Emma Goodridge



Emma Goodridge

Dr. Campbell

English 474: Seminar in Milton

22 July 2008

Adam and Eve Reflected: Using Typology to Reconcile the Inequality in Eden

Perhaps the one aspect of Milton’s epic, Paradise Lost, that can be universally acknowledged and accepted is its complexity. No matter how many times or ways we look at Milton’s grand retelling of the story of the first humans on earth and their disastrous ruin, it always seems to remain messy, confusing, and frustrating. But it is Milton’s poetry that makes the work so beautiful and the complication that makes it so compelling and worth the sweet agony of suffering through such challenging ideas. Is this what compels critics come back over and over again to Paradise Lost and devote entire careers to reading and rereading? It is a text rich with variety and possibility, even after three hundred and forty one years of existence. Such a work provides great challenges to the modern reader, from those of religious and theological nature to current hot-button issues concerning gender and sex. It is these complexities that provide the greatest need for recompense; how does one love Milton when his ideas on sexual equality (firmly based in his century and theology, it is important to acknowledge) do not come even close to 2008’s standards? How can one even begin to answer such a question and can a reasonable answer even be expected? It is too easy to simply dismiss Milton as a man of his times or condemn him as a misogynist; he does not elevate women to he status of men, but neither does he destroy them. Instead he seems to treat Eve as an important part of a strict hierarchy, with God (presumably the Son, also) and Adam above her; but as a female reader, it is unclear how to reconcile Eve’s clear inferior status in Eden.

The study and use of typology, looking at Biblical history to find “types,” reaches back to Dante and forward to today, as literary critics continue to find value in such an old method of analysis. In Milton studies, specifically, it has been used in many ways, particularly being useful in the reading of Paradise Lost; from Neil Graves reaching assessments on Milton’s own theological beliefs, Edward Tayler discovering the primary purposes of the epic, and Dennis Danielson justifying more desirable plot developments, typology has seemed to truly become an adjustable lens through which to view Milton’s world, a kaleidoscope possibilities colored with the same smudges of truth. Few critics, though, have used typology to help unravel the relationships in Paradise Lost, though Shannon Murray in her essay “Postlapsarian Types and Prelapsarian Parallels: Strategies for Reading and Rereading Paradise Lost” does attempt to explain the relationships between God, the Son, Adam and Eve, though she does not explicitly address Eve’s perceived inferiority. Considering typology to primarily apply to human history and events after the fall, Murray develops an alternative way of reading the time before the fall, based in the traditional typological process; instead of looking forward and back in time, Murray’s strategy points in a vertical direction, grounding characters in a firmly established hierarchy rather than in a permanently established history. But her theory alone cannot offer complete answers. Regina Schwartz, in her article, “From Shadowy Types to Shadowy Types: the Unendings of Paradise Lost,” sees typology not as an enlightening, completed process, but rather one whose answers remain in shadow. It is the lack of these truly definitive conclusions that allow typology to perhaps apply more flexibly and fluidly to Milton’s text. Other critics, too, can offer insights leading to “typological response,” so to speak, for Eve’s lower status in Paradise. So, hopefully this synthetic method will allows readers to see the relationship between Adam and Eve, not as one of stronger and weaker, superior and inferior, but rather as a reflection of the relationship between God and man. What if Milton’s own words in Paradise Lost offer a satisfactory answer?: “Though what if earth/ Be but the shadow of heav’n, and things therein/ Each to other like, more than on earth is thought?” (V.574-76). What if Milton’s Heaven truly offers a mirror in which to view the events on Earth, particular those of the first man and woman?

In what seems to be the strictest definition, as found in The Milton Encyclopedia, typology is the study of “the provincial design of history by looking at the Bible and finding ‘types’” (Hunter 100). Types are normally found in the Old Testament and they have a corresponding antitype occurring the New Testament. Noah, for example, an Old Testament figure, is traditionally considered a type of Christ, whose antitype, is Christ as he is found New Testament. Edward Tayler, in his book Milton’s Poetry, explains typology as something that allows people to see how God works on an eternal scale; by studying types and antitypes we can potentially see God’s plans with time and history. He delightfully compares God to a poet: “It should be obvious that God in shaping history took on the role of the late medieval and Renaissance poet, writing an allegory of people, things, and events” (88). Milton too, as the author of Paradise Lost, is following in the footsteps of his God, the author of history; both have the ability to manipulate characters and time, creating fulfilled and unfulfilled meanings and events, presumably with larger purpose. There are several observations about typology made by William Madesen in From Shadowy Types to Truths: Studies in Milton’s Symbolism, the first being that a type is a historical, not a mythical, event or person. Also, he insists there must be both similarities and difference between a type and its antitype, that the meaning of a type is never known until fulfilled by its antitype, and finally, a type only looks forward in time and not up the great chain of being (Madsen 4-5). While these observations are generally accepted as the basis of typological analysis, Shannon Murray takes issue with Madsen’s fourth point in her essay “Postlapsarian Types and Prelapsarian Parallels: Strategies for Reading and Rereading Paradise Lost”; after the fall, types forecasting towards the future and the redeemer are fine, but before the fall, time is eternal, so types are instead cast upward towards God.

However Murray does see Adam’s typological significance realized through Christ in the New Testament, and acknowledges their importance to each other in Milton’s Paradise Lost, both before and after the fall. This is still an important part of her argument. She views typology as “concerned primarily with the significance of events at and after the fall and with mankind’s temporal relationship with God” (Murray 213), which contrasts to the time before the fall, in “prelapsarian Paradise.” Because they are “yet unfallen” they have no need for and no sense of the history they will be apart of, the history that leads to the redeemer and, Adam and Eve must seek an understanding of their relationship to God and each other in a different way. Murray suggests that Milton develops a new kind of typology for the prelapsarian world, one where Adam and Eve first learn their place by hierarchy, followed by typology after the fall. In the previously mentioned essay, Murray explains: “Just as the revelation in time of similar types allows Adam to comprehend the identity and role of Christ and his own place in relation to the Messiah, so the vertical movement before the fall from man to God through God’s various images allows mankind to comprehend God and its own place in relation to God” (214). It is Adam’s typological connection to the son throughout the epic (not just after the fall) that allows us to adopt a new sort of typological comparison, discovering what Murray calls “prelapsarian parallels.” Instead of looking forward in time to find Christ, we look eternally upwards towards God, from Eve to Adam to the Son and finally, to God. It is this method of thinking that can perhaps allow for an explanation of the treatment of Eve, in both her relation to Adam and to God.

In Paradise Lost, the relationship between Adam and Eve is clearly meant to be hierarchical; it does not have positive connotations. In Book IV, this is expressed clearly in the description of the first humans:

though both

Not equal, as their sex not equal seemed;

For contemplation he and valour formed,

For softness she and sweet attractive grace,

He for God only, she for God in him. (295-99)

While it could be interpreted that the inequality here is simply superficial, the very adjectives used to describe the couple are strikingly different. Adam is formed for “contemplation” and Eve for “softness,” a stark contrast that evokes a more intellectual and capable male figure and a more emotional and ornamental female. This coupled with Adam’s creation for “God only” and Eve’s creation for God in Adam – what are the exact implications of such a statement? Though Eve appears to have the ability to commune with God as Adam does, her relationship with Him is clearly not characterized in the same way. Milton connects Adam directly to God in line 299, while Eve is left out of such an immediate connection; she is connected to God only through Adam. Well, that may very well be all that is necessary for a fulfilling life with God, but it hardly seems fair. In these five lines, women already appear at the bottom of the totem pole. Milton continues to directly assert Adam’s domination in Book IV, when Eve relates to Adam, “God is thy law, thou mine: to know no more/ Is woman’s happiest knowledge and her praise” (637-39). Why on earth should Eve be satisfied with Adam as her law? Perhaps these words were spoken through a veil of love, which can cause humans to unduly praise their lovers, but without that filter Eve seems to be simply conceding to Adam. Once again, the man is closer to God; the woman sees her husband as having God’s law, while she has his, and she does not even need to know anything more. This is simply ridiculous; this is clearly not one of Milton’s finest moments in Paradise Lost. Murray, too, in “Postlapsarian Types and Prelapsarian Parallels,” points out Adam and Eve’s imbalanced relationship, as it is expressed in Nature, through the sun and the moon. In Book 8 Raphael describes creation, and here the imagery is not only that of superior and inferior, but also explicitly masculine and feminine:

and other suns perhaps

With their attendant moons thou will descry

Communicating male and female light,

Which two great sexes animate the world,

Stor’d in each orb perhaps with some that live (148-52)

Murray explains that the angel is telling Adam how the natural world operates and how Adam and Eve should imitate or emulate this arrangement. Clearly Adam in this case is the sun and Eve is the “attendant moon” off of which the sun’s light is reflected. These examples clearly illustrate the hierarchical nature of Adam and Eve’s relationship, and while it is not oppressive, it is certainly not equal. How can one claim that in both Adam and Eve “the image of their glorious maker shone” if one version of that image is so obviously considered the first? (IV.192)

The separate and varied creations of Eve and Adam also contribute to the suggestion that Eve is the weaker sex in the eyes of Milton and in the eyes of Milton’s God. The two anecdotes can offer insight into their relationship. Murray begins the comparison by explaining that both Adam and Eve tell the stories of their own creations to “audiences of comparable stature” (218), meaning that each explains it to someone directly above them in the hierarchy: Eve relates her story to Adam, while Adam relates his to an angel. Adam is on a higher rung than Eve, and the angel is on a higher rung than Adam. The specific details of each can also provide insights into the superior-inferior dynamic. In Book IV, Eve remembers:

I thither went

With unexperienced thought, and laid me down

On the green bank, to look into the clear

Smooth lake, that to me seemed another sky (456-459).

Eve remains lying down, looking at the lake upon waking. She is reluctant to leave her own reflection in the water, and though she acknowledges the lake appears to be like the sky, it is only a reflection of the heavens, not the actual thing. Murray adds to this analysis, recalling that Eve is hesitant to acknowledge her “author” and reluctant to follow Adam’s voice; she prefers the look of her reflection (218). When placed against Adam’s initial reaction when he is created, the stark contrast is obvious. Adam relates to Raphael in Book VIII: “Straight towards heaven my wondering eyes I turned,/ And gazed a while the ample sky” (257-258). He “instinctively” springs up after a moment (VIII.259). There is no lazing around for Adam as there was for Eve. One of his first thoughts and actions is to look to the sky, look to Heaven; Murray believes that Adam is acknowledging his creator and has already discovered, through reason, the existence of God (218). And all Eve does is gaze at her own pretty face? Eve certainly appears to be the more vain and thoughtless of the two; does that make her weaker? Perhaps. She is the one to fall first, being deceived by the serpent, who, in part, does appeal to her vanity. He calls her “goddess humane” (IX.732) and explains that her dim eyes will become clear if she eats from the fruit. Perhaps Eve’s portrayal as the weaker, female is a way of explaining why woman falls first.

If this was all there was to Milton’s treatment of Eve and the relationship between her and Adam in Paradise Lost, feminists (and even casual readers) could not be blamed for rejecting the epic, or at least rejecting Milton in part. However, perhaps these characterizations are acceptable and even enlightening once viewed through the lens of typology. We return again to Madsen’s From Shadowy Types to Truths, which reminds us on page 112 that in Paradise Lost, Milton sees the journey to God as a journey of degrees:

Well hast thou taught the way that might direct

Our knowledge, and the scale of Nature set

From centre to circumference, where on

In contemplation of created things

By steps we may ascend to God. (V.508-12)

So hierarchy is clearly important, to Milton and to his God, and therefore to Adam and Eve, as it is the way to reach God, but is there a way to reconcile the seemingly sexist hierarchy found within the text? Perhaps, and it begins with typology. Typology allows Adam to be considered a type of Christ. Dennis Danielson, in his essay “Through the Telescope of Typology: What Adam Should Have Done,” succinctly explains the typological tradition of Adam as a type of Christ. He explains that Saint Paul in 1 Corinthians 15.45 describes Christ as “the last Adam” and in Book XI of Paradise Lost in line 383, Milton refers to Christ as “Our second Adam” (122). The opening line of the epic itself also connects the Son and Adam:

Of man’s first disobedience, and the fruit

Of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste

Brought death into the world, and all our woe,

with the loss of Eden, till one greater man

Restore us, and regain the blissful seat. (I.1-5)

Adam (and Eve as well) caused man to fall but in Christ what was lost shall be regained; the story is completed in that “one greater man” to come: Christ. Murray reiterates these connections in “Postlapsarian Types and Prelapsarian Parallels,” adding that their parallel is deepened by the fact that both are favored children, or sons, of God and because of that Satan has decided to attempt to destroy both (215). It is by way of this great connection, that of Adam and the Son, which Murray’s ideas on “prelapsarian parallels” really take hold. Because these parallels work vertically, upwards towards God, they connect characters hierarchically, which Murray sees as having two major purposes. The first is simply to help each being understand his or her place and the behavior that is required as a result of that place, and the second is to help understand the beings higher up the chain of being (216), and perhaps eventually and ultimately fully realizing God. Murray clarifies: “As typology in history is to lead one gradually toward an understanding of an unknowable event in the future, so the patters in the unfallen hierarchy re to lead one upwards to the unknowable” (216). This concept of vertical movement in Eden and hierarchal relationships can inform one’s reading of Paradise Lost, as in this the characters can be considered “images” of each other, beginning with the most important Son and Father: “Hidden by cloud or obscured by over-brightness, the Father’s face is invisible, but the Son’s acts as a mirror, an image in which the Father can be found reflected” (216). This continues down the hierarchical line; the relationship between Adam and Eve, therefore, is meant to be a reflection of the perfect relationship between the Father and Son. In “Postlapsarian Types and Prelapsarian Parallels,” Murray breaks down the crux of her theory:

Mankind, then, learns of God through the analogy of human relationships, and the hierarchy of

characters is constructed by a series of images: Christ and man are images of God, Eve is an

image of Adam, and their children will be their images. Before the fall, the two humans

function in a kind of ratio leading to God…After the fall, they require more mediation in the

person of Christ. (218)

How does this, then, satisfactorily rectify Milton’s treatment of Eve throughout the text, as previously discussed? If we are to believe Murray’s analysis, then we are able to view Adam and Eve’s hierarchical relationship as a parallel, or perhaps a type, of the relationship between the Father and the Son. While God’s relationship with Christ is considered hierarchical also, it seems clear that Christ is not thought to be weaker or inferior. Instead, the perceived problems with the inequality of Adam and Eve’s relationship can now be seen in a more positive light, as a reflection of the ultimate relationship is Heaven, that of the Father and the Son. The example of the sun and the moon from Book 8 parallels this idea the best. The moon and the sun are majestic, beautiful, and also independent objects. The sun does not need the moon to exist and the moon does not need the sun to exist either. However, one cannot look directly at the sun for very long and one cannot see the moon from Earth without illumination of some kind, so an arrangement is made: the sun’s light can be reflected off the moon, which can then be seen as a result. If the sun and the moon can represent the Father and the Son, and also represent Adam and Eve, clearly the two relationships are parallels of each other. Eve is perhaps not inferior, as Milton text seems to suggest, but instead, when looked at through the lens of typology, Eve’s place at Adam’s side seems to be equal to the Son’s place at God’s side, on a lesser, human scale of course. Perhaps, too, Adam and Eve’s relationship may be considered as a model of mankind’s relationship to God.

How far can the “prelapsarian parallels” take us? Are they as valid as typological fulfillments? Madsen, in From Shadowy Types to Truths, would probably say no, because he does not see typology as capable to look vertically, up the chain of being. For him, typology is not a hierarchical thing, it is a time thing. Murray clearly disagrees, and if it was only about looking at history, how could typology be useful in coming to terms with more sensitive matters in the text, like gender issues? Obviously some questions cannot be answered by this method. For example, why, if Adam and Eve’s relationship is a reflection of the Son and Father’s relationship, is Eve characterized as weaker? Why does she fall first and not Adam? Obviously, no method, typological or otherwise, can completely explain every aspect of an issue. Perhaps Schwartz is right in her article, “From Shadowy Types to Shadowy Types”: perhaps there is no “definitive understanding”, perhaps it all ends up being a handful of “dim apprehensions” (124). I do hate to think so, though. While many questions have been answered, Milton’s Paradise Lost seems to ultimately adopt the “shadowy types to shadowy types” attitude. While some answers concerning the relationship between Adam and Eve emerge using typology, the discussion seems to only open more doors to explore and new avenues to pursue. The ultimate question of the validity of these analyses seems to be the question of: can we view the things on Earth (both before and after the fall) as a reflection of things in Heaven? As mentioned in the introduction, Milton suggests that the Earth may be a shadow of heaven (V.574-76). But Madsen points out that in Book VII.70-72, Adam denies this very idea: “Great things, and full of wonder in our ears, / Far differing from this World, thou hast reveal’d / Devine Interpreter.” So who is right? Milton? Adam? The critics? Perhaps no one should claim to have ultimate authority over Paradise Lost, as its complexities seem to rule more fully than time, history, narrative, character or author. Through perhaps Milton understood his epic to be a parallel of life on Earth: complicated, beautiful, heartbreaking, and hurtling toward an end no one can quite catch up with. Perhaps with our interpretations of Paradise Lost we too are waiting for the same moment, all of Adam’s children continue to wait for:

and in a moment will create

Another world, out of one man a race

Of men innumerable, there to dwell,

Not here; till, by degrees of merit raised,

They open to themselves at length the way

Up hither, under long obedience tried;

And Earth be changed to Heaven, and Heaven to Earth,

One kingdom, joy and union without end” (XII.154-162).

If this passage is any indication, perhaps readers of Paradise Lost, too, wait for the time when their understanding of the text will match their experience with it. As Milton is a fan of delay, perhaps we should remind ourselves to not simply grasp for ultimate endings and conclusions but rather enjoy the experience of the complexities and the time working through them and us.

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