Paradise Lost Milton s Hidden Misogyny - 2846 Words

Olivia McDonald FALL 2014 Milton and the Bible (Seminar) Professor Fulton Paradise Lost: Milton’s Hidden Misogyny Paradise Lost tells a tale infused with archaic gender hierarchies that were not at all unique to the traditions of Western patriarchy of the time. John Milton called upon the Classic traditions of the time, as well as his own cultural and religious norms, in order to retell the Biblical story of Adam and Eve. Milton’s Eve, despite being a more nuanced character than her Biblical namesake, seems to engage in the most risky behavior compared to Adam; puzzling when they are of the same flesh, and created in the same image. Milton writes Eve as the archetypal Renaissance woman, and to charge him outright with blatant misogyny would be difficult to do. Nevertheless, Milton wrote Paradise Lost at a time when his views on women would have matured with his age, experience, and Biblical knowledge. Although Eve is slightly more refined than Milton’s other female character (the ne’er-do-well Dalila of Samson Agonistes, for example),she is still written to be a character t hat exhibits sinful qualities in a place where sin is not supposed to exist. While re-fashioning the Book of Genesis in his epic, Milton goes out of his way to portray Eve as the reason for the damnation of Mankind, taking liberties and creative license with the Bible to paint her as the downfall of Paradise. Using â€Å"the inescapable touches of patriarchy and misogyny that have shaped and are still