Her the Inferior, Yet...

Yeah Milton, put Satanic Eve in her place.

"Of Nature her the inferior, in the mind
And inward faculties, which most excel;
In outward also her resembling less
His image who made both, and less expressing
The character of that dominion given
O'er other creatures:"

Many female critics abhor this section of Paradise Lost where Adam is describing his reaction to Eve. Sandra M. Gilbert, speaking specifically of this attitude in Milton's work expressed,

 "for [Woolf], as for most other women writers, both [Milton] and the creatures of his imagination constitute the misogynistic essence of what Gertrude Stein called 'patriarchal poetry.'"

While this reaction towards Milton is extraordinarily common among most critics, it is also helpful to realize where Milton is coming from. 64 years before the first publication of Paradise Lost, England mourned the loss of their Protestant, female ruler. The social and ideological implications of her rule on the English mind, more specifically on Milton's, raise so many questions. For example, did Milton view women as fit to rule on their own or did he see Elizabeth as a product of her male counselor? Did he sympathize with Elizabeth as a Protestant or was he a critic of her as a dictator?

One insight we can refer to is found in how seventeenth-century women viewed Milton's Paradise Lost. Shannon Miller explains in reference to seventeenth-century female pamphleteers "in defenses where women are arguing for themselves (or appear to be doing so), they could be viewed as taking on the identity of a seducing Eve. Eve’s arguments had, of course, seduced Adam to fall; consequently, women defenders could be aligned with Eve. Instead, these writers turn this liability to an advantage, appropriating the potential association with the first mother."

One other significant difference with these women, as with Eve, "[lie] not in the terms of [their] defense, but in the fact that [they] defend [themselves] at all."  Eve was, in the act of defending herself against Adam, in fact taking on the methods and attitude of the radical and free women of Milton's day. Both Eve and Milton seem to take on a very progressive view of women as fundamentally separate, but complementary in mind. This autonomy is very clearly illustrated in their physical autonomy as well.

"Eve argues against the conventional language of attack within the “anti-feminist” debate, and she does so by employing its very language. She even anticipates how the metonymy of her as a “crooked rib” will be employed, transforming the image in her defense:“Was I to have never parted from thy side? / As good have grown there still a lifeless Rib” (9.1153-54). While the “crooked rib” may have erred, her “lifeless Rib” image asserts that women must have some independent status or they would have no existence at all."

Contradistinction in relationships is still viewed as progressive.

Men and women in their differences are made harmonious. It is not without argument and conflict that significant decisions are made. It is this very duality and contradistinction that allows men and women, Adam and Eve to be whole together. It is only with this contraposition that we may reach an agreement and there is something more beautiful about two opposites working together than two eternally unanimous beings in cooperation.  It is this very polarity that results, even, in attraction. 

"Of Nature her the inferior, in the mind

And inward faculties, which most excel;

In outward also her resembling less

His image who made both, and less expressing

The character of that dominion given

O'er other creatures: Yet when I approach

Her loveliness, so absolute she seems

And in herself complete, so well to know

Her own, that what she wills to do or say,

Seems wisest, virtuousest, discreetest, best:"