Errant Eve: The Adventure Politics of Paradise Lost

By Anthony Abuan

Abstract

Reading Paradise Lost requires cognitive and interpretive dissonance between the Biblical and Miltonic Genesis narratives. Milton’s reconceptualization of words towards his own narrative utility is a hallmark of his writing. Inconsistent with his internal monologue, Adam labels Eve as “adventurous” upon recognition of her transgression (IX.921). By disassociating “adventure” from its genre conventions, Eve, Satan, and the Fall may be reassessed in a new light of the Miltonic “adventure.” While anti-feminism surrounding Eve endures as a virulent strain of PL interpretation, new criticism demonstrates a significant need to reassess Eve both as a character and a potential heroine. This reassessment will not dismantle the historically dominant readings of PL that are suspicious of a prelapsarian Eve and vilify the fallen Eve as ontologically wicked – yet perhaps understanding Eve through a new context may destabilize older readings. When reassessed as a heroine on a fated intellectual adventure, Eve resonates with the heroism and romance of a knight-errant. Through examining what I call adventure politics, I seek to expose the emotional and intellectual texture of Eve’s character and role within PL and its counterpoint intersection with Satan’s adventure narrative. Milton employs adventurism in both Satan and Eve which resonates in the registers of theme, theology, and ideology. Articulating classical epic form, Satan embarks on a literal adventure full of peril and obstacles which he must evince. Emerging as an English Christian epic heroine, Eve engages in intellectual adventurism which is fraught with inner vulnerabilities, insecurities, fallacies, and consequences that she must overcome.

Errant Eve:

The Adventure Politics of Paradise Lost

Milton, as Achsah Guibbory observes, “is one of the most serious of poets” and that seriousness “was grounded in the view of the poet’s responsibilities” and that his “writing was driven by an educative, redemptive purpose” (Guibbory 73). To this end, Milton did not shirk away from redefining, reconceptualizing, and reimagining key terms in all his writing to fit the exact purpose he intended. A historical overview of the following definitions of adventure which the OED has flagged as long obsolete will be of significant value considering their usage leading up to Early Modern English. As the OED indicates, adventure may be “a chance occurrence or event, an accident” or simply the concepts of: “chance, fortune, luck” (“adventure, n.” def. 1-2). This is a useful framework to establish as Milton’s attempts towards a redefinition are grounded in the conceptual plasticity found here. Furthermore, adventure may also take the form of “any undertaking the outcome of which is uncertain” or merely “a test of luck” (“adventure, n.” def. 6). Lastly, as this will especially relate to the case of Satan’s articulation of adventure, it also may be  “a course of action which invites risk…a daring feat or exploit” to “a political or military venture, action, or policy” (“adventure, n.” def. 4-7). It is difficult to work through those definitions and not draw immediate parallels to Eve. Milton delineates classical adventure (led by Satan) versus intellectual, internal adventure (led by Eve) throughout the overarching text of Paradise Lost (PL) that is observable in the significant uses of “adventure” throughout the text.

Intellectual ambition and adventure are hallmarks of Milton’s PL in terms of plot, characters, and the poetic project as a whole. Riggs observes the crucial theme of “intellectual ambition” in the “exhilaration of new knowledge [as it] confronts the cautionary lesson of” Milton’s Eden and the entire text (Riggs 376).  This ambition resonates across Milton’s other writings as well; numerous commentators have drawn parallels between PL and Areopagitica in terms of the moral and ethical responsibility Milton foists upon the reader as rigorous, necessary work (Rumrich 148, Guibbory 73). Creaser sets this out in terms of “the most sustained account of life as perpetual quest and trial, as wayfaring that is also warfaring, without arrival or final victory” (Creaser 166). The very language commentators must summon up to discuss Milton is inundated with the rhetoric of adventure – though Creaser slinks back from that assertion to state that the Miltonic “quest is guided by momentous certainties: that a just and loving God exists” and “a redemptive faith is accessible to all” (Creaser 169). This is a significant point to bear in mind in turning to the first employment of adventure in PL as the poet-narrator opens up the entirety of the poem and project in asking the Muse to “Invoke thy aid to my adventurous song” (1.13). The interpretive effect of this line is three-fold. First, this line establishes a literary lineage between Milton and his novel, Christian epic and the Classical epic canon and their poets. Second, it aligns the poem’s plot with the adventure genre conventions of those Classic epics. Third, it affirms and anticipates the daring nature of Milton’s project itself: his theodicy to “justifie the ways of God to men” (1.26). Remarkably, Milton collapses this significant amount of exposition into the simple, yet freighted adjective usage of “adventurous” (1.13). As Fallon observes, Milton’s theodicy gives the illusion of tame piety while being truly and “audaciously, presumptuous and, from the prevailing Calvinist perspective, even damnable” (Fallon in Corns 329). Adventurous song, indeed.

The earlier Books of PL follow Satan along a demonic adventure cycle that articulate many conventions of Classic epic form and resonate with early English literary history as well. From the hero emblems Satan carries such as his shield and spear to the numerous, exhaustive lists and catalogues of allusions, Milton takes great authorial pains to indicate the conformity of his epic within the form’s tradition (1.284-94). As many commentators have noted, PL stands in unique conversation to Spenser’s The Faerie Queene and as Guibbory observes Milton’s admiration of Spenser’s representation of life “as a series of temptations or trials in which humans must make choices, rejecting evil and choosing good” so that both hero and reader “enact the arduous process of discerning the good in a complex, deceptive world” (Guibbory 75). Once more, we are presented with the conceptual connections between PL and Areopagitica (cf. Psyche passage in Hughes 728). As noted by Guibbory, Milton’s “Edenic nuptial bower recalls not just Spenser’s good Garden of Adonis but Acrasia’s evil Bower of Bliss” (Guibbory 81). To this end, Milton’s attempts to “assimilate to Christianity the literary and ethical legacy of the classical world” is evident in the larger thematic cross-textual conversation unfolding between PL and TFQ (Guibbory 74). Milton punctuates much of Satan’s early actions in the text with notions of adventure. After hearing the exploit Satan has resolved upon, Rebel Angels dread “not more th’ adventure then his voice / Forbidding” (2.474-5). As the adventurer Satan embarks alone, the Rebel Angels scout Hell’s landscape “on bold adventure to discover wide / That dismal world” (2.571-2). After this reconnaissance, “the adventurous Bands / With shuddering horror pale, and eyes agast / View’d first thir lamentable lot” (2.615-7). Sin in discussion to Death refers to their “adventurous work” in bridging Hell to Earth (10.253). In their last appearance, the Rebel Angels await “each hour their great adventurer” from his far-off exploits (10.440), and Satan articulates this sentiment himself in his speech citing their victory “by my adventure hard / with peril great atchiev’d” (10.467-8). Considering these numerous examples, Milton contextualizes the exploits of Satan and his demonic crew as adventurous. Milton rarely plays into the conventions of genre, so this suggests a darker irony in his employment of adventure here. This is not to say that Satan’s adventure is a false one, but one that is drastically corrupted by the faults of Satan as its hero. Fallon notes the central problem with the Hell sequences is that the rhetoric of Hell is “marked by incomprehension and contradiction, as they wander wide of the truth in their efforts to understand and improve their hopeless situation”; Fallon further indicates that the emblematically paradoxical image of Hell being “darkness visible” (1.63) “signals an intellectual murkiness” along with the visual murkiness it expounds (Fallon 333). Milton, the ever-stern polemicist, sets out a vision of Satanic adventure as exciting, but flawed.

With the adventure framework of PL’s early books in mind, the prelapsarian Eve is introduced as a character already tending towards an internal, intellectual adventure. Eve’s primary concerns after being created are to determine: “where / And what I was, whence thither brought, and how” (4.451-2). This alone does not evidence the grander sense of intellectual curiosity that I am suggesting she articulates, yet as several commentators have noted Eve’s primary concerns are distinctly different than Adam’s after creation. His first questions are of “how came I thus, how here?” and in anticipation of a hierarchy answers himself “by some great Maker then” to which his question moves towards “how may I know him, how adore” (8.275-80). Adam’s questioning of the world around him leads him naturally (in the space of half a line) towards the notion of a higher power. While many commentators latch on to this as Milton’s signaling towards male superiority – it should be stressed that in order for Adam to arrive at the conclusion of God – he first must reject himself. The whole sequence reads “how came I thus, how here? / Not of my self; by some great Maker then, / In goodness and in power praeeminent” (8.277-9, emphasis mine). Eve’s questions are brought into stark contrast when compared with this passage. To this end, Eve relates that “I thither went with unexperienc’t thought” to lay “on the green bank, to look into the cleer / Smooth Lake, that seemd to me another Skie” (4.456-9). The exterior elements and natural phenomena of Eden are encounterable and experienceable, and Eve’s curiosity and interest in them suggests a specific intellectual register in her character or what Riggs terms as “her cognitive signature in the poem” (Riggs 369). This is interesting when considering a signature or mark of authenticity in relation to Eve beholding her own reflection. Here, there is a clear link to the Narcissus myth noted by critics (Riggs 368, Forsyth 257). Milton embeds an alluring sense of symmetry in the text through the parallel “I started back / It started back” (4.462-3) perhaps as a means of mimicking the Narcissus myth. Eve seeks answers in the reflection; Milton gives the slightly cheeky response with the reflection’s “answering looks / Of sympathie and love” (4.464-5) before both Eve and narrator sternly check these notions as pining with “vain desire / Had a voice not thus warnd me” (4.466-7). Forsyth notes this as an extension of uxorious PL interpretation which suggests that Eve herself is susceptible to her image (Forsyth 257). Milton’s construction of Eve’s origin narrative registers an allusive connection between her and the pantheon of Greek mythology. Riggs aptly notices the fragility of this origin narrative in relation to “her story being poised against cultural materials heavy with moral implication” (Riggs 368). The cultural material economy of the poem which Riggs notes here is expansive and often favors Greek mythology in these earlier books.

Eve poses an interesting space in terms of how Milton is at once engaging with Christian and secular narratives. This liminal space is made all the more apparent in the first words said to Eve by Adam: “back I turnd, / Thou following cryd’st aloud, Return fair Eve” (4.480-1). Riggs is apt to note how Adam and Eve’s “dynamic has originated in error and whose first recorded words…register loss” (Riggs 368). The adventure politics I argue for registers this passage as Eve already being upon a path lit by curiosity and intellectual adventure. When Satan first spies Adam and Eve, the reader is given a significant visual account of the Edenic pair. Wittreich makes an astute general note that “if the intellectual density of Paradise Lost, its textual ambiguity and slippery perspectivism, opens the poem up to interpretive confusions, those confusions have been multiplied and exaggerated by the critical history Milton’s poem has occasioned” (Wittreich 96). The critic’s remarks are useful to negotiate the highly controversial territory of the poem in Milton’s initial physical characterizations of Eve: 

Shee as a vail down to the slender waste

Her unadorned golden tresses wore

Dissheveld, but in wanton ringlets wav’d

As the Vine curls her tendrils, which impli’d  

Subjection, but requir’d with gentle sway,

And by her yeilded, by him best receivd,

Yeilded with coy submission, modest pride,

And sweet reluctant amorous delay. (4.304-11)

This passage stands as a unique example of Milton’s brilliance through poetic maneuverings. What begins as an innocent enough depiction of Eve’s hair issues out into a larger and much commented on abstraction of her character. The enjambment of her curls “which impli’d / Subjection,” (4.307-8) is somewhat of a smoking gun in misogynistic PL interpretations, yet the more compelling phrase to the adventure politics I note is what follows: “but requir’d with gentle sway” (4.308). This, along with the prolonged rhyme finally realized with “delay” (4.311), gestures towards something a bit more complicated than a mere singular phrase being an interpretive skeleton key to Eve’s character. I argue that the “sway” (4.308) Milton poses here resonates with Eve’s concluding remarks that “with that thy gentle hand / Seisd mine, I yielded” (4.488-9). The reader is given an example of what this yielding exactly looks like. Contrary to what some commentators would project upon this passage, Eve is not imprisoned by Adam nor in absolute captivity. While “seisd” (4.489) does denote possession and carries connotations of ownership, this becomes more of a semantic problem than an interpretive one as “held” would function in much the same way. It is also important to note the gentleness of Adam’s hand and the willingness with which Eve yields. These might appear to be ushering the reader towards some sort of natural hierarchy in Eden, yet the employment of sway over subjection in the earlier passage conveys a clear sense of power and agency. Eve is able to internally and intellectually register herself as a subject that requires sway in the larger repertoire between herself and Adam. This sense of agency is also within her initial assessment of Adam through the slight humor evident in Eve stating “methought [Adam was] less faire, / Less winning soft, less amiablie milde / Than that smooth watry image” (4.478-80). The multivocal nature of PL is important to bear in mind when considering a passage such as this; the content of speech alone is not sufficient to interpret the larger movements within the text – one needs to consistently and scrupulously consider to whom a given character is speaking and the ways in which a certain audience might recontextualize a passage, its intent, and ultimately our own reading.

A brief survey of critical responses to this sequence in the text is useful in establishing a framework to the discourse surrounding Eve and the implications of this introduction. Dobranski notes the ways in which this passage has “raised doubts about [Eve’s] virtue” (Dobranski 342). J. Hillis Miller concludes that this “disheveled wantonness means that she has in effect already fallen” (qtd. in Dobranski 342). Several critics including Dobranski, Wittreich, and Forsyth reject Miller’s reading for good reason. While there is great deal of interpretive plasticity PL offers, an “already fallen” prelapsarian argument is perhaps a bridge too far. Wittreich jabs that this passage “is bait, not ballast for a deconstructionist reading, [and] bait swallowed with astonishing ease by J. Hillis Miller” (Wittreich 86). Forsyth draws a productive link between Eden’s “wanton growth” (4.629) and Eve’s “wanton ringlets” (Forsyth 269). Wittreich takes these descriptions and challenges the notion that they are intended to provide “evidence of Eve’s ‘subjection’ and…an impression of Eve’s fallenness” to which the critic concludes “Milton’s strange and slippery text eventually will check, if not cancel” this impression (Wittreich 86). Guibbory reminds readers that “Milton drew on the libertine tradition in describing the role of Eve’s ‘coy submission’ before the Fall” to marshal “adequate resources for representing Adam and Eve’s prelapsarian married sexuality” (Guibbory 83). Dobranski argues that Adam and Eve’s hair “both convey[s] an amorous reciprocity and signif[ies] the paradoxical strength and fragility of their Edenic marriage” (Dobranski 339). In relation to the adventure narratives mentioned earlier, Dobranski offers a Classic hero lineage to these descriptions of hair in noting that “in the Iliad, Homer describes Zeus and Poseidon as long-haired, and Achilles, Agamemnon, Hector, and Paris all have thick, long locks” (Dobranski 339). Wittreich argues that “Milton’s portrait of a disheveled, wanton Eve, [is] a figuration that is at odds with and challenging the orthodox depiction of a woman subjected” (Wittreich 87). One of the key moments where Eve’s intellectual adventurism is pulled into focus is during the discussion of separation on the fateful morning of the Fall. Eve’s arguments are posed as significant questions towards their Edenic condition as follows: “How are we happie, still in fear of harm?” (9.326) and “who rather double honour gaine / From his surmise prov’d false, finde peace within[?]” (9.332-3). This is followed up by an intertextual connection to Areopagitica’s “fugitive and cloistered virtue” in Eve’s asking “what is Faith, Love, Vertue unassaid / alone, without exterior help sustaind?” (cf. Hughes 728, 9.335-6). Here, Eve articulates a type of heroism in which Milton has reserved to the “true warfaring Christian” discussed in Areopagitica. Eve articulates a type of adventurism in her willingness to have her faith tested. There is an inventiveness and curiosity about the world around her that these passages are emblematic of. This is further evident in her concluding assertion that “Fraile is our happiness, if this be so, / And Eden were no Eden thus expos’d” (9.340-1). Eve’s critique draws upon a specific sense of uncertainty and chancery that registers her thinking as adventurous in many earlier discussed key ways.

The most crucial passage from the Temptation is Satan’s recontextualization of eating the apple as one that allowed him to “not onely discerne / Things in thir Causes, but to trace the ways / Of highest Agents, deemd however wise” (9.681-3). This is doubled down on by Satan’s rhetorical questions that ask “if what is evil / Be real, why not known, since easier shunnd?” (9.698-9) and his conclusion that the prohibition was meant “to keep ye low and ignorant” (9.704). There are significant similarities between Comus’ rhetoric of temptation in A Masque and Satan’s here. Yet where Comus’ rhetoric was geared towards ease, Satan’s gestures towards an epistemological temptation. This is the most significant factor towards interpreting the Fall as an intellectual adventure for Eve. There is a Satanic connection to the way in which Eve relates eating the apple to Adam. During the temptation after Satan has piqued Eve’s interest in the fruit, the narrator signals Satan’s next speech with: “To whom the wilie Adder, blithe and glad” (9.625); this description resonates heavily with the later retelling of events: “Thus Eve with Countnance blithe her storie told” (9.886). The repetition of blithe interconnects these two sequences which fits quite well as they somewhat bookend the major point of the poem’s plot. The sequence of events that follows this moment are crucial to the adventure politics argued for here. Adam, after processing the transgression Eve has committed, breaks his internal silence “First to himself” (9.895) in a way that is drastically different than what he will say aloud. Internally, Adam casts this act as Eve being “lost…on a sudden lost, / Defac’t, deflourd, and now to Death devote[d]” (9.900-1). These lamentations continue with Adam’s acknowledgement of horror in how Eve “yeelded to transgress” and “to violate / The sacred Fruit forbidd’n!” (9.902-4). Although Adam never appears to be the most apt student – he cuts to the quick of the issue here in assessing that “some cursed fraud / of Enemie hath beguil’d thee, yet unknown, / And mee with thee hath ruind, for with thee / Certain my resolution is to Die” (9.904-7). Yet all of this is only internal for Adam. All is withheld as he formulates a response to the narrative Eve has just related. His spoken response to her begins “Bold deed thou hast presum’d, adventurous Eve, / And peril great provok’t” (9.921-2). Thus, Adam is the first to recognize Eve as an adventurer. There are a wide range of possibilities to why Milton chose to have Adam’s response to Eve diverge internally and externally as two distinct responses, and other critics have noticed the significant difference as well. Wittreich notices this same process with Satan as well as Adam in relating that “there seems always to be a discrepancy between what they think of Eve and what they tell her directly” (Wittreich 90). This provides further evidence of PL’s multivocal nature.

            As Adam and Eve grapple with the consequences of transgressing, they cycle through rather unproductive emotions in coming to terms with their condition. At the end of Adam lashing out at Eve in the height of the text’s misogyny, the text relates

He added not, from her turn’d, Eve

Not so repulst, with Tears that ceas’d not flowing

and tresses all disordered, at his feet

fell humble, and imbracing them, besaught

His peace, and thus proceeded in her plaint. (10.909-13)

This passage offers a normative vision of the act of supplication with Eve at Adam’s feet. Yet there are a few significant points to the image Milton leaves us with here. First, Eve disobeys Adam’s command to get out of his sight and in her continuation of this dialogue with him. Second, the text affirms to readers that Eve is “not so repulst” (10.910) by Adam at his arguably worst. Lastly, this moment should be considered in contradistinction to Eve’s golden disheveled tresses in all their prelapsarian beauty. Her tresses now are “all disordered” in a state of distress and disarray (10.911). Milton uses disorder sparingly in PL, yet it should be noted that it is not necessarily in a negative context (cf. “Light shon, and order from disorder sprung” 3.713). This possibility of a positive disorder begins to recontextualize this moment as a bit more hopeful than one may initially perceive it to be.

One of the most important aspects to the intellectual adventure Eve has embarked upon is that her prelapsarian sensibilities and curiosities about the world around her have endured. She brings that sense of inventiveness and problem-solving to the deeply conflicted emotional terrain she and Adam traverse in Books 9 and 10. Eve, in an attempt to assess the best course forward, applies creative problem-solving to their condition and comes up with creative resolutions in “Childless thou art, Childless remaine” (10.989) and “Destruction with destruction to destroy” (10.1006). The idea being either to deceive Death or to meet it on their own terms – both ideas are emblematic of adventurous responses to her circumstances. Eve exposes the emotional texture of her remorse in “cries importune Heaven, that all / The sentence from thy head remov’d” to be placed upon “Mee mee onely just object of his ire” (10.927-36). After expressing this, Milton indicates the bourgeoning sense of penitence which Eve essentially invents as Eve “ended weeping, and her lowlie plight, / Immoveable till peace obtain’d from fault / Acknowledg’d and deplor’d, in Adam wraught / Commiseration” (10.937-41). There is a palpable extinguishing of animosity and bitterness in this sequence evidenced by “his heart relented” (10.941) and “his anger all he lost” (10.945). The creative force of Eve’s character and her willingness to engage in intellectual adventure pays off in the meditative, quiet reflection Book 10 ends on.

At the conclusion of PL, Eve is a demonstrably more developed character than the one introduced in Book 4. One of the subtle ways Milton signals this to reader is in her concluding speech that is set off by “And thus with words not sad she him receav’d” (12.609). This evidences Eve’s more developed sense of agency in these final passages which is further suggested by her manner of address to Adam and her knowledge of “Whence thou returnst, & whither wentst, I know” (12.610). This is a significant departure from the initial inquires Eve poses after her creation, and the intuitive nature of Eve’s education has been remarked upon by numerous critics. The expulsion from Eden configures the beginning of a new, human narrative which is registered in the emotional texture of the final lines. Yet Eve stands ready to meet this new adventure as indicated in her remarks “In mee is no delay; with thee to goe, / Is to stay here; without thee here to stay, / Is to go hence unwilling” (12.615-7). This passage gestures towards a sense of an internal Eden that Adam and Eve could never be expelled from. Fallon notes that our attendance to “the intellectual contexts helps us to see the great adventure of Paradise Lost is as much Milton’s adventure as it is the adventure of creation, fall, and redemption of humankind” (Fallon in Corns 347).  To this end, Eve’s larger adventure narrative Milton constructs is foisted back upon the reader in the end to untangle and find value in. In this light, Eve may be read as a female knight errant as she willingly goes in pursuit of internal, intellectual adventure. Various waves of criticism have gazed down upon Eve from an interpretive vantage point of privilege and within cultural systems that find value in male superiority. Wittreich remarks on the necessity of “reinterpreting Paradise Lost in the light of a continually emerging and expanding critical consciousness” (Wittreich 98). Milton’s Paradise Lost endures as a textual space because it offers endless interpretations and reinterpretations through the complicated network of associations, allusions, and redefinitions that is at once contradictory and exhaustively logical. 

Work Cited

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Dobranski, Stephen. “Clustering and Curling Locks: The Matter of Hair in Paradise Lost.” PMLA, vol. 125, no. 2, 2010, pp. 337–512. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/25704429. Accessed 17 Oct. 2020.

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Milton, John, and Dennis Danielson. Paradise Lost: Parallel Prose Edition. Dennis Danielson. editor, Broadview Press, 2012. Print.

Riggs, William G. “The Temptation of Milton’s Eve: ‘Words, Impregn’d / With Reason.’” The Journal of English and Germanic Philology, vol. 94, no. 3, 1995, pp. 365–392. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/27711182. Accessed 3 Dec. 2020.

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About the Author

Anthony Abuan (he/him) is a graduate student in the English Literature M.A. Program at San Francisco State, where he is also pursuing a Certificate in the Teaching of Composition. In Spring 2020, he received degrees in English Literature and Modern Jewish Studies from San Francisco State. Anthony was the 2020 recipient of the Cunningham Scholarship, the 2018 recipient of the Linda Mazursky Kurtz Scholarship; he was also a 2018-19 University Research Fellow at the JFCS Holocaust Center in San Francisco. Anthony’s work ranges from narratives of diaspora, persecution, and exile to Kabbalistic and Jewish Mystical traditions in literature. Anthony also focuses on English Literature of the 19th Century with a profound love of George Eliot’s works.