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Eve and the Doctrine of Responsibility in Paradise Lost

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 December 2020

Stella P. Revard
Stella P. Revard*
Affiliation:
Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville
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Abstract

Critics have argued that Adam in Book ix of Paradise Lost is responsible for Eve's fall in that he permitted her to go forth alone on the fatal morning. This view of indirect responsibility may not be consonant, however, with Milton's doctrine of individual responsibility enunciated elsewhere in the poem. Neither God in Book iii, Raphael in Books v-viii, nor the Son in Book ximplies that Adam's headship over Eve requires that he control absolutely his wife's actions. If his function as husband was not to restrain Eve, then he can hardly be found delinquent for not having done so. Eve, though inferior to Adam, should not be thought incomplete without him and thereby unable to bear the responsibility of resisting Satan alone. Eve's intellectual inferiority does not make her more susceptible to sin, for Milton has shown repeatedly in Paradise Lost that nothing in a creature's innate being predisposes him to sin and that, moreover, it is not intellectual prowess which enables a creature to repulse sin, but love and allegiance to God. Thus, each creature is responsible individually for his own obedience. It is incompatible with the meaning of the entire poem to suppose that Eve was only conditionally responsible to God and therefore, when separated from Adam, unable to succeed against Satan.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 88 , Issue 1 , January 1973 , pp. 69 - 78
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1973

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References

1 A. J. A. Waldock, Paradise Lost and Its Critics (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1947), pp. 30–41. Waldock suggests, as well, that “if we were obliged to choose from the series of events constituting the double Fall one act (or failure to act) of which we might quite fairly say that upon it the whole issue depended, it would probably have to be Adam's weakness here” [in permitting Eve to set forth alone on the fateful day]. “The point seems to me a pleasant one, but I have naturally no intention of pressing it, and I presume that nobody, however bent on tracking down the cause of the Fall to its farthest lurking-place, will care to find the ultimate secret of it in Adam's lack of firmness here.”

2 Dennis H. Burden, The Logical Epic (Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard Univ. Press, 1967), pp. 76–96.

3 Fredson Bowers, “Adam, Eve, and the Fall in Paradise Lost,” PMLA, 84 (March 1969), 265.

4 Burden has commented upon the essential error which Adam and Eve make here in assigning their fall to some irresistible fatality and not to the mistake committed by free will.

5 In Book xi, Michael's rejoinder to Adam on the subject of male responsibility reinforces the point the Son has made here. When Adam once more bewails the fact that woman leads man to sin, Michael reminds him that man as woman's superior is responsible for maintaining that place above her. Man's misery begins when through “effeminate slackness” he, “who should better hold his place / By wisdom, and superior gifts received,” yields to temptation (xi.634–36).

6 Bowers, p. 270. John C. Ulreich (“ ‘Sufficient to Have Stood’ : Adam's Responsibility in Book ix,” Milton Quarterly, 5, 1971, 38–42) has argued in response to Bowers' contention that the fall is predetermined with Adam's initial permissiveness, that Adam's action cannot be called “deliberately sinful,” and the incident is too slight to bear the weight of all our woe. Ulreich suggests that Bowers' argument obscures “Milton's crucial distinction between innocence and experience.”

7 It is part of Eve's punishment after the fall that she must submit to her husband's rule. See x.195–96: “to thy Husband's will / Thine shall submit, hee over thee shall rule.”

8 In her discussion of the separation scene, Diane Kelsey McColley (“Free Will and Obedience in the Separation Scene of Paradise Lost,” SEL, 12, Winter 1972, 103–20) has independently arrived at conclusions similar to my own.

9 It must be remarked, however, that Adam in this anti-feminist outburst is only technically correct. To him all spirits have appeared as masculine, but Raphael had assured him that spirits can assume either sex at will and thus in the true sense include both masculine and feminine.

10 The need of human beings in the sense of “moral” support has no place in the unfallen Eden. Whatever assistance Adam gives to Eve before the fall, he does not and should not uphold her from falling. There is a world of difference between the way Adam comforts and cheers Eve after her bad dream in v and the way he, himself encouraged by her, comforts her tears in x, supports her disconsolate spirits, and turns her from thoughts of self-destruction.

11 “The Two Great Sexes in Paradise Lost,” SEL, 2 (1962), 1–26. Rpt. in The Muse's Method (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1962).

12 Barbara K. Lewalski's comments upon this passage and others in the article have been extremely helpful.

13 That wisdom is the gift of faith is one of the principal tenets of the New Testament. See James i.5–6.

If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him.

But let him ask in faith, nothing wavering.