Adam's Idolatrous Love

Postlapsarian Gardening

"Make Haste, for Eve is Gathering..."

(Idolatrous Image from Wikipedia)

I've finished a rough draft of my Milton article, and today's section explores Adam's 'idolatry':

When a postlapsarian Eve returns to Adam, she announces that she has taken from the Tree of Knowledge and that its fruit is good:

This Tree is not as we are told, a Tree
Of danger tasted, nor to evil unknown
Op'ning the way, but of Divine effect
To open Eyes, and make them Gods who taste; (PL 9.863-6)

Implicitly, she sets herself as a divinity, above Adam in knowledge and status, and in lines that soon follow, she makes this explicit:

Thou therefore also taste, that equal Lot
May joyne us, equal Joy, as equal Love;
Least thou not tasting, different degree
Disjoyne us, and I then too late renounce
Deitie for thee, when Fate will not permit. (PL 9.881-5)

In such manner does Eve now esteem herself divine, inviting Adam to do the same or bear the consequences of separation from her godhead.

At that moment -- given what Raphael has told him -- Adam ought to remonstrate with Eve and rationally oppose her statements, remind her that she has broken the divine command, and perhaps seek to intercede with God for her. Instead he temporizes, hesitating while he silently reflects:

O fairest of Creation, last and best
Of all Gods works, Creature in whom excell'd
Whatever can to sight or thought be formd,
Holy, divine, good, amiable, or sweet! (PL 9.896-9)

Instead of responding as Raphael would have advised, Adam silently addresses the fallen Eve not only as if she were yet unfallen but even as if she were a being superior, the best of God's works, excellent in both form and mind, even holy and divine! Little wonder, then, that Adam uses the vocative and addresses Eve with the awed reverence due to a divine being.

Milton quickly goes on to show us, as earlier adumbrated, that Adam "resolves through vehemence of love" to share Eve's fate (Book 9, "Argument"). In Milton's time, the word "vehemence" could mean "great or excessive ardour, . . . fervour of personal feeling[, or] . . . passionate force" (Oxford English Dictionary 3599), and this would seem to fit Adam's case, as Raphael has warned him about succumbing to passion for lower things as though they were higher rather than loving with a refined, rational love the truly higher things that raise one to heaven (cf. PL 8.579-594). These passionate feelings have been anticipated by his actions in preparing for Eve's return, for he had already implicitly set her above himself by forming a garland with which to crown her at her appearance:

. . . Adam the while
Waiting desirous her return, had wove
Of choicest Flours a Garland to adorne
Her Tresses, and her rural labours crown,
As Reapers oft are wont thir Harvest Queen. (PL 9.838-42)

Here, Milton lifts a motif from pastoral poetry, but it shares in common with the tradition of courtly love the elevation of the woman above the man, being merely transferred from the court to a rural setting.

Moreover, Milton insinuates pagan associations with the reference to Eve as "Harvest Queen," a ritual figure in the sort of "rural festivals denounced by many Puritans as profanations of the sabbath, pagan in origin, and occasions of sin" (Dale Hudson and Maeve Adams, "Civil War of Ideas: Overview," Norton Anthology of English Literature, Norton Topics Online, paragraph 2). The eighteenth-century antiquarian William Hutchinson reports on such a harvest festival in Northumberland, England:

In some places, an Image apparelled in great finery, crowned with flowers, a sheaf of corn placed under her arm, a scycle in her hand, carried out of the village in the morning of the conclusive reaping day, with musick and much clamour of the reapers, into the field, where it stands fixed on a pole all day, and when the reaping is done, is brought home in like manner. This they call the Harvest Queen and it represents the Roman Ceres. (Hutchinson, A View of Northumberland, with an Excursion to the Abbey of Mailross in Scotland, 2 Volumes (Newcastle, 1778), Volume 2, ad finem, 17)

One might doubt the classically trained Hutchinson's identification of a Northumberland "Harvest Queen" with the Roman goddess of harvest Ceres, but an obviously pre-Christian crop festival in which reapers joyfully crown their harvest queen with flowers sounds rather like what Milton is alluding to. One might object that Hutchinson is describing an "Image" rather than a human being, but is Milton himself clearly alluding to a woman being crowned by reapers? Even if he were, the parallels to a pagan harvest festival remain and suggest that Adam risks the danger of idolizing Eve through his vehemence of love.

Well, thus stands this 'idolatry' section from my article's completed rough draft in all its "mutable perfection" and awaiting critique.

Actually, I could use some assistance on a particular point. The quote from Hutchinson is useful for commenting upon Milton's "Harvest Queen" allusion, and I don't think that scholars have previously noted it, but I'm a bit leery of using it because I haven't been able to confirm the quote to my satisfaction. If anybody reading this happens to have access to a copy of Hutchinson's book, A View of Northumberland, and could check the quote for accuracy in its details and its citation, I'd be eternally grateful.

Not that I'll continually thank you over on that other shore, which could get tedious for us both, but that I -- like Adam but minus the idolatry -- will silently esteem you for your gracious act of kindness.