Complexity of Eve’s Speeches in Relation to the Question of Subjection

Nicole Liu

Prof. Joanna Stalnaker

Paper #2

May 3, 2016

Complexity of Eve’s Speeches In Relation to the Question of Subjection

        In his epic poem Paradise Lost, John Milton chronicles Satan’s fall and his subsequent journey to the garden of Eden, expands on the story of Adam and Eve from the Genesis, and ends with an emphasis on God’s supremacy in keeping both the devil and the mankind under control. One striking tension in the poem is between the submission to a high power along with the negation of one’s own desires, and the primitive curiosity about what is beyond one’s power constraints, the curiosity about free will. Eve, in particular, is a character that embodies this tension. “O glorious trial of exceeding love/ Illustrious evidence, example high!/ Engaging me to emulate, but short/ Of thy perfection, how shall I attain/ Adam…” (961-965, p233) So Eve exalts Adam, before offering him the forbidden fruit, stressing Adam’s superiority as an exemplar of God’s image, and rendering her own attempt to emulate this example only secondary, if not utterly futile. At the same time, however, Eve manifests dauntless discontent toward the structure of Eden as designed by God. “And what is faith, love, virtue unassayed/ Alone, without exterior help sustained?…Frail is our happiness, if this be so/ And Eden were no Eden thus exposed” (335-341, p216). She not only calls for a test on the qualities conferred by God, but encourages a share of contribution to God’s creation on the part of Satan. Adam, in nature much more compliant, is perplexed by why Eve harbors these treacherous thoughts. His bafflement about Eve echoes the larger question about Eden, that if Eden was created pure, why would God also plant an evil knowledge tree? By examining Eve’s speeches in different settings, I intend to probe into the source of Eve’s subjection and disobedience, which helps illustrate those questions.

        Eve’s speeches are marked by their multiplicity in the layers of communication. When she first speaks in the entire epic, for instance, she recounts her awakening after the creation and her encounter with - or return to - Adam. In that speech, she interacts with her own image reflected by the water surface of a lake, receives instruction from a voice whose origin she does not identify, and at last yields to the vocal as well as physical beckoning of Adam. “I tither went/ With unexperienced thought, and laid me down/ On the green bank…” (457-458, P98) While “unexperienced thought” highlights a blank and pure mental state, the active voice in “laid me down” seems to already suggest a duality in her that is to be exemplified by the mirror image. The reflection’s resemblance to her is reinforced by the repetition of words on the paper: “I started back/ It started back, but pleased I soon returned/ Please it returned as soon with answering looks/  Of sympathy and love…”(462-464, p98) The projected emotions of “sympathy and love” reflect Eve’s appreciation of herself, and is incompatible with her previous “unexperienced,” primeval nature. She is now harboring “vain desire” (466, p98), but neither is the desire evoked by nor is it directed to Adam. In other words, Eve’s love is not predetermined to be exclusive to Adam, and neither is her later subjection more innate to her character.

        A voice then appears from nowhere, and suggests Adam as a substitute of the mirror image. Eve will arrive at a place “where no shadow stays,” implying the mirror image, itself a shadow, will no longer exist. “…he/ Whose image thou art, him thou shall enjoy/ Inseparably thine, to him shalt bear/ Multitudes like thyself…” (471-474, p98). The pleasure Eve will experience in finding the likeness of Adam to herself seems to be a mere compensation for the vanity of her desire to love and attend her own reflection. As a result, Eve“follow[s] straight, invisibly thus led” ( 476, p98). The sentence contains an essential paradox that deals with the irreconcilability of the absence of a guide and the action of following. More importantly, these words from Eve - not the voice, as its speech has ended abruptly in the previous line - juxtapose two simultaneous perspectives. The former part fits Eve’s perspective as a follower, and yet the latter part appears to have come from an observer who judges that Eve is passively being led by something intangible.

        Eve’s interaction with Adam introduces a new kind of power dynamics. Upon meeting Adam, Eve finds him inferior, again testifying to the idea that Adam serves only as a compromise. Similar to the previous scene, Eve turns back, but instead of mimicking her action, Adam “follow[s] cried’st aloud” (481, p99), and their shortened distance breaches the perfect physical and literal harmony between Eve and her mirror image. Adam proclaims the subordinate position of Eve by declaring “whom thou fly’st, of him thou art/ His flesh, his bone; to give thee being I lent/ Out of my side to thee, nearest my heart/ Substantial life, to have thee by my side/ Henceforth an individual solace dear” (482-486, p99). He also freely switches perspectives in one line, explains first that Eve is “his flesh, his bone,” and then uses “I” to assert ownership of Eve’s life. The repetition of “my side,” in one case referring to the location of the rib in Adam’s body out of which Eve was created, and in the other case referring to Eve’s duty to accompany him, exposes the unsettling logic that Eve has to fulfill what she is made from. Eve does not respond to Adam either vocally or physically, and is very much absent in this part of her speech. “I yielded,” says Eve eventually, downplaying a major transition in her life by mentioning this concise result in the middle of a line. The speech as a whole seems to indicate that Eve’s subjection to Adam, in comparison to the love for herself, is more unnatural and forcibly induced.

         A later speech of Eve about a dream she had also sheds light on the power structure between Eve and Adam. In this speech there is again a voice, whose source is unidentifiable, that uses imagery to highlight nature’s pleasantness and urges Eve to open her eyes, for “heaven wakes with all his eyes/ Whom to behold but thee, nature’s desire/ In whose sight all things joy, with ravishment/ Attracted by thy beauty still to gaze” (44-47, p116). Here heaven is personified as a male character, and Eve pushes the boundary of female power by conferring joy to nature, and in this way making a creation, which has always been subsumed in male’s might. But at the same time, she is evoked as “nature’s desire,” which reasserts the role to serve and the sexual function as fundamental to her character.