By: Morgan Gerlach
Very specific expectations were put on Eve, and she subverted many of them in Paradise Lost, beyond showing attraction to women (which is discussed in Eve as a Queer Woman)
With Adam commonly referred to as the first human, and Eve the second, it would make sense to hear the narrative of Adam first. Milton instead continues to redirect tradition, and Eve’s narrative is told first. Adam’s narrative doesn’t enter until he enters in Eve’s story well into book IV. This puts Eve in the position of giving her own account, an opportunity she (and many other women) are not offered. We get to hear her tale directly from her, as opposed to the removed perspective of how it is told in the Bible, or as adjacent to Adam’s story. Eve asserts herself into the narrative, instead of letting it unfold and be dictated by outsiders. Simply in the way that Milton laid out the narrative, he portrays Eve as a woman who is asserting herself into the narrative, which diverges from both many of the writings of the time and the Catholic canon.
Even if you do not agree that Milton’s Eve was sapphic (as I suggest in my other page), we do see her resisting her forced match with Adam. She has to be drawn to him and attempts to leave him upon first meeting. This is not what is supposed to happen. While she does inevitably end up with him, she resists initial efforts to the best of her ability. In doing so, she pushes back against the nature of her own creation and the life that has been laid out for her by outside forces.
On the fateful day in which she takes a bite of the forbidden apple, she pushes Adam to have them work separately, despite the dangers. In this act, she both enforces her independence from Adam and asserts her individual strength. They argue at lengths whether to work separately or together, and Eve eventually wins with her resistance.
So spake the partriarch of mankind, But Eve/Persisted, yet submiss, though last replied:/’With thy permission then, and thus forewarned…The willinger I go, nor emuch expect/A foe so proud will first the weaker seek;/So bent, the more shall shame him his repulse”/Thus saying, from her husband’s hand her hand/Soft she withdrew”
Book IX, 376-386
She is expected to obey the “patriarch of mankind,” yet pushes back against his wishes, and receives only his unwilling approval, and continues to push her point. She leaves with the last word on the subject, not allowing him to further assert his power over her.
When she is inevitably tempted by Satan, she is convinced by her logic, not her naivete or foolishness (as Adam believes will happen). When talking with Satan as the snake, she realizes she can consume the apple without dying, contrary to what was implied by Raphael to Adam, and that it potentially offers great power, it seems to be a clear choice to partake of the apple. “Fixed on the fruit she gazed, which to behold/Might tempt alone, and in her ears the sound/Yet rung of his persuasive words, impregned/With reason” (IX, 735-738). She is ultimately persuaded by reason and logical thought. If the apples will give her power and knowledge, why should she not partake?
Milton appears to have created an Eve that is assertive, logical, and pushes for autonomy, ultimately rebelling against the expectations put upon her. It is unclear whether this was intentional or not. His writing is clearly misogynistic and sexist throughout this text and others, and his stance on the act of rebellion as a whole seems inconsistent. It is said that “Milton found himself vehemently justifying political revolt, while simultaneously scrutinizing and combatting in some of its more ambiguous forms” (Loewenstein). This rebellion of Eve’s is absolutely ambiguous. Satan is the protagonist of Paradise Lost, rebelling against the (arguably) political agenda of God. Eve is rebelling in the way that she uniquely can: in her daily life, against what is expected of her. These are two very different kinds of rebellion, and Eve seems to fall in the disapproved category of rebellion. Milton “heatedly engaged in rebellion as a fierce supporter of regicide, he was also deeply anxious about other forms of it” (Loewenstein). Eve is still ultimately punished for consuming the apple as in the Biblical canon, perhaps suggesting that her actions were not right. However, unintentionally, Milton wrote an Eve that serves as a prime example for everyday rebellion against forced patriarchy or power structure.
Milton, John. Paradise Lost. The Norton Anthology of English Literature: The Sixtennth Century The Early Seventeenth Century, edited by Stephen Greenblatt,W. W. Norton & Company, 2018, 1493-1727.
Loewenstein, David. “‘An Ambiguous Monster’: Representing Rebellion in Milton's Polemics and ‘Paradise Lost.’” Huntington Library Quarterly, vol. 55, no. 2, 1992, pp. 295–315. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/3817560.