MaryLupine wrote:
This stuff goes along with Plato's idea of matter as empty without what is "really real" - that is Form (reason being the only way to perceive Form). Aristotle expressed this concept of matter as materia prima. The basic idea for Plato is that women are essentially materia prima, dumb to the higher calling of reason and essentially an animal vessel for the growth and embodiment of form as it descends into the earthly plain. This "seeding," of course, is the role of men, who are, according to Plato, capable of reason.
If we're talking about creation and ideas about cosmology or ontology, I guess we got a little ahead of ourselves, since those subjects aren't covered until really until Book VII. But I'd be interested to hear your view on how this Greek philosophical background applies to Milton's cover of biblical creation, and especially regarding Eve's creation as an apparent afterthought, with "creation" already over. I'm glad you joined the discussion and hope you can stay around to give us your very interesting perspective.
What usually strikes immediately about Eve is of course her submissiveness. The line "He for God only; she for God in him" can be somewhat incendiary. Still, in their relationship I do see something touching and pure. Milton's sympathies with his human characters (as well as with Satan) are so apparent that God is undermined almost completely, with his pointless prohibition. The fall becomes a completely fortunate one, or at least a completely inevitable one.
Milton throughout the poem doesn't seem to have control over the reader's reactions to Satan. He attempts to counteract his own building up of Satan by such devices as making editorial statements, by having him sire Sin and Death, giving him the form of a toad, and by having others report of him unlikely behavior, as when Gabriel alleges that Satan himself fawned over God:
And thou sly hypocrite, who now wouldst seem
Patron of liberty, who more then thou
Once fawn'd, and cring'd, and servilly ador'd
Heav'ns awful Monarch? wherefore but in hope [ 960 ]
To dispossess him, and thy self to reigne?
None of this really works. As Mary Lupin said elsewhere, Satan is the most human character in the poem, and it is not necessarily bad human behavior that he exemplifies.