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After Eve submits to Adam, her relationship to the earth becomes
more inward and concealed, suggesting that she is associated with lower
level, physical productivity while Adam is connected with God and higher
order productivity. Thus, both assume the most prevalent seventeenthcentury
gender roles associated with men and women. Maus suggests that
“Milton’s trope originates in an ambivalent wish to conflate intellectual
originality with childbearing, while simultaneously implying that to
identify the two processes is to confuse [the] carnal and spiritual” (93);
while I concede that Milton correlates the intellectual with the physical,
I disagree with the claim that carnality and spirituality are confused.
Rather, they are separated according to gender, with woman being carnal
and man being intellectual. Adam is presented as a beneficiary of the
earth’s abundant warmth and embrace, while Eve is shown as enclosed
within it and domestically subjected to Adam:
Adam discerned as in the door he sat
Of his cool bow’r while now the mounted sun
Shot down direct his fervid rays to warm
Earth’s inmost womb, more warmth than Adam needs.
And Eve within, due at her hour, prepared
For dinner Savory fruits of taste to please . . .
(Milton V. 299-305).
In this passage, Adam is presented as a mediating being, positioned on
the boundaries of internal and external spaces. This physical positioning
lends Adam the ability to partake in earthly comforts while also being
visible, and accessible, to God. In contrast, Eve is not only enveloped
by the earth and positioned within its “womb,” she is also serving Adam
by performing domestic duties. Considering Wittig’s theory that gender
roles are established via a relationship between men and women that is
defined by domestic and reproductive obligations, one can see how Eve
is doubly gendered female in this scene through her connection with the
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womb and domesticity.
Furthermore, Eve’s imitation of Adam demonstrates that she relies
on him as a mediator between herself and God. After meeting Adam, Eve
is denied direct access to God. Eve is conveniently absent during many
of the moments when God or his angels relay information to Adam; for
instance, in Book V Raphael warns to Adam alone about the imposing
threat of Satan, and Eve is only given second hand information through
Adam. Adam’s mediation is so apparent that when Satan first sees the
human pair, he remarks that “Though both / Not equal as their sex not
equal seemed / . . . / He for God only, she for God in him” (Milton IV.
295-299). Eve’s access to God is interrupted by Adam, highlighting that
separation from God is signified by difference, as it moves away from the
intended, uniform ideal. Eve’s internalization of the separation from God
is seen in Eve’s responses to Adam, wherein she calls him her “guide / And
head” (Milton IV. 442-43), indicating that she views Adam as a mediator
between herself and God. This mediation leads to gender difference
and results in a gendered hierarchy and separation from God. Thus, as
Schoenfeldt asserts, Adam and Eve show a “baffling blend of mutuality
and hierarchy” (320), but the mutuality is not equally distributed as Eve
is always subject to, and image of, both God and Adam, where Adam
is only subjected to and imitative of God. The extra layer of mediation
makes Eve an apt target for Satan, who sees this difference and separation
as a weakness to exploit; thus, Eve is more susceptible to deception on
account of the headship arrangement. Eve’s separation from God is
further exemplified when she wakes from her tainted dream in Book V
and admits that Adam is her “sole in whom [her] thoughts find all repose,
/ [her] glory, [her] perfection” (Milton V. 28-29), as she is so removed
from God that Adam has become God-like to her, defined as perfect and
glorious.
It is unsurprising, then, that Satan follows as Eve’s second mediator,
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