by John Milton
The third of our controversies, about the character of Eve, first appeared in the feminist criticism of the twentieth century. “For the Romantics,” Mary Nyquist and Margaret Ferguson wrote in 1987, “it was Satan who was oppressed by the author’s consciously held beliefs. In our time it tends to be Eve” (xiv). Satan was the controversy of another day. Feminism has arrived, and it wants to argue about Eve.
Traditionally Milton had received mostly high marks for his characterizations of Adam and Eve. Coleridge thought the love of Adam and Eve was “removed from everything degrading,” the creation of two people who give each other what is most permanent in them and achieve “a completion of each in the other” (Thorpe 96). Their love unfolds without flattery or falsehood. Hazlitt told of some men’s club wit who maintained that Adam and Eve enjoyed only the least interesting of the pursuits of human life, the relations between man and wife. Hazlitt replied with a long catalog of the furniture of fallen life (wars, riches, contracts, et cetera) missing from the supreme pleasures of Eden: “Thank Heaven, all these were yet to come” (Thorpe 111). Extending Hazlitt’s idea that Milton had the power to think “of nobler forms and nobler things than those he found about him” (Thorpe 98), Emerson praised the poet for giving us a new human ideal: “Better than any other he has discharged the office of every great man, namely, to raise the idea of Man in the minds of his contemporaries and of posterity.… Human nature in these ages is indebted to him for its best portrait” (Early Lectures 149).
But there was information of diverse sorts suggesting that Milton might have had a grudge against womankind. During the time that he was deserted by his first wife, Mary Powell, Milton wrote four pamphlets arguing in favor of divorce on the grounds of spiritual incompatibility. Mary’s daughters did not get along with his subsequent wives. Now and then the daughters were asked to read to their blind father in languages they could not understand (Darbishire 177, 277). And there were also a few passages in the poetry cataloging domestic unhappinesses with a somewhat unbalanced fervor. Samuel Johnson brought all of these factors together in a memorably pithy sentence: “There appears in his books something like a Turkish contempt of females, as subordinate and inferior beings” (Lives 1:193).
But through the eighteenth, the nineteenth, and much of the twentieth centuries, Milton’s misogynistic streak was usually considered an eccentricity, not a malign preoccupation at the center of his being. At the dawn of the feminist period, Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar, in their groundbreaking The Madwoman in the Attic, maintained that Milton’s patriarchal version of Genesis had from the beginning intimidated and oppressed female writers. He taught that a divine Father and Son had created everything, that Sin was a cursed mother, that Eve was supposed to be obedient to Adam (“He for God only, she for God in him”) but instead was corrupted by the devil (Gilbert 368–82; later in Gilbert and Gubar 187–212). Philip Gallagher objected immediately (Gallagher and Gilbert 319–22) and later expanded his views in the fervently argued Milton, the Bible, and Misogyny (1990).
Joseph Wittreich’s Feminist Milton (1987) showed that, Gilbert and Gubar to the contrary, many women down through the years had been empowered by Milton’s portrait of Eve. Early commentators on Paradise Lost were well aware that a passage such as Adam’s enumeration of marital woes to come at 10.896–908 was forced and gratuitous, since Adam “could not very naturally be supposed at that time to foresee so very circumstantially the inconvenience attending our straight conjunction with this sex, as he expresses it” (Thyer, cited in Todd 3.321). A few passages on a pet peeve were not too high a price to pay for great literature. Most poets had bees in their bonnets. Shakespeare himself never had a good word for dogs and cats. But feminists feared that Milton, whether consciously or not, was the agent of patriarchy or logo-centrism or bourgeois individualism—whatever its name, a large conspiracy of overlapping ideological commitments hostile to women and progressive civilization alike.
The main positions in feminist Milton studies are essentially the same as those adopted in Shakespeare studies, and no doubt in other literary disciplines. Some interpreters found that Milton’s poetry, if read sympathetically, yields meanings surprisingly favorable to women (McColley 1983; Woods). Others of this persuasion explored the possibility that Milton was not primarily threatened by women but in fact identified with them in profound ways (Kerrigan 1983, 184–86, 188–89, and 1991; S. Davies; Turner 65–71, 142–48; Lieb 83–113). Some, by contrast, agreed with Gilbert and Gubar that Milton is irredeemably an obstruction and will have to be cleared away (Froula). There were also those evenhanded souls contending that Milton is pretty much all right so far as he goes, but does not go far enough. James Turner in One Flesh found Milton’s Eden erotically liberating; yet the poem has “two quite different models of the politics of love: one is drawn from the experience of being in love with an equal, … the other from the hierarchical arrangement of the universe, and the craving for male supremacy” (285). Mary Nyquist conceded that Milton seemed progressive in championing companionate marriage based on conversational partnership but warned that a woman content with such by-products of individualism would be settling for too little. The “blear illusion” (Masque 155) of these bourgeois goods prevents women from appreciating the higher truths to their left (99–100, 115–24).
This is still a young tradition. Up to now it has no doubt been too caught up in the barren chore of ideological grading. But the arguments have begun.
REFERENCES AND ABBREVIATIONS
Most of the many editions, books, and articles cited in the introduction and notes can be found, alphabetized by author, in the Works Cited bibliography at the end of this volume. Where an author’s surname is given without a date, it means that only one of this author’s works has been cited in the edition. Where a name is coupled with a date, it means that at least two works by this author have been cited in the edition. Multiple entries in Works Cited are arranged chronologically.
We use these abbreviations for works by John Milton:
1667 Paradise Lost. A Poem Written in Ten Books (1667).
1671 Paradise Regained. A Poem in IV Books. To which is added Samson Agonistes (1671).
1674 Paradise Lost. A Poem in Twelve Books. The Second Edition …(1674).
CMS Manuscript of poems by Milton at Trinity College, Cambridge.
MLM The Complete Poetry and Essential Prose of John Milton, ed. William Kerrigan, John Rumrich, and Stephen M. Fallon. Modern Library edition: New York, 2007.
Yale Complete Prose Works of John Milton, ed. Don M. Wolfe et al. (8 vols., Yale Univ. Press, 1953–80).
Anidmad Animadversions on the Remonstrant’s Defense
Apology An Apology for Smectymnuus
Areop Areopagitica
CD Christian Doctrine
Damon Epitaph for Damon
DDD The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce
Eikon Eikonoclastes
Il Pens Il Penseroso
L’All L’Allegro
Lyc Lycidas
Masque A Masque Presented at Ludlow Castle
Nat Ode Nativity Ode
Of Ed Of Education
Of Ref Of Reformation
PL Paradise Lost
PR Paradise Regained
RCG The Reason of Church Government Urged Against Prelaty
REW The Ready and Easy Way to Establish a Free Commonwealth
SA Samson Agonistes
TKM The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates
1Def Pro Populo Anglicano Defensio (A Defense of the English People)
2Def Defensio Secunda (Second Defense of the English People)
Citations to Milton’s prose refer either to the Modern Library Milton (MLM) or, for passages not included in the Modern Library Milton, to the volume and page number of the Yale edition.
We use the following abbreviations for works by Shakespeare:
ADO Much Ado About Nothing
ANT Antony and Cleopatra
COR Coriolanus
HAM Hamlet
1H4 The First Part of King Henry the Fourth
2H4 The Second Part of King Henry the Fourth
H5 King Henry the Fifth
JC Julius Caesar
LLL Love’s Labor’s Lost
LR King Lear
MAC Macbeth
MM Measure for Measure
MND A Midsummer Night’s Dream
OTH Othello
R2 King Richard the Second
R3 King Richard the Third
ROM Romeo and Juliet
TMP The Tempest
TN Twelfth Night
TRO Troilus and Cressida
Unless otherwise indicated, we quote the Bible from the AV (King James Version), and use standard abbreviations when referring to its books; we sometimes cite Geneva (The Geneva Bible, 1588). Poetry in English, except where otherwise indicated, we cite from the Oxford authors series. Classical works are cited from the Loeb Classical Library unless otherwise noted, with standard abbreviations, such as, prominently, Il. and Od. for Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, Ec. and Aen. for Vergil’s Eclogues and Aeneid, and Her. and Met. for Ovid’s Heroides and Metamorphoses.
We also use these abbreviations:
Torquato Tasso, GL Gerusalemme Liberata
Ludovico Ariosto, OF Orlando Furioso
Edmund Spenser, FQ The Faerie Queene
A CHRONOLOGY OF MILTON’S LIFE
1608 (December 9) John Milton born on Bread Street in London.
1615 (November 24?) Brother Christopher born.
1620 (?) Enters St. Paul’s School under the headmastership of Alexander Gill, Sr. Begins his friendship with Charles Diodati. Thomas Young tutors Milton at home.
1625 (February 12) Admitted to Christ’s College, Cambridge.
1629 (March 26) Receives his B.A. degree. In December writes On the Morning of Christ’s Nativity.
1632 (July 3) Receives his M.A. degree. Retires to his father’s country house at Hammersmith for continued study.
1634 (September 29) A Masque performed at Ludlow Castle in Wales.
1635 or ’36 Moves with his parents to Horton.
1637 A Masque published (dated 1637 but possibly published in 1638). Mother, Sara, dies in Horton on April 3. Lycidas written in November and published the next year.
1638–9 Milton tours the Continent from April or May 1638 to July or August 1639. Charles Diodati dies in August 1638.
1639 Settles in London, where he makes his living as a tutor.
1641 Earliest antiprelatical tracts—Of Reformation (May), Of Prelatical Episcopacy (June or July), Animadversions on the Remonstrant’s Defense (July)—published.
1642 Publishes The Reason of Church Government (January or February) and An Apology for Smectymnuus (April). Marries Mary Powell in June or July. In August she leaves him and the Civil War begins.
1643 The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce published in August.
1644 The second edition of The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce published in February; Of Education in June; The Judgment of Martin Bucer in August; Areopagitica in November.
1645 Two more divorce pamphlets, Tetrachordon and Colasterion, published in March. Reconciles with Mary in July or August and moves to a larger house in Barbican in September.
1646 Poems of Mr. John Milton published in January, dated 1645. Daughter Anne born July 29.
1647 (March 13) On or about this date his father dies, leaving Milton the Bread Street house and a moderate estate. (September–October) Moves to a smaller house in High Holborn.
1648 (October 25) Daughter Mary born.
1649 (January 30) Charles I executed. Eikon Basilike published a week later. (February 13) The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates published, with a second edition in September. (March 15) Appointed Secretary for Foreign Tongues and ordered to answer Eikon Basilike. (May 11) Salmasius’s Defensio Regia arrives in England. (October 6) Eikonoklastes published, answering Eikon Basilike.
1651 (February 24) The Pro Populo Anglicano Defensio (A Defense of the English People) published, answering Salmasius. (March 16) Son John born.
1652 (February or March) Total blindness descends. Daughter Deborah born May 2. Wife Mary dies on May 5. Son John dies in June.
1653 Duties as Secretary for Foreign Tongues are reduced by the addition of an assistant. Cromwell installed as Protector in December.
1654 Defensio Secunda (Second Defense of the English People) published in May.
1655 Milton is pensioned in April and though he continues to work for the Protectorate, devotes more time to private studies. Pro Se Defensio (Defense of Himself) published in August.
1656 (November 12) Marries Katharine Woodcock.
1657 (October 19) Daughter Katharine born.
1658 Probably begins work on Paradise Lost. Wife Katharine dies on February 3. Daughter Katharine dies on March 17. Cromwell dies in September, succeeded by his son Richard.
1659 A Treatise of Civil Power published in February. Richard Cromwell resigns in May. Considerations Touching the Likeliest Means to Remove Hirelings out of the Church published in August.
1660 The Ready and Easy Way to Establish a Free Commonwealth published in February, with a second edition in April. Charles II proclaimed king in May. Milton arrested and imprisoned between September and November and released in December.
1663 (February 24) Marries Elizabeth Minshull. Moves to a house in Artillery Walk, near Bunhill Fields.
1665 Around June, moves to Chalfont St. Giles to avoid the London plague.
1667 (October or November) Paradise Lost published as a poem in ten books.
1670 (Around November 1) History of Britain published.
1671 Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes published.
1672 Artis Logicae (The Art of Logic) published.
1673 Of True Religion published. An enlarged edition of Poems published, also including Of Education.
1674 Epistolae Familiarum (Familiar Letters) published, including his Prolusions. Paradise Lost. A Poem in Twelve Books published around July 1. Milton dies November 9 or 10 and is buried in St. Giles, Cripplegate.
MINUTES OF THE LIFE OF MR. JOHN MILTON
John Aubrey
There are several seventeenth-century Milton biographers, including the anonymous biographer (most likely Milton’s friend Cyriack Skinner), the Oxford historian Anthony à Wood, Milton’s nephew and former student Edward Phillips, and the deist John Toland. One can find their works in Helen Darbishire’s The Early Lives of Milton (1932), which attributes the anonymous biography to Edward Phillips’s brother, John. We choose to print the biographical notes gathered by the antiquarian John Aubrey, which are notable for their author’s extraordinary attention to personal details and efforts to verify his information by consulting those who knew Milton well, including the poet’s widow, his brother, and some of his friends.
Aubrey’s manuscript notes are loosely organized, partly chronologically and partly by the person interviewed. Our text follows the chronologically arranged version established by Andrew Clark (2:62–72). Those wanting to identify the sources of individual comments may consult Clark’s edition or Darbishire’s. We have reproduced Clark’s interpolated headings, but we have in some places made different choices in our inclusions and exclusions. We have also modernized the text, changing punctuation and spelling. Aubrey’s notes are peppered with ellipses, where he leaves blanks to be filled in should further information appear. Bracketed ellipses in our text indicate places where we omit material found in Clark’s edition; otherwise the ellipses are Aubrey’s.
[HIS PARENTAGE]
His mother was a Bradshaw.
Mr. John Milton was of an Oxfordshire family.
His grandfather, …, (a Roman Catholic), of Holton, in Oxfordshire, near Shotover.
His father was brought up in the University of Oxon, at Christ Church, and his grandfather disinherited him because he kept not to the Catholic religion (he found a Bible in English in his chamber). So thereupon he cam
e to London, and became a scrivener (brought up by a friend of his; was not an apprentice) and got a plentiful estate by it, and left it off many years before he died. He was an ingenious man; delighted in music; composed many songs now in print, especially that of Oriana.1
I have been told that the father composed a song of fourscore parts for the Landgrave of Hesse, for which [his] highness sent a medal of gold, or a noble present. He died about 1647; buried in Cripplegate church, from his house in the Barbican.
[HIS BIRTH]
His son John was born in Bread Street, in London, at the Spread Eagle, which was his house (he had also in that street another house, the Rose, and other houses in other places).
He was born Anno Domini … the … day of …, about … o’clock in the …
(John Milton was born the 9th of December, 1608, die Veneris,2 half an hour after 6 in the morning.)
Portrait of Milton at age ten, by Cornelius Janssen. (illustration credit fm3.1)
[HIS PRECOCITY]
Anno Domini 1619, he was ten years old, as by his picture; and was then a poet.
[SCHOOL, COLLEGE, AND TRAVEL]
His schoolmaster then was a Puritan, in Essex, who cut his hair short.
He went to school to old Mr. Gill, at Paul’s School. Went at his own charge only to Christ’s College in Cambridge at fifteen, where he stayed eight years at least. Then he traveled into France and Italy (had Sir H. Wotton’s commendatory letters). At Geneva he contracted a great friendship with the learned Dr. Diodati of Geneva (vide his poems). He was acquainted with Sir Henry Wotton, ambassador at Venice, who delighted in his company. He was several years
From his brother, Christopher Milton: When he went to school, when he was very young, he studied very hard and sat up very late, commonly till twelve or one o’clock at night, and his father ordered the maid to sit up for him; and in those years (10) composed many copies of verses which might well become a riper age. And was a very hard student in the university, and performed all his exercises there with very good applause. His first tutor there was Mr. Chapell; from whom receiving some unkindness
