Book IV
Eve is first mentioned in Paradise Lost through Satan's eyes, in Paradise, where her physical appearance is thoroughly conveyed to us:
"Not equal, as their sex not equal seemed;
For contemplation he and valour formed,
For softness she and sweet attractive grace;
He for God only, she for God in him;"The sexes are deemed unequal to begin with, keeping in line with Christian ideology and the Bible. The idea of God is a bit ambiguous here, does Milton mean Adam contains Lord the God in him, or does Eve consider some other entity she identifies as God, residing in Adam? Anyway, both of them exist for their God, wherever He might be.
The second part we are concerned with is
" 'O thou for whom
And from whom I was formed flesh of thy flesh,
And without whom am to no end, my guideAnd head, what thou has said is just and right. "
She is, according to the Bible, from Adam, a part of him. She considers Adam and his words to be sacrosanct. Maybe this is the God she is for: Adam's word?
The next crucial part in our analysis of Eve's formation of her self is thus:
" "What thou seest,
What there thou seest, fair creature, is thyself:With thee it came and goes: but follow me,
And I will bring thee where no shadow staysThy coming, and thy soft embraces-he
Whose image thou art; ..."
When the voice leads her away from the mirror, and to Adam, it affixed her image of her self as Adam, and not as she, a separate entity: Eve. She eventually becomes convinced, till she Falls at least, that she is an other Adam, only less of an Adam: his image.
The next part describes Adam's reaction when he sees Eve for the first time:
" "Return, fair Eve;Whom fliest thou? Whom thou fliest, of him thou art,
His flesh, his bone; to give thee being I lent
Out of my side to thee...
... Part of my soul I seek thee, and thee claim
My other half"; with that thy gentle hand
Seized mine; I yielded, and from that time see
How beauty is excelled by manly grace
And wisdom, which alone is truly fair."
A lot of things happen here. Adam, convinced that sees a walking piece of flesh, his flesh, reclaims it as his own, while in reality it is a subject who has just started to think. Suppressing Eve's intellectual growth, Adam makes her his own, effectively foreclosing any chance of her declaration of her self as a free agent and not an image of Adam. Any possibility of the female sex seen independent of the male is destroyed here, in the Prelapsarian reality.
Eve happily obliges to being subjugated by not acknowledging it as subjugation, rather seeing it as the natural order of things:
" 'My author and disposer, what thou bidd'stUnargued I obey: so God ordains:
God is thy law, thou mine; to know no more
Is woman's happiest knowledge, and her praise."
Book IV lays the groundwork for the existence of Eve as without agency, later broken, and even later, strongly enforced than ever.
Book V
Nothing new happens here, only a systematic, blissful show of submission from Eve, as she was programmed to do.
What is noticeable here is that Milton hinted at Eve's final fate through Raphael's greeting to her:
"On whom the Angel "Hail"Bestowed- the holy saturation used
Long after to blest Mary, second Eve:
'Hail, mother of mankind, whose fruitful womb
Shall fill the world numerous with thy sons..."
Then, staying true to God's ordain, Raphael and Adam made no effort to include Eve in their very lengthy conversation,
because what is the use of bringing in Adam's image when Adam is already there? Eve is useful for specific, pre-defined activities, and knowing of God's creations and the rebellion amongst his angels firsthand from God's messenger isn't one of them. This is further clarified at the beginning of Book VII.
Book VIII
In here, we come to know of Eve's desires in terms of her acknowledgement of Adam as the supreme authority:
"So spake our sire, and by his countenance seemedEntering on studious thoughts abstruse; which Eve
Perceiving, where she sat retired in sight,
With lowliness majestic from her seat,
And grace that won who saw to wish her stay
Rose, and went forth among her fruits and flowers...
...Yet went she not as not with such discourse
Delighted, or not capable her ear
Of what was high; such pleasures she reserved,
Adam relating, she sole auditress;
Her husband the relater she preferred
Before the angel, and of him to ask
Chose rather; he, she knew, would intermix
Grateful digressions, and solve high dispute
With conjugal caresses: from his lip
Not words alone pleased her. ..."
She was engrossed in and content with whatever is being given to her. That is the greatest difference between Prelapsarian and Postlapsarin Eve: the difference between the feeling of being fulfilled and that of feeling incomplete.
To expand on this feeling of fulfillment, we look at another part from Book VIII, portion of Raphael's admonishment to Adam:
"...Wherever placed, let him dispose; joy thouIn what he gives to thee, this Paradise
And thy fair Eve; heaven is for thee too high..."
By divine ordain, Adam is told to be satisfied with Paradise and "his" Eve, and consequently, Eve with Adam.
The blase, one-sided, ignorant conjugal relationship exists between Adam and Eve in Paradise precisely because Christian "true love" consists of denial of everything except the Postlapsarian constructs of human carnal desire and lust:
"In loving thou dost well; in passion not,Wherein true love consists not; love refines
The thoughts, and heart enlarges- hath his seat
In reason, and is judicious, is the scale
By which to heavenly love thou may'st ascend
Not sunk in carnal pleasure; for which cause
Among the beasts no mate for thee was found.' "
We are beginning to understand why Eve was created in the first place, from this excerpt. This explains Eve's primary function: to enable Adam to love and make love in a way that is not considered animalistic, or, in the way mankind is forbidden by Lord the God to love.
Book IX
The ninth book marks the break in mankind's fate, in the sense that mankind Fell from Paradise, forever destined to roam the earth, and to face death, hunger, guilt, shame, and pain, banished from the Garden. The permanent loss of mankind's innocence happens in a primal scene, perpetrated by Eve, with Satan as the snake in disguise acting as the catalyst for Eve's action.
Things come to a boil here, not just because of the Fall, but because, for the fist time, the woman has beaten the man to something that has never been attempted by mankind. Eve takes the charge of the change, not Adam, the phallocentric order of nature is defied, by noone else but the woman, and she pays no heed to the masculine urge to pioneer an event, a state, a rebellion.
Of course, for that act of disobedience, not to God, but to man, she has to pay, through the archetypal act of Adam passing the buck in front of the sovereign, through the sovereign's sentence, and through the final agreement Adam imposes on her. We'll come to all of that later.
For now, let us go back to the Prelapsarian portion in Book IX, where Adam and Eve debates whether they should work in proximity with each other, in which, remarkably, Eve has the last say, hinting at the turn of events about to take place. Because, of course, Eve needs to be portrayed as someone who made the fist step towards ruin, and the ruin is to be sanctioned by nothing less than the failure of Adam, being assertive and losing his 'manhood' by letting Eve have the last say. Let us recall parts of the debate in which Eve retains her lack of agency, but doesn't feel hesitant to speak her mind, again, for the very first time in the epic. This particular excerpt is Adam restating the 'original' female function:
"...for nothing lovelier can be foundIn woman than to study household good,
And good works in her husband to promote."
At the same time, emphasising on the male function:
"Or this, or worse, leave not the faithful sideThat gave thee being, still shades thee and protects."
Eve, on hearing Adam's argument, expresses resentment (for the fist time):
"But that thou shouldst my firmness therefore doubtTo God or thee, because we have a foe
May tempt it, I expected not to hear."
Adam tries to take back control from the conversation by using ingratiation, but that is routine in Eve's life, she takes them as she hears them, a part of her daily discourse.
Eve then leaves Adam's side, symbolising the split between the two sexes for the first time, from the state of the female sex being a fraction of the male. She has done it: she has effed the ineffable. Thus, these lines are of remarkable significance in the epic:
"Thus saying, from her husbands hand her handSoft she withdrew..."
However, she is in no way equal to Adam, in worth, as clear from Satan's assessment of her and Adam:
"Her husband, for I view far round, not nigh,
Whose higher intellectual more I shun,
And strength, of courage haughty, and of limb
Heroic built, ...
... She fair, divinely fair, fit love for gods,
Not terrible, though terror be in love,
And beauty, not approached by stronger hate, ..."
Moving on from Satan's masterful usage of rhetorical skills to get Eve to taste the forbidden fruit, we have Eve slowly entering the realm of reason from the realm of faith, illustrated in one single beautiful passage. The first reasoning she does is with herself, to share her experience with Adam, regardless of the quality and consequence of her experience:
"So to add what wants
In female sex, the more to draw his love,
And render me more equal, and perhaps-
A thing not undesirable - sometime
Superior; for inferior, who is free?
This may be well; but what if God have seen,
And death ensue? Then I shall be no more;
And Adam, wedded to another Eve,
Shall live with hr enjoying, I extinct;
A death to think. Confirmed, then, I resolve
Adam shall share with me in bliss or woe;
So dear I love him that with him all deaths
I could endure, without him live no life."
Two major points are to be noted here. Eve, for the first time, wants to be seen equal to Adam (apologies for too many "for the first time"). Secondly, Eve does not want Adam to taste the fruit for benevolent purposes, she does it out of anxiety of losing him and have God replace him with another Eve, which contradicts her first impulse. She knows she is replaceable, born out of Adam's rib, but there is and will be one Adam, who came from God, subjecting Eves to the same treatment, of formal objectification. She wants to be equal and at the same time realizes the futility of her wish. Thus, to safeguard her own interests, which still is to be with Adam, she uses him as insurance against the possibility of she suffering the punishment alone. She cannot come to terms with solitude, as a unitary entity, being bound to Adam in every possible way.
Thus, being reborn in reason, she tries to persuade Adam to take part in her undertaking. Adam, still in his Prelapsarian state, blissful in his perception of their eternal togetherness, agrees after the initial shock from Eve's action:
"My own in thee, for what thou art is mine;
Our state cannot be severed; we are one,
One flesh, to lose thee were to lose myself."
How ironic is it that while Eve fell for her initial need to be independent, Adam fell for his desire to keep Eve dependent on him forever. He fell because he failed to let go of his possessive nature, to recognize Eve's difference, to acknowledge her as a separate entity. He fell because to him Eve was still his rib, a piece of flesh, made by God to enable him to display "true love".
What is of further importance in Book IX is the quarrel between Adam and Eve, after they both realize their Fall, and the game of passing the buck begins, as Adam draws first blood, to which Eve replies:
"As good have grown there still a lifeless rib.
Being as I am, why didst not thou the head
Command me absolutely not to go, ...
...Hadst thou been firm and fixed in thy dissent,
Neither had I transgressed, nor thou with me.' "
Book X
In Book X we see Adam justifying his act, and the Divine agent passing judgment on Adam and Eve's sin, along with some choice remarks on God's motive in creating Eve. To begin with Adam:
"This woman, whom thou mad'st to be my help,
And gav'st me as thy perfect gift, so good,
So fit, so acceptable, so divine,
That from her hand I could not suspect no ill, ..."
Moving to God's Son's assessment of Eve:
" 'Was she thy God, that her thou didst obey
Before his voice: Or was she made thy guide
Superior, or but equal, that to her
Thou didst resign thy manhood, and the place
Wherein God set thee above her, made of thee
And for thee, whose perfection far excelled
Hers in all real dignity? Adorned
She was indeed, and lovely, to attract
Thy love, not thy subjection; ..."
So Adam was being sentenced for being an Eve to Eve, or for letting Eve be an Adam to him. That sheds a lot of (divinely sanctioned) light on the intended role of the woman in society.
Eve was punished as such:
"Thy sorrow I will greatly multiply...
... ,and to thy husband's will
Thine shall submit; he over thee shall rule.' "
An attempt, thus, at restoration of the inequality between the sexes. A balancing act to counterbalance Eve's aggressiveness in pioneering the Fall.
Then, as Adam and Eve begins to digest their punishment, Adam finally admits to his lack of perceived 'manhood' in the first place through a vitriolic diatribe at Eve:
"Out of my sight, thou serpent! That name best
Befits thee, with him leagued, thyself as false
And hateful: nothing wants, but that thy shape...
...To trust thee from my side, imagined wise,
Constant, mature, proof against all assaults,
And understood not all was but a show,
Rather than solid virtue, all but a rib..."
And puts forward his idea of an ideal world:
"... O why did God,
Creator wise, ...
...not fill the world at once
With men as angels, without feminine;
Or find some other way to generate
Mankind? ..."
Eve, on the other hand, crushed by her sentence, fails to reciprocate Adam's accusations. She chooses to be pacifist, in agreeing with Adam and proposing a way out of their eternal suffering: repentance and supplication to God. This eventually leads her to lose her agency in an even more permanent form, as we shall see in Book XII.
Book XII
After all this and then some, Adam and the God and his angels form a covenant, a pact between them, after reducing the severity of Adam's and Eve's torment by banishing them from Paradise but freeing them from the most terrible clauses in their sentences. Adam agrees to the pact, but then again, the pact is such that it needs both Adam's and Eve's approval. Eve is not be told about this in the first place: she is co-opted into the agreement. To work around this, the angel Micheal says such:
"Her also I with gentle dreams have calmed,
Portending good, and all her spirits composed
To meek submission: thou at season fit
Let her with thee partake what thou hast heard- ..."
And then Adam ran along to Eve, woke her, and bound her in the contract of begetting the mortal form of God's Son, in no uncertain terms:
"I carry hence: though all by me is lost,
Such favour I unworthy am vouchsafed
By me the promised seed shall all restore."
A return for Adam, therefore, to his original place, to be responsible, denying Eve any importance in the grand scheme of things. Eve, demoted from a place for Adam to display his "true love", to the bearer of his seed, and nothing more. Thus, the capitalistic bond of sealing the woman in her image of being the baby factory, with the baby perpetuating the system of oppression and subjugation in one form or the other. Adam and Eve: the perfect master-slave relationship.
Subhajit Das,
PG- I
Roll Number- 34.
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