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primarily a feminine act and intellectual production being a ‘superior’
masculine act. 1 Yet, not all poets were bound by these limitations. For
instance, Margaret Cavendish resists defining reproduction as the “female
creative act” (11) by imagining an intellectual space free from gender
difference and the physical act of male-female reproduction in The
Blazing World (hereafter TBW); similarly, in Paradise Lost (hereafter PL),
Milton acknowledges reproduction as a divisive act that is only gendered
by means of mediation and separation from God. In a world wrought
with political and religious dissention and division, fragmented by the
civil wars and political turmoil, it is understandable that contemporaries
such as Cavendish and Milton would create universes that allowed for
unity and a return to an undivided state. Since reproduction is the means
by which humans fragment, it is unsurprising that both these authors
connect birth with disorder, and thus attempt to control it.
Exploring the idyllic creations of seventeenth-century poets, feminist
critic Marina Leslie considers the lack of reproductive sexuality which
results from the absence of male-female physical interaction in Margaret
Cavendish’s TBW. 2 As a scholar of utopian literature, Leslie argues that
Cavendish (re)creates an immaterial, imaginative space separate from
physical reproduction, wherein “[f]eminine virtue becomes a medium
for action, rather than the mediation necessary for transmitting political
legacies” (134). 3 Furthermore, Leslie suggests that in Cavendish’s
utopia, female productivity is associated with virtue and intellectual
production rather than physicality (141). Indeed, Margaret Cavendish
(re)creates an egalitarian, idealized space that reduces or eliminates
the possibility of physical reproduction, often by excluding the male
presence, allowing mastery of and freedom in intellectual reproductions.
In doing so, Cavendish forms a unified world wherein gender differences
are biologically insignificant. In this female poetic space, women are
mutually reliant on each other and have first-hand, unmediated access
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to creative production. Thus, through the lack of physical reproduction,
Cavendish creates a space that promotes unity by means of sameness and
interdependence.
In contrast, the recent conversation surrounding Milton’s
presentation of gender and its connection to reproduction falls into
three main categories: the first, which includes feminist critic Katherine
Maus, focuses largely on the female body as an internal yet penetrable
space, explaining why it is an apt metaphor for poetic constructions; 4 the
second, including critics such as Elizabeth Sauer, Erin Murphy, William
Riggs, and Michael Schoenfeldt, calls attention to Milton’s depiction of
reproduction in relation to the social and gender hierarchies that dictate
female public and private life; 5 the third, including Louis Schwartz,
suggests that Eve is a heroic and sympathetic character on account of her
curse and connection to Christ’s birth. 6 For the purposes of this paper,
I am most engaged with the second and third areas of the conversation,
particularly with Schoenfeldt’s assertion that Adam and Eve are initially
genderless in the garden, complicating the evident gender hierarchy at
work in the text (319). While I agree that Eve challenges the “masculine
hierarchy” (320) and that both characters are initially genderless, I do not
believe that she is as successful at maintaining equality through “egalitarian
subjugation” (322), as Schoenfeldt proposes. Schoenfeldt posits that Eve’s
mimicry of Adam is an indicator of her equality (321-22); yet, the very
fact that Eve mimics rather than creates is indicative of her reliance on
mediation, subjection, and separation from God. Furthermore, Eve seeks
unification, a Godly trait, as demonstrated through her acts of mimicry
and desire for similitude, but, once subjected to Adam, finds only
difference and fragmentation.
Milton demonstrates that when creation, particularly reproduction,
is separate from God’s direct influence, it is dangerous, leading to
fragmentation and division. My argument consists of four parts: first,
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