The Mother of All Living: Eve’s Redemptive Role in John Milton’s Paradise Lost*

Abstract

In this essay I argue that in Paradise Lost, Milton reframes traditionally misogynistic narratives of Eve. Milton does this by portraying Eve as a growing, dynamic woman seeking to “find herself” after her secondary creation from and for Adam. In hubris, Milton’s Eve desires wisdom and the autonomy it would afford. She does not want to be attached to Adam forever and longs to work, at least for a time, in solitude, not because she does not love her husband but because she wants to develop her own selfhood to contribute to her marriage and to the Garden’s labor. But following Satan’s temptation to eat the “forbidden fruit,” Milton’s Eve is repulsed at the separation between the prelapsarian and postlapsarian worlds, which has disrupted her marital union, and in despondence and desperation, she shares the fruit with Adam to bring about inclusion. Adam’s readiness to share in her sin and die with Eve brings attention to the identity Eve has already had—as woman, wife, mother of nature—and gives her the strength and wisdom to save Adam from suicide and lead them both to repentance and redemption. Although she eats the forbidden fruit from the Tree of Knowledge and shares it with her husband Adam, Milton’s Eve experiences the stages of “growing up” attributed to her innate humanity in God’s Paradisal Eden.

*Winner of the Deans’ Distinguished Essay Award