This speech has been seen as an allusion to Adam’s speech in Book IX (Milton 9. 370-75). In both speeches there is an internal rhyme and Eve’s speech alludes and paradoxes mainly phrases that Adam uses. For instance, Eve uses the word “go” to mean staying whereas Adam’s use of “staying” is to go (McGrath 73). The way in which speaks and the subtle rhetoric devices employed hints at her intellect. It could be argued that Book IX Eve has an even higher sense of self-confidence and intelligence than previously demonstrated in the poem. By ascribing the final words, especially about the restoration of order, to Eve Milton gives her a sense of importance. She is the one that tells the audience that everything will be restored and although the…
Women were forbidden from casting their opinions in topics, were looked down upon by men, and weren’t allowed to be independent. Women were also declined from all political rights and were legally labeled as property to their husbands. Every wife, no matter what class she was in, was expected to perform all duties designated to a housewife as well. The wives of shop owners or merchants usually assisted their husbands’ businesses, while women in higher classes were forced to partake in household jobs like cooking, sewing, and entertainment. The idea of how women should be treated stemmed from the novel, “The Courtier” by Castiglione. Castiglione explained that women should acquire education, have a proper, charismatic attitude, and remain faithful and submissive towards their husbands, even when they pursued relations outside their marriage. Another popular advocator of this idea was the church because in the Bible, Eve was the one to trigger the original sin and man’s Fall, thus sentencing every woman to the pain of childbirth and the labor of motherhood. Eve was viewed as a weak, voluptuary, and untrustworthy woman, which reflected as a stereotype among all women and caused them to become insignificant and subservient to men. Humanist scholar, Marsilio Ficino, agreed with label, implying that women should be used like “chamber pots,” hidden away once a man has “pissed in…
During the Middle Ages, men are known to have more power than women, controlling them and taking advantage over them. Women do not have the same rights as men and they are treated differently. Men are superior while women are inferior. Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales changes the society of the Middle Age completely in The Wife of Bath. In The Wife of Bath, the main character of this tale, or the one telling this tale, is a woman, the Dame Alice. The Dame Alice tells her tale as if she has nothing to hide and she explains the role of women in her tale and she explains her tale, thus, becoming the first feminist character in Western Literature.…
Milton’s Paradise Lost is essentially the book of Genesis on steroids. Looking specifically at Book three and seven of Paradise Lost we will notice many descriptions and events that have been added to the book. The three most noticeable differences in Paradise Lost (book three and seven) compared to the book of Genesis in the Bible are: the devil’s use of Uriel to get to Earth, both the process of Jesus being asked to be the savior of the world and the dialogue between God and Jesus, and the use of the archangel Raphael to warn the oncoming temptation of Satan in book seven. All three of these are not mentioned in the Bible, and have been added by Milton to add excitement,…
From the start, the creation and fall of Man is summarized in this: the creation and reason for human nature is "God gave Man free will, from Man's free will, sin and death came into the world." Although Milton is not necessarily saying the Fall of Man went down the way he wrote it, the story is much more believable – and more entertaining – if the characters seem like they could have been real people.…
Milton starts off as presenting Adam as a protecting, reasonable and logical man with great authority. God created Adam with free will, so he has to make a choice to obey God’s orders of not eating from The Tree of Knowledge, or to follow Eve’s decision. Throughout the book, Milton drops hints about Adam’s flaws; For example, how Adam does not share the warnings that God and Raphael tell him about The Tree of Knowledge, or how Adam can only think about having sexual relations with Eve instead of working. Men are believed to have logical and reason, but Adam shows the trait passion, which women are believed to have. In Milton’s re-told story of The Fall, Adam is seen to have passion and Eve is seen to have reason and logical, which is complete opposite of belief (Lansbury 2). All of these actions characterized by Adam could be why he had the blame set on him for The Fall of man.…
In the original Genesis story, Eve is portrayed as a woman who was solely tricked by Satan into doing his evil doings, although in Paradise Lost, Milton portrays Eve as a woman who wasn’t just manipulated by Satan, but allows the reader to see Eve’s disobedience through her independent thought.…
While Milton’s retelling of the biblical tale of man’s origin within Paradise Lost is true to the bible, he manages to reinvent it in a slightly different manner – a manner that brings to light new questions about the roles Adam and Eve played in the fall of human kind. Speaking more specifically, his retelling of the fall of man seems to bring up questions about how gender operates within the biblical world and how it may relate to the time Milton comes from. At face value, the portrayal of Eve suggests that she is inferior and subordinate to Adam. There seems to be a stark contrast between Adam and Eve: where Adam is strong, rational, and intelligent, Eve is naïve and narcissistic. These differences between Adam…
Women play important roles in both The Bible and The Aeneid; however, because of cultural differences, they are portrayed distinctly from one another. In The Bible, women are usually associated with helpfulness, whereas women in The Aeneid are often associated with absurdness and lust. The authors’ portrayals of women in each text differ in such that women in The Bible hold powers that are crucial as they represent Jesus’s supporters throughout his journey, while women in The Aeneid are the obstacles that hinder men from proceeding their duties. Thus, while men are achieving success, women are the backbones and necessary in the Christian community, whereas women are insignificant and obstacles that prohibit men from…
This has been perpetuated by the ideology that women are naturally submissive, pious, and gentle creatures. “The Cult of Womanhood” describes this ideology by placing men and women into two “spheres” – not unlike men are from Mars, women are from Venus. (reference here) The public sphere involves business and public life, ruthless and uncaring. This sphere is reserved for men. The other sphere, the private sphere, is gentle, nurturing, and devoted to familial and religious matters. When a women steps outside this sphere, she is reviled and, what some sexist journalists have called her, a “mental hermaphrodite.” The Wife of Bath, Alyson, one of the traveling characters in Geoffrey Chaucer’s “The Canterbury Tales” is a prime example of a complex, independent woman in literature, who by Chaucer’s pen, is an immoral being. GoodAlyson explains her quintet of marriages, going into detail about how she controlled, lied, and manipulated all of her husbands until their deaths. She says, “Of tribulacion in marriage, of which I am expert in al myn age. This is to seyn, myself have been the whippe.” (III.179-181) ExcellentShe is seen as a sexually dominant man-hater, instead of a headstrong, vivacious…
Set in a man’s world, the female characters in All about Eve have the mindset that “all females have one career in common, whether they like it or not” and without this, “your not a women”. This stereotype which is encapsulates the women in All about Eve, provides them with the drive for a career. “Love or hate, success or failure, whatever it is” males have the ability to achieve, with their “little loyal [women]” to shadow behind them. Eve, “the golden girl”, sacrifices her time and money to develop connections which will provide her with the success she has longed for. She was required to work hard, being Margo’s “sister, lawyer, mother, friend, psychiatrist and cop” and an indispensable assistant to her valued idol. Max’s remark “the kid’s…
In Milton's “Paradise Lost”, Adam and Eve might be considered tragic "heroes" in the sense that they knowingly doom themselves to be removed from Paradise, and are thus subjected to the harsh, new world, and yet persevere with the hope for a better future. What makes their act of sin almost tragic in a way as compared to Satan, is that Satan's act was meant out of spite and hate for the God. He seeks to destroy in one day that which took six days to create. Neither Adam nor Eve intended on for anything such as this to occur, but instead hoped to achieve a greater state of understanding and being. Satan realized that he would not be able to catch both of them, so he tempted Eve when she was alone. When Eve was asked by the serpent, she replies that the one restriction placed upon her and Adam was that "the fruit of this fair tree ye shall not eat thereof, nor shall ye touch it lest ye die". When he explains to her that she would not actually 'die', but instead become such as God, it appealed to her desire to be equal to or more powerful than Adam, and so she fell. Although she, like Satan, fell because of her prideful aspirations and was condemned to be placed under her husband, she confesses her sin, and so she is able to, unlike Satan, move past her pride by admit her fault. Adam also ate of the forbidden fruit, knowing full well that was against the will of God, chose to do so anyhow due to his love for Eve thus causing him to fall as well. What makes Adam & Eve "heroic", from Milton's perspective, is their ability to admit their sin against God as being wrong, and their willingness to take responsibility for their actions. They do not walk away from God; they instead look to persevere with the hope for a…
“By God, if wommen hadde writen stories as clerkes han (have) withinne hire (their) oratories (chapels) they would han (have) writen of men moore wikkednesse than al (all) the mark of Adam (men) may redresse” (693-696). This quote from Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Wife of Bath’s Prologue from the Canterbury Tales highlights the Wife’s displeasure towards the general stigmatization of women during the 14th and 15th Centuries. More importantly, it represents the Wife’s significance as a hero in this story. With the Wife of Bath, Chaucer defies the stereotype that women are submissive, a vilification that would continue for many centuries. Despite cultural stigmas, the Wife represents a turning point in literature of an emergent structure of feeling…
Women in literature were scarcely written as the main character of a story so they rarely had names, character depth or complexity. They were usually portrayed as liars, traitors, and over-sexual. Examples include the female characters within the works Marie De France. She never gave her female characters the lead role, depth or even a name. This yielded an overly melodramatic perception of them as almost the villains of Medieval literature. On the other hand, Judith, written by an anonymous writer was one of the few women in literature depicted as brave and admirable. However, she also embodies the stereotype of women who held their sensuality over men. Judith withheld sex in order to get what she wanted. Chaucer could have been influenced by this work and similar works while creating a feminist character, but there aren’t many similar stories that hold a woman in reverence. The Wife of Bath is particularly concerned about the roles women play in the majority of books. She is enraged about the depiction of women; so much so that she tore out pages of one of her husband’s books because they contained sexist stories that made him laugh. “What shodle I saye but at the monthes end/ This jolly clerk Janekin that was so hende/ Hath he wedded me with greet solempintee” (Chaucer 633-635) This book consisted of real stories that circulated throughout medieval times; telling of tales that depicted women as villainous and…
In the book of Genesis 3:1-6, the passage teaches the story of how Satan tempts Eve into causing the act that leads to the “fall of mankind”. Of this biblical account, is where John Milton gained inspiration for the idea of is work, Paradise Lost. Milton’s storyline and broad array of imagery portray the tale in a different light than that told in the Bible. While both accounts of “the fall”, are used to convey the same story and outcome, the two versions share some comparative similarities and many contrasting differences.…