[Milton-L] Eve's curls (reply to William Moeck)

[James Rovira]

Can't we do better than simple moral judgments against Milton's notion
of subjection?   Shouldn't we try to understand it, how it was framed,
what functions it served?  I think we can take for granted that we
don't think today the same way Milton did in the 17thC.

Within a system with a good God as its absolute head, some degree of
subjection must be good, right, and part of the created order.
Subjection is part of the cosmos.  Everything is subject to God, first
of all, and that primary subjection determines not only the creature's
relationship to God, but all creatures' relationships with one
another.  So when Satan rebels, he not only deforms his own
relationship to God, but deforms his relationship with the entire
created order, and deforms the God-relationship that others have
within this created order as well.

But even here we still have a democratic universe.  Everything is
subject directly to God, so there's at least a theoretical equality
before God.  We have problems with hierarchies within the created
order itself, but in Milton's universe, that's a fact of existence as
well.  Both fallen and unfallen angels have a hierarchy.  The earth
and everything in it is subject to Adam and Eve.  Adam and Eve appear
to be "lesser than" the angels but not subject to them -- one gets the
impression that angels are there to advise and explain rather than
command, as the only command given to Adam and Eve was given by God.

So the question is, how does this system extend to Adam and Eve?  The
traditional answer has two parts: that Adam was "first in the order of
creation" and that Eve was derived from him, and that derivation is
the basis of Eve's subjection to Adam, and that "woman is more
sensuous than man."  I'm drawing from Kierkegaard's Concept of Anxiety
on these points as I believe it draws from a tradition in western
thought much older than Milton.

However, Eve's subjection to Adam in this case is not a function of
her relationship to Adam, but a function of her relationship to God.
Should Eve remain unfallen and Adam fall, Eve's primary subjection
would still be to God, and she would owe it to God to resist Adam in
anything he pursued that was against God's will, just as Adam owed it
to God to remain unfallen even though Eve fell.

The next question is, of course, why subjection at all?  There's only
two of them.  I think Adam and Eve's relationship is supposed to serve
as a microcosm, or paradigm, for all human sexual/familial
relationships and, by extension, is the basis of social organization.
I don't think Milton ever envisioned a society of complete equals with
no head, or a society of complete equals whose only head is God.  So
Eve's subjection to Adam is a figure of all human social organization
in which a group of equals under God are still subject to a head, and
is a figure for the subjection of emotion to reason (since woman is
more sensuous than man).

Do we agree with this?  Some people do today, but I'd imagine no one
on this list does.  But I'd also hope we have more to say about this
subject than, "Bad, wrong, naughty Milton."  And I'd hope we'd also
see that we live in a society today in which subjection is the rule
rather than the exception, right to vote notwithstanding, politically,
economically, in the workplace, in the classroom, etc.  Starting from
that point, I think we can engage Milton more thoughtfully,

Jim R

On Sun, Aug 30, 2009 at 9:10 AM, alan horn<alanshorn at gmail.com> wrote:
> "Do you think it's possible that Milton distinguished between
>> prelapsarian subjection and postlapsarian subjection, between
>> subjection under God's order and under Satan's?"
>
> Sure. That's the excuse. If women's oppression as actually practiced
> seems less humane than the mythical ideal he depicts, the institution
> itself is not to blame.
>
> Alan