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Milton's Attitude Towards Women in the History of Britain
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Extract
When all the evidence has been marshalled, Milton's views on the position of women are both consistent and plain, whatever the astonishing obfuscations of many of his critics, assailants and apologists alike. Each side in the old controversy might at least have known better what they were attacking or defending if they had not ignored a major source-book for Milton's attitude, the History of Britain. There is reason to believe that Milton was here giving vent to a passing mood, but it was sharp and arrogant while it lasted. Herein we have a contrast with the evidence usually cited. Just preceding the composition of the early books of the History had come the divorce tracts, where the author made an heroic effort at impersonality, and perhaps only his images betray him; it would take a very sensitive critic to analyze them. Years later came Paradise Lost and Samson Agonistes, where, as Professor Allan H. Gilbert has warned,1 the interpreter must tread lightly, for the poet in the angry outbursts of Adam and of Samson was not ostensibly speaking in his own person but rather writing as a dramatist. But in the History of Britain the voice that speaks out on the inferiority and proper subjection of women is at times unmistakably Milton's own. To heap up discredit upon what John Knox called “the monstrous regiment of women” he will go out of his way, whether by parenthetical remark, or by free alteration of his sources, or, in one case, by sheer misinterpretation of the original Latin.
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References
1 “Milton on the Position of Women,” MLR, xv (1920), 244 ff. So Milton had warned Salmasius: “scito, inquam, non quid poeta, sed quis apud poëtam quidque dicat, spectandum esse: variae enim personae inducuntur, nunc bonae, nunc malae, nunc sapientes, nunc simplices, non semper qvid poëtae videatur, sed quid cuique personae maximè conveniat loquentes.” Defensio Prima in Works, Columbia edition, vii, 306. Beside this, however, is to be put the parenthetical remark further on : “sensum ferè suum poëtae personis optimis affingere soient.” Ibid., 326.
2 History of Britain in Works, x, 21.
3 Ibid., x, 170. Cf. Flores Historiarum (xcv in Rolls Series, Vol. i, 329): “sed indignantibus regni magnatibus expulsa est a regno, nolens sub sexu femineo militari.”
4 “… his Elder Sister Quendrid; who with a female ambition aspiring to the Crown, hir'd one who had the charge of his nurture, to murder him, led into a woody place upon pretence of hunting.” x. 194.
5 x, 26.
6 Historia Regum Brilanniae, iii, xiii.
7 Historie of England, iii, ch. v.
8 Genuissa by acting as mediator stopped the war between Arviragus and Vespasian, according to Geoffrey of Monmouth (iv, xvi).
9 x, 56.
10 x, 62.
11 Ibid.
12 x, 63. Cf. Defensio Secunda: “Frustra enim libertatem in comitiis & foro crepat, qui domi servitutem viro indignissimam, inferiori etiam servit” (viii, 132). In no less than eight places in the Defensio Prima Milton taunts Salmasius as being under the sway of his wife and therefore—it is several times implied—no man at all (vii, 160, 280, 348, 390, 400, 420, 510, 548).
13 x, 153.
14 Adam to Eve, Paradise Lost, x, 883-884.
15 So previous historians had regarded her, as Sir Charles Firth notes in “Milton as an Historian,” Proceedings of the British Academy (1907-1908), p. 247.
16 x, 67-68.
17 x, 68.
18 x, 68-69.
19 x, 63.
20 x, 60. The words of the Roman historian are: “Atque illi vinclis absoluti Agrippinam quoque, haud procul alio suggestu conspicuam, isdem quibus principem laudibus gratibusque venerati sunt. Novum sane et moribus veterum insolitum, feminam signis Romanis praesidere: ipsa semet parti a maioribus suis imperii sociam ferebat” (Annales, xii, 37). On the other hand, we see the civilising effect of Rome on a woman in Milton's sentence: “Claudia Rufina the Daughter of a Britain, and Wife of Pudence a Roman Senator, liv'd at Rome; famous by the Verse of Martial for beauty, wit, and learning.” X, 81. The poet Martial convinces, where the “monkish” chroniclers do not.
21 Samson Agonistes, 717.
22 Doctrine and Discipline, Book ii, ch. xv; P.R., ii, 219.
33 x, 173-174. Cf. Paradise Lost, iv, 741 ff. The passage in The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce which gave rise to the theory mentioned below and with which this passage in the History is to be compared, is as follows: “The sobrest and best govern'd men are least practiz'd in these affairs; and who knowes not that the bashfull mutenes of a virgin may oft-times hide all the unlivelines and naturall sloth which is really unfit for conversation; nor is there that freedom of accesse granted or presum'd, as may suffice to a perfect discerning till too late: and where any indisposition is suspected, what more usuall then the perswasion of friends, that acquaintance, as it increases, will amend all. And lastly, it is not strange though many who have spent their youth chastly, are in some things not so quick-sighted, while they hast too eagerly to light the nuptiall torch; nor is it therefore that for a modest error a man should forfeit so great a happines, and no charitable means to release him. Since they who have liv'd most loosely by reason of their bold accustoming, prove most succesfull in their matches, because their wild affections unsetling at will, have been as so many divorces to teach them experience. When as the sober man honouring the appearance of modesty, and hoping well of every sociall vertue under that veile, may easily chance to meet, if not with a body impenetrable, yet often with a mind to all other due conversation inaccessible …” (iii, 394-395).
24 Milton (London, 1879), p. 58.
25 “The truth is, that Godwin and his Sons did many things boistrously and violently, much against the Kings minde; which not able to resist, he had, as some say, his Wife Edith Godwins Daughter in such aversation, as in bed never to have touch'd her; whether for this cause or mistak'n Chastitie, not commendable; to enquire further is not material” (x, 306). But it is material to note Milton's consistency. He had referred in the Cambridge Manuscript, presumably before his own marriage, to this same case of Edward the Confessor's “superstitious praetence of chastitie” (Works, xviii, 244).
26 x, 191 ff.
27 x, 137-138.
28 “Spernuntur namque primae, post monachi votum irritum illicitae licet, tamen propriae conjugis praesumptivae nuptiae, alia viri viventis, non externi, sed fratris filii adamata. Ob quod dura cervix illa multis jam peccaminum fascibus onerata, bino parricidiali ausu, occidendo supradictum, uxoremque tuam, aliquamdiu a te habitam, velut summo sacrilegii tui culmine, de imis ad inferiora curvatur. Dehinc illam, cujus dudum colludio ac suggestione tantae sunt peccatorum subitae moles, publico et, ut fallaces parisitorum linguae tuorum conclamant, summis tamen labiis, non ex intimo cordis, legitimo, utpote viduatam, thoro; ut nostrae vero, sceleratissimo adscivisti connubio” (Epistola Gildae in Monumenta Historica Britannica, [1848], p. 19).
29 J. Milton French, “Milton's Annotated Copy of Gildas,” Harvard Studies and Notes in Philology and Literature, xx (1938), 79.
30 The Epistle of Gildas (London, 1638), p. 91. The nineteenth century translation of J. A. Giles, Works of Gildas and Nennius (London, 1841), has the identical phrase (31).
31 x, 87; cf. 51.
32 Cap. x.
33 x, 87.
34 viii, 136: “quatuor jam libros absolveram …” This gives a terminus ad quern of March, 1649 for the composition of the first four books. Firth (op. cit., p. 229) and J. H. Hanford (A Milton Handbook, 4th edition [1946], p. 116) conjecture that Milton began the writing at about 1646.
35 x, 246.
36 x, 205.
37 x, 301.
38 x, 228. He calls her 'vertues more then female“ (x, 236), but at least, and in contrast to his handling of Boadicea, he admits that she had them.
39 Cf. William R. Parker, “A Word on ‘Misogyny’ ” in Milton's Debt to Greek Tragedy in “Samson Agonistes” (Baltimore, 1937), pp. 129-135.
40 See Chilton L. Powell, English Domestic Relations, 1487-1653 (New York, 1917) and Francis L. Utley, The Crooked Rib, An Analytical Index to the Argument about Women in English and Scots Literature to the end of the Year 1568 (Columbus, 1944) ; see also the Old Testament. Extremely enlightening is the article by William and Malleville Haller, “The Puritan Art of Love,” Huntington Library Quarterly, V (January, 1942), especially pp. 247 ff., who well apply the adjective “patriarchal” to Milton's attitude. Even that first modern man, the mild and liberal Montaigne, flatly states in his essay “De l'Affection des Peres aux Enfants” (ii, 8) : “Mais, au demeurant, il me semble, ie ne sçay comment, qu'en toutes façons la maistrise n'est aucunement deüe aus femmes sur les hommes, sauf la maternelle et naturelle;” and adds, very Miltonically, “si ce n'est pour la châtiment de ceus qui, par quelque humeur fieureuse, se sont volontairement soubmis a elles.” Essais, ed. R. Dezeimeris and H. Barckhausen (Bordeaux, 1870), i, 329-330. The remark was too much for Montaigne's editor, Mlle. de Gournay, who altered it to: “il naist rarement des femmes à qui la maistrise soit deüe,” etc.
41 Paradise Lost, IV, 296.
42 See C. S. Lewis, A Preface to “Paradise Lost” (London, 1942), pp. 72-80, the chapter on “Hierarchy.”