A Concise Companion to Milton by Unknown
Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated
Published: 2008-04-15T00:00:00+00:00
The tension between the two biblical versions of Eve’s creation is evident throughout Paradise Lost, though the second carries greater weight in Milton’s stress on Adam’s need to retain supremacy. This emphasis on Adam’s superiority not only reflects the dominant patriarchal values of seventeenth-century English society; we might also see it as the consequence of the fact that Milton’s interpretation of the Genesis account is shaped by the New Testament. The details of his description of this first couple – details not there in the plain Hebrew text of Genesis – echo repeated comments in the Pauline epistles about the wife’s proper “subordination” to her husband as her “head” (cf. Ephesians 5:22–4; 1 Cor. 11:3). Paul had said that women should be “covered” (1 Cor. 11:4–15). Milton’s Eve is created already “veil[ed].
Milton’s version of the Genesis story, that is, is subtly Christianized. But there is also much that Milton adds to the Bible. Although he follows the Bible in having Adam name all the creatures, Milton gives Eve the surprising role of naming the flowers (Paradise Lost 11.273–9). Another change is more radical. The Bible explicitly says nothing about the sexual relations of Adam and Eve before the Fall, despite the blessing to “be fruitful and multiply.” In sharp departure from Christian tradition, Milton has Adam and Eve consummate their marriage before the Fall, perhaps echoing a rabbinic tradition. Whereas Christian tradition had long associated human sexuality with sin, in Book 4 we see Adam and Eve enjoying a kind of holy sex that is framed by prayer. They pray before entering their nuptial “bower” ” (4.738) and again when they rise in the morning. Milton’s narrator comments, “nor turn’d I ween / Adam from his fair Spouse, nor Eve the Rites/Mysterious of connubial Love refus’d” (4.741–3), and even inserts a defense of their sexuality as pure and unshameful in his own hymn, “Hail wedded Love” (4.750) (Guibbory 1995; Turner 1987).
The biblical account of the temptation and Fall is minimalist; motivations or explanations are lacking. In Milton’s poem, the narrative is fleshed out. Christian traditions about Satan’s temptation are brought to bear on the brief Genesis script. Satan assumes a role so enormous and powerful that some readers have felt him to have heroic proportions. Milton frames and explains Satan’s temptation of Adam and Eve by describing Satan’s earlier rebellion against God in Heaven, his being cast down into Hell with the other rebel angels, and their subsequent plot for revenge. Invoking but going beyond traditions, many of Milton’s creative additions in the poem humanize the story and develop the characters, making them believable, recognizable. One might say he makes the Bible his – and our – own. Milton invents a powerful scene in Pandemonium (the theatrical congress in Hell), in which Satan indirectly masterminds the plot. We see Satan in these early books as proud, disdaining “Submission” (1.661) or “subjection” (4.50), envious, sometimes despairing. Later, when Raphael explains to Adam the details of the rebellion in Heaven, we see
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