Sharon Achinstein’s “Citizen Milton” is a collection of 14 readings on the history, background, and impact of John Milton’s writings and their impacts. Milton was, according to this text, a great advocate of freedom of speech and the press, resenting censorship and putting great value on expanding opportunities for publicly accessible learning and libraries. In fact, his works, when they were banned and sentenced to burn, were hidden and protected in one such library and allowed to survive. Milton also harbored disdain for “tyranny” of political, religious, and “domestic” varieties, and expressed his belief that the government should serve the people, and openly detested the established monarchy system of England. Another of his causes was the legalization of divorce.
The historical context to Paradise Lost was the reestablishment of monarchy in England after a short lived republican period, and Milton was arrested, and later bailed out. Paradise Lost depicted Adam and Eve, citizens of a paradise that they could have kept if they had known the difference between good and evil, just as the people of England could have seen and kept their republic, but both, in his eyes, fell from grace. Satan was depicted as a tragic hero in “Citizen Milton”, and served as a politically revolutionary symbol in future moments in history.
“Citizen Milton” also discussed several other works, but the one of most note is one generally referred to as Comus, about a Lady who is abducted by the magician Comus in the woods. A much more lighthearted work than Paradise Lost, Lady resists temptation, but it is supposed to express the fragility of virtue in the face of temptation. Another of possible import is an epic poem about Samson, who at the end slaughters the enemies of the Israelites in a bloodbath, by some critics feared and reviled as a vengeful terrorist, by other readers seen as an embodiment of freedom fighting. (I suppose the issue of terrorism today can fall along similar perspectives.)
After reading this collection, I was left with more questions than I had clarification or clarity on Paradise Lost. The most nagging of the question to me was this: what, precisely, does John Milton feel about women? The idea behind championing divorce legalization, and the claim that he was against “domestic tyranny”, seems to be unsupported or largely unexplored by the contents of “Citizen Milton”. However, one of the first things I noticed about Paradise Lost is what I can most eloquently call misogyny; Eve was apparently made just to be attractive and built to be inferior to Adam, in the words of the Son and cursed her kind to always “submit to their husbands.” According to notes from Dartmouth University’s John Milton reading room, that can be interpreted to mean that marital rape is totally fine according to Milton (http://www.dartmouth.edu/~milton/reading_room/pl/book_10/text.shtml). Adam also goes on a tirade against Eve after their punishment is given to them by the Son, and, in the argument, Eve is blamed for suicidal plans, and Adam leads her back on the right path (although I’m pretty sure Adam mentioned the desire to cut life short before Eve did in the Book 10 text itself). However, for the same token, in one of his writings concerning government practices, he claims to write for “Queen Truth” [emphasis my own], and virtue is depicted as the female Lady in Comus. These are both venerating positions in both of those works, a deifying tone to these females where a vilifying one was used for Eve in Paradise Lost. Although Eve fails to resist temptation in Paradise Lost, Lady does in Comus. I’m curious to know how Achinstein defines “domestic tyranny”, assuming I understand the “submit to their husbands” clause correctly, but more generally, I wonder how these very different ways of viewing and treating women in literature can be reconciled in the mind of John Milton. Was there a change over time? I also wish that “Citizen Milton” had provided some evidence for the claims I have mentioned in this paragraph–I found these to be lacking.
Furthermore, I would like to re-examine Paradise Lost in terms of the concepts Milton challenged and fought for. I have no problem accepting that Adam and Eve symbolize people who could have been citizens of a utopia if only they had clung to virtue and knew the difference, and acted on the difference, between good and evil, perhaps a direct symbol of the people of England and their rejection of a republic government. However, I find confusing, since Milton seemed to resent monarchy religious and political, that God, should Milton really be on that deity’s side, should be depicted as an all-powerful king, even if that is the traditional way of depicting Him. Yet, I am reluctant to believe the reader is supposed to by sympathetic to Satan, the rebel, yes, but also the enemy of virtue. This may be a product of my overthought, but if Milton’s Satan was then used as a symbol for rebellion and uprising in other political contexts, I’m left wondering if Milton actually intended Satan to be something of a hero with a tragic end, also falling from grace in his transformation into a serpent and loss of his angelic form.
I leave you with these discussion questions:
- Do you find the interpretation of Milton’s Satan as a revolutionary figure a problematic one? If so or if not, why?
- In Paradise Lost, whose side is Milton really on? God’s? Satans? Adam and Eve’s? According to “Citizen Milton”, Paradise Lost was meant to be a tale of despair.
- What does the differential treatment of Eve in Paradise Lost and Comus’s Lady tell us about Milton’s view of women?
I find the interpretation of Milton’s Satan as a revolutionary and problematic figure. Revolutionary because everyone knows who Satan is. We all know what he did and why he was banished from the heavens. He was the one angel that tried to beat God. This aspect of course makes him problematic. No one is supposed to be God aside from God himself. This portrays Satan as evil and mischievous; and behaved “angel”. Growing up Christian I have been told that anything bad that I do or anything bad that happened in the worlds in general is because it is Satan’s work. He was banished from the heavens which was up in the sky and came down to live on earth. I think that Milton isn’t on anyone’s side really. He always tries to give the good side and the bad side of the characters.