"As Thir Sex Not Equal Seem'd"-Milton's Idea Of Woman In His Depiction Of Eve In Paradise Lost

In Paradise Lost,English poet John Milton rewrites the biblical story about Adam and Eve's Fall.Centering around Eve,this thesis aims to discuss Milton's idea of woman by juxtaposing the image of Eve and other female characters in Milton's oeuvre.Paradise Lost is primarily a Christian epic,and thereby will be treated with due attention to its rewriting of the Bible—its inheritance and transcendence of the Holy Book.Milton inherits the stories and tales from the Old Testament and follows the Pauline Epistles in the New Testament.However,he does not treat them as dogmas,but as sources of his inspiration.As a result,his Eve becomes an early modern puritan housewife.His idea of woman is then expressed in a three-fold framework—Eve's spiritual significance,her domestic position,and her responsibility in the Fall,corresponding respectively to the birth of Eve in Eden,her marriage to Adam,and their Fall.The body part of this paper is thus divided into these three parts.First,as for woman's spirituality,Milton depicts Eve as a mirror character of Sin by describing Eve as made from “a left-side rib.” This implied contempt for Eve and woman is a very important part of Milton's complex attitude towards woman.Then,as for woman's position,Milton rewrites the Ovidian rape theme in many places of his works so as to promote his idea of domestic equality,but he understands domestic equality in a framework guided by the Pauline Head-and-Body metonymy,therefore in a way similar to his construction of the Republic and the Church.Last,as for the responsibility woman should take in the Fall,Milton rejects the seventeenth-century misogyny by having the Archangel and the Son refute Adam,the mouthpiece of his misogynistic contemporaries.However,his refutation of the seventeenth-century misogyny unconsciously debases female and femininity,therefore rendering itself limited and questionable.In the end,this thesis concludes that Milton's idea of woman is very complex.He has certainly transcended his time on certain issues such as woman's rights to be educated and their freedom to divorce,but he is also a limited seventeenth-century man who believes woman to be spiritually and intelligently inferior to man.Factors behind such complexity are the poet's identity as both humanist and puritan,and the tension between enlightenment thoughts and traditional theology.