Milton uses Ovid’s story of Narcissus to parallel Eve’s story. After Eve wakes up, she looks at her reflection with a lake. She, of course, does not recognize herself. He uses repetition to stress her curiosity of her own reflection. “I started back; / It started back. But pleased I soon returned; pleased it returned…”(461-463). Eve’s vanity is shown when she cannot look away: “There I had fixed / Mine eyes till now and pined with vain desire” (464-465). She now places stress on “I” - herself and beauty. Also according to the footnotes, vain can mean futile, which means that her desire is pointless. Again, Eve is shown as a lower being than Adam. Only women can be entranced by their beauty and ruined by their vanity. A voice, God, directs her away from the lake. She easily listens to the voice and is “invisibly thus led” (476). She does not question the voice and only from God’s guidance does she leave the lake. When she spots Adam, she describes how “beauty is excelled by manly grace, / And wisdom, which alone is truly fair” (490-491). Using the word “manly” to describe both grace and wisdom places men on a pedestal. After all, Eve did come from Adam’s bones and flesh: “His flesh, his bone; to give thee being I lent” (483). When read it breaks iambic. The emphasis is put on “his”. Eve is made from Adam and thus women are inferior to men.
Sunday, October 28, 2012
Blog #10: Close Reading of Paradise Lost
In this passage, Eve discusses what she remembers about the start of her existence
in Paradise and how she came to be made from Adam. From the close reading, Eve
is of a “lower” form than Adam and therefore is more easily controlled. Milton
writes in iambic pentameter. When Eve begins talking about waking up, she
removes herself from the story if we follow iambic pentameter: “I first awaked and found myself reposed” (450). Eve does not stress “I” but rather “first.” This
story is not about her, but rather how she was created. The emphasis is placed
on God, not humanity. Milton does break iambic pentameter: “Under a shade of flowers, much wondering where” (451).
Breaking on this line places emphasis on it. Eve was born in the shade and not
in the light. This again removes Eve further from God since she was not born in
light. In the next line, if following iambic pentameter, “And what I was…”(452), “I” once again is not emphasized.
Milton uses Ovid’s story of Narcissus to parallel Eve’s story. After Eve wakes up, she looks at her reflection with a lake. She, of course, does not recognize herself. He uses repetition to stress her curiosity of her own reflection. “I started back; / It started back. But pleased I soon returned; pleased it returned…”(461-463). Eve’s vanity is shown when she cannot look away: “There I had fixed / Mine eyes till now and pined with vain desire” (464-465). She now places stress on “I” - herself and beauty. Also according to the footnotes, vain can mean futile, which means that her desire is pointless. Again, Eve is shown as a lower being than Adam. Only women can be entranced by their beauty and ruined by their vanity. A voice, God, directs her away from the lake. She easily listens to the voice and is “invisibly thus led” (476). She does not question the voice and only from God’s guidance does she leave the lake. When she spots Adam, she describes how “beauty is excelled by manly grace, / And wisdom, which alone is truly fair” (490-491). Using the word “manly” to describe both grace and wisdom places men on a pedestal. After all, Eve did come from Adam’s bones and flesh: “His flesh, his bone; to give thee being I lent” (483). When read it breaks iambic. The emphasis is put on “his”. Eve is made from Adam and thus women are inferior to men.
Milton uses Ovid’s story of Narcissus to parallel Eve’s story. After Eve wakes up, she looks at her reflection with a lake. She, of course, does not recognize herself. He uses repetition to stress her curiosity of her own reflection. “I started back; / It started back. But pleased I soon returned; pleased it returned…”(461-463). Eve’s vanity is shown when she cannot look away: “There I had fixed / Mine eyes till now and pined with vain desire” (464-465). She now places stress on “I” - herself and beauty. Also according to the footnotes, vain can mean futile, which means that her desire is pointless. Again, Eve is shown as a lower being than Adam. Only women can be entranced by their beauty and ruined by their vanity. A voice, God, directs her away from the lake. She easily listens to the voice and is “invisibly thus led” (476). She does not question the voice and only from God’s guidance does she leave the lake. When she spots Adam, she describes how “beauty is excelled by manly grace, / And wisdom, which alone is truly fair” (490-491). Using the word “manly” to describe both grace and wisdom places men on a pedestal. After all, Eve did come from Adam’s bones and flesh: “His flesh, his bone; to give thee being I lent” (483). When read it breaks iambic. The emphasis is put on “his”. Eve is made from Adam and thus women are inferior to men.
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I think we should pause before immediately jumping to the "women are inferior" reading of these lines. If we return to lines 304-311 and use them to interpret the lines under consideration in this blog, we may be able to generate a more nuanced, perhaps "feminist" reading. Milton writes:
ReplyDeleteShe as a veil down to the slender waist
Her unadorned golden tresses wore
Disheveled, but in wanton ringlets waved
As the vine curls her tendrils, which implied
Subjection, but required with gentle sway,
And by her yielded, by him best received,
Yielded with coy submission, modest pride,
And sweet reluctant amorous delay.
First, how can Eve be "coy" or "wanton" in a prelapsarian state? The language suggests that Eve is already of Satan's Fallen party. It also begs the question: how can Eve be coy *and* submissive simultaneously? These questions, I think, ask us to reconsider the difference between equality and mutuality. Indeed, Milton goes to great lengths to distinguish Eve from Adam. Eve's identity emerges through--or rather *as*--text. Unlike the way Milton describes Adam (in straightforward ways), Eve is introduced to us through a simile ("as a veil"), and later (in the lines you had to close read) she is compared to Narcissus. She is an ambiguous text that we must read and interpret. Her wanton ringlets and coy submission (the latter bordering on an oxymoron), as well as the description we get here, ask us to read her as a character defined by wandering, suspense, and delay (she wanders off and has to be called back; unlike Adam, her first response after her creation is not to speak but to delay speech to look around, ponder in the shade, etc.). And how about that "sweet reluctant amorous delay" (line 311)? Why is she reluctant? Why does she delay? Could it be that her reluctance--her coyness--demands a relationship that is based on mutuality that precludes equality? In more abstract terms, is equality really ideal? Eve seems to suggest that a relationship based on mutual pleasure (yes, the amorous delay is erotic, so perhaps this is all about how to achieve mutual orgasm) is better than an equal relationship based on "sameness."
Now, having said that, I agree that Milton depicts Eve as inferior to Adam. For example, her access to God comes entirely from Adam--she experiences God indirectly (direct vs. indirect experience has been a prevalent theme in our course this semester). Before we jump to the conclusion that indirect experience is inferior, though, we might want to ask ourselves what kinds of agency indirect experience makes possible.
We should also note that Eve *does* follow the voice in the Garden but she also returns to her own image: "Till I espied thee, fair indeed and tall,/Under a platan, yet methought less fair,/Less winning soft, less amiably mild,/Than that smooth wat'ry image; back I turned" (477-480). What she is saying here is that the image she saw in the water was prettier than Adam. Keep in mind that she does not realize that the image is a reflection of herself. But as you suggest in this post, a reflection is all she "is": "What thou seest,/What there thou seest fair creature is thyself" (468). She is merely a reflection of Adam, perhaps.
Along the lines that Ed is using, isn't there something to be said about the fact that Eve actually finds herself more visually desirable than Adam?
ReplyDeleteExcellent point, Taylor. Is this narcissistic auto-eroticism (masturbatory) or is it homoeroticism (since she doesn't know she is the one in the image)?
ReplyDeleteI think it's a mixture of both. Whether she knows it or not she is attracted to herself, although she is ignorant of either cases.
ReplyDelete*case
ReplyDelete