Conflict between man and God/ Man and women Flashcards
What is the argument
There is an epistemic distance of why God created Eve as inferior / antagonistic relationship of Adam and Eve – hierarchy? Rooted in a lack of understanding of why God would do this and a lack of acceptance for Eve to accept this.
Argument one - part one
Women’s hubristic seduction of reason
1) C.S Lewis Eve fell through pride -
2) It is Eve, who encountered Satan on her rebellious search for independence and uses reason to convince Adam who is unknown to her true intentions
3) “Firm faith and love”
Fricative alliterative is peaceful/ soothing foreshadows descent as mirrors the soothing sibilance associated with Satan “sun was sunk” – doomed to fall?
4) Women below men on GchainofB and should have known her place as social inferior – incapable of proper reason
Argument one - part two
Women’s hubristic seduction of reason
1) Eve wants to be autonomous – curiously reminiscent of when she turned away after being created as Adam’s “second self”
2) Zimmerman “a woman in search for her identity”
3) “Graceful innocence” / Adam “guards her”
Infantile like a child – not free – was Eve right to be deceitful????
4) Eve’s language mirrors the Doctrines of Freedom in Milton’s Aeropagitica and arguments of reason do make sense if pre-lapsarian
5) “How are we happy in fear of harm” – how can we be in bliss if constantly afraid? Is this a divide between God and man?
Argument two - Part one
Satan’s great temptation speech
Can Eve be blamed being ignorant to Satan
1) Empson PL is a “malicious joke”
2) Satan’s great temptation speech is like an operatic aria in praise of a certain “goodly tree” that he does not name. Could Eve be blamed for being ignorant to his Machiavellian eloquence when he should not be able to “reason” with “tongue of brute”
3) Innocent “goodly” – seemingly good but Satan not describing the tree with the superlative suggests maligned intentions
4) “reason” arguably what Eve is trying to strive for in her separateness to Adam and why she constantly uses it
5) Despite being lower on the GchainofBeing – divide between male and female
Argument two - Part two
Satan’s great temptation speech
Can Eve be blamed being ignorant to Satan
1) Eve is aware of Satan’s intentions
2) Gilbert Eve has an inner morass of rot and evil
3) Although the fruit brings death “How dies the serpent?”
-Rhetoric – aware that Serpent is not completely honest
4) Resentful “For us alone was death invented? Or to us denied?”
-Rhetoric questioning God
-Pre-fallen ?
-Was eve ever oblivious to Satan’s intentions
5) Were women created evil? Flaw of the creator?
Argument three - Part one
Eve’s refusal to accept hierarchy
-Is the Great Chain of Being just?
1) Gilbert “Eve refuses to accept hierarchy
2) Eve at first does not want to give Adam the knowledge of death and her arguments centre from equality
3) “Render me more equal”
“Superior: for who inferior is free”
4) “inferior” – shackled to Adam / no voice
-Further emphasised by worry that God will replace her
-Objectifies – is this just?
5) Women not allowed to be educated seen as inferior to men as lower on the GCofB – Eve questions how this is fair
6) Ricks: “an argument about God’s justice”
Argument three - Part two
Eve’s refusal to accept hierarchy
-Is the Great Chain of Being just?
1) Epistemic distance – test for Adam to see if he would put his uxorious passion for Eve above his love for God
2) “defaced deflowered and to death devote”
-Cold formality of tone lays the blame on Eve and yet resorts to die with her
3) “fondly overcome with female charm”
-Eve used powers of seduction
“God left free the will” – shows it was Adam’s choice alone in the
4) Adam views Eve as a possession and refuses to withdraw from what he views is rightly is his – hamartia
A key contextual point
Cromwell: started with the greater intent then for individual gain – son on the throne
Other Questions
-Revolt and disobedience
-Milton writes about a fallen world not a perfect world
