Many people consider Genesis to be the root of the environmental crisis. When God created humans, God gave them dominion over the earth and the mission to subdue it. This interpretation has caused many people to disregard the natural world claiming it is humanity’s role to fill the earth and bend it to our will. In John Milton’s Paradise Lost he audaciously goes about retelling the first few chapters of Genesis. Therefore, an ecocritical reading of Paradise Lost may provide insight into a new perception of the Earth and environment that differs from the one given in the bible. It seems Milton gives a more active and dignified role to the Earth than in the original creation story.
In Book One, Milton describes a scene where the devils are harming the Earth. He writes,
Mammon led them on,/ Mammon, the least erected spirit that fell/ From Heav’n, for ev’n in Heav’n his looks and thoughts/ Were always downward bent, admiring more/ The riches of Heav’n’s pavement, trodden gold,/ Than aught divine or holy else enjoyed/ In vision beatific: by him first/ Men also, and by his suggestion taught,/ Ransacked the center, and with impious hands/ Rifled the bowels of their mother earth/ For treasures better hid. Soon had his crew/ Opened into the hill a spacious wound/ And digged out ribs of gold (1.679-690).
Here the devil is enthralled with precious metals leading to the wounding of Mother Earth in a selfish search for treasure. The damage done to mother earth is characterized as a wound and ransacking may as well be replaced with “raped” or “pillaged.” This description of the brutal harm done by mining gives the Earth value in Milton’s story. As Richard DuRocher puts it, “the passage affirms a ringing ethical imperative: Violating the earth amounts to a desecration of divine creation” (DuRocher, 98). Framing mammon’s mining of the Earth in this light condemns people of the post-fall world for doing the same thing and following in the ways of evil.
Additionally, the role humans have in Paradise appears to be that of stewards. As stewards, Adam and Eve have a role as care takers of the garden. They are described spending their time “following our delightful task/ To prune these growing plants, and tend these flow’rs” (Milton 4.437-438). The work they do in the garden is characterized as “sweet gard’ning labor” (4.328). Milton’s Adam and Eve are not attempting to control, subdue, tame, and tear down the garden for their own purposes. Instead, they engage in purposeful and loving care of the garden.
The environment and the human relationship to it is also changed as a result of the fall. In Book Nine when Eve eats the fruit Milton writes, “Earth felt the wound, and nature from her seat/ Sighing through all her works gave signs of woe,/ That all was lost” (9.782-784). Likewise, when Adam eats the fruit, “Earth trembled from her entrails, as again/ In pangs, and nature gave a second groan” (9.1000-1001). Here the Earth is also affected by the fall of the humans. The wounded Earth sighs and trembles. DuRocher writes, “Because the injuries to the Earth by mining depicted in Book One have been shown to be abuses of the Earth’s creative force, Adam and Eve’s sin likewise seems to involve a violation of Mother Earth’s creative power” (DuRocher, 101). The fall marks a change in Adam and Eve, a change intimately felt by Creation as well. After Adam and Eve’s fall there is no longer the desired harmony between people and nature.
Doré, Gustave. “Illustration for John Milton’s ‘Paradise Lost.'” Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Paradise_Lost_46.jpg.
Milton’s Paradise Lost clearly shows the ideal relationship between humans and the environment before the fall. Here people interact with the Earth lovingly and act as stewards. After the fall the human relationship to Creation is much less harmonious. For example, humans interact with mother Earth through mining in a way that ransacks and wounds her. Clearly, the state of affairs before the fall would represent the impossible in a world tainted by the fall. However, Adam and Eve’s stewardship of the garden that Milton emphasizes can offer a counter narrative to the one that claims the bible simply teaches humans are to have dominion over the natural world. The ideal to work toward today in an age of ecological crisis would be one of loving care portrayed by Adam and Eve, the Paradise garden stewards.
Works Cited
Blake, William. “The Temptation and Fall of Eve – illustration to Milton’s ‘Paradise Lost.'” Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:William_Blake,_The_Temptation_and_Fall_of_Eve.JPG.
Doré, Gustave. “Illustration for John Milton’s ‘Paradise Lost.'” Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Paradise_Lost_46.jpg.
DuRocher, Richard J. “The Wounded Earth in ‘Paradise Lost.’” Studies in Philology, vol. 93, no. 1, 1996, pp. 93–115. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/4174539.
Milton, John. Paradise Lost. In The Norton Anthology of English Literature, edited by Stephen Greenblatt, 10th ed., vol. B, 2018, 1495-1727.