“Higher Argument”: Paradise Lost 1665–1669and angels differ only in degree and humans can expect the gradual refinement of
their natures to angelic status, the distance between male and female on the hierar-
chical scale must be minimal. Moreover, Raphael’s comment that creatures hold
their place on that scale “as neerer to him [God] plac’t or neerer tending” (5.476)
allows that if Adam is at first “plac’t” marginally higher than Eve, their final places
will depend on how they develop, whither they “tend.” In line with this, in Milton’s
unique representation of the state of innocence, Adam and Eve are both expected
to grow, change, and develop in virtue by properly pruning and directing their
erroneous apprehensions and perilous impulses, as well as their burgeoning garden.
Another complicating element is Milton’s concept of companionate marriage,
an advanced notion as he developed it in the divorce tracts, and he imagined it in
much more gracious and idealized terms in the poem. Pleading with God for a
mate, Adam points to the great disparity between humans and beasts and to the
infinite distance between humans and God, then asks for an equal life partner:
Among unequals what societie
Can sort, what harmonie or true delight?
Which must be mutual, in proportion due
Giv’n and receiv’d;...
Of fellowship I speak
Such as I seek, fit to participate
All rational delight. (8.383–91)God states that he always intended exactly such a mate for Adam: “Thy likeness, thy
fit help, thy other self, / Thy wish exactly to thy hearts desire” (8.450–1). Conso-
nant with this vision of marriage, Adam and Eve’s roles and talents are not sharply
segregated by gender, as convention would dictate. Eve performs certain domestic
tasks – ornamenting the couple’s bedroom bower and preparing and serving the
noonday meal when Raphael visits – but otherwise the couple share the physical
and intellectual activities of Edenic life. They take equal responsibility for their world,
laboring together to maintain its eco-system: in Milton’s unique version of Eden
their pruning, cutting, and cultivating activities are absolutely necessary to keep the
garden from returning to wild. Unique to Milton’s Eden also is the fact that Eve
names the plants and thereby shares in the authority over nature, the intuitive knowl-
edge, and the power of symbolization that Adam’s naming of the animals signifies,
albeit in lesser degree.^141 She also receives the same education as Adam, though not
in the same manner. As decorum dictated, Adam asked Raphael questions (often
framing them faultily) while Eve listened in silence as the angel explained the nature
of being, rendered an account of the War in Heaven as a brief epic, and recounted
his story of Creation as a hexaemeron. For both, the Edenic curriculum included
ontology, metaphysics, moral philosophy, history, epic poetry, and divine revela-
tion. Eve missed the astronomy lesson when she left to tend her flowers, but the