Divided We Fall:Gender, Androgyny, and the troubled union of Adam and Eve
Summary :
Table of Contents
- Introduction
- Visions of unity
- Visions of division
- Conclusion
Abstract
The single most important question at the center of John Milton's Paradise Lost is the question of predestination. The poem hinges on the assertion that mankind has been created "sufficient to have stood, yet free to fall" (III.99); if we do not accept this assertion, and instead believe ourselves faced with a vision of mankind created insufficient and therefore destined to fall, Milton's entire theodicy dissolves, leaving us with only a cruel God, a doomed race, and a story more akin to a simple fable than a complex epic. However, even if we do accept this basic, somewhat paradoxical premise that mankind's sufficiency and free will can coexist, we are still a far cry from having "solved" the problem of the fall itself. If mankind has been created sufficient, why do adam and eve eventually - and, despite all claims of sufficiency, seemingly inevitably - fall?
Though it is possible to extract from Paradise Lost a wide variety of answers to this question, the one Milton makes most readily available seems to fault eve - and not just eve, but eve as a microcosmic example of the broader, problematic "effeminate slackness" (XI.634) on which adam is quick to blame his own subsequent transgression. The next question, then, is the question of eve's sufficiency: is eve "sufficient to have stood," on her own? Or is she doomed to fall the moment she separates from adam, him being somehow more sufficient? An examination of eve's questionable sufficiency proves impossible, I believe, without a simultaneous examination of gender differences in Paradise Lost. Laying blame on a specifically "effeminate slackness" suggests a direct causal relationship between feminine influence and the fall. While many Feminist critics would posit that this suggestion is a rather blatant manifestation of Milton's misogynistic tendencies, others argue that these allegations are only superficially founded, and that Milton's rendering of gender difference as it impacts the fall is a good deal more ambiguous than most Feminist criticism allows.
Though it is possible to extract from Paradise Lost a wide variety of answers to this question, the one Milton makes most readily available seems to fault eve - and not just eve, but eve as a microcosmic example of the broader, problematic "effeminate slackness" (XI.634) on which adam is quick to blame his own subsequent transgression. The next question, then, is the question of eve's sufficiency: is eve "sufficient to have stood," on her own? Or is she doomed to fall the moment she separates from adam, him being somehow more sufficient? An examination of eve's questionable sufficiency proves impossible, I believe, without a simultaneous examination of gender differences in Paradise Lost. Laying blame on a specifically "effeminate slackness" suggests a direct causal relationship between feminine influence and the fall. While many Feminist critics would posit that this suggestion is a rather blatant manifestation of Milton's misogynistic tendencies, others argue that these allegations are only superficially founded, and that Milton's rendering of gender difference as it impacts the fall is a good deal more ambiguous than most Feminist criticism allows.
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Divided We Fall:Gender, Androgyny, and the troubled union of Adam and Eve
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