“Higher Argument”: Paradise Lost 1665–1669Milton’s epic inscribes gender hierarchy, though in a complex and nuanced ver-
sion. Adam and Eve are described first in terms of their shared nobility, majesty, and
authority over all other creatures; their moral and spiritual equality is based on their
creation as God’s images, exhibiting “Truth, wisdome, Sanctitude severe and pure”
(4.287–95). Then their different physical qualities are interpreted as emblems of
their unequal natures and roles: “For contemplation hee and valour formd, / For
softness shee and sweet attractive Grace, / Hee for God only, shee for God in him”
(4.297–9). Later Adam, after admitting to Raphael his unsettling passion for Eve,
says that he knows she is inferior to himself in qualities both of mind and body:
For well I understand in the prime end
Of Nature her th’inferiour, in the mind
And inward Faculties, which most excell,
In outward also her resembling less
His image who made both, and less expressing
The character of that Dominion giv’n
O’er other Creatures. (8.540–6)Raphael confirms this judgment, urging Adam not to attribute “overmuch to things
/ Less excellent,” to cultivate proper self-esteem so that Eve will “acknowledge
thee her Head,” to eschew passion, and to love Eve’s higher qualities as a means to
make a Neoplatonic ascent to heavenly love (8.565–75). More authoritative still,
the Son, judging Adam after the Fall, confirms that Adam’s proper role is to act as
Eve’s head and governor, not make an idol of her to set in place of God:
Was shee thy God, that her thou didst obey
Before his voice, or was shee made thy guide,
Superior, or but equal, that to her
Thou did’st resigne thy Manhood, and the Place
Wherein God set thee above her made of thee,
And for thee, whose perfection far excell’d
Hers in all real dignitie: Adornd
Shee was indeed, and lovely to attract
Thy Love, not thy Subjection, and her Gifts
Were such as under Government well seem’d,
Unseemly to beare rule, which was thy part
And person, had’st thou known thy self aright. (10.145–56)Yet this conventional view of gender is destabilized by elements of Milton’s
imaginative vision that invite a more egalitarian conception: if Milton could not
fully work through such conflicts, he did provide liberalizing perspectives upon
which some later feminists could and did build.^140 One such is the poem’s unusually
fluid concept of hierarchy, the concomitant of Milton’s monist ontology: if humans