” (4.471–472). Now several days later, Eve tries to show Adam a likeness of his yearning in herself which he that day had satisfied.

To judge, however, from the sense narrative persona imposes on these events Adam does not as yet grasp what Eve has told him. Adam surely understands her acceptance of him, but the mode of reasoning would be strange. Eve revalued the “fair” by the “truly fair.” As she tells him, “and from that time [I] see\ How beauty is excelled by manly grace\ And wisdom, which alone is truly fair” (4.489–491). But as she now “half imbracing lean[s] \ On our first Father” (4.494)––her proffered analogue at this moment to Adam’s clasp of her hand that day––narrative persona now reads this gesture as of amorous intent and thinks of Jupiter’s “superior Love” (4. 499) of Juno.

Here Milton conveys Adam’s confused appreciation of Eve through the lens of his narrator’s confusion about Adam.

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