Themes in Paradise Lost
Free will and predestination
Ideas:
- Though God foresaw the Fall of Man, he still didn’t influence Adam and Eve’s free
will. God specifically says that he gives his creatures the option to serve or disobey,
as he wants obedience that is freely given, not forced
- Man has the free will to either choose or reject obedience to God (and thus to reason
over desire) and by doing so, is made responsible for his actions.
- Reasoning as a form of free will
- Self-governance = the ability to restrain oneself from instincts and desires that
reason/rationality should have hold over, but also the ability to use questioning as an
independent mind - control over one’s own affairs
- Responsibility for the Fall - are A+E as free-thinking agents culpable or was the Fall
inevitable
- God’s authority and rule, Adam’s authority and rule over Eve - is Eve, as a woman,
free?
- The free will the reader possesses when reading
- Free will as a dangerous pursuit/ambition or valuable trait
- Satan, in his temptation, undermines Eve’s belief God’s authority and laws with false
assertions
- The idea of Eve being free in her action of eating the fruit is ironic as she delivers the
human race to be slaves to sin as a result
- God’s absence in Book 9 amplifies the significance of mankind’s choices
- Satan is a servant to his own fury and hatred, yet sees God as a tyrant
Quotes:
- ‘Yet not so strictly hath the lord imposed Labour, as to debar us when we need
refreshment, whether food, or talk between, food of the mind, or this sweet
intercourse’
- ‘O woman, best are all things as the will of God ordained them, his creating hand
nothing imperfect or deficient left of all that he created’
- ‘But God left free the will, for what obeys Reason, is free’
- ‘Lest by some fair appearing god surprising she dictate false, and misinform the will
to do what God expressly hath forbid.’
- ‘Go; for thy stay, not free, absents thee more’
- ‘The more he (S) sees pleasure not for him ordained’
- ‘Indeed? Hath God then said that of the fruit of all these garden trees ye shall not eat,
yet lords declared of all in Earth or air?’
- ‘Of the fruit of each tree in the garden we may eat, but of the Fruit of this fair Tree
amidst the garden, God hath said..’
- ‘Or will God incense his ire for such a pretty trespass..?’ ‘Threatener’
- ‘Why then was this forbid? Why but to awe, why but to keep ye low and ignorant, his
worshippers’
- ‘Goddess humane, reach then, and freely taste.’
- ‘Nor can I think that God will in earnest so destroy us his prime creatures’
, - ‘God shall uncreate, be frustrate, do, undo, and labour lose’
- ‘Adam, freely taste’
- ‘She gave him of that fair enticing Fruit with liberal hand: he scrupled not to eat,
against his better knowledge’
- "Our inward freedom? (762), How dies the serpent? (754), Was death invented?
(757), This intellectual food, for beasts reserved? (758)"
- Satan’s confession about ‘only in destroying do I find ease to my relentless thoughts’
suggests that Satan is controlled by his tormented thoughts, which means that he
isn’t free
- ‘I in one Night freed from servitude’ - Liberated from oppression - God as a tyrant
- ‘Let us not then suspect our happy state Left so imperfect by the Maker wise’ - trust
god
- ‘the Will Heard not her lore, both in subjection now To sensual Appetite, who from
beneath Usurping over sovereign Reason’
- This image now changes to a rebellious state, where the royal (sovereign)
rulership by the reason (understanding) which should direct the will has been
overthrown by usurping appetite which now claims 'superior sway'. The 'temper'
or integrity of Man's psyche is lost, distempered
Context:
- Milton's concept of reasoning as free will and personal relationship with God in
Puritan religion vs blind, royalist Catholicism
- Self-governance - Civil War, being able to govern selves, failure of free-thinking and
free will. We might admire Eve for self-governing (imposing of modern feminist
values), but does M’s reader agree?
- Does Eve represent Milton's ambiguity about striving for self-governance in England?
Ended with Charles II's return so was it God-ordained and did Milton do wrong in
seeking "self-governance" in England?
- Gender roles - Chain of Being/female societal submissions (man/woman)
- Areopagitica - Milton’s prose philosophical defence of the principle of a right to
freedom of speech and expression
- Divine right - Charles I believed in the 'divine right of kings' and ruled fairly
autonomously, but much of Parliament believed that the king had a contractual
obligation to the people to rule without tyranny.
- Milton’s religious beliefs - religious toleration and the individual's right to think and act
independently
- For Milton, abolishing kingship was a step back towards the original freedom of
Adam
- Milton ignores the traditional epic format of a plot based on a mortal conflict between
opposing armies with deities watching over and occasionally interfering with the
action. Instead, both divinity and humanity are involved in a conflict that, while
momentarily ending in tragedy, offers a future salvation
- AREOPAGITICA - we cannot claim to be virtuous and loyal unless that virtue and
loyalty is put to the test - this is the situation in which God has placed mankind by
giving him free will to choose between sin and virtue - a virtue untested has much
less worth than one which has defeated temptation
Critics:
, - 'It is in the splendid isolation of free choice that the individual attains the highest
nobility or the basest evil.' - Revard
- 'Deceived and misled though she is, however, Eve completes her act knowing that it
is a violation of her promise to God.' - Revard
- ‘Satan is cast in a poem with an axiomatically omniscient and omnipotent God,
meaning that every hostile move he makes must be self-defeating’ - Carey
- ‘Satan is trying to set himself up as God's opponent, as God's adversary, which is a
way to try and set himself up as God's equal.’ - Edwards
- When Adam assents to Eve's departure from him, he ‘proceeds to make Eve a free
agent and reverses their hierarchical order by allowing her to make the crucial
decision on which the fate of mankind is to depend.’ - Revard
- Kapelos-Peters - ‘foreknowledge is not commensurate with culpability. Although God
knew that Adam and Eve would eat the forbidden fruit of knowledge, He neither
commanded them to do so, nor influenced their decision."
- Moreover, God gives humans free will to choose to do good or evil, while a tyrant
would do the very opposite and deny free will by controlling his subjects' actions like
a puppet-master. Milton "demonstrates one crucial point: the presence of sin in the
world is attributable to human agency and free will. Danielson argues that free will is
crucial, because without it humanity would have only been serving necessity
Gender and agency
Ideas:
- Eve is allowed a voice and a discursive space which she is not given in Genesis. Her
idea to separate from Adam, able to voice her opinions in discussion with him, yet
unable to control herself under the guile of Satan - is she equal to Adam in terms of
agency?
- Subversion of gender stereotypes - does Adam have some feminine qualities?
- Adam’s distrust in women
- The overriding idea that Eve is a product of and subordinate to Adam provides a
framework for conflict
- The ways in which Eve from the outset makes her ambition to be autonomous a
matter of trust of her “firm faith and love” for Adam which might be seen as a use of
feminine wiles
- The ease with which Satan persuades Eve to sin paints an unflattering portrayal of
woman, one that accords with Milton's portrayal throughout the poem of women as
the weaker sex.
- Vanity
Quotes:
- ‘leave not the faithful side that gave thee being, still shades and protects the wife,
where danger or dishonour lurks, safest and seemliest by her husband stays’
- Adam reminds Eve not only of her origins, as is implied by the reference from
Genesis to Eve being made from his rib or ‘side’, but warns her of the dangers of
going against the natural order of marriage. This natural order, which sets up a
hierarchy in which man has authority over woman, would have been ingrained in
the consciousness of Milton’s contemporary reader. Milton’s use of the verb
, ‘shades’, with its tree-like language, positions Adam as an overshadowing figure
dictating Eve’s role within their marriage
- ‘To whom mild answer Adam thus returned. 'sole Eve, associate sole, to me beyond
compare all living creatures dear’
- ‘For nothing lovelier can be found in woman, than to study household good, and good
works in her husband to promote’ - confinement to domestic servitude
- ‘Go; for thy stay, not free’
- ‘O much deceived, much failing, hapless Eve’ ‘event perverse’ ‘such ambush hid
among sweet flowers and shades waited with hellish rancour imminent to intercept
thy way, or send thee back despoiled of innocence, of faith, of bliss.’
- ‘He ended, and his words replete with guile into her heart too easy entrance won.’
- ‘fairest unsupported flower’
- ‘Greedily she engorged without restraint, and knew not eating death. Satiate at length
and heightened as with wine’
- ‘From her husband's hand her hand soft she withdrew’
- ‘And render me more equal, and perhaps, A thing not undesirable, sometime
Superior; for inferior who is free?’
- Ending of the poem - A warns other men not to trust women - but this is A speaking,
we cannot assume from what he says that the poem endorses this view
Context:
- The depiction of Adam and Eve in Genesis establishes a gender hierarchy in which
husbands ought to govern over their wives. Milton both conforms to and rejects this
tradition of misogyny by depicting the relationship between Adam and Eve as an
archetype of the relationship between the controlling male and the resisting female.
- However, it is hard not to find anti-feminist sentiments in Milton’s epic with its
conformity to Genesis’ narration of Eve as a product of and subordinate to Adam.
- Milton believed that next to the relation between each person and God, the relation of
husband and wife was the chief source of personal happiness or misery. His
matrimonial ideals and especially his representation of the first marriage in Paradise
Lost reflect his libertarian belief in the original goodness.
- Milton was a vocal advocate for the legalisation of divorce in a time when it was
considered highly controversial and often prohibited by religious and societal norms.
He thought that people should have the freedom to escape unhappy or abusive
marriages.
- The 17th century confined women to traditional roles, limited by a strong patriarchal
system. They were primarily expected to be wives, mothers, and homemakers, with
little formal education. Society considered women subordinate, emphasising
modesty, chastity, and virtue. Marriages were often arranged for economic or
procreative reasons, and women lost legal rights upon marriage.
- However, this period also marked the emergence of early feminist ideas influenced
by Enlightenment ideals, paving the way for future gender equality movements.
- Milton reinforces the anti-feminist interpretation of the fall by comparing Adam to
Samson, of the tribe of Dan (Danite) who was tricked by his wife (Dalilah) into falling
asleep, so that she could call her own kinsmen in to cut his hair wherein lay his
strength
Critics:
