Messages are important, and advertising is vital in conveying messages. I do not wish to dwell on the history of such activities, but when we think of advertising, we think of persuasion and attraction; luring the viewer towards the subject matter of said advertisement.
As a result, we (sadly) have advertising on television (as if televisions weren’t bad enough). In the past, iconic adverts have included gorillas playing the drums or memorable lines from Hastings Direct. Have they ever changed anything or produced anything substantial within the UK? I would argue no, not really.
Typically, in the West, government and private business messages on social issues tend to be negative. We see adverts of smokers with cancerous growths and drink driving victims. The ‘world of you’ is incomplete without a specific item and you need it to become complete. The shock factor of such messages intends to make the audience fearful of the consequences of such behaviours.
Additionally, Western adverts which touch on important issues comes across as painfully inauthentic, superficial, and twee. This is likely compounded by a heightened awareness of forcing major issues into such a short space of time for televisions. I assume this is because such adverts are made not for the viewers but for the creators themselves, mirroring most modern media in recent years.
In contrast, one country has used a different means of spreading its message, utilising comedy and the heartfelt. Although funny adverts exist all over the world (most notoriously in Japan), it is the health adverts found in Thailand which do the most wonders.
This being all being said, what has any of this got to do with Thailand its own adverts? Thailand has problems with alcohol, it ranks among the highest in the world and the highest within Asia. Britain has alcohol problems too, all of which have their own effects and subsequent advertising campaigns. What is interesting is how both nations advertise differently to their respective populations. Thai adverts tend to be more friendly, less intense and hit home for the audience. All these things considered, I’m of the view that they’re more effective than UK adverts.
Perhaps the most famous Thai advert is this anti-drinking advert, found here. What is the most interesting is that it is weirdly powerful in nature. We see an individual go from being a alcohol-induced wreck to becoming a functioning member of society in the space of a minute.
It is done in a funny yet logically coherent way. There is no great shock value, no negativity, it is all laid out for the viewer to understand and enjoy. Moreover, the greater emphasis on becoming productive, not just for yourself nor your family, but most importantly your nation. The time you spend drinking could be used to tackle the issues facing your life and getting ahead of things. These actions aggregate into a big societal change occurring; a change occurring from one action.
Contrast this to the harsh and brutal actions taken in UK television adverts regarding alcoholism and related issues. We see botched and broken bodies that shock daytime viewers, yet none of them seem to be memorable or affect us in a long-lasting and meaningful way. There is no positive message nor spin that can be used to reach further to the viewers. In short, what this shows is that of the major cultural divide between how both nations approach not just raising awareness of such issues, but what can be done about it.
Another good example which evokes the heartfelt can be found within this life insurance advert. Again, we see this attitude of avoiding the negative and instead we see the aggregate effects of one man’s actions uplifting the society which surrounds him. The style may be different to that of the aforementioned ‘comedic’ type of adverts, but the messages remain the same. We see a singular man do minor actions which help society at a much larger scale.
This sits in sharp contrast to the types of adverts that are commonly seen in the UK. Most life insurance adverts are reductive. We see some random adult sat at the dining table talking to a suspiciously non-Indian call centre worker about being a non-smoker and the cost of insurance for a newly parented couple.
Above all else, what is propagated is a certain cultural attitude that is reflected within the nation. Generally speaking, this can be summarised as being that of Greng Jai (เกรงใจ). In short, Greng Jai means to be kind and considerate. This, in part, plays in the stereotype of being friendly and smiley in nature. This itself has many different problems which I will talk about in future articles.
However, the nature of Greng Jai, when played out in the role of advertising, presents the core functional difference. When negative and positive messages are presented, it is the positive messages which most effectively conveys the core message of the advertisement. Our ability to address certain issues need not be simplified nor brutalised.
In summary, the potential to learn from how various countries from around the world and how they spread, and promote certain messages to the population at large, remains important. Additionally, it remains important to develop a deeper understanding of how other nations handle themselves when presented with certain issues.
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His Royal Mistress
We may think of our ancestors as prudes when it comes to sex, but that’s not the case. A decent percentage of women were pregnant on their wedding day. People like Benjamin Franklin wrote guides on the best ways to have sex. Lewd ballads and jokes spread around the court.
The most prominent example of this is the royal mistress. Often young and beautiful, these women would service the king in ways he may not get from his wife. They would provide wit, charm and companionship. In France, a mistress could become Maîtresse-en-titre, an official appointment that would bring her her own apartments. It’s less official in other countries but these women were the most prominent ladies of the court after the official royals.
Let’s dive into the world of royal mistresses.
Why a mistress?
Royal marriages were alliances. As a rule, love would come after the wedding, if it all. Factors of a match included wealth, geography, religion, security and chances of children. Compatibility rarely factored into it. The brides were often in their early teens, sometimes younger, with their husbands sometimes a lot older. You met at the aisle or just before. It didn’t matter if they weren’t attractive or the right age- you married them.
With love out of the question, a king would turn to a mistress in order to have companionship. They’d be able to enjoy the sex they had with them as well as just being around someone they’re on good terms with.
A lot of the time, it was expected that a king would have a mistress and would be regarded as odd as he didn’t. A king could love and care for his wife but take a mistress either out of lust or obligation. For most of their marriage, Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon were pretty happy, yet he had mistresses. George II cared for his wife Caroline of Ansbach but still took lovers. On her deathbed Caroline asked him to remarry, but George replied that he’d only have mistresses. To love one’s wife was seen as unfashionable and having a mistress was seen as a sign of masculinity. George III being a loving, faithful husband to Queen Charlotte and spending time with his children was seen as rather odd.
Who were the mistresses?
Mistresses could come from all walks of life, from working-class girls to the highest nobility, though the latter was much more common. It tended to be easier to meet women of their own social standing. They were sometimes already known to the king or perhaps caught his eye at court. A particularly ambitious family might introduce their daughter in hopes of reaping the awards.
Beauty was almost always universal, but looks aren’t always the key factor. It was said that James II’s mistresses Arabella Churchill and the Countess of Dorchester were not beautiful. Instead these women were lively, intelligent, witty and charming. They were there not just to sleep with the king but to be companions. They’d attend parties together and have a drink after dinners. These women tended to be well educated and from political families which meant that they could hold their own. The most powerful mistresses would have political influences.
Marital status and virginity would not matter. Kings chose virgins, unmarried women, married women and widows. The husband of a mistress may well have been paid off and given handsome positions, sometimes they were sent away from court. Some were happy, others ambivalent or even angry. Either way, there wasn’t much they could do. They were the husband, but the king was the king.
Despite the strict sexual norms of the era, families of mistresses were often delighted that their daughters and sisters were chosen. The families of mistresses received new titles, positions and land. Thomas Boleyn, already a competent courtier, was showered with responsibilities as Henry VIII fell for Anne. Arabella Churchill’s family was thrilled for her, as she was considered extremely plain and even ugly.
What were the benefits of being a mistress?
In France, the Maîtresse-en-titre was an official title and position. The mistress would have her own apartments. She would often substitute for the queen if she was pregnant or ill.
Mistresses who weren’t Maîtresse-en-titre or even French would also be kept in luxury. They would receive money along with jewels, clothes and other luxurious gifts. Their families would also not be the only ones to receive titles and responsibilities. The mistresses themselves would receive new titles. Barbara Villiers, one of Charles II’s many, many mistresses, was made Duchess of Cleveland in her own right. Another was made Duchess of Portsmouth. Both also had other titles along with pensions and allowances.
Unmarried mistresses would often be given advantageous marriages, either as a gift or a parting present. Bessie Blount, Henry VIII’s mistress and the mother of his illegitimate son, was married to an Earl after her service. Anne de Pisseleu d’Heilly, mistress of Francis I of France, was married to a man whom the king created a Duke.
The politically-minded mistress might seek to influence. A close mistress who had the ear and the bed of the king would be their most powerful counsel. Those seeking to speak to the king often went to the mistress in order to get their foot in the door. A mistress could close or open the door to anyone, a gatekeeper in a way only a queen could match. Madame de Pompadour, famous mistress of Louis XV, was extraordinarily powerful. She would appoint and fire ministers along with other responsibilities. Barbara Villiers, lover of Charles II, and Diana de Poitiers, lover of Henry II of France, both used their influence politically.
If a mistress had a child that was acknowledged by the king as his, then there was a chance that child would be given titles and good marriages. Some illegitimate children even married royalty. They would be given prominent positions in the military and clergy.
What were the drawbacks of being a mistress?
Being a mistress wasn’t always sunshine and rainbows. A mistress was dependent upon the whims of the king. On tiring of her, he could cast her aside without giving her a husband or monetary assets. Plenty of mistresses, even the popular ones, would be cast aside at a moment’s notice.
You also had the reputation of being either a fornicating or adulterous woman. Many noblemen and royals had mistresses, but it was the women who were blamed. There were also reasons for the mistress to be concerned. They would become unpopular if they were seen as taking advantage of the king or supporting the wrong causes. Alice Perrers, mistress of Edward III, was a young woman accused of manipulating an older king still mourning his beloved wife. Jane Shore, lover of Edward IV, was forced to do public penance.
There was also little choice. Some mistresses tried to attract kings from the very beginning whilst others were pursued. Louis XV’s lover Louise de La Vallière was an extremely pious Catholic who felt awful for having unmarried sex with a married king. She felt so terrible that she entered a convent after she’d had their fifth child. Louise was reportedly an extremely kind and naive woman who never asked for special treatment.
If you had a child with the king and he did not recognise the baby, then you had a bastard child on your hands. If you were married then the husband would automatically assume fatherhood, whether he was the actual father or not. If you were unwed then there was a chance you were seen as damaged goods, ruining marital prospects.
What did the queen think?
Unfortunately for the king’s wife, she had basically no choice. He would have mistresses whether she liked it or not. She would likely have been raised with the understanding of mistresses and if she didn’t then she would soon learn. The queen, of course, would not be allowed to take a lover of her own. Queens who did or were accused of having lovers were exiled, or even executed in the cases of Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard.
Kings were expected not to flaunt their mistresses too openly around their wives, but they would definitely be aware of their existence. Queens would often have them as ladies-in-waiting, either by choice or by the command of their husband. Catherine of Braganza, the tragic and unfortunate wife of Charles II, was forced to accept Barbara Villiers in her court. Catherine tried to protest but Charles put his foot down. She was so angry that she threatened to return to Portugal, to which Charles responded by sending her courtiers home. He did eventually soften and treated Catherine with much more respect in their marriage, mistresses aside. Charles would side with her over mistresses.
Madame de Pompadour was always friendly and respectful of Queen Marie, who in turn liked her. This was a sharp contrast from previous mistresses who had been openly hostile to their queen. George II’s wife, Caroline of Ansbach, cleared his mistresses before he took up with them. Interestingly, George was close to Caroline and likely only took mistresses because it was expected of him.
At the end of the day, queens tended to have one security- they were the legitimate wives under law. Their sons-or daughters- would be the monarch one day. Even the most libertine of kings knew they had to spend time with their wives.
That is not to say all queens were so tolerant. Eleanor of Aquitaine got so sick of her husband’s adultery that it was part of the reason she tried to remove him from the throne. Anne Boleyn flew into a rage when she saw Henry VIII and Jane Seymour together, despite the fact that it was how she’d managed to become Queen.
Probably the most notable rebellious Queen was Isabella of France, wife to Edward II. Isabella was only a child of twelve when she landed on English shores to marry the twenty-four year old Edward. At their wedding feast, Edward sat with his likely lover Piers Gaveston. He also gave Gaveston jewellery that was meant to be Isabella’s. Isabella was furious and complained to her father, who interceded on her behalf.
While Isabella would come to accept Gaveston, Edward’s next favourite would become her enemy. Hugh le Despenser was initially exiled after becoming too powerful, but soon returned. He effectively ruled England with Edward and was a tyrannical man. Isabella returned to France and raised an army with her lover Roger Mortimer. They were supported by the barons, who despised the Despenser family. Hugh le Despenser the Younger and his father were executed. Edward was forced to abdicate and locked in a castle; he soon died under mysterious circumstances. His and Isabella’s son Edward took over, with the Queen as his regent. Three years later, Edward III had Mortimer executed and Isabella was imprisoned for two years.
The history of the royal mistress is a fascinating one. These women (and men) have attained glory and privilege as well as despair and derision. Some would provide their king with more children than the queen did. Others were fleeting. Some would become Queen themselves. All in all, there were more to royal mistresses than sex and lust.
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Rip Up the Roads
Driving may well be the biggest psy-op in modern history. The car has often been depicted as the symbol of freedom, the ability to go wherever one pleases – to emancipate oneself from the circumstances they find themselves in, and to strike up a new existence elsewhere. There’s a reason they talk of the ‘open highway’. Maybe in America this imagery resonates. After all, America has the size necessary for road trips to take you to genuinely isolated places. But America is America, and Britain is Britain. If you woke up at a random place on the British Isles, you could walk in any direction and find a marker of civilisation and follow it to safety before you were seriously close to death.
This fact is part of Britain’s charm, we really are the national equivalent of The Shire. A place where just the natural landscape lends itself to safety. Our island status makes it easy to defend, and our size allows us to grow, but not isolate ourselves from one another. Considering this, there really is no escape from civilisation in Britain. This may well be why exploration and adventure are such a large part of our culture: the only way to experience these things was to leave the country.
These facts make cars not so much a freedom, but a restriction. There is no ‘open road’ in Britain, just congested highways and country lanes that were fit for horses and carriages, not Land Rovers and BMWs. Driving in modern Britain means going from your box apartment to your box office, all facilitated by your box car. What do you get for the privilege of this freedom? More paperwork, bills, and another thing to look after. These are just the personal costs, the social costs are much greater. Huge swathes of land have to be taken up to facilitate cars. Roads are just the beginning, parking, driveways, motorways and car-related services such as petrol stations and garages all take up space that could otherwise be allocated for residential use. Cities such as Rome enchant those who visit because they were structured around the human and not the car. The streets of Rome have natural, organic arcs to them which obscure the street ahead. Cars don’t do well with too many turns, and so roads become long stretches that give the eyes nothing to feast upon but the gruelling monotonous journey ahead, often accompanied by ‘humorous’ bumper stickers or, God forbid, billboard emblazoned with advertisements – turning your commute into an advertisement break between your diminishing private life, and your gruelling work life.
So what should replace the roads? Surely we still need all of the creature comforts of the modern world, and if we don’t have roads between towns or within them, we can’t have any trade. First and foremost, people will not simply sit in their homes and starve because the A419 has been ripped up and they cannot reach a Tesco. Where there’s mouths to feed, there’s money to be made, and a new wave of farm-to-table markets would be incentivised to emerge locally. Now that walking is the main way of navigating towns and cities, commerce has to spread out to accommodate. No longer will there be massive central hubs of consumption, but small decentralised centres catering to the bespoke needs of communities on the most elemental level. For transport between these centres, the newfound cash not spent on road maintenance can be used to build trams to move people between these different centres allowing cross-pollination of consumers without the homogenisation of products that comes with shoving those products in vans and moving them across towns.
Of course, there are those goods which simply cannot be manufactured locally, and certain goods like fish are quite obviously not easy to come by if you’re not on the coast. To this end, a massive expansion and upgrade to the railways is needed. Expansion to offset the now-defunct road freight industry, and upgrades to ensure timely delivery of goods. This would mean moving away from much of the Victorian-era railway, but returning In full force to the Victorian-era spirit of industrialisation and progress. Rail freight is often cheaper per-mile than road freight, and allows for quick loading and unloading of containers, rather than manual loading and unloading from the back of lorries.
In order for rail to dominate the British landscape, the failures of the British state can no longer be tolerated. It shouldn’t take a decade to open a railway for public consultation, only to downscale it before any serious construction has taken place. Instead, a reactive and dynamic centralised infrastructure is required that clears out the dead weight who would stand in the way of a new vision of Britain – one in which the countryside is reclaimed from the concrete mess of roads, and the rewilded landscape tears past the window of your maglev as you travel from Plymouth to Edinburgh in four hours, rather than ten.
However, the removal of roads doesn’t require the end of private travel. Instead, we can simply take paramotors to the skies and fly to any number of open fields. Paramotors are statistically safer than cars, and can go at around 60mph. Private travel in Neo-Britain would mean the removal of box cars to open skies, overlooking a renewed landscape. For those who prefer to remain grounded, the reclaimed land doesn’t need to be privatised, it can be kept public and traversed by anyone who rents a quad bike and decides to drive through the wilderness to visit their friend a town over, or anyone who just wants to to ramp around the countryside for the day.
Roads are an ugly blight on Britain, they turn a once green and beautiful isle into a grey, dead landmass full of grey, dead people. They facilitate a society built around machinery and not around the character of the people who compose it. There are those who want to end the growth of technology where it stands. These people will lose out to those who wield the weapon of tech. There are also those who wish to simply allow tech to override their humanity. Indeed, we see this in the fact most of our cultural events (including Project 22) are experienced through a screen. Instead, I propose a third way: that technology is a tool in the hands of those who wield it, and through a great strength of will, we can adapt it to the world we live in. We ought not to see technology as an escape from nature, nor as a means to become stewards of nature. We are a part of nature, and must shape ourselves and our societies to work in tandem with it. To that end, we must rip up the roads.
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Eve: The Prototype of the Private Citizen
Written in the 1660s, John Milton’s Paradise Lost is the type of book I imagine one could spend a lifetime mining for meaning and still be left with something to learn. Its being conceived as an English Epic that uses the poetic forms and conventions of Homeric and Ovidic antiquity to present a Christian subject, it yields as much to the student of literature as it does to students of history and politics, articulating in its retelling of the Fall many of the fundamental questions at work in the post-Civil-War body politic of the preceding decade (among many other things). Comparable with Dante’s Inferno in form, subject, and depth, Paradise Lost offers—and requires—much to and from readers, and it is one of the deepest and most complex works in the English canon. I thank God Milton did not live a half century earlier or write plays, else I might have to choose between him and Shakespeare—because I’d hesitate to simply pick Shakespeare.
One similarity between Milton and Shakespeare that has import to today’s broader discussion involves the question of whether they present their female characters fairly, believably, and admirably, or merely misogynistically. Being a Puritan Protestant from the 1600s writing an Epic verse version of Genesis 1-3, Milton must have relegated Eve to a place of silent submission, no? This was one of the questions I had when I first approached him in graduate school, and, as I had previously found when approaching Shakespeare and his heroines with the same query, I found that Milton understood deeply the gender politics of Adam and Eve, and he had a greater respect for his heroine than many current students might imagine.
I use “gender politics” intentionally, for it is through the different characterizations of Adam and Eve that Milton works out the developing conception of the citizen in an England that had recently executed its own king. As I’ve written in my discussion of Shakespeare’s history plays, justified or not, regicide has comprehensive effects. Thus, the beheading of Charles I on 30 January 1649 had implications for all 17th-century English citizens, many of which were subsequently written about by many like Margaret Cavendish and John Locke. At issue was the question of the individual’s relation to the monarch; does the citizen’s political identity inhere in the king or queen (Cavendish’s perspective), or does he or she exist as a separate entity (Locke’s)? Are they merely “subjects” in the sense of “the king’s subjects,” or are they “subjects” in the sense of being an active agent with an individual perspective that matters? Is it Divine Right, conferred on and descended from Adam, that makes a monarch, or is it the consent of the governed, of which Eve was arguably the first among mankind?
Before approaching such topics in Paradise Lost, Milton establishes the narrative framework of creation. After an initial prologue that does an homage to the classical invoking of the Muses even as it undercuts the pagan tradition and places it in an encompassing Christian theology (there are many such nuances and tensions throughout the work), Milton’s speaker introduces Satan, nee Lucifer, having just fallen with his third of heaven after rebelling against the lately announced Son. Thinking, as he does, that the Son is a contingent being like himself (rather than a non-contingent being coequal with the Father, as the Son is shown to be in Book III), Satan has failed to submit to a rulership he does not believe legitimate. He, thus, establishes one of the major themes of Paradise Lost: the tension between the individual’s will and God’s. Each character’s conflict inheres in whether or not they will choose to remain where God has placed them—which inerringly involves submitting to an authority that, from their limited perspective, they do not believe deserves their submission—or whether they will reject it and prefer their own apparently more rational interests. Before every major character—Satan, Adam, and Eve—is a choice between believing the superior good of God’s ordered plan and pursuing the seemingly superior option of their individual desires.
Before discussing Eve, it is worth looking at her unheavenly counterpart, Sin. In a prefiguration of the way Eve was formed out of Adam before the book’s events, Sin describes to Satan how she was formed Athena-style out of his head when he chose to rebel against God and the Son, simultaneously being impregnated by him and producing their son, Death. As such she and Satan stand as a parody not only of the parent-progeny-partner relationship of Adam-Eve but also of God and the Son. Describing her illicit role in Lucifer’s rebellion, Sin says that almost immediately after birth,
I pleased and with attractive graces won
The most averse (thee chiefly) who full oft
Thyself in me thy perfect image viewing
Becam’st enamoured and such joy thou took’st
With me in secret that my womb conceived
A growing burden.
—Paradise Lost II.761-767In here and other places, Sin shows that her whole identity is wrapped up in Satan, her father-mate. In fact, there is rarely any instance where she refers to herself without also referring to him for context or as a counterpoint. Lacking her own, private selfhood from which she is able to volitionally choose the source of her identity and meaning, Sin lives in a state of perpetual torment, constantly being impregnated and devoured by the serpents and hellhounds that grow out of her womb.
Sin’s existence provides a Dantean concretization of Satan’s rebellion, which is elsewhere presented as necessarily one of narcissistic solipsism—a greatness derived from ignoring knowledge that might contradict his supposed greatness. A victim of her father-mate’s “narcissincest” (a term I coined for her state in grad school), Sin is not only an example of the worst state possible for the later Eve, but also, according to many critics, of women in 17th-century England, both in relation to their fathers and husbands, privately, as well as to the monarch (considered by many the “father of the realm”), publically. Through this reading, we can see Milton investigating, through Sin, not only the theology of Lucifer’s fall, but also of an extreme brand of royalism assumed by many at the time. And yet, it is not merely a simple criticism of royalism, per se: though Milton, himself, wrote other works defending the execution of Charles I and eventually became a part of Cromwell’s government, it is with the vehicle of Lucifer’s rebellion and Sin—whose presumptions are necessarily suspect—that he investigates such things (not the last instance of his work being as complex as the issues it investigates).
After encountering the narcissincest of the Satan-Sin relationship in Book II we are treated to its opposite in the next: the reciprocative respect between the Father and the Son. In what is, unsurprisingly, one of the most theologically-packed passages in Western literature, Book III seeks to articulate the throneroom of God, and it stands as the fruit of Milton’s study of scripture, soteriology, and the mysteries of the Incarnation, offering, perhaps wisely, as many questions as answers for such a scene. Front and center is, of course, the relationship between the Son and Father, Whose thrones are surrounded by the remaining two thirds of the angels awaiting what They will say. The Son and Father proceed to narrate to Each Other the presence of Adam and Eve in Eden and Satan’s approach thereunto; They then discuss what will be Their course—how They will respond to what They, omniscient, already know will happen.
One major issue Milton faced in representing such a discussion is the fact that it is not really a discussion—at least, not dialectically. Because of the triune nature of Their relationship, the Son already knows what the Father is thinking; indeed, how can He do anything but share His Father’s thoughts? And yet, the distance between the justice and foresight of the Father (in no ways lacking in the Son) and the mercy and love of the Son (no less shown in the words of the Father) is managed by the frequent use of the rhetorical question. Seeing Satan leave Hell and the chaos that separates it from the earth, the Father asks:
Only begotten Son, seest thou what rage
Transports our Adversary whom no bounds
Prescribed, no bars…can hold, so bent he seems
On desperate revenge that shall redound
Upon his own rebellious head?
—Paradise Lost III.80-86The Father does not ask the question to mediate the Son’s apparent lack of knowledge, since, divine like the Father, the Son can presumably see what He sees. Spoken in part for the sake of those angels (and readers) who do not share Their omniscience, the rhetorical questions between the Father and Son assume knowledge even while they posit different ideas. Contrary to the solipsism and lack of sympathy between Sin and Satan (who at first does not even recognize his daughter-mate), Book III shows the mutual respect and knowledge of the rhetorical questions between the Father and Son—who spend much of the scene describing Each Other and Their motives (which, again, are shared).
The two scenes between father figures and their offspring in Books II and III provide a backdrop for the main father-offspring-partner relationship of Paradise Lost: that of Adam and Eve—with the focus, in my opinion, on Eve. Eve’s origin story is unique in Paradise Lost: while she was made out of Adam and derives much of her joy from him, she was not initially aware of him at her nativity, and she is, thus, the only character who has experienced and can remember (even imagine) existence independent of a source.
Book IV opens on Satan reaching Eden, where he observes Adam and Eve and plans how to best ruin them. Listening to their conversation, he hears them describe their relationship and their respective origins. Similar to the way the Father and Son foreground their thoughts in adulatory terms, Eve addresses Adam as, “thou for whom | And from whom I was formed flesh of thy flesh | and without whom am to no end, my guide | And head” (IV.440-443). While those intent on finding sexism in the poem will, no doubt, jump at such lines, Eve’s words are significantly different from Sin’s. Unlike Sin’s assertion of her being a secondary “perfect image” of Satan (wherein she lacks positive subjectivity), Eve establishes her identity as being reciprocative of Adam’s in her being “formed flesh,” though still originating in “thy flesh.” She is not a mere picture of Adam, but a co-equal part of his substance. Also, Eve diverges from Sin’s origin-focused account by relating her need of Adam for her future, being “to no end” without Adam; Eve’s is a chosen reliance of practicality, not an unchosen one of identity.
Almost immediately after describing their relationship, Eve recounts her choice of being with Adam—which necessarily involves remembering his absence at her nativity. Hinting that were they to be separated Adam would be just as lost, if not more, than she (an idea inconceivable between Sin and Satan, and foreshadowing Eve’s justification in Book IX for sharing the fruit with Adam, who finds himself in an Eve-less state), she continues her earlier allusion to being separated from Adam, stating that, though she has been made “for” Adam, he a “Like consort to [himself] canst nowhere find” (IV.447-48). Eve then remembers her awakening to consciousness:
That day I oft remember when from sleep
I first awaked and found myself reposed
Under a shade on flow’rs, much wond’ring where
And what I was, whence thither brought and how.
—Paradise Lost IV.449-452Notably seeing her origin as one not of flesh but of consciousness, she highlights that she was alone. That is, her subjective awareness preexisted her understanding of objective context. She was born, to use a phrase by another writer of Milton’s time, tabula rasa, without either previous knowledge or a mediator to grant her an identity. Indeed, perhaps undercutting her initial praise of Adam, she remembers it “oft”; were this not an image of the pre-Fall marriage, one might imagine the first wife wishing she could take a break from her beau—the subject of many critical interpretations! Furthermore, Milton’s enjambment allows a dual reading of “from sleep,” as if Eve remembers that day as often as she is kept from slumber—very different from Sin’s inability to forget her origin due to the perpetual generation and gnashing of the hellhounds and serpents below her waist. The privacy of Eve’s nativity so differs from Sin’s public birth before all the angels in heaven that Adam—her own father-mate—is not even present; thus, Eve is able to consider herself without reference to any other. Of the interrogative words with which she describes her post-natal thoughts— “where…what…whence”—she does not question “who,” further showing her initial isolation, which is so defined that she initially cannot conceive of another separate entity.
Eve describes how, hearing a stream, she discovered a pool “Pure as th’ expanse of heav’n” (IV.456), which she subsequently approached and, Narcissus-like, looked down into.
As I bent down to look, just opposite
A shape within the wat’ry gleam appeared
Bending to look on me. I started back,
It started back, but pleased I soon returned,
Pleased it returned as soon with answering looks
Of sympathy and love.
—Paradise Lost IV.460-465When she discovers the possibility that another person might exist, it is, ironically, her own image in the pool. In Eve, rather than in Sin or Adam, we are given an image of self-awareness, without reference to any preceding structural identity. Notably, she is still the only person described in the experience—as she consistently refers to the “shape” as “it.” Eve’s description of the scene contains the actions of two personalities with only one actor; that is, despite there being correspondence in the bending, starting, and returning, and in the conveyance of pleasure, sympathy, and love, there is only one identity present. Thus, rather than referring to herself as an image of another, as does Sin, it is Eve who is here the original, with the reflection being the image, inseparable from herself though it be. Indeed, Eve’s nativity thematically resembles the interaction between the Father and the Son, who, though sharing the same omniscient divinity, converse from seemingly different perspectives. Like the Father Who instigates interaction with His Son, His “radiant image” (III.63), in her first experience Eve has all the agency.
As the only instance in the poem when Eve has the preeminence of being another’s source (if only a reflection), this scene invests her interactions with Adam with special meaning. Having experienced this private moment of positive identity before following the Voice that leads her to her husband, Eve is unique in having the capacity to agree or disagree with her seemingly new status in relation to Adam, having remembered a time when it was not—a volition unavailable to Sin and impossible (and unnecessary) to the Son.
And yet, this is the crux of Eve’s conflict: will she continue to heed the direction of the Voice that interrupted her Narcissus-like fixation at the pool and submit herself to Adam? The ambivalence of her description of how she would have “fixed | Mine eyes till now and pined with vain desire,” over her image had the Voice not come is nearly as telling as is her confession that, though she first recognized Adam as “fair indeed, and tall!” she thought him “less fair, | Less winning soft, less amiably mild | Than that smooth wat’ry image” (IV.465-480). After turning away from Adam to return to the pool and being subsequently chased and caught by Adam, who explained the nature of their relation—how “To give thee being I lent | Out of my side to thee, nearest my heart, | Substantial life to have thee by my side”—she “yielded, and from that time see | How beauty is excelled by manly grace | And wisdom which alone is truly fair” (IV. 483-491). One can read these lines at face value, hearing no undertones in her words, which are, after all, generally accurate, Biblically speaking. However, despite the nuptial language that follows her recounting of her nativity, it is hard for me not to read a subtle irony in the words, whether verbal or dramatic. That may be the point—that she is not an automaton without a will, but a woman choosing to submit, whatever be her personal opinion of her husband.
Of course, the whole work must be read in reference to the Fall—not merely as the climax which is foreshadowed throughout, but also as a condition necessarily affecting the writing and reading of the work, it being, from Milton’s Puritan Protestant perspective, impossible to correctly interpret pre-Fall events from a post-Fall state due to the noetic effects of sin. Nonetheless, in keeping with the generally Arminian tenor of the book—that every character must have a choice between submission and rebellion for their submission to be valid, and that the grace promised in Book III is “Freely vouchsafed” and not based on election (III.175)—I find it necessary to keep in mind, as Eve seems to, the Adam-less space that accompanied her nativity. Though one need not read all of her interaction with Adam as sarcastic, in most of her speech one can read a subtextual pull back to the pool, where she might look at herself, alone.
In Eve we see the fullest picture of what is, essentially, every key character’s (indeed, from Milton’s view, every human’s) conflict: to choose to submit to an assigned subordinacy or abstinence against the draw of a seemingly more attractive alternative, often concretized in what Northrop Frye calls a “provoking object”—the Son being Satan’s, the Tree Adam’s, and the reflection (and private self it symbolizes, along with an implicit alternative hierarchy with her in prime place) Eve’s. In this way, the very private consciousness that gives Eve agency is that which threatens to destroy it; though Sin lacks the private selfhood possessed by Eve, the perpetual self-consumption of her and Satan’s incestuous family allegorizes the impotent and illusory self-returning that would characterize Eve’s existence if she were to return to the pool. Though she might not think so, anyone who knows the myth that hers parallels knows that, far from limiting her freedom, the Voice that called Eve from her first sight of herself rescued her from certain death (though not for long).
The way Eve’s subjectivity affords her a special volition connects with the biggest questions of Milton’s time. Eve’s possessing a private consciousness from which she can consensually submit to Adam parallels John Locke’s “Second Treatise on Civil Government” of the same century, wherein he articulates how the consent of the governed precedes all claims of authority. Not in Adam but in Eve does Milton show that monarchy—even one as divine, legitimate, and absolute as God’s—relies on the volition of the governed, at least as far as the governed’s subjective perception is concerned. Though she cannot reject God’s authority without consequence, Eve is nonetheless able to agree or disagree with it, and through her Milton presents the reality that outward submission does not eliminate inward subjectivity and personhood (applicable as much to marriages as to monarchs, the two being considered parallel both in the poem and at the time of its writing); indeed, the inalienable presence of the latter is what gives value to the former and separates it from the agency-less state pitifully experienced by Sin.
And yet, Eve’s story (to say nothing of Satan’s) also stands as a caution against simply taking on the power of self-government without circumspection. Unrepentant revolutionary though he was, Milton was no stranger to the dangers of a quickly and simply thrown-off government, nor of an authority misused, and his nuancing of the archetype of all subsequent rebellions shows that he did not advocate rebellion as such. While Paradise Lost has influenced many revolutions (political in the 18th-century revolutions, artistic in the 19th-century Romantics, cultural in the 20th-century New Left), it nonetheless has an anti-revolutionary current. Satan’s presumptions and their later effects on Eve shows the self-blinding that is possible to those who, simply trusting their own limited perception, push for an autonomy they believe will liberate them to an unfettered reason but which will, in reality, condemn them to a solipsistic ignorance.
By treating Eve, not Adam, as the everyman character who, like the character of a morality play, represents the psychological state of the tempted individual—that is, as the character with whom the audience is most intended to sympathize—Milton elevates her to the highest status in the poem. Moreover—and of special import to Americans like myself—as an articulation of an individual citizen who does not derive the relation to an authority without consent, Eve stands as a prototype of the post-17th-century conception of the citizen that would lead not only to further changes between the British Crown and Parliament but also a war for independence in the colonies. Far from relegating Eve to a secondary place of slavish submission, Milton arguably makes her the most human character in humanity’s first story; wouldn’t that make her its protagonist? As always, let this stimulate you to read it for yourself and decide. Because it integrates so many elements—many of which might defy new readers’ expectations in their complexity and nuance—Paradise Lost belongs as much on the bookshelf and the syllabus as Shakespeare’s Complete Works, and it presents a trove for those seeking to study the intersection not only of art, history, and theology, but also of politics and gender roles in a culture experiencing a fundamental change.
