In the seventeeth century, women were not permitted to embrace in the power of knowledge. John Milton portrays the only female character in his epic poem, Paradise Lost, as a subservient creature caught in a seemingly misogynistic society. Milton states Eve’s location in the great chain of authority of his time quite clearly with her inferiority to man repeated frequently throughout the epic, especially amplified in Book IV and Book IX. Milton uses the character of Eve to represent the ills that can befall mankind after she (the woman) breaks the chain of authority in which she was placed. A twenty-first century reader might perceive Milton’s theodicy on a woman’s place in society to be inhumane as well as appalling, however, during his time women were accepted by society and themselves as subordinate on the chain of hierarchy. They were to be treated properly by their man but were to walk two steps behind their superior male counterpart at all times. Even though Milton’s blatant description of Eve’s role in the created world is unequal, the twenty-first century reader accepts this concept and enjoys the passionate power that the character has over the reasonable male authority figure.In the traditional epic structure and in Book I of Paradise Lost, the reader is immediately introduced to the main action of the story being told, the narration opens with the middle of the story (media res) and uses flashbacks to develop the plot. “Of man’s first disobedience…Who first seduced them to that foul revolt?…the infernal serpent; he it was, whose guile stirred up with envy and revenge, deceived the mother of mankind”(PL: BK 1, L 1-36). It is stated quite clearly in these lines that Eve initiated the fall of man by giving in to the temptation posed to her by Satan. Knowing this from the absolute beginning of the narrative, it is clear that the woman unreasonably steps out of ...
