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"On the Character of Milton's Eve" 1
The difference between the character of Eve in Milton and Shakspeare’s female characters is very striking, and it appears to us to be this: Milton describes Eve not only as full of love and tenderness for Adam, but as the constant object of admiration in herself. She is the idol of the poet’s imagination, and he paints her whole person with a studied profusion of charms. She is the wife, but she is still as much as ever the mistress, of Adam. She is represented, indeed, as devoted to her husband, as twining round him for support ‘as the vine curls her tendrils,’ but her own grace and beauty are never lost sight of in the picture of conjugal felicity. Adam’s attention and regard are as much turned to her as hers to him; for ‘in that first garden of their innocence,’ he had no other objects or pursuits to distract his attention; she was both his business and his pleasure. Shakspeare’s females, on the contrary, seem to exist only in their attachment to others. They are pure abstractions of the affections. Their features are not painted, nor the colour of their hair. Their hearts only are laid open. We are acquainted with Imogen, Miranda, Ophelia, or Desdemona, by what they thought and felt, but we cannot tell whether they were black, brown, or fair. But Milton’s Eve is all of ivory and gold. Shakspeare seldom tantalises the reader with a luxurious display of the personal charms of his heroines, with a curious inventory of particular beauties, except indirectly, and for some other purpose, as where Jachimo describes Imogen asleep, or the old men in the Winter’s Tale vie with each other in invidious praise of Perdita. Even in Juliet, the most voluptuous and glowing of the class of characters here spoken of, we are reminded chiefly of circumstances connected with the physiognomy of passion, as in her leaning with her cheek upon her arm, or which only convey the general impression of enthusiasm made on her lover’s brain. One thing may be said, that Shakspeare had not the same opportunities as Milton: for his women were clothed, and it cannot be denied that Milton took Eve at a considerable disadvantage in this respect. He has accordingly described her in all the loveliness of nature, tempting to sight as the fruit of the Hesperides guarded by that Dragon old, herself the fairest among the flowers of Paradise!
The figures both of Adam and Eve are very prominent in this poem. As there is little action in it, the interest is constantly kept up by the beauty and grandeur of the images. They are thus introduced:
‘Two of far nobler shape, erect and tall,
Eve is not only represented as beautiful, but with conscious beauty. Shakspeare’s heroines are almost insensible of their charms, and wound without knowing it. They are not coquets. If the salvation of mankind had depended upon one of them, we don’t know—but the Devil might have been baulked. This is but a conjecture! Eve has a great idea of herself, and there is some difficulty in prevailing on her to quit her own image, the first time she discovers its reflection in the water. She gives the following account of herself to Adam:
Godlike erect, with native honour clad,
In naked majesty seemed lords of all,
And worthy seemed; for in their looks divine
The image of their glorious Maker shone: ...
——Though both
Not equal, as their sex not equal seem’d;
For contemplation he and valour form’d,
For softness she and sweet attractive grace;
He for God only, she for God in him.
His fair large front and eye sublime declar’d
Absolute rule; and hyacinthine locks
Round from his parted forelock manly hung
Clust’ring, but not beneath his shoulders broad;
She as a veil down to the slender waist
Her unadorned golden tresses wore
Dishevell’d, but in wanton ringlets wav’d
As the vine curls her tendrils, which implied
Subjection, but required with gentle sway,
And by her yielded, by him best receiv’d,
Yielded with coy submission, modest pride,
And sweet reluctant amorous delay.’‘That day I oft remember, when from sleep
The poet afterwards adds:
I first awak’d, and found myself repos’d
Under a shade on flow’rs, much wond’ring where
And what I was, whence thither brought and how.
Not distant far from thence a murmuring sound
Of waters issued from a cave, and spread
Into a liquid plain, then stood unmov’d
Pure as the expanse of Heav’n; I thither went
With unexperienc’d thought, and laid me down
On the green bank, to look into the clear
Smooth lake, that to me seem’d another sky.
As I bent down to look, just opposite
A shape within the watery gleam appear’d,
Bending to look on me; I started back,
It started back; but pleas’d I soon return’d,
Pleas’d it return’d as soon with answ’ring looks
Of sympathy and love.’...‘So spake our general mother, and with eyes
The same thought is repeated with greater simplicity, and perhaps even beauty, in the beginning of the Fifth Book:
Of conjugal attraction unreprov’d,
And meek surrender, half-embracing lean’d
On our first father; half her swelling breast
Naked met his under the flowing gold
Of her loose tresses hid: he in delight
Both of her beauty and submissive charms;
Smil’d with superior love, as Jupiter
On Juno smiles, when he impregns the clouds
That shed May flowers.’——‘So much the more
The general style, indeed, in which Eve is addressed by Adam, or described by the poet, is in the highest strain of compliment:
His wonder was to find unawaken’d Eve
With tresses discompos’d and glowing cheek,
As through unquiet rest: he on his side
Leaning half-rais’d, with looks of cordial love
Hung over her enamour’d, and beheld
Beauty, which whether waking or asleep
Shot forth peculiar graces; then, with voice
Mild, as when Zephyrus on Flora breathes,
Her hand soft touching, whisper’d thus. Awake
My fairest, my espous’d, my latest found,
Heav’n’s last best gift, my ever new delight,
Awake’....‘When Adam thus to Eve. Fair consort, the hour
Eve is herself so well convinced that these epithets are her due, that the idea follows her in her sleep, and she dreams of herself as the paragon of nature, the wonder of the universe:
Of night approaches.’...
‘To whom thus Eve, with perfect beauty adorn’d.’
‘To whom our general ancestor replied,
Daughter of God and Man, accomplish’d Eve.’——‘Methought Close at mine ear one call’d me forth to walk,
This is the very topic, too, on which the Serpent afterwards enlarges with so much artful insinuation and fatal confidence of success. ‘So talked the spirited sly snake.’ The conclusion of the foregoing scene, in which Eve relates her dream and Adam comforts her, is such an exquisite piece of description, that, though not to our immediate purpose, we cannot refrain from quoting it:
With gentle voice, I thought it thine; it said,
Why sleep’st thou, Eve? Now is the pleasant time,
The cool, the silent, save where silence yields
To the night-warbling bird, that now awake
Tunes sweetest his love-labour’d song; now reigns
Full-orb’d the moon, and with more pleasing light
Shadowy sets off the face of things; in vain,
If none regard; Heav’n wakes with all his eyes,
Whom to behold but thee, Nature’s desire?
In whose sight all things joy, with ravishment
Attracted by thy beauty still to gaze.’‘So cheer’d he his fair spouse, and she was cheer’d;
The formal eulogy on Eve which Adam addresses to the Angel, in giving an account of his own creation and hers, is full of elaborate grace:
But silently a gentle tear let fall
From either eye, and wip’d them with her hair;
Two other precious drops that ready stood,
Each in their crystal sluice, he ere they fell
Kiss’d, as the gracious signs of sweet remorse
And pious awe, that fear’d to have offended.’‘Under his forming hands a creature grew,
That which distinguishes Milton from the other poets, who have pampered the eye and fed the imagination with exuberant descriptions of female beauty, is the moral severity with which he has tempered them. There is not a line in his works which tends to licentiousness, or the impression of which, if it has such a tendency, is not effectually checked by thought and sentiment. The following are two remarkable instances:
... so lovely fair,
That what seem’d fair in all the world, seem’d now
Mean, or in her summ’d up, in her contained
And in her looks, which from that time infus’d
Sweetness into my heart, unfelt before,
And into all things from her air inspir’d
The spirit of love and amorous delight.’——‘In shadier bower
The other is a passage of extreme beauty and pathos blended. It is the one in which the Angel is described as the guest of our first ancestors:
More secret and sequester’d, though but feign’d,
Pan or Sylvanus never slept, nor Nymph,
Nor Faunus haunted. Here in close recess,
With flowers, garlands, and sweet-smelling herbs,
Espoused Eve deck’d first her nuptial bed,
And heavenly quires the hymenœan sung,
What day the genial Angel to our sire
Brought her in naked beauty more adorn’d,
More lovely than Pandora, whom the Gods
Endow’d with all their gifts, and O too like
In sad event, when to th’ unwiser son
Of Japhet brought by Hermes, she ensnar’d
Mankind by her fair looks, to be aveng’d
On him who had stole Jove’s authentic fire.’——‘Meanwhile at table Eve
The character which a living poet has given of Spenser, would be much more true of Milton:
Minister’d naked, and their flowing cups
With pleasant liquors crown’d: O innocence
Deserving Paradise! if ever, then,
Then had the sons of God excuse to have been
Enamour’d at that sight; but in those hearts
Love unlibidinous reigned, nor jealousy
Was understood, the injur’d lover’s Hell.’——‘Yet not more sweet
Spenser, on the contrary, is very apt to pry into mysteries which do not belong to the Muses. Milton’s voluptuousness is not lascivious or sensual. He describes beautiful objects for their own sakes. Spenser has an eye to the consequences, and steeps everything in pleasure, often not of the purest kind. The want of passion has been brought as an objection against Milton, and his Adam and Eve have been considered as rather insipid personages, wrapped up in one another, and who excite but little sympathy in any one else. We do not feel this objection ourselves: we are content to be spectators in such scenes, without any other excitement. In general, the interest in Milton is essentially epic, and not dramatic; and the difference between the epic and the dramatic is this, that in the former the imagination produces the passion, and in the latter the passion produces the imagination. The interest of epic poetry arises from the contemplation of certain objects in themselves grand and beautiful: the interest of dramatic poetry from sympathy with the passions and pursuits of others; that is, from the practical relations of certain persons to certain objects, as depending on accident or will.
Than pure was he, and not more pure than wise;
High Priest of all the Muses’ mysteries.’The Pyramids of Egypt are epic objects; the imagination of them is necessarily attended with passion; but they have no dramatic interest, till circumstances connect them with some human catastrophe. Now, a poem might be constructed almost entirely of such images, of the highest intellectual passion, with little dramatic interest; and it is in this way that Milton has in a great measure constructed his poem. That is not its fault, but its excellence. The fault is in those who have no idea but of one kind of interest. But this question would lead to a longer discussion than we have room for at present. We shall conclude these extracts from Milton with two passages, which have always appeared to us to be highly affecting, and to contain a fine discrimination of character:
‘O unexpected stroke, worse than of Death!
This is the lamentation of Eve on being driven out of Paradise. Adam’s reflections are in a different strain, and still finer. After expressing his submission to the will of his Maker, he says:
Must I thus leave thee, Paradise? thus leave
Thee, native soil, these happy walks and shades,
Fit haunt of Gods? Where I had hope to spend,
Quiet, though sad, the respite of that day
That must be mortal to us both? O flowers,
That never will in other climate grow,
My early visitation and my last
At even, which I bred up with tender hand
From the first opening bud, and gave ye names,
Who now shall rear ye to the sun, or rank
Your tribes, and water from th’ ambrosial fount?
Thee, lastly, nuptial bow’r, by me adorn’d
With what to sight or smell was sweet, from thee
How shall I part, and whither wander down
Into a lower world, to this obscure
And wild? how shall we breathe in other air
Less pure, accustom’d to immortal fruits?’‘This most afflicts me, that departing hence
As from his face I shall be hid, depriv’d
His blessed countenance; here I could frequent
With worship place by place where he vouchsaf’d
Presence divine, and to my sons relate,
On this mount he appeared, under this tree
Stood visible, among these pines his voice
I heard, here with him at this fountain talk’d:
So many grateful altars I would rear
Of grassy turf, and pile up every stone
Of lustre from the brook, in memory
Or monument to ages, and thereon
Offer sweet-smelling gums and fruits and flow’rs:
In yonder nether world where shall I seek
His bright appearances or footstep trace?
For though I fled him angry, yet recall’d
To life prolong’d and promis’d race, I now
Gladly behold though but his utmost skirts
Of glory, and far off his steps adore.’_______________________________
NOTES:1 Hazlitt's "On the Character of Milton's Eve" was one of the essays picked to go into his first book, The Round Table (1815-17); it first appeared first on July 21, 1816.