Good to hear from you again, seespotrun. So you did make it through to the end? It was a marathon. I feel a sense of oppressiveness in the poem as well, at some points, especially when I have to contemplate God's grand scheming, also called omniscience.seespotrun2008 wrote: I think this is such a good question and certainly something that one could write an entire book on. I think that, at least in our time, there is a lot of political capital in saying that this story is factual and irrefutable. Modern interpretations of this story, possibly thanks to Milton but perhaps going back further than that, explain why women’s oppression is their own fault and why they have to obey their husbands, and men in general. It justifies dominion over and oppression of other living creatures on earth. It also justifies hierarchy and pecking orders. Uggg. By the end of PL I was feeling really irritated and feeling that it is pretty unfortunate that this book has had so much influence over Western society.
It's interesting that you lay the blame on modern interpretations of the Eden story. That emphasis does remind us that in itself, the Eden story in Genesis doesn't contain all that much by way of woman's subservience, though we might assume that this view of woman would be strongest the further back in time we go. Maybe this isn't quite so. Maybe the need to define woman's place was actually stronger later on.
I was thinking after I wrote the question about Eden: maybe the best way to explain how the myth got so big is that it happened by accident. I mean, in a historical sense, was it purely an accident that the Eden story became scripturized? There have been other cultures whose myths have disappeared without a trace. Christopher Hitchens makes this point in God is not Great. This all brings in some vexing questions that I guess I'd like to avoid for now!