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y means of sexual intercourse. This intercourse is only possible on
account of Sin’s difference, a difference that is based on the ability to
physically produce without God’s interference. Additionally, by means
of the reproductive capabilities of Sin, Satan is gendered as male; he is
the first being to physically impregnate a woman via sexual intercourse,
resulting in the birth of Death, who is a decisively male character (Milton
II. 761-67). Thus, on account of Satan and Sin’s roles as reproducers
who can create separate from God’s interference, they are mediated,
fragmented and divided in the poem. I agree with Sauer’s assertion that
“the move toward destruction authored by Satan is mapped out on the
‘double-form’d’ female Sin, whose body and whose story become the sites
of the confusion of tongues, identities, and gender roles” (184). Sin’s
reproductive body leads to fragmentation on a larger scale, influencing
language and gender as the fragmented history of both are reflected in her
multifarious body. Satan is fragmented into what Sauer dubs the “demonic
trinity” (173); he is physically split into three separate, gendered beings.
Furthermore, Sin is simultaneously fragmented and self-consumed by
the “the yelling monsters” (Milton II. 795) who are “hourly conceived
/ And hourly born” (Milton II. 796-97). These hydra-like beings attack
the very source of fragmentation, the womb, while also dividing Sin into
a fragmented being.
Where Milton pictures reproduction as a fallen, gendered activity,
Cavendish avoids the biological entrapment of female creativity by
presenting disembodied spirits incapable of physical reproduction. In
TBW, reproduction, which Leslie calls a “gruesome metamorphosis” (140),
is an act of chemistry and magic, rather than the result of intercourse. The
people in Cavendish’s utopia come about by means of a mixture of “oyl”
and “gum” that is cultured for nine months, leading to the emergence
of beings that will “appear of the age of twenty” (Cavendish 184-85).
In this way, reproduction is a genderless act, as neither sex is subjected
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by the physical act of birth. Wittig argues that in order to escape gender
inequalities, women must not only gain “control of the production of
children” (11), but also “abstract themselves from the definition ‘woman’
which is imposed upon them” (11). Cavendish does precisely this, as she
evades gender difference by creating a world of genderless spirits; in fact,
she chooses for her scribe “one of [her] own sex” (Cavendish 209) and
engages in intellectual creation free from the constructs of gendering
physical reproduction. As Leslie so eloquently proposes, “in order to
make her text an authoritative body of knowledge, Cavendish must
transcend the limitations of the physical body and those contemporary
views of female ‘nature’ which would associate her with inert materiality
rather than the animating spirit of masculine intellect” (9). 8 By making
birth an act separate from gender restrictions, Cavendish transcends the
subjective role of female bodily reproduction and becomes a genderless
spirit who creates intellectually, allowing for an egalitarian space that is
united in sexual equality. Thus, for both Cavendish and Milton, the act of
physical, bodily childbirth is a fragmenting and divisive act.
In Book III of PL, Milton connects the image of birth to
fragmentation and the creation of division by correlating “ill-joined”
(III.463) reproduction with the splintering of language and the fracturing
of religion. Milton’s narrator interrelates the fractioning of language and
religion with the “monstrous, or unkindly mixed” (III. 456) race that
results from the intercourse “Betwixt th’ angelical and human kind” (III.
462). This passage is referring to the Nephilim, a biblical, pre-flood race
of “giants” (Milton III. 464) born of human women impregnated by
fallen angels. Directly following this reference is a passage about “Babel
on the plain” (Milton III. 466) and divisive “New Babels” (Milton III.
468), alluding to the biblical site of language fragmentation, followed
by the emergence of religious factions, who are described as “Embryos
and idiots, eremites and friars, / White, black and grey with all their
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