Eve and the Doctrine of Responsibility in Paradise Lost Author(s): Stella P. Revard Reviewed work(s): Source: PMLA, Vol.

88, No. 1 (Jan., 1973), pp. 69-78 Published by: Modern Language Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/461327 . Accessed: 23/03/2012 01:46
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STELLA P. REVARD

Eve and the Doctrine of Responsibility in Paradise Lost

HEN EVE in Book ix of ParadiseLost withdraws her hand from her husband's hand and goes alone to tend her garden, to upstay "each Flow'r of tender stalk," what reader does not feel how innocent, how beautiful, and yet how unprotected she is? Who does not wish that there were squadrons of angels sent to drive away the insidious foe? And who does not think that this "fairest unsupported Flow'r / From her best prop so far" would not be ravished of her innocence if her husband had not permitted her to fare forth unprotected? Traditionally critics and readers have responded to the predicament of Eve with compassion and concern; some, like A. J. A. Waldock, have attempted to mitigate her ensuing sin by suggesting that circumstance to a large extent caused it: that bad luck is more involved than the deliberate sin of pride.1 More recently, however, instead of deprecating the circumstances, critics have argued that the cause of Eve's fall, and thus the responsibility for it, lies with the husband who sanctioned her exposure, not with the circumstance of that exposure. In his book, The Logical Epic, Dennis Burden cogently argues that Milton would not allow so important an event as the fall to occur under circumstances arrived at only by chance. Eve must be alone, but not accidentally so; Adam, by permitting Eve to go forth alone, creates the climate for her fall. Milton, says Burden, intends us to see Adam involved in Eve's fall, not merely agreeing to it afterwards; thus it must be through Adam's knowledge and consent that Eve is alone. Adam is the stronger of the pair, and since Eve was "designedly the W
weaker . . . more helpless in a very real sense," his

his article, "Adam, Eve, and the Fall in Paradise Lost," takes an analogous view. Crucial for the fall, he argues, is the moment during the morning's colloquy when Adam bows his stronger intellect before Eve's weaker and permits her to rule. The Fall occurswhenreason,strongerin the personof its Adam, relinquishes sovereigntyoverjudgment,or in decision,to passion,whichis stronger the personof Eve. Eve'sweakerreasonfalls victimto a morepowerful passion and underthis influenceshe makes a decision that seals the fate for them both.3 These critiques by Bowers and Burden challenge the reader to a reinterpretation of the role of responsibility in producing the fall. Does Milton wish us to see Adam morally as well as accidentally involved in Eve's fall? Are the events of the morning and not those at noon to be regarded as crucial? And, finally, is Eve as the lowliest rational creature in the hierarchy of the poem to be regardedas not fully in control of her fate, not, that is, responsible? It is useful, I think, to begin by defining Milton's concept of responsibility. Does any voice in Paradise Lost urge us in assessing the fall to view one of the human couple as more to blame than the other? Milton's narrative voice offers little assistance; he is more likely to refer to the couple as the guilty pair than to dispute upon the division of guilt. When the question of responsibility is first introduced into the poem, it is through the voice of God predicting the fall in Book iII. There the reader is assured positively and firmly of one thing only: the responsibility is not God's. God speaks of Adam and Eve collectively as founding parents of the race, and he assigns the guilt in terms of both as first "Man" initiating original
sin.

is the greater share of the responsibility for choices made. To exercise independent choice, says Burden, is a liberty improper to woman. Adam was meant to shape his wife's decisions, and when he relinquishes that authority, as he does in approving her freedom, he causes, so to speak, her fall and his own. "The tragedy," says Burden, "is more his failure than hers."2 Fredson Bowers in

For Man will heark'nto his glozinglies, And easily transgress sole Command the Sole pledgeof his obedience:So will fall Hee and his faithlessProgeny:whose fault? Whose but his own? ingrate,he had of mee

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Eve and the Doctrine of Responsibility in Paradise Lost

All he could have; I made him just and right to Sufficient have stood, thoughfree to fall.
(III.93-99)

In terms of logical action, this statement might appear to be directed more to Eve than to Adam, for only she encounters Satan and listens to his "glozing lies." But God does not single out Eve; the fault he assigns jointly. He is concerned with two qualifications only. First, he is determined to make clear that man was sufficient to have stood alone; there was nothing in his predestined nature or in the force of circumstance that "made" him fall, and thus he cannot blame God. On the matter of "relative" guilt, God has one comment alone: that man is less culpable than Satan and his crew, for they fell by their own suggestion, "selftempted, self-depraved: Man falls deceiv'd / By th'
other first . . " (Ii. 130-31). Yet this qualification

does not remove from man the responsibility for his action: while man "shall find grace, / The other none," yet man must recognize that he freely chose to fall. Neither God's foreknowledge nor Satan's temptings excuse Adam and Eve. As creatures made with free choice, they had the option either to stand or fall; thus in a true sense, as God says, "they themselves ordain'd thir fall" (iu.128). There is no notion in Book iIi of relative guilt; circumstance may mitigate the punishment which Adam and Eve are to suffer, yet it does not in God's definition mitigate the responsibility. The concept of divided responsibility is first introduced during the quarrel between Adam and Eve after their fall, when the couple have wakened to their nakedness and shame. Speaking from "distemper'd breast," "estrang'd in look and alter'd style," Adam blames their fall and misery upon Eve, asserting that if Eve had stayed with him and not been possessed with "that strange / Desire of wand'ring," they would have remained "still happy, not as now, despoil'd/ Of all our good ..." (ix.1,131-39, et passim). Eve, in turn, indignantly counters Adam's accusation with one of her own: if she wandered, she did so with Adam's permission, and thus, if either of the two is to blame, it must be he since he permitted and approved her act and did not assert his authority as "head" to command her "absolutely not to go." It is the human couple then, who, as they consider the events of the day, assign the turningpoint in the action to the events and discussion of the morning and not to the crime at noon. Curiously, of course,

there is some aptness in their choice of moment: separately, Adam and Eve had decided to eat the fruit, but together they had assented to the circumstance which produced the opportunity to sin. In focusing on the circumstance, moreover, they are illustrating a familiar postlapsarian human tendency to argue circumstancerather than self as the designer of any evil or mishap that might occur. Eve and Adam are in effect saying that if Eve had not been available to Satan at that precise moment, then nothing would have happened. Yet this argument clearly sidesteps the issue. Adam and Eve are acting as though the fall were "determined" when they separated, and not when they ate the fruit.4Perhaps they cannot bear to look at the actual moment of sin. Focusing on the antecedent decision allows them to shift the blame. Each may argue that he didn't know that evil would befall them when they separated; therefore he is innocent of premeditation. Each may blame the other as having the greater voice in the decision and therefore having shaped, no matter how innocently, the circumstance. By emphasizing the morning's debate, both Adam and Eve attempt to avoid responsibility. How seriously must the reader take their attempt? Must he take sides here as Bowers and Burden suggest? Must he indict Adam, as Eve has suggested, for abdicating his headship over her, for refusing to guide her actions responsibly? The narrator comments tersely: "they in mutual accusation spent / The fruitless hours, but neither self-condemning, / And of thir vain contest appear'dno end" (ix. 1,187-89). Whoever is to blame is not willing to accept that blame. It is useful then to turn to the judgment scene in order to discover how the Son, coming to accuse Adam and Eve, assesses their guilt. One point springs immediately to attention. The Son focuses upon the actual commission of the crime, not upon motivation or events that led to it, and he judges each person separately for what that person independently did. Eve's response to his question is far more favorably received than Adam's, for she directly confesses: "The Serpent me beguil'd and I did eat" (x.162). She does not attempt to excuse herself because of circumstance and she does not shift the blame. She accepts her responsibility, and the Son, as if in approval, allows her to do so. He neither suggests that she is only partially to blame nor treats her as a creature unable to shoulder the burden of her act and its

Stella P. Revard
consequences. Were this not so, then perhaps the assigning of punishment-and Eve is assigned punishment, separately, in proportion to her crime-would be unjust. The Son's indictment of Eve would seem to imply that, although she had not stood, she had been capable of so doing and thus was liable to punishment as an independent being. It is Adam, in contrast, who attempts to implicate Eve in his crime, and thus, unlike Eve, to avoid independent responsibility. Adam's view is that he sinned, not because of independent choice, but because of unavoidable involvement: Eve led him to sin. This Womanwhom thou mad'stto be my help, And gav'st me as thy perfetgift, so good, So fit, so acceptable,so Divine, That from her hand I could suspectno ill, And what she did, whateverin itself, Her doing seem'dto justify the deed; Shee gave me of the Tree, and I did eat. (x.137-43) The Son's response is significant, for he rebukes Adam for resigning his "Manhood" and place to Eve, for allowing her to rule when he should rightly have done so. The Son demands that Adam stand alone. Eve, the Son says, was created to attract Adam's love, not his subjection, for "her Gifts / Were such as under Government well seem'd, / Unseemly to bear rule, which was thy part / And person, hadst thou known thyself aright" (x.153-56). According to the Son's view, responsibility clearly belonged to Adam, responsibility for himself and for Eve. Yet, I believe, we must look squarely at the context of the Son's remarks. He and Adam are discussing Adam's sin and not Eve's. Adam has argued that Eve had "caused" him to sin and therefore was in a way "responsible" for his sin. The Son directly counters that Adam alone was responsible for his own sin. Yet he does not stop here; he makes Adam's responsibility almost directly proportionate to the degree he excelled Eve and was set in perfection and real dignity above her.5 Clearly, however, the Son defines Adam's sin only as his having followed Eve's lead in eating the fruit, and not in having allowed Eve to take the lead that morning and separate from him. On the second point the Son is silent. This very issue, however, is the one which

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Bowers and Burden would put to readers. If Adam is to blame in resigning his manhood to Eve when he takes the fruit from her hand, is he not also to blame in having permitted Eve to grasp the leadership earlier that day and go forth alone? Bowers' assumption is that it is Adam's role always, not merely when tempted by Eve to eat the fruit, to exercise his authority over her. Therefore, in a subtle manner, he is bound not only to refuse at Eve's instigation to sin himself, but also to prevent Eve from sinning. Bowers has contended that 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."6 Thus he becomes "responsible" for her fall. If we as readers are to follow Bowers' suggestion and hold Adam negligent on this point, we may do so only if we find Adam failing in a duty he knew or should have known was his. First, should Adam have exercised his headship in such a way that he operated as a constant supervisor for his wife and an all-empowered restricterof her actions? Only if he had been present always and only if he commanded absolute and unquestioned obedience could he have prevented Eve from sinning. Second, did Adam know that separation was to be the crucial issue, as Bowers calls it, in the fall ? Was he aware of a fatal weakness in Eve? In sum, was Adam, in allowing Eve to depart from him, violating either the essential nature of his headship or a specific injunction of God? According to the nature of the Son's later accusation of Adam, if we are to find him here responsible for Eve's fall, it must be that he, aware of his wife's insufficiency and aware of his own duty to ward away corrupting evil, agreed through an "effeminate slackness" to a situation he knew to be dangerous. Separation as a crucial issue, indeed as any issue at all, had never occurred to anyone before the morning that Eve suggests it. Raphael, when he visited earth, had the opportunity to observe the domestic relations of the human couple and he never warns Adam that Eve should not be allowed to come and go as she pleased. During Raphael's stay, Eve separates herself from Adam, and Raphael does not demur. Independently she decides to withdraw when she notes that Adam and the angel are bent on discussing "studious thoughts abstruse." She goes forth quite alone to

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Eve and the Doctrine of Responsibility in Paradise Lost

Primarily what is of concern here to the angel is how Adam stands against potential weakness from within, how through valuing himself rightly in the hierarchicalposition that God has granted to him he may buttress himself against sin. Of secondary note is the point that Adam in governing himself well will also be a fit example and guide to Eve. Yet Raphael does not here imply that Adam's place as head requires more than that he lead and counsel Eve as her superior, so that Eve will of her own consent acknowledge and obey his authority. Command and control are not recommended, and it may be noted that Raphael's strictures are consonant with the concept of authority and obedience earlier elucidated in ParadiseLost.7 The portraits of the human couple in Book iv tell us that Eve is subject to Adam, yet it is such subjection as is "requir'dwith gentle sway, / And by her yielded, by him best receiv'd" (iv.308-09). In fact, Eve's place under the authority of Adam is likened to Adam's own place under the authority of God: "Hee for God only, shee for God in him" (iv.299). This analogy is significant, for it may be used to clarify the nature of Adam's governance over Eve. God to man is an absolute ruler to whom man owes obedience and love, but God rules by appealing to the free choice of man to serve him, not by the decree of necessity. So God has argued in Book IIi. Not free, what proof could they havegiv'n sincere Of true allegiance,constantFaith or Love, Whenonly what they needs must do, appear'd, Not what they would? what praise could they receive? WhatpleasureI from such obediencepaid WhenWill and Reason(Reasonalso is choice) Uselessand vain, of freedomboth despoil'd, Made passiveboth, had serv'dnecessi N (.103-11) If God completely denies that he controls his creatureMan by the bonds of necessity, how could Adam, the surrogate of God in his role toward Eve, demand that her state be choiceless? Clearly, if he did, he would like Satan be exercising the tyrant's plea. No, in the context of hierarchical relationship, Eve must be as free to give her love and obedience to Adam, as Man collectively is free to submit in love and allegiance to God. To require Eve's obedience without free choice would be to destroy the liberty of Eden (surely not ac-

survey her flowers, and neither the angel nor Adam prevents her going. Eve whereshe sat retir'din sight, Perceiving With lowlinessMajesticfrom her seat, And Gracethat won who saw to wish her stay, Rose, and wentforthamongher Fruitsand Flow'rs, To visithow they prosper'd, and bloom, bud Her Nursery...
(vIII.40-46)

If Eve were truly unable to bear the responsibility of "separateness,"surely Raphael would have cautioned Adam here at this very moment of the danger of allowing Eve to fare forth alone. Satan might have lurked in the shadows on this occasion instead of on the following day. To argue that the angelic presence would guard against such a possibility is, I think, to miss the point. Raphael has been sent to educate the human couple as fully as possible concerning the danger they face. If Eve faces peril from within whenever she is separated from her husband, if she requires his presence in order to stand firm against evil, then Raphael should have specifically warned Adam. His silence leads the reader to draw one of two conclusions: either that the separateness of Eve was not in itself the danger and that Eve was capable of standing against evil, even without her husband's presence to stay her; or that the separateness of Eve was, as Professor Bowers has argued, the crucial issue and that Raphael in not alluding to it is delinquent in his duty to Adam. Of course, if we conclude the latter, we may also be forced to indict the entire providential system for its failure toward the human couple. It would be surprisingto find Raphael negligent on this point alone, since he has taken such great care in cautioning Adam concerning inherent dangers in his attitudes toward Eve, and in reminding Adam sternly that he is responsible for his wife and not she for him. That Adam bear and maintain himself always as the superior of the two is the theme of Raphael's long discourse on the marriage pact. Adam is not to allow Eve to rule him, but is to value both himself and his place above her. Oft-timesnothingprofitsmore Than self-esteem,groundedon just and right of Well-managed; that skill the more thou know'st, The more she will acknowledge thee her Head
(vIIi.571-74)

Stella P. Revard
corded to Adam alone) and in consequence to destroy happiness as well. Eve herself has argued (ix.322-41) that if she and Adam are compelled to remaininseparable, "in narrow circuit straitn'd by a Foe," that they possess neither happiness nor liberty. Happiness cannot exist without liberty and liberty can function only if man and woman are permitted independently to affirm "Faith Love, Virtue" by trial. Both Bowers and Burden, however, have suggested that Eve errs in claiming independence of choice as a female prerogative. Woman by nature was never meant, says Burden, to engage in single trial. Eve alone, says Bowers, was almost certain to fail in that her dominant quality, passion, makes her ill-equipped to undertake a trial that is essentially intellectual. However one regardsAdam's ultimate responsibility for his wife's choices, one need not dismiss Adam as counselor nor suggest that he bears no responsibility for what Eve does. Bowers is quite right in remarkingthat Eve is at a disadvantage in encountering Satan in an intellectual debate and Adam assuredly would have better understood Satan and his evil. Therefore, it is vital that Eve have the advice of her husband. After Raphael has relatedto Adam and Eve jointly the account of the war in Heaven and the terrible price paid for disobedience, he turns to Adam cautioning him to be firm against temptation and to "warn [his] weaker . . . " (vi.908). As Raphael was appointed by God to counsel Adam and Eve of their duty toward God, so Adam is appointed to counsel Eve. When Adam exhorts Eve to "rely / On what thou has of virtue, summon all, / For God towards
thee hath done his part, do thine" (ix.373-75),

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some readers may be offended by the sternness of the tone. Yet, is not Adam doing here and in the entire preceding scene of domestic colloquy exactly what Raphael has told him he is bound to do? Eve wishes to sally forth alone, unmindful of danger, and Adam warns her not only of the presence of Satan in the garden but also of the dangers inherent in an indirect attack upon virtue. Often this scene is read as an example of unrest in Eden and Adam's role in it taken as that of the threatened, aggrieved husband. But, in terms of Book viII and Raphael's reminder that Adam must guide and warn his weaker, may the reader not better take the scene as one in which a concerned husband and wise counselor enlightens his wife on the manifold and devious forms evil may assume

and urges her thereby to remain firm in her duty? Especially pertinent is the fact that Adam reminds his wife that Satan as the corrupter of angels must be subtle and his "malice and false guile" not lightly to be contemned. If Eve listens well to Adam's advice here, she will expect the unexpected and will be on her guard against subtlety and guile. Adam cautions her as well that she is not to trust too strongly to reason. Reason alone may be insufficient, may be deceived by some "fair appearing good" and thus "dictate false, and misinform the Will" (Ix.354-55). Particularlymust a creature be on guard then, and despite fair seeming circumstance be mindful not to do "what God expressly hath forbid" (ix.356). What better counsel could Eve have had, to be suspicious of false good and to remember to obey the sole prohibition of God, for if Eve had kept these two precepts she would not have fallen. Must Adam do more than serve as counselor? Must his be the hand that restrains as well as the voice that cautions? In blaming Adam for not preventing his wife's departure, readers are responding, I think, to the emotional climate of this scene. Adam, hurt at Eve's gesture ofindependence, has interpreted her desire for personal integrity as a want of love. Thus, he has, one senses, held back from making the final, direct appeal to Eve that she assent to what he has demonstrated to be the wisest course of action: the avoidance of unnecessaryexposure. On the one hand, dispassionately he has refused to command a "stay, not free," but on the other, emotionally he has dismissed Eve. Clearly, it would have been better had Adam overcome his own feelings of rejection and voiced the loving plea which might have won his wife's consent. Thus he would have led her to choose wisely, not merely left her free to choose. Yet Adam's omission, however much we may regret it in terms of later consequences, is a tactical and not a moral failure. He has made clear to Eve what her responsibilities are and where inherent dangers lie; if he has held back from urging her consent, with hopes undoubtedly that she will volunteer to stay as a spontaneous gesture of love, he is not guilty of negligence. The worst that may be said of him is that he proves an ineffective, if morally sound, advocate; he loses the case in seeking to win the lady's heart with her consent. Certainly, in allowing Eve to depart, he cannot be reproved for endangeringher safety; he believes in

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Eve and the Doctrineof Responsibility ParadiseLost in

Adam share the same basic qualities of humanity, before he has detailed the differences between them as female and male. Both were of far noblershapeerectand tall, Godlike erect,with nativeHonor clad In naked Majestyseem'dLordsof all, And worthyseem'd,for in thir looks Divine The image of thir gloriousMakershone, severeandpure Truth,Wisdom,Sanctitiude
(iv.288-93)

Eve's sufficiency to withstand evil and he knows that God will repel any physical attack upon her. Nor may we say that his male absolutism is in any real way threatened because he agrees to Eve's "protest" for female rights. For if Adam, Eve's authoritarian "symbol" and surrogate in Eden for God, is wrong in permitting his wife liberty of choice (even though he by granting that liberty has unwittingly precipitated her disastrous encounter with Satan), then God is blameworthy for having left uncompelled the wills of human beings in the first place and having permitted Satan the opportunity to try them. Liberty in Eden would die were Adam the "prince" to tyrannize the will of the "subject" Eve, and the repercussions of that death would be felt all the way to the throne of God where originated the principle of government sustained by the willing and loving service of inferiors to their lord. Thus, Adam, if he would affirmEden the true mirror-imageof Heaven, must leave Eve free to choose, and trust, like God, that he has sent his creature forth sufficientto stand.8 Yet readers of Paradise Lost are nagged with doubts about Eve's sufficiency. Who can deny that when she departs from Adam on the fatal morning she seems particularly vulnerable to harm? Professor Bowers has suggested that Eve is not only vulnerable to harm but also truly incomplete without Adam, that as woman she is dependent upon man and cannot be expected to function-particularly as an intellectual beingwithout him. Eve, of course, is the only woman in the universe; God, having "peopl'd highest Heav'n / With Spirits Masculine," as Adam petulantly is to remark in Book x, created "at last /
This novelty on Earth ..." (x.889-91).9 Thus,

This is not, of course, to deny Eve's basic inferiority, but only to show that whereas Eve does not share all the gifts of Adam, she does in her very endowment as a human being possess formidable gifts. Because she lacks Adam's bent to contemplation and valor, because she is the subject being and not the head, must she, therefore, be regarded not only inferior but incomplete? It is interesting that the notion of the human being as incomplete is not first noted by Eve, but by Adam. When Adam spoke of incompleteness, moreover, he was referringto his own incompleteness without Eve. After his creation, but before God had formed Eve for him, Adam complained to God that he felt incomplete without a mate. But Man by numberis to manifest His singleimperfection, beget and Like of his like, his Imagemultipli'd, In unity defective,whichrequires Collaterallove, and dearestamity.
(vIII.422-26)

the very uniqueness of Eve presents a problem. Surely Milton in describing her and her actions means many times for us to understand her as pure female and to see her responses as contrasting vitally with those of Adam as male. Eve was created for Adam, and not he for her, and she was created with lesser excellences: "not equal, as thir sex not equal seem'd" (iv.296). While he inclines more to contemplation and valor, she inclines to softness and ''sweet attractive Grace" (iv.297-98). But even as we remark the differences between Eve and Adam, we must remark many more likenesses, for Eve is female by subclassification: her primary classification is human. Milton himself has emphasized first how Eve and

Surely, however, Milton does not mean for us to interpret Adam's complaint as a true indication of an "incompleteness" as a creature, but merely as a sign that the human being needs companionship in order to live happily, needs sexual fulfillment to express love and to propagate his species. Without Eve, Adam is in no way intellectually incomplete, howbeit he may be psychologically, socially, and physically unsatisfied without her. To a degree, the case of Eve is quite simply parallel, for she needs Adam to fulfill her nature as a woman as much as he needs her in order to function as a man. The sexes are interdependent.'0 Man and woman sustain one another by loving support and assistance, and this mutual sustenance, expressed by the interdependence of the sexes, is part, as Joseph Summers has shown, of the entire design of interdependence in the universe.11

Stella P. Revard
Nevertheless, it is evident that Eve is dependent upon Adam in one way in which he is not dependent upon her. Inferior intellectually, she turns to Adam for guidance, and as we have already noted, it is part of his function as husband that Adam render her that guidance. But the point is: does Milton wish us to see Eve not only as lesser and dependent, but also as incomplete and thereby insufficient to stand alone? Bowers has implied that it is Milton's intent to show us that the wife should not function independently of the husband and that Eve by nature and instinct is inclined to "wrong" decisions when she acts alone. Yet, Eve's very first decision as a "separate" being is a right one. Despite her fascination with her own image in the "wat'ry glass," she does not return to pine for it forever; she listens to Adam's voice, she chooses his manly beauty above her own. She is advised in her decision by God and by Adam, but hers alone is the choice and she alone is allowed to choose. (She is not compelled.) Eve's intellect, while limited, is not perverse. She can and does learn. By the side of Adam, she is inferior, yet may we not remark that Adam when viewed next to Raphael is inferior, the immaturities and the limitations of his intellect thrown sharply in relief as he discourses with the angel. No one has argued, however, that Adam's intellectual inferiority caused his sin. Adam, no matter how inferior to Raphael, was sufficient to have withstood sin. Sufficiency is the issue, not inferiority. All intellects, except God's, are limited, and if superiority of intellect alone would protect a creature against sin, then Lucifer would have remained secure and Abdiel fallen. Nowhere in his poem does Milton suggest that inferiority of intellect predisposes a creature to sin. Thus, that Eve is inferior does not mean that she is incomplete and thereby liable to sin. Indeed, the analogy between Abdiel and Eve serves to clarify what Eve's role as an inferior might have been. Although lesser in intellect and status, Abdiel triumphs, proving himself more than sufficient against the temptings of his suIs perior.12 it not possible that Eve possessed just such a potential for success as her angelic predecessor, whose history she has heard recounted? In the Abdiel episode, clearly, Milton has set forth the contest of the lesser with the greater: Abdiel is neither a Michael with "next to Almighty Arm," still less a Messiah, preeminent in wisdom as in

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might. Abdiel meets Satan on humble ground and wins victory by excelling in the very weakness and dependency that Satan despises him for. Abdiel is surprised to encounter apparent disloyalty in his leader and unprepared to exercise with Satan in rhetorical contest; but he must either speak or remain silent, compliant with disloyalty. At first, he does not attempt to reply to Satan's statements, point-by-point, to unravel the sophistries of argument. Instead, he cries out against Satan's blasphemous ingratitude: "Shalt thou give Law to God?" (v.822). Satan's words have seemed to deny the love of God, and so strongly does Abdiel believe in God's love, that his overwhelming impulse is to reaffirmwhat Satan has denied. Everything that Abdiel speaks, in fact, comes from this single impulse: his trust in a living Creator, to whom he as creature is bound by reciprocal love. The understanding by which Abdiel comes to answer Satan's lies is derived, not from acuteness of intellect, but from the enlightenment of the heart, won by steadfast love. Abdiel refuses again and again to assent to any proposition, no matter how plausible it appears, that denies God's love and demands he be ungrateful in return for God's many gifts. How does Abdiel know that Satan lies when he asserts that Messiah's exaltation is meant to demean the angels? Is it not simply that he trusts that God would not unjustly abase those very beings whom he has raised to life and happiness? His trust, however, is well grounded in experience. He points out how in the past the angels have been taught "by experience" that God is good and is "provident" of their dignity; thus he argues how illogical it is to suspect God of treachery and to assume that the decree exalting Messiah was meant in any way other than "to exalt / Our happy state under one Head more near / United" (v.829-31). Faced next with the problem of how to explain the choice of Messiah and not another being for king, Abdiel again bridges the gap between love and logic. He knows by love that God would not commit an injustice and he knows by concept that the exaltation of an equal over an equal, which is what Satan has accused God of having done, would be an injustice. Therefore, Abdiel asserts that God would only in perfect love raise a superior to govern the angels, and evidence of the Messiah's superiority appears to Abdiel easily arguable. Messiah is the begotten Son, the agent

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Eve and the Doctrineof Responsibility ParadiseLost in

Satan on the goodness of God. As we have seen, when Abdiel is forced to choose between the plausible suggestions of his seraphic lord that God is unjust and his own experience with and trust in God, he affirms the bounty of God and brands Satan the liar. When Eve, however, hears the serpent call her God the "Threat'ner," and hears him suggest that God has lied to them about the nature of the fruit in order to keep man "low and ignorant," she wavers in her trust. Ready evidence is available to her that God is "Father" and "Nourisher" to man, not "Threat'ner," that far from abasing them, God has "rais'd [them] from the dust and plac't [them]" in the garden "in all this happiness" (Iv.416-17), and that they in return "to him indeed all praises owe, / And daily thanks" for their happy lot, her own, as Eve herself has proclaimed, by "far the happier" (iv.44446). These are words that Adam and Eve themselves have spoken in gratitude and testimony to God's goodness. Thus when Eve must choose to believe in either the fantastic account of a talking serpent or the word of her God manifest in his goodness to man, the choice is one directed to the faith and not to the intellect. Had she trusted God, had she been mindful of what experience had taught her, Eve would have affirmed that a good God cannot commend evil and withhold good. Therefore, if the serpent had commended the tree which God had warned them to avoid, the serpent's commendation must be suspect. Eve's love would have led her to this logical conclusion and would have guarded her from the logical fallacy which she actually commits when addressing the tree: "[God's] forbidding / Commends thee more, while it infers the good / By thee communicated, and our want" (ix.753-55). Eve needed no more than a zealous love for God to protect her from Satan's lies, for to the loving creature, any word or any being who would discredit the truth of God is the lie. Whether Eve, knowing the serpent'sduplicity, would have recognized Satan in the serpent, one cannot positively assert-it was unnecessary to her salvation that she do so. Yet one suspects strongly that implicit with her knowledge of his fraud would have been the recognition of his true identity. Abdiel, after he had denied Satan, named him the Apostate, the rebel against right Reason and Nature; Eve could have been similarly enlightened. Thus, when one says then that Eve falls de-

"by whom / As by his word the Father Made / All Things" (v.835-37). To choose, moreover, a superior drawn from their own ranks, says Abdiel, is no injustice but a sign of honor which manifests the peculiar care of their God. Abdiel has been led to a knowledge of God's ways and to a logical refutation of Satan's by love unwavering, but not blind. First he has affirmed his trust in God, then he has been given arguments by which to demonstrate his belief. His, however, is not the victory of intellect, but of faith. Curiously enough, Eve, when first tempted by Satan, within sight of the forbidden tree, has an impulse to steadfastness much like Abdiel's. Her reply to the serpent indicates that she knows God as the highest authority over her life, to whom she owes unquestioned obedience. Serpent,we mighthavespar'dour cominghither,
... of this Tree we may not taste nor touch;

God so commanded,and left that Command Sole Daughterof his voice; the rest, we live Law to ourselves,our Reason is our Law.
(ix.647, 651-54)

Clearly, Eve understands the requirements of her condition, the necessity of maintaining loyalty as the link with God. That she knows the link with God is manifest in love is evident in the hymns by which she with Adam has glorified God as the giver of all good things, and has rendered thanks and love to him for his gifts. Could Eve, supported by her own knowledge of what God requires of her and upheld by the assurance that God is a loving Father, have unravelled the coils of Satanic rhetoric, have separated the plausible from the true, and unmasked Satan in the serpent? If one objects that these intellectual exercises are too difficult for one simple and gullible woman, one must remark that it was not the intellectually able angels-the politically astute Beelzebub and the rhetorically expert Belial who unmasked Satan in Book v. Wisdom and not intellect is needed, and it is that lowly wisdom of which Raphael spoke in Book vIII to the adventurous Adam. Only the wisdom of the heart will suffice.13 It is true that Eve is taken at a disadvantage in that she had no reason to suspect fraud in the serpent, but neither had Abdiel any clue that the morning star, Lucifer, was malevolent. Eve and Abdiel prove different-and this is the key to the one's failure and the other's success-primarily in how each responds to indirect attack, launched by

Stella P. Revard
ceived, it does not mean that Eve's intellect fails because it is innately weak when she is divided from her superior Adam, but that her intellect falters when it would have been upheld had her faith and love for God not first failed. Deceived and misled though she is, however, Eve completes her act knowing that it is a violation of her promise to God. Stupefied by the serpent, she remains clearheaded in recognizing that, though she hopes to succeed in her disobedience, her act can have no other name. Undoubtedly her passion overcomes her reason, when her desire for self-enhancement is stronger than her will to obey God. Yet passion in this instance is not a peculiarly female disability, the disposition to be emotional rather than reasonable, as Professor Bowers has argued. Passion is the very essence of all sin, be it Satan's, Eve's, or Adam's. Satan had fallen when his passions of envy and pride overwhelmed him; Adam is to fall when his passion for Eve predominates. Would Satan have been unable to tempt Eve had Adam stood by her side or failed to succeed if he had encountered Adam instead? These questions are pure speculative second-guessing, but they serve a purpose. Nothing in our knowledge of Satan leads us to think that he would not have been ingenious enough to have used another ploy (adapting the temptation to those tempted) had he encountered a circumstance different from the one that he found. Certainly, he finds it easier to seduce the divided Adam and Eve, but does that mean that he could not have seduced them together or seduced Adam alone? If we blame the circumstance of Eve's fall or even if we blame the person who produced the circumstance, we fall into the same error that the postlapsarian Adam and Eve do,. as they attempt to withdraw blame from themselves, assigning it to the other or to sheer accident. Milton, throughout Paradise Lost, is concerned with the individual's commitment to God; that multitudes err is to him not so significant as the fact that the individual can remain true. The key to the Miltonic universe is that each creature was

77

made by God so that he might freely and without compulsion choose to serve God. Each and every creature must make that decision, and the very groundwork of that free choice is that nothing in the inherent nature of any creature predisposes him to failure. So says God in Book II, speaking of the framing of Man I made him just and right, to Sufficient have stood, thoughfree to fall. Such I createdall th' EtherealPowers And Spirits, both them who stood and them who fail'd; Freelythey stood who stood, and fell who fell.
(III.98-102)

It is so emphasized in this passage that sufficiency is granted to all creatures that we cannot deny sufficiency alone to Eve, or grant it conditionally without taking from her as well the potentiality of freely making her commitment to God. Throughout his poem, the moments of triumph are those when an individual in the very throes of dubious circumstance chooses to affirm his love for God: the Son in Book II, Abdiel in v, Enoch in xi. Ironically the circumstancesof the falls of Eve and Adam are those when potentially the individual might have confirmed his allegiance. It is almost as though Milton were saying that truly it is in the splendid isolation of free choice that the individual attains the highest nobility or the basest evil. Eve in Book Ix is granted such a moment. If we describe it as one in which Eve is already through her inherent weakness or through the negligence of Adam pregiven to sin, we have forgotten that in the Miltonic universe the Almighty Father guards for each individual the right (indeed the responsibility) to dispose freely his being to triumph or to fail. That Eve fails is part of the tragedy of the poem, but if her failure is to have meaning, we must grant with our whole hearts that she possessed the capacity for success. SouthernIllinois University Edwardsville

Notes
1A. J. A. Waldock, ParadiseLost and Its Critics(CamUniv. Press, 1947),pp. 30-41. Waldock bridge:Cambridge suggests, as well, that "if we were obliged to choose from the series of events constitutingthe double Fall one act (or failureto act) of which we might quite fairlysay that upon it the whole issue depended,it would probablyhave to be Adam's weakness here" [in permitting Eve to set forth alone on the fatefulday]."Thepoint seemsto me a pleasant one, but I have naturallyno intentionof pressingit, and I presumethat nobody, howeverbent on trackingdown the

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Eve and the Doctrine of Responsibility in Paradise Lost

Husband's will / Thine shall submit, hee over thee shall
rule."
8 In her discussionof the separation scene, Diane Kelsey McColley ("Free Will and Obedience in the Separation Scene of ParadiseLost,"SEL, 12, Winter1972,103-20)has arrivedat conclusionssimilarto my own. independently 9 It must be remarked,however,that Adam in this antifeminist outburst is only technically correct. To him all spirits have appearedas masculine, but Raphael had assuredhim that spiritscan assumeeithersex at will and thus in the true sense includeboth masculineand feminine. 10The need of humanbeingsin the senseof "moral"support has no place in the unfallen Eden. Whateverassistance Adam gives to Eve before the fall, he does not and should not uphold her from falling.Thereis a world of difference between the way Adam comforts and cheers Eve after her bad dreamin v and the way he, himself encouraged by her, comfortshertearsin x, supportsher disconsolate spirits,and turnsher from thoughtsof self-destruction.

will care to cause of the Fall to its farthestlurking-place, find the ultimate secret of it in Adam's lack of firmness here."
2

Dennis H. Burden, The Logical Epic (Cambridge,

Mass.: HarvardUniv. Press, 1967), pp. 76-96. 3 FredsonBowers,"Adam, Eve, and the Fall in Paradise
Lost," PMLA, 84 (March 1969), 265.
4 Burdenhas commentedupon the essentialerrorwhich Adam and Eve make here in assigning their fall to some irresistiblefatality and not to the mistake committed by free will. 5 In Book xi, Michael'srejoinder Adam on the subject to of male responsibility reinforcesthe point the Son has made here. When Adam once more bewailsthe fact that woman leadsman to sin, Michaelremindshimthat man as woman's that placeaboveher. superioris responsiblefor maintaining slackness" Man's miserybegins when through"effeminate he, "who should better hold his place / By wisdom, and superior gifts received,"yields to temptation(xi.634-36). 6 Bowers, p. 270. John C. Ulreich (" 'Sufficient to Have Stood': Adam's Responsibilityin Book ix," Milton Quarterly, 5, 1971, 38-42) has argued in response to Bowers' with contentionthat the fall is predetermined Adam'sinitial that Adam's action cannot be called "depermissiveness, liberatelysinful," and the incidentis too slight to bear the weight of all our woe. Ulreich suggeststhat Bowers'argument obscures"Milton's crucial distinctionbetweeninnocence and experience." 7 It is part of Eve's punishmentafter the fall that she must submit to her husband'srule. See x.195-96: "to thy

1 "The Two Great Sexes in Paradise Lost," SEL, 2

(1962), 1-26. Rpt. in The Muse's Method (Cambridge, Mass.: HarvardUniv. Press, 1962). 12 Barbara K. Lewalski's comments upon this passage and others in the article have been extremelyhelpful. 13That wisdom is the gift of faith is one of the principal tenets of the New Testament.See Jamesi.5-6. If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally,and upbraidethnot; and it shall be given him. But let him ask in faith, nothing wavering.