Sandra M. Gilbert on Satan and the Serpentine Eve
Poet and Scholar
(Image from Sandra M. Gilbert Website)
I'm still looking into ways in which John Milton depicts the fallen Eve as 'serpentine' in Paradise Lost. I'm not the only one who's ever thought about this, as yesterday's blog entry demonstrated. Today, I want to excerpt a passage by the feminist scholar Sandra M. Gilbert, from her article of 1978, "Patriarchal Poetry and Women Readers: Reflections on Milton's Bogey," in which she argues that Milton assimilates Eve to Satan:
[E]ven the briefest reflection on Paradise Lost should remind us that, despite Eve's apparent passivity and domesticity, Milton himself seems deliberately to have sketched so many parallels between her and Satan that it is hard at times for the unwary reader to distinguish the sinfulness of one from that of the other. As Stanley Fish has pointed out, for instance, Eve's temptation speech to Adam in Book IX is "a tissue of Satanic echoes," with its central argument, "Look on me. / Do not believe," an exact duplicate of the antireligious empiricism embedded in Satan's earlier temptation speech to her. Moreover, where Adam falls out of uxorious "fondness," out of a self-sacrificing love for Eve, which, at least to the modern reader, seems quite noble, Milton's Eve falls for exactly the same reason that Satan does: because she wants to be "as Gods" and because, like him, she is secretly dissatisfied with her place, secretly preoccupied with questions of "equality." After his fall, Satan makes a pseudo-libertarian speech to his fellow angels in which he asks, "Who can in reason then or right assume / Monarchy over such as live by right / His equals, if in power and splendor less, / In freedom equal?" (V.794-97). After her fall, Eve considers the possibility of keeping the fruit to herself "so to add what wants / In Female Sex, the more to draw [Adam's] Love, / And render me more equal" (IX.821-23).I excerpted this passage from Gilbert's article after skimming the entire text, but I don't have time to deal with it fully this morning, and I'd first like to read the entire article carefully before commenting -- other than to observe that this looks interesting. Gilbert has noted various parallels in Paradise Lost between the falling and fallen Eve and the falling and fallen Satan, particularly in their reason for rebellion and their manner of tempting others.
Again, just as Milton's Satan -- despite his pretensions to equality with the divine -- dwindles from an angel into a dreadful (though subtle) serpent, so Eve is gradually reduced from an angelic being to a monstrous and serpentine creature, listening sadly as Adam thunders, "Out of my sight, thou Serpent, that name best/ Befits thee with him leagu'd, thyself as false / And hateful; nothing wants, but that thy shape, / Like his, and colour Serpentine may show / Thy inward fraud" (X.867-71). (Sandra M. Gilbert, "Patriarchal Poetry and Women Readers: Reflections on Milton's Bogey," Proceedings of the Modern Language Association, Vol. 93, No. 3 (May, 1978), page 372B)
More tomorrow, perhaps, but don't forget meantime that Adam is also partly assimilated to the serpentine Satan, as we have already seen in the fact that both are depicted as eating their fill.
Labels: Adam and Eve, Feminism, John Milton, Paradise Lost, Satan
posted by Horace Jeffery Hodges @ 3:16 AM
7 comments
7 Comments:
Jeffery:
To each his own, but to respond to the equivocations of these middlebrows is boring; moreover, it lends credence to the absurd notion that "their ideas are important."
Ha, ha, ha.
Instead, why not instruct us on Milton's sense of humor, his anthropological insights, or the evolution of his political philosophy?
Really, everyone knows Eve is a hero, and moreover God is pulling everybody's strings anyway. And then there is the nature of the poem itself and the appropriate response to that poem. Milton is chiefly seeking to entertain highbrows of good taste, rather than provide middlebrow bureaucrats with an "obscure" text that somehow requires their ridiculous explanations.
In the end the answer is going to be, "Gilbert is as wrong as wearing Welly boots to the Glyndebourne." But go on if you must. I am listening....
Anonymous, this is how I do my research, so I need to look at scholarship on the issue of a 'Satanic' Eve.
My blog posts of this sort are how I work through my own ideas and prepare my articles.
You'll probably have to endure this for a while . . .
Jeffery Hodges
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Granted, and point taken.
And I am listening. I'll endeavor to address the fine points of your dialectical concerns, and if at the end it turns up that in this activity we are shown to be as absurd as devils gathering on burning hilltops to discuss philosophy, as described in Book II, then so much the better. Mortals acting like devils in these matters gives Grace much to work upon, so sin boldly.
Precisely as Luther might have said . . .
Jeffery Hodges
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Yes clearly Eve is the “Hero” though not in Milton’s Poem. I am not sure what you actually read to come up with that rather bold assertation. Milton went so far as to roofie Eve when the Arch Angel was bestowing all the wisdom of past and present on Adam because obviously that bitch couldn’t be trusted. In fact, from the moment that they “fell” all culpability fell onto Eves shoulders despite being a mutual fault. You are supposedly a history/politics buff, bully for you. Me too. I have taken the same plank of classes you have only I went one step further and got my English Degree as well because politics as of late seems to be a fools errand. If you were such a History buff, perhaps you knew that Milton had woman issues, not marrying until his mid to late 30’s and when he did he married a teenager. He carried an over idealized idea of marriage so it lasted a whopping six months. Eventually they reconciled after years and years but my points the same, he was an interesting mess of weirdo who thought marriage was the perfect institution until reality slapped him in the face. This reality is rather spelled out into Paridise Lost. He vilifies Eve much like he vilified his wife for years. History is an interesting thing, it’s all there for you to find, you don’t need to try to read into long winded over glorified text to get into the inferiority complexes of it all.
I regret that my blogpost provoked you. My apologies.
Jeffery Hodges
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A larger response here.
Jeffery Hodges
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