Milton on the Position of Woman

Abstract

IMPORTANT as are Milton's prose works in representing to us his opinions, they must yield in interest to his poetry. One of the functions of his prose is to assist in the interpretation of his poetry, for Milton's life and thought were so unified that the real man is to be found in any of his utterances, and a passage from one work can often be used to clarify another in a different context. It is especially fortunate that we have prose works plainly giving his opinions, for much of his poetry is of a dramatic nature, and the dramatic portions cannot be assumed to give his beliefs except as they agree with passages in his prose. While in his poetry Milton does not speak directly on divorce, both in his own person and through the months of his characters he does give much on the subject of the relations of man and wife, which, of necessity, he dealt with in his writings on divorce. Above all, he shows by example how men and women actually conduct themselves to each other.