Paradise Lost

16 Pages 4036 Words

desire…” (IV, 464-466). Milton discusses the scene through Eve and she is the one who describes what goes on. He does this because the scene happens in the past and therefore he uses her to discuss it rather than confusing the reader with a flashback type scene. He also has Eve relate what happened to prove that Eve must indeed be beautiful if she herself was taken by her looks as she discusses how she “pined with vain desire” (IV, 466) for the image of her reflection. In fact, Eve’s beauty is discussed repeatedly. For example, when Satan first sees the human couple, he is overtaken by Eve’s “beauty and submissive charms” (IV, 498). Milton even goes so far to stress her beauty and charms as to have her stun Satan himself with it. Actually, as Satan is on his mission to seduce Eve into eating the apple, her beauty overtakes him.
If chance with nymphlike step fair virgin pass,
What pleasing seemed, for her now pleases more,
She most, and in her looks sums all delight;
Such pleasure took the Serpent to behold
This flowery plant, the sweet recess of Eve
Thus early, thus alone; her heavenly form
Angelic, but more soft and feminine,
Her graceful innocence, her every air
Of gesture or least action, overawed
His malice, and with rapine sweet bereaved
His fierceness of the fierce intent it brought.
That space the Evil One abstracted stood
From his own evil, and for the time remained
Stupidly good, of enmity disarmed,
Of guile, of hate, of envy, of revenge.
(IX, 452-466)
Thus Milton creates an Eve that is so lovely that even the antagonist of the story temporarily forgets his cause to corrupt her upon sight of such beauty. She is called “nymphlike” and this is most definitely not the first time that Milton uses allusions to Greek and Roman mythology in the poem- such as calling her a “wood-nymph light,/ Oread or Dryad, or Delia’s self…” (IX, 386-387). At the time that the epic was written such stori...