Abundant Gifts: Hierarchy and Reciprocity in "Paradise Lost"

Abstract

Speaking of relationship between and Eve in Paradise Lost, Fredson Bowers argues Adam is reasoning, Eve feeling half of their union, and although Bowers acknowledges need for both passion (or emotion) and reason form whole being, circle of perfection, he reads Eve's correct conclusion wisdom excels beauty in fairness in Book 4 as showing that her feelings are correctly placed.' No wonder, then, he sees Eve's proposal to garden separately in Book 9 as curious new plan, nonsense which Adam disposes of . . with his customary powers of reason.2 Similarly, is censured, by Raphael and many a reader, for uxoriousness when in Book 8 he confesses his feelings for his spouse, and his allowing Eve to leave his side after separation colloquy is, in Bowers's words, effeminate abdication of his male responsibility.3 Since Bowers's 1969 appraisal, this representative earlier view, with its emphasis on a rigid hierarchy and stereotyped sex roles, has been challenged by those who see pair as developing inhabitants of a by no means unchanging Eden.4 Barbara Kiefer Lewalski characterizes Milton's imagination of Life in Innocence as an exaltation of . . . vitality, change, growth,s and Marilyn Farwell claims we no longer have a statically fused couple incapable of individual growth or action, but two people in a dynamic, growing balance. ..6 more than two decades during which critics have increasingly called attention to mutuality of pair's relationship, there has nonetheless been considerable disagreement about significance of this mutuality, especially as it relates to issues of gender and hierarchy.7 For instance, Kay Gilliland Stevenson argues When Milton twice, in Book 9, inverts rationality and concern with relationship as feminine and masculine basis for decision, he implies a freedom from fixed gender roles . .8 Susanne Woods suggests and Eve may be unequal in some ways, but are equally free and rational,9 and Noam Flinker states In context of seventeenth century, it is striking to find such willingness to envision near equality for even idealized relationship between sexes.10 But while this emphasis on mutuality would appear to suggest Milton repudiated traditional, patriarchal mindset of his time and even to support Philip J. Gallagher's claim the blind bard is a noble exponent of human