THE BYRONIC MADONNA: ENGLISH LITERATURE’S ABSOLUTION OF EVE

A thesis submitted to the faculty of San Francisco State University "2^ 0 19 In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree

Master of Arts

In

English Literature

by

Brianna Marie Anthony

San Francisco, California

Spring 2019 Copyright by

Brianna Marie Anthony

2019 CERTIFICATION OF APPROVAL

I certify that I have read THE BYRONIC MADONNA: ENGLISH LITERATURE’S

ABSOLUTION OF EVE by Brianna Marie Anthony, and that in my opinion this work meets the criteria for approving a thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the degree Master of Arts in English Literature at San Francisco State

University.

Marg^f t Schoerke, Ph. D. Professor of English Literature

Jennifer Myland^rfrh. D. Associate Professor o f English Literature THE BYRONIC MADONNA; ENGLISH LITERATURE’S ABSOLUTION OF EVE

Brianna Marie Anthony San Francisco, California 2019

While Lord Byron, as many Romantics, found a rebellious hero in Milton’s Satan, it is my belief that the resultant Byronic hero is far from Milton’s own conception of heroism; rather it is Emily Dickinson’s feminine appropriation of the Byronic archetype which not only aligns more strongly with the heroic values set forth in Paradise Lost, but which more boldly continues Milton’s subtle glorification of Eve. This thesis explores the oblique path of this centuries-long evolution, delving into the possibility of Biblical allusion as formative of a uniquely hopeful embodiment not only of heroism, but of feminine rebellion. Though the path is indirect, I am convinced that the road from Milton to Dickinson leads to Eve’s literary absolution.

that the Abstract is a correct representation of the content of this thesis.

Z M y Committee Date / ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

To my parents, whose love has shown me the beauty and value o f this earth from the

moment I entered it—

To Jenna, who once pulled me from the trough of my own existence—

To Bert, “Part o f my S o u l. . . / My other half’—

To Doctors Meg Schoerke and Jennifer Mylander, whose guidance has led me through the trying Eden that is the writing process—

To each of the professors I was so privileged to study under during my time at San

Francisco State University: your passion for Literature and life has kindled my desire for knowledge on a daily basis; your generosity has shaped me in ways I could never have foreseen— the inheritance of your teachings has been a beautiful gift—

Thank you. TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction 1

Chapter I: The Subtlest Heroine: Paradise Lost's Revolution o f the Flesh 13

I) The Satan Question 19

II) Malleable Flesh, Resilient Bone 23

III) Forming the Revolutionary Heroine 25

Chapter II: The Byronic Female: Emily Dickinson and the Voice of Poetic Revolution 40

I) Sacrificial Solitude 45

II) Almighty Autonomy 51

III) End Everlasting 59

Chapter III: Eve’s Absolution: Dickinson’s Realization of Milton’s Eve 67

I) Perfectly Formed, Grounded in Time 73

II) The Soul o f Sense 77

III) Time o f Life 81

IV) Victory by Entendre 85

V) Death and the Birth o f Eve 88

Conclusion 96

Bibliography , 102

v 1

-Introduction-

That Milton was not the first to extrapolate upon Genesis' tale of our Fall from

Grace hardly wants mentioning. Biblical exegesis in all of its forms, from philosophy to visual art, is nearly as ancient as the Scripture itself.1 It is a phenomenon which Erich

Auerbach astutely attributes to a text made richer through obscurity, a style which not only supports interpretation, but demands it (Mimesis 15). It is this interaction between reader (or listener) and text which enables an intimacy o f experience far exceeding that o f more forthright verse, such that the absorption o f Scripture is less an act o f receiving than one of collaboration. Indeed there is something within the Bible which is quite willing to adapt, to transform— to remain relevant throughout the course of inevitable revolution2 and change.3 It is a malleability so supple that the Fall from Grace has been able to maintain its influence even as its role in reality is cast into doubt; it is at just such a point in history that Milton creates Paradise Lost.

1 For a comprehensive overview of these exegeses across time and discipline, see Greenblatt’s opening chapter, “Bare Bones” (1-20).

2 I owe the formulation of this theory to Benson Bobrick’s Wide as the Waters: The Story of the English Bible and the Revolution it Inspired. He claims that “once the people were free to interpret the Word o f God according to the light o f their own understanding, they began to question the authority of their inherited institutions, both religious and secular” (12); this combined with his tracing o f conflicting readings o f Scripture further suggests that the Bible’s elliptical nature lends itself to revolutionary interpretation and thought.

3“[The Bible] seeks to overcome our reality,” to subsume it, such that “[a]ll other scenes, issues, and ordinances,. . . the history of all mankind, will be given their due place within its frame, will be subordinated to it” (Auerbach, Mimesis 15). 2 Just like its scriptural predecessor, Milton’s English epic has inspired all manner o f interpretation; rooted in Genesis, Paradise Lost seems cloaked in its own unique obscurity, such that it, not unlike the Bible itself, is perpetually ripe for exegesis. This of course yields conclusions that run the gamut, with Paradise Lost presenting one key complication which the Bible does not: knowledge o f the author. Thus, as is so often the case in Literature, much interpretation seeks to reconcile the poetry with the poet— a pursuit which has duly shaped much of Milton scholarship.

This biographical approach to Paradise Lost frequently leads to debate surrounding one of Milton’s most fascinating Biblical extrapolations, and whether or not it was the poet’s intention, Milton’s Satan has long found a following amongst readers.

Although, as John Carey points out, the Romantics were not the first to find a mascot in

Satan (161), they decidedly did much to cultivate his appeal. Their refinement of the

Satan archetype through the Byronic hero has ensured that generations of readers will recognize the peculiar mode of heroism which Milton’s Satan occupies. Even now, narrative culture draws inspiration from this type of being, “proud, moody, cynical, with defiance on his brow, and misery in his heart, a scomer o f his kind, implacable in revenge, yet capable of deep and strong affection” (Christiansen 201). From Lord

Byron’s Manfred to Emily Bronte’s HeathclifF, one finds this model stamped out time and again. And while each iteration varies, they all share certain characteristics which can be traced back to Milton’s Satan: rebellion, ambition, the solitude o f brilliance and a debilitating sense of ennui. Such characteristics have, in many ways, come to define the rebel and thus the revolutionary. Those dissatisfied with their lot have turned, time and 3 again, to this being, made solitary through his capacity to envision a future outside of the status quo.

Indeed, revolution and its exploration as a political theme within Paradise Lost have always been confined to Satan, and thus to the heavenly realm. But this categorization is, in my opinion, hugely problematic. Not only does such an assumption lay the sole example of revolutionary spirit in the bosom of a theologically evil being,4 but it further isolates that spirit to the immortal and incorporeal. This isolation would indicate either that Milton, in the twilight of his life, finds it necessary to render revolution a wicked pursuit, or that while he does feel a sympathetic bond with a being driven to challenge authority, he has come to question whether such a pursuit has any place on earth; for perhaps fragile humanity is not meant to withstand the disappointments and consequences of resistance— perhaps earthly life is as futile as

Satan’s attempts to subsume God. In a revolutionary and humanist such as Milton, both of these possibilities equate to an admission of failure— both are the conclusions of a being cast into the trough o f his existence, content to wallow in an eternal status quo.

This is not Milton.5

4 John Carey in his article “Milton’s Satan,” asserts that “[Milton] presents evil as real and traceable to a single Evil One. The wish to isolate evil in this way argues a particular mental configuration which seems to be associated with the belief that, once isolated, evil may become containable or punishable” (160).

5 As Diane McColley so astutely states, “although [Milton’s] hope o f spiritual rebirth o f the body politic was disappointed, he never abandoned his hope for the rebirth o f the specific men and women who would read his poem” (Danielson ed. 177). It is my belief that this black and white approach is deeply rooted in how literaiy criticism has defined “revolution” up to this point, and that this definition as it applies to both Milton and Paradise Lost has been entirely too narrow. Indeed the word has been mostly confined to a masculine, political and spiritual interpretation o f the epic and entirely excluded from what is deemed to be its opposite: the feminine, nonpolitical and earthly. To be clear, I have no interest in aligning m yself with either the political or nonpolitical school of thought,6 rather I wish to break down the wall between the two, to consider how revolution might interact with the nonpolitical— and in this instance largely feminine— sphere. Thus, for the duration of this thesis, “revolution” will be considered through a different lens; that of its nonpolitical meaning: “A dramatic and wide-reaching change in conditions, attitudes or operation.”71 choose this definition not only because of the breadth of its scope, but because it speaks to Milton’s own approach to life, and even to his approach to Paradise Lost. Indeed it seems quite probable that in the wake of a failed political revolution, Milton might have found it necessary to adjust this definition

6 For a comprehensive summary of these schools and the history of their debates, see Herman’s fourth chapter: ‘“New Laws, New Councels’: The Problem o f Politics in Paradise Lost”

7This particular sense of the word, as it is defined in the Oxford English Dictionary, is frequently utilized during Milton’s period, with three of the examples cited in OED having been bom of the poet’s epoch. 5 for himself—that by the time he considered forming Paradise Lost, he must have known that his great stamp upon the world would not be one of political revolution.8

Yet, Milton’s creation o f Paradise Lost is far from an epic concession; it is a renegotiation of goals, a demonstration of invention in the face of trial; it is a reaction to knowledge challenged and to “Faith, Love, Virtue [assayed]” (Milton IX.335)— it is a celebration both of earthly existence and of a uniquely human resilience. With what other mentality could Milton have gone on to write one of the greatest contributions to our - earthly English Literature?

Indeed, Milton’s choice to expand upon an Old Testament tale during a period when it and the earthly suffering it is thought to justify are falling out of favor, speaks volumes. In a moment when European Literature had begun “free[ing ] itself from serving the concept of a Christian universal order” (Auerbach, M imesis 258), Milton’s interpretation o f our genesis is far from an attempt to reassert the futility o f this state o f clay. It is too fraught with the beauties o f earth and corporeal existence. Rather, Milton’s version places the Fall from Grace under a humanistic lens: one which detects the value o f humanity, the importance o f its earthly influence and, most importantly, its ability to

8 Here it is worth noting that Milton himself does not utilize the word “revolution” in either its political or nonpolitical sense over the course of Paradise Lost, rather, it is always used in its cyclical sense. Furthermore, the use of “revolt” seems to be synonymous with political revolution while “reform” is far more synonymous with the nonpolitical definition cited above. That being said, as this thesis crosses centuries and evolving definitions, “revolution” will be the preferred term used throughout; defined in the fashion specified above, I believe it to be the most adequate term for my purposes insofar as it bridges the heroic values explored by both Milton and Dickinson. For these observations, and the realization of the necessity of this clarification, I am indebted to Dr. Jennifer Mylander. 6 question, to learn and to change— in other words, its ability to bring about and withstand

revolution. It follows then that this humanistic application to the Old Testament is itself

revolutionaiy, for it privileges an unlikely hero: not the immortal, rebellious, but futile

Satan; not even the inquisitive but cautious Adam. Instead Paradise Lost privileges a

figure long-blamed for humanity’s earthly suffering; for it is woman who was the first to

act, challenge and strive; and it is to woman that we owe both the exercise of our

resilience and our release from the bonds of stasis— it is to woman that we owe earthly

existence as we know it. The true hero o f Paradise Lost is Eve.

Yet criticism has repeatedly shuffled Eve into explorations not of heroism but of misogyny. It is an oversight which has yielded a series of near misses; indeed, even the examination of Areopagitical language in the mouths of both Satan and Eve has been conducted in a gendered fashion; the possibility of Eve’s heroism has been completely overshadowed by the possibility of her culpability.9 And yet close examination of

Paradise Lost reveals a juxtaposition which undoubtedly elevates Eve: for the earthly and corporeal are constantly compared to the spiritual, a comparison which consistently favors the earthly— indeed it is the presence of the earthly which differentiates Eve from

Satan, which leads to her revolutionary success where the archangel knows only failure.

It is a differentiation rooted in words which recall the sparse Biblical mention of both

Satan and Eve; from “flesh” and “bone” to the “burning lake,” Milton’s subtly specific

9 For insight into this debate, consult Diekhoff’s “Eve, the Devil, and Areopagitica,” Gallagher’s Milton, the Bible and Misogyny and Dipasquale’s ‘“Heav'n's Last Best Gift’: Eve and Wisdom in ‘Paradise Lost.’” 7 appropriation o f biblical diction reveals his privileging o f the first woman as an idyllic representation o f humanity’s revolutionary spirit.

While this possibility has long been overshadowed by Satan as revolutionary, I believe that something of it survived in the Byronic hero. For just as Satan’s revolutionary traits find realization in Eve, so too do the traits of the Byronic hero find realization in the great Victorian poet, Emily Dickinson. Indeed Dickinson’s epoch saw an explosion of Byronic tropes, most notably in the volatile male protagonists of the

Bronte sisters. That Dickinson was well-acquainted with the ins and outs of the Byronic hero is undeniable; and yet, this is an influence which has remained widely unexplored in

Dickinson’s work,10 perhaps because pinning down any aspect of Dickinson herself is nearly as impossible as pinning down her poetry. Thankfully, there exists an enabling method entirely owed to the brilliance of Cynthia Griffin Wolff: that of the voices of

Emily Dickinson.11 Via this method, Wolff isolates the voices of the child, wife and proleptic, but I propose a fourth: the voice o f the Byronic female. It is through this voice that Literature sees a resurgence o f Milton’s female revolutionary.

10 To the best of my knowledge, this topic is only briefly broached in Albert J. Gelpi’s Emily Dickinson and the Mind o f the Poet. There he states that “in these moments of rebellion Emily Dickinson’s spirit was, in its feminine way, distinctly and passionately Byronic” (40). This claim gamers a quick citation in Gilbert and Gubar’s The Madwoman in the Attic (189). For both, the mention is exceedingly brief, with neither delving into the alignment to the depth I propose— especially insofar as the Byronic is made manifest in Dickinson’s poetry.

11 For the insight that such a method might free my exploration, I am indebted to Dr. Meg Schoerke. 8 The appeal of and necessity for such a voice to Emily Dickinson is not difficult to imagine. Despite or perhaps because of the limits placed upon her gender in the nineteenth century, that quintessential Byronic rebelliousness was both desirable and unavailable to women. As Gilbert and Gubar point out, “Admiring, even adoring, Satan’s

Byronic rebelliousness, his scorn of conventional virtues, his raging energy, the woman writer may have secretly fantasized that she was Satan” (207); even so, few dared to go so far as to entertain the existence of certain Satanic qualities in feminine form—but

Dickinson dared. She was not the type to accept restrictions. And why not create the voice of a feminine rebel? Emily Dickinson knew all too well that such a being existed.

Thus, within Dickinson’s poetry, a uniquely feminine form of the Byronic emerges; one which explores what the pursuit of power looks like when it is transferred to a woman, how and why she pursues solitude and with what motives she entertains the prospect of death. It is an exploration of woman which is startlingly similar to Milton’s own, such that one begins to question whether this figure stems from that Satanically inspired Byronic hero or from Milton’s Eve herself.

For Dickinson did in fact toy with occupying the roles of both of Eden’s supposed antagonists; and while it is impossible to say with certainty that it was Milton’s version of the Fall from Grace which most influenced Dickinson’s conception of these players, there is enough of an alignment in critical themes between Milton and Dickinson to strongly suggest that this is the case. In fact, when it comes to Dickinson’s specifically Edenic references, the field of critical conversation is fairly well-tilled. From Wolff, to Gilbert and Gubar, to Margaret Homans, the explorations of Dickinson’s allusions to the Serpent, 9 Satan, Eve, and Milton himself have been both impactful and convincing. And the consensus does seem to be that Paradise Lost was an integral part o f any nineteenth- century woman’s literary inheritance.

Yet while these critics rightly claim that Dickinson’s own allusions to the epic are a reaction against a masculine tradition, they go too far in insinuating that Paradise Lost, and therefore Milton, is an entity which Dickinson had to overcome.12 Rather, there is much within Milton’s portrayal of humanity, heroism, and woman which indirectly enables the bold female poet, the crux of which lies in his valuation of life on earth. In fact, perhaps the largest obstacle to Dickinson’s literary inheritance is the Byronic hero himself—the misconception of Paradise Lost passed down through a Romantic misreading.13 This misconception touted the world-weary antihero, while overshadowing a hero that Literature was not ready to privilege, a hero whose revolutionary qualities

12 For Gilbert and Gubar, Dickinson is “subtly anti-Miltonic” and grouped among female writers who, “in an effort to come to terms with the institutionalized and often elaborately metaphorical misogyny Milton’s epic expresses,. . . devised their own revisionary myths and metaphors” (189). Homans' tracing of Romantic influences on women’s poetic identity concludes that “Wordsworth was burdened by the greatness of Milton’s poetry; the women poets are burdened by the masculinity of both” (8). Wolff is decidedly the most generous, merely grouping Milton into a tradition of “usual religious poetry [which] celebrated a God Whose ways [Dickinson] had come to condemn,” a mode which she “could not temper her insight to accept” (155-156).

13 Here it seems appropriate to address the Bloomian influence upon this thesis. I have undeniably absorbed many of his ideas surrounding both misreading and the anxiety of influence, a fact especially cemented by choosing to enter into conversation with Harold Bloom’s feminist successors: Homans, Gilbert and Gubar. Where this thesis departs from all of the aforementioned is in its specific treatment of the woman writer. Where Bloom does not address such an entity and where his successors see the woman writer as somehow pitted against her male predecessors, I take an approach which I flatter myself to consider Dickensonian: I explore the woman writer as entering into a collaborative conversation with her male predecessor. 10 Milton somewhat wisely camouflaged within his elliptical text; such a hero would only appear to a being who was ready— and Dickinson was ready.

By successfully transplanting Byronic traits into a feminine vessel, by more boldly repeating the movement which Milton quietly attempted centuries prior, Emily

Dickinson discovers both a Byronic female and an empowered Eve. Thus, the final point of transplant is the brilliant female poet herself; her own boldly unconventional mind served as fertile ground for the suggestion of a female revolutionary, and her own elliptical poetry falls perfectly into the line of its descent; from the Bible to Paradise Lost to Dickinson, there is the common quality of the elliptical, and thus a malleability of interpretation that spurs great minds to great thought—a malleability which yields again and again to revolution. Indeed, it would seem that Emily Dickinson and her unique voice were perfectly formed to engender Eve’s literary absolution.

Thus this thesis will argue that while centuries separate John Milton and Emily

Dickinson, their heroic, revolutionary values are far from divided; their shared celebration of curiosity, change, growth and, ultimately life on earth align the two poets in a way that is far more collaborative than combative. And while in many ways their connection hinges upon a masculine Byronic archetype, it is ultimately the feminine realization o f Byronic heroism which earns their united favor. For in truth, neither Milton nor Dickinson can be said to be “of the Devil’s party”;14 neither ever yielded to Byronic failure when there was still the possibility of change and thus the hope of success— their

14 These are the words which the Romantic poet, William Blake, famously ascribed to Milton (qtd. in Von Maltzhan 245). 11 earthly ambitions would not permit it. Rather, these same earthly ambitions connect the poets far more strongly to Eve— to the first human to ever question authority and desire change. And while such desires and propensities are frequently conflated with wickedness (especially when detected in a woman), these are the very elements which both necessitated Dickinson’s Byronic appropriation and wrought success from a long- failed archetype— these are the elements which yield heroism in Milton’s Eve. For it is my belief that Dickinson’s Byronic female is Milton’s Eve, that her voice advances upon qualities rooted in the biblical dilation that is Paradise Lost—that she is the embodiment of an empowered, realized woman who not only initiates humanity’s revolution but brings about its ultimate Salvation. Indeed, Dickinson projects Eve forward into the New

Testament. She imagines a narrative in which no pristine, virginal version o f woman is needed to improve upon the mother of mankind. She imagines a world where Eve need not apologize, a world where woman does not merely give birth to Salvation— she is

Salvation. She is the fulfillment of Milton’s Eve. In order to support this claim, the first chapter of this thesis will explore Milton’s subtle valuation of the feminine and corporeal

(Eve) over the masculine and incorporeal (Satan), while the second chapter will explore

Dickinson’s feminization of the Satanically inspired archetype, the Byronic hero. Finally, the third chapter will place Milton and Dickinson’s feminine heroes side by side in order to examine their united rejection of a masculine Byronic archetype and the path by which this shared rejection yields an unprecedented representation of Eve. For at their core, both

Milton and Dickinson align in this: they grant a voice of heroism and empowerment to the long-vilified mother of mankind— they absolve humanity (and thus themselves), of the guilt of curiosity, of the desire for betterment and change, and of their own unyielding affection for earthly existence. It is this which elevates their heroic creations above the

Byronic archetype on which they hinge; it is a love for the bold malleability of this life which at last crowns Eve the Byronic Madonna. 13

Chapter I: The Subtlest Heroine: Paradise Losfs Revolution of the Flesh

"[T]he stern hand o f God is ever upon the Old Testament figures; he has not only made them once and for all and chosen them, but he continues to work upon them and kneads them, and, without destroying them in essence, produces from them forms which their youth gave no grounds for anticipating. ” Erich Auerbach, Mimesis

That John Milton was bom into a revolutionary age is axiomatic. In his lifetime, he experienced both the hopes and passions of the English Revolution and the disappointments of the ensuing Restoration. Yet we truly do Milton a disservice by presuming that he viewed “revolution” as a purely political concept,15 for change not only permeated his epoch; it was a guiding force in his own life. Indeed, even Milton’s political tracts address change as an entity beyond the bureaucratic goals they speak to.

As John Creaser observes, Milton’s prose more broadly repudiates “feare of change,” where “[t]hat phrase” and “[sjimilar expressions occur throughout the works to epitomize the reactionary frame of mind” (161). For the poet, questioning, change and thus revolution simply equate to the responsible use of human existence: whether the subject be the divine right of kings, the doctrine of marriage, censorship, or simply the course of one’s life, it is man’s responsibility to address these supposed truths both with a critical eye and a desire for improvement. Indeed, if Milton had not so valued invention,

15 Recall, this thesis considers “revolution” through the lens of its nonpolitical definition: “A dramatic and wide-reaching change in conditions, attitudes or operation” (Oxford English Dictionary). 14 Paradise Lost would never have come into fruition, for only invention can render creation from failure.

And at the moment o f Paradise Lost's inception, Milton was incontestably confronted with said failure, not only politically, but personally: the collapse of the body politic combined with the encroaching tragedy that was Milton’s deteriorating sight, must have left the poet questioning not only his own purpose, but the purpose of earthly life in general. The Restoration found Milton both politically and personally fallen;16 a lifetime of effort had yielded to the status quo and the finely wrought weapon that was his literacy was receding into the darkness of blindness. Milton must have at least briefly regarded himself as one of God’s forsaken creatures.

Perhaps it is just such a line o f thought which spurred Milton’s brooding upon the

Old Testament. Therein lies not only the tale of mankind’s creation, but of its path to sin and of the wrathful God who tries its faith through earthly suffering. The Old Testament has long been interpreted as a sort o f justification o f the pangs and trials o f earthly

16 For the formation of my beliefs surrounding Milton’s parallel fall, the Miltonic value of standing, the Fortunate Fall as framed through innocence vs. experience, and countless other observations surrounding Paradise Lost, I am deeply indebted to Dr. Jennifer Mylander. 15 existence, wherein this state of clay is simply a painful step along the path to salvation.17

But, as Erich Auerbach asserts, this sense of reality shifts with the birth of Renaissance humanism;18 by Milton’s epoch, the interpretation of reality was deeply engrossed in the process of “free[ing] itself from serving the concept o f a Christian universal order” (Mimesis 258), such that the earthly was becoming less a necessary step in a beautiful process, than a thing of beauty all its own. In essence, the Old Testament was quickly falling out of vogue. Yet within the tale of humanity’s fall, Milton glimpsed something relevant; and even in the trough of his own failure, that something was not

17Erich Auerbach. Scenes from the drama of European literature. Vol. 9. U of Minnesota Press, 1984. Auerbach refers to this phenomenon as figural interpretation, or the “establish[ment] o f a connection between two events or persons, the first of which signifies not only itself but also the second, while the second encompasses or fulfills the first” (53). Auerbach asserts that “no student of the Middle Ages can fail to see how [the figural method] provides the medieval interpretation of history with its general foundation and often enters into the medieval view of everyday reality” (61); here reality, the “earthly event,” is merely “a prophecy or figura o f a part o f a wholly divine reality that will be enacted in the future” (72). However, as Auerbach points out, Christianity complicates this two-stage understanding slightly; figure and fulfillment must be replaced by a three-part evolution: “the Law or history of the Jews as prophetic figura for the appearance o f Christ; the incarnation as fulfillment of this figura and at the same time as a new promise o f the end of the world and the last Judgement; and finally, the future occurrence of these events as ultimate fulfillment” (41).

18 Erich Auerbach and Edward W. Said. Mimesis: The representation o f reality in Western literature. Princeton University Press, 2013. Auerbach tracks this shift within European Literature as a whole, particularly attending to what he terms “creatural reality,” or the Christian anthropological focus upon “life’s subjection to suffering and transitoriness” (Mimesis 249); it is via the process of “free[ing ] itself from serving the concept of a Christian universal order” (258), that the “creatural realism of the Middle Ages came to be passed on to the sixteenth century, [supplying] the Renaissance with a strongly counterbalancing factor against the forces...which grew out of the humanists’ emulation of antiquity” (261). This paper’s focus upon the earthly and corporeal is greatly indebted to the creatural element of Auerbach’s exploration. 16 some archaic justification of his misery; it was a justification of his humanism— it was the inspiration to rise. Thus emerges Milton’s masterpiece; and within the creation of

Paradise Lost, the poet not only finds the realization of his revolution, but of his purpose.

Indeed, he unearths from the spare lines of Genesis a hero whose path and substance parallel his own— and it is not, as many have historically claimed, his revolutionary

Satan.

Here it may be argued that my approach, my assumptions thus far, are much too rooted in the biographical; but I consciously choose this mode o f inquiry. I deem it the best way to enter into a conversation which frequently conflates poem with poet. And this conflation occurs with good reason: the creation of Paradise Lost is rooted in Milton’s interaction with a biblical, and therefore elliptical, text; it is inevitable that, in moving from a few spare lines to 12 books, Milton’s scriptural dilation should be rooted in his experience, his imagination, his beliefs—himself.19 It is no wonder then that much of the discourse surrounding Paradise Lost is entrenched in the excavation of Milton’s beliefs and intentions, in discovering with whom his sympathies lie. Yet, I believe that criticism has been far too myopic in this respect; it has been so preoccupied with either accusing or defending Milton that it has missed the more nuanced evidence of his favor.

Specifically, this poet-focused approach to the epic has frequently led to debate surrounding Milton’s stance on two issues— or perhaps one should say mindsets: revolution and misogyny. The general logic is this; that because these issues permeate

19. As Auerbach asserts, the Bible is a text made richer through obscurity, a style which not only supports interpretation, but demands it (Mimesis 15). 17 Milton’s prose, they must also permeate his elliptical poetry.20 Yet despite the prevalence of these elements in Milton scholarship, they seem to evade consideration as a unit.

Revolution and misogyny are shuffled into their separate spheres and we are left with two neatly boxed sets of literary criticism; revolution is confined to the political box, along with Satan, while misogyny is confined to the domestic box, along with Eve. Essentially, while Satan’s rebellion against God is examined through the lens of Milton’s revolutionary experience, Eve’s rebellion is probed for signs of the poet’s misogyny. In the former, one searches for the degree of Milton’s sympathy ; in the latter for the degree of his mercy. In the former, one asks whether Milton identifies with Satan’s rebellion; in the latter, whether he forgives Eve hers. Thus, the assumption is quite clear: masculine rebellion signals the potential for honor and revolution; feminine rebellion signals only the moral weakness of that sex.

In no place is this disparity more apparent than in criticism’s examination of

Areopagitical language in the mouths of both Satan and Eve (an examination I will review in greater detail below), for it ultimately places the two players right back in the aforementioned boxes. Conveniently ignoring what is in fact a parallel, critics tend to ask vastly different questions of Satan as opposed to Eve. In fact, criticism has generally and stubbornly confined these two to their respective spheres, for while an allusion to

Milton’s own language in Satan is probed for some misplaced revolutionary endorsement,

20 The Cambridge Companion to Milton does a fine job of summarizing these elements within Milton scholarship; especially John Carey’s chapter on “Milton’s Satan” and Diane K. McColley’s chapter on “Milton and the sexes.” 18 the same language in Eve is merely examined for its potential softening of her moral culpability. The absolute reverse is never considered; indeed the prospect of revolution seems to stop at Eve. Thus, revolution in Paradise Lost has been confined to Heaven, and the role of the revolutionary to the brilliant, ambitious and captivating Satan— to the being so proud, he would defy God himself. Yet, how easy it is to replace “Heaven” with

“Earth” and “Satan” with “Eve”; what has hindered criticism from taking this small leap?

It is a leap which gamers a revolutionary outcome; it is a leap which renders

Milton’s Eve neither accused nor acquitted of culpability, but praised for it. For as

Areopagitica itself states, “‘[t]o the pure, all things are pure’; .. .all kind of knowledge whether of good or of evil” (727). Indeed, Milton creates an Eve in whose transgression there is nothing wicked, for there is nothing wicked in the pursuit of knowledge, betterment and change; this ambitious malleability is one of humanity’s most admirable qualities, and within the walls of Eden, it is a quality most pronounced in that most subjugated creature of clay: woman. And so, in order to bring the guilt-laden Fall from

Grace into a state of relevance, Milton bucks against an age-old assumption; he strips away the grime of antagonism long placed upon woman and reveals a hero. Indeed, through the combination of the poet’s own experience and the elliptical nature of biblical text, Milton is able to transport the tale o f Eden itself, moving our creation from a figural reality which bemoans the human condition into a reality which values it. In his hands, the Fall is transformed from a tale of tragedy to a tale of revolution— for what is revolution if not the spirit of inquiry and change? Thus, Milton’s biblical dilation sows the Fall with the seeds of a revolutionary race; and while he bestows upon Satan many of 19 the elements of a revolutionary hero, these traits only find realization through their transference21 to a uniquely feminine flesh and bone: Eve.

I) The Satan Question

In selecting this revolutionary hero, Milton made a calculated choice; he had ample space to imbue certain players with revolutionary traits as he carefully selected those of whom the Bible tells us very little. In other words, it is important to recall how entirely the characters of Paradise Lost are Milton’s own invention; for the Bible, as noted above, leaves much space for human interaction and interpretation. And when we imagine Scripture interacting with the mind of John Milton, we must necessarily imagine interaction with the mind of a somewhat failed political revolutionary. Thus, his use and expansion of biblical text have a revelatory potential: for a man whose youth was spent advocating for change, a man who in his twilight has seen a general return to the status quo, what constitutes a life well-lived? What sort of being leaves the mark of a hero?

It would be easy enough to assume that Satan should occupy this role; from the great risk of the archangel’s revolution to his perceived great failure, there is a certain kinship between Satan’s experience and Milton’s own. It may even be possible to assume that Milton should take comfort in realizing the tragic beauty of the Fallen angel’s narrative, perhaps further deriving some hope o f glory and influence from the immortal model o f both the narrative and its primary player. Even in the Bible’s spare and singular

2 1 1 owe the spark of this idea to Dr. Jennifer Mylander and her insights surrounding Paradise Lost’s shift in heroic treatment from Satan to Adam and Eve. 20 reference to Lucifer, there is the sense o f a tragic hero: “How art thou fallen from heaven.

O Lucifer, son of the morning! .../ For thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars o f God;... / 1 will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the most High. / Yet thou shall be brought down to hell” {Isaiah 14:12-15).22 The language of height, of ascent, of reaching for power then tumbling to the depths must surely have found some echo in the heart of a disappointed revolutionary; far more so than the sparse and comparably tame words o f Genesis, o f the serpent who promises that “in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil,” and of the woman who “took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat” (Genesis

3:6). Despite the tragic consequences, the quiet language of Adam and Eve’s descent somehow pales in comparison to the archangel’s epic fall; it is far too hushed and matter- of-fact to smack of revolution. Yet it is exactly this inglorious narrative of humanity’s first parents which Milton ultimately privileges. He finds something of value in these creatures of clay, something he does not even afford to the angels: malleability. Over the course o f Paradise Lost, Milton discovers a certain superiority of human substance; it, unlike that of its angelic predecessors, can be molded, shaped, changed.23

22 All biblical citations in this thesis reference the King James Version.

23 In a literal sense, consider the moment “Satan first knew pain,/.../ The girding sword with discontinuous wound/ Pass’d through him, but th’ Ethereal substance clos’d/ Not long divisible” (Paradise Lost, VI.327-331); the substance of Milton’s angels is unalterable. As to the more figural sense of their changelessness, that will be explored below. 21 But as so many have instead deemed the archangel as the revolutionary hero of

Paradise Lost, let us begin, as Milton does, with Satan. As John Carey states in his comprehensive examination of the alluring archangel, “[t]here is very little in the Bible about Satan. In Christian Doctrine Milton collects all the available biblical evidence in a few sentences. It amounts to little more than that Satan is the author o f all evil and has various titles” (Carey 160). In other words, even while remaining within the confines of

Scripture, Milton’s Satan is primarily the result of the poet’s own mind. Milton surely felt the influence of the various apocrypha and popular cultural references, but at the end of the day, the Satan o f Paradise Lost is one finely wrought through Milton’s own election.

The result is a creature of ambition and futility, strength and weakness, of predictable malice and shocking relatability. It is no wonder then, that “those readers who have left their reactions on record have seldom been able to regard Satan as a depiction o f pure evil, and some of the most distinguished have claimed that he is superior in character to

Milton’s God”; Satan is “insolubly ambivalent,” (Carey 161) and much like the Bible itself, this inherent disputability has rendered his prevalence immutable.

Thus as stated above, many have found, and will find, a mascot in Satan; with perhaps the most infamous literary manifestation being that Satanically inspired Byronic hero, a rebellious archetype emerging in the wake of the French Revolution (Homans

201). Isolated by brilliance, ambition and a boldly nihilistic preference for power, one need not delve deep to discover the appeal of Satan and the ensuing Byronic hero for revolutionary minds. For via his willingness to take on God himself, Satan seems to stand for change, for a questioning of authority, for rebellion. Yet Satan, just as every Byronic 22 hero following in his footsteps, fails. He never regains his pre-fallen state; he never subsumes God; and his temptation of humanity’s parents is not only foreseen by God, but produces “Fruits of more pleasing savor than those/ Which his own hand.../... could have produc’t, ere fall’n/ From innocence” (Milton XI.26-30). His desire to reign in heaven blots out everything of value in his existence and this myopia leaves him utterly incapable of gratitude or joy. For while he acknowledges that nothing could be less difficult than to afford God praise, he is yet convinced that “all [God’s] good prov’d ill in me” (Milton IV.46-48). Thus, his brilliance and ambition are all for naught and his own nihilism leaves him to wallow in the trough of his own descent: “So farewell Hope, and with Hope farewell Fear,/ Farewell Remorse: all Good to me is lost;/ Evil be thou my

Good” (Milton IV. 108-10). Indeed, there is some part of Satan which is content with his fallen lot, content to accept evil rather than dare to hope for good. Because the truth is,

Satan never truly believes himself capable of change. His path has been descent and he refuses to fathom that grace might again lay within his grasp: “Pride and worse

Ambition” (Milton IV.35) threw him down and hold him down still. And despite his consciousness of these self-destructive traits, he cannot see any way to escape them, “For never can true reconcilement grow, / Where wounds of deadly hate have pierced so deep”

(IV.98-99). To reconcile with God would be to prostrate oneself to God, and Satan’s hubris is too great to trade pride for pardon; his love o f power and his hatred o f submission have pierced too deep. Thus misery follows Satan to Eden and continues to follow him wherever he goes, “for within him Hell / He brings, and round about him, nor from Hell / One step, no more than from himself, can fly” (Milton IV.20-22). He is truly 23 “Confounded though immortal” (Milton 1.53). How gut-wrenching, then, to imagine this tragic hero with his stagnant flaws as Milton’s revolutionary ideal. Thankfully, there is much within Paradise Lost which suggests that this is not the case.

II) Malleable Flesh, Resilient Bone

For recall again how entirely Paradise Lost represents Milton’s carefully wrought version of the biblical tale; the movement from a few lines to 12 books offers great freedom of development, for so long as Milton does not directly challenge any scriptural implications, he is free to develop these ancient players as he sees fit. Thus, Satan’s brittle futility is intentional, his unbending nature is chosen. And Adam and Eve? Milton grants them a very different substance and a very different path. In this pair, the poet’s humanism reaches its zenith. It is a feat inspired by just a few lines of scripture, by just a few key words; indeed, Milton takes the Bible’s scant description of humanity’s parents and molds it into a full narrative arc. Yet, what makes Milton’s version most poignant is / not simply scriptural extrapolation; this would not have been anything novel nor would it have guaranteed survival of the cultural tide into which Paradise Lost was bom. Rather, it is the conscious expansion of what is earthly, palpable and beautifully, imperfectly human. And while one could fill a book with Milton’s humanistic dilation of scripture, one theme stands out as particularly exemplary: the imagery of the rib, of flesh and of bone.

Even within the abbreviated diction of the Bible, these words hold a dominant place. Indeed, reference to these specific bodily elements would surely have rung familiar 24 in any seventeenth-century ear, for even now, in this comparably secular age, the following lines of Genesis hold a certain cultural sway: “And the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one o f his ribs and closed up the flesh thereof;/ And the rib, which the LORD God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto man./ And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man” {Genesis

2:21-23). This is the extent of the Bible’s divulgence of our first parents’ meeting, of the singleness of their substance; yet from this Milton creates the volatile tale of humanity’s first revolution.

That being said, the first reference to these words within Paradise Lost is not in reference to Adam and Eve nor even to humanity; rather the corporeal is used to accentuate the boundlessness of spiritual, angelic forms which are not confined by gender

“Nor founded on the brittle strength of bones,/ Like cumbrous flesh” (Milton 1.427-28).

Were these lines housed within one of the heavenly books, they would seem to be a strike against the earthly, an allusion to woman as a source of sin and a typically figural emphasis upon “man’s subjection to suffering and transitoriness” (Auerbach, Mimesis,

249). Yet this allusion to spiritual dominance is rather conspicuously placed in Book I; it is nested within the introduction to the Fallen angels and to Satan himself. It is surrounded by beings which, while not bound to flesh and bone, are bound to a worse fate: Hell. Thus upon further examination, this first mention o f human substance subtly sings its praises; for while the words themselves seem negative, and while the meter maintains a rhythm as unchanging as the Fallen angels’ fate, three monosyllabic words 25 hold the positions of accented honor: “Nor founded on the brittle strength o f bonesJ Like cumbrous flesh.'" It is as if, even in articulating the difference between man and angel, the human substance refuses to be held down. And this pattern will continue; never once is either flesh or bone subjected to the trough o f poetic rhythm. Rather, they are always the means of ascent. Thus, upon the scriptural echoing that is “Bone of my Bone, Flesh of my Flesh” (Milton VIII.495), the words have appropriated an even deeper significance.

Thrown into high relief by the iambic pentameter which surrounds them, the pairing of trochee and iamb creates a gentle rhythm of fall and ascent. Through Milton’s careful guidance, these familiar lines of scripture become the microcosm of Adam and Eve’s course: while they may fall from their pedestaled innocence, they will ascend into experience, a fate inextricably connected to the corporeal substance which they share.

Thus it is not surprising that Satan should envy Adam and Eve for their very existence as

“creatures o f other mould” (Milton IV.360) and for their Earth, “how like to Heav’n, if not preferr’d/ ..., as built/ With second thoughts, reforming what was old” (Milton IX.

99-101). Even Satan senses the possibility in these, God’s final creations.

Ill) Forming the Revolutionary Heroine

Indeed, Milton’s allusion to biblical language highlights this juxtaposition of the spiritual and earthly more than once, an effort which achieves its most poignant comparison in the figures o f Satan and Eve. For yet another scripturally saturated word will be jockeyed between the two: “lake.” It is an especially loaded term, for while the

Bible provides little information in regard to Satan, Revelation's lake of fire recalls the 26 archangel nearly as much as flesh and bone recall Adam and Eve. In fact, Revelation encompasses Satan’s most enduring Biblical presence, “loosed out of his prison,” to exact a final deception before being “cast into the lake of fire and brimstone” (Revelation 20:7 and 10). And it is upon this lake that Milton first discovers his own Satan, floating in the stagnant waters of Hell, “stretcht out huge in length . . . / Chain’d on the burning

Lake” (1.209-10). And while he may physically rise, Satan’s soliloquizing will show how inconsequential such an effort truly is; for Satan feels a Hell within. The lake of fire is always with him, and he will never tear himself away.

And this willing immutability is an even harsher criticism of Satan’s futility than it first appears, for the static water recalls another of Milton’s creative ventures:

Areopagitica. Here he praises the pursuit of knowledge, steadfastly supports humanity’s right to question and pursue Truth, that “streaming fountain; [but] if her waters flow not in a perpetual progression, they sicken into a muddy pool of conformity and tradition” (739). For truth must have movement in order to remain truth; “faith and knowledge thrives by exercise” (739), by exposure, experience and challenge. For

Milton, the pursuit of truth is active in every facet, and no influence should be shunned, but rather considered and categorized; every challenge to one’s sense o f truth should be met as an opportunity to strengthen that truth— even to render it truer. Essentially, the formation of truth is a constantly shifting process, thus to ever believe that the pursuit is complete is to conform to a tradition of stasis which renders one’s truth not only opaque, but diseased— doomed to sicken until no essence of verity remains. Initially, this may not seem entirely applicable to Satan; he is certainly not willing to conform to God’s will. 27 But is he not a creature o f “tradition”? Does he not time and again “conform” to his own myopic sense of self? Nothing can move or alter him, not truly, for he denies himself the capacity to learn and change. He may question the status quo, but he will never allow the answers to alter him. Indeed, in discovering his Satan upon the burning lake, Milton transforms the archangel’s biblical fate into a true Sisyphean failure. From the moment

Satan falls, the loop commences; he begins upon the lake and he will end there, utterly unaltered. Indeed, Satan’s cyclical reasoning and self defeating logic render him as static as any muddy pool, and stasis is a state which Milton simply cannot esteem.

Thus, Eve’s Narcissus-like account of her first moments of consciousness is significant; for no sooner is she created than she is tested. Indeed, by the time Milton places Eve near her own pool, looking “into the cleer/ Smooth Lake, that to [her] seemd another Skye” (IV.458-459), by the time Eve encounters her own possibility of stasis, the stakes are much higher than a simple surrendering to vanity. And Milton does not hesitate to highlight the precariousness of Eve’s choice, for when she first beholds Adam, “fair indeed, and tall,” yet “less faire,/ Less winning soft, less amiablie milde/ Then that smooth watry image,” she flies from him (IV.477-480); she is won by the comfortable mildness of her own reflection—thus she is initially won by stasis. Yet, there is something in Adam’s ensuing language which calls Eve to his side, and it is no coincidence that said language encompasses the poem’s second instance of flesh and bone. These words become the very elements by which Adam woos Eve, persuading her o f their substantial bond: “Whom fli’st thou? Whom thou fli’st, o f him thou art,/ His flesh, his bone” (IV.482-483). Here the iambic pentameter artfully accents flesh then 28 bone, before ultimately halting the rhythm with an additional syllable: “to give thee being

I lent” (IV.483, emphasis added). This syllable, much like Eve’s own birth, acts as a novel extension o f a preexisting structure, as a change to the status quo; and the distinct prominence which it grants to being reinforces existence as active, for Adam’s gift is no mere noun: it is a gerund— it is action made substantial24 and it is the ultimate culmination offlesh and bone.

Furthermore, the I lent which suspends this enjambed line does not lead to the rib one might expect, but to a sort of locational pseudonym which Milton employs again and again: . .1 lent/ Out of my side to thee, neerest my heart/ Substantial Life, to have thee by my side” (IV.483-485). The overt repetition of “side” is far from an oversight.

Locating the rib in this way, Milton is able to play upon side’s very definition: “either of the two halves o f an object, surface, or place regarded as divided by an imaginary central line.”25 Indeed, Adam and Eve are two parts o f a whole, each the completion o f the other.

And in Adam’s own words, Eve is far from a mere rib: “Part o f my Soul I seek thee, and thee claim/ My other half’ (IV.487-488). They are equals, corporeally and incorporeally bound. And it is only after this language o f equality, reason, and action that Eve finally yields. For even as she observes “How beauty is excelld by manly grace/ And wisdom, which alone is truly fair” (IV.490-491), her diction contains a subtle possibility; “manly”

24 This idea responds to Theresa Dipasquale’s statement that “Eve . . . embodies that distinctly Miltonic conception of Wisdom as active, dialogic, defined by Becoming rather than by static Being” (49). I fully agree with her sentiment, but would argue that there is action in both becoming and being.

25 Side, as defined by the Oxford English Dictionary. 29 decidedly belongs to “grace,” but “wisdom”? Wisdom stands apart, and while it may be excelled by beauty, it is not inaccessible to it,26 especially when the possessor has just discovered herself to be the other half, the equal, of manly grace. Thus, Eve relinquishes the stasis of her own reflection, persuaded by the promise of wisdom, equality, change, and thus substantial life. Just like Milton, Eve will readily abandon a stagnant pool in pursuit o f truth.

Now, I am hardly the first to point to an Areopagitical link between Milton and

Eve; that the sentiment of this tract is echoed in both Eve and Satan from the contested separation scene all the way through the temptation is a point that has been observed and grappled with many times: Satan’s “of evil, if what is evil/ Be real, why not known, since easier shunned?” echoes Milton’s “What wisdom can there be to choose, what continence to forbear, without the knowledge o f evil?” (Diekhoff 433); Eve’s “Faith, Love, Vertue unassaid,” echoes Milton’s “fugitive and cloister’d vertue unexercis’d & unbreath’d , that never sallies out and sees her adversary, but slinks out of the race, where the immortall garland is to be run for, not without dust and heat” (Diekhoff 429). These parallels do not themselves spur any critical contention; rather, the debate seems to revolve around the following: whether said parallels are “an important inconsistency in Milton’s thought” (Diekhoff 429); whether Milton is, as William Blake so famously asserted, “of the D evil’s party” (Qtd. in Von Maltzhan 245); and whether or not Eve is “at all morally

26 As observed by William Kerrigan and Gordon Braden, “it is a mistake to neglect the enjambment of these lines and to assume that ‘manly’ modifies ‘wisdom’ as well as grace” (qtd. in Dipasquale 51). 30 culpable” (Gallagher 76). John DiekhofFs oft cited and oft contested conclusion to his

“Eve, the Devil and Areopagitica,” is particularly representative of the most frequently volleyed arguments in this debate:

There is, then, no contradiction in Milton’s putting fragments from Areopagitica

into the mouths of Eve and Satan, and Milton in so doing is not—as has been

suggested— revealing his secret or unconscious sympathy for the cause of Satan.

On the contrary, Eve’s use o f the arguments from Areopagitica in a context where

they do not apply is but the rationalization of her desire— the desire for

temptation which is itself the beginning of her defilement (434).

I do not cite this passage in the interest o f entering this particular argument, but rather to allude to a possibility which has not yet been examined; for while Diekhoff considers whether Areopagitical language in the mouth of Satan indicates Satanic sympathy, and while he considers whether Areopagitical language relinquishes Eve of culpability, he never considers a potential sympathy with Eve. Yet if we simply adjust Diekhoff’s final sentence, we are left with a very different prospect: Eve’s use of the arguments from

Areopagitica is but the rationalization of her desire— the desire for knowledge which is itself the beginning of her growth. For while Areopagitical language is decidedly incongruous in the mouth of Satan— in the mouth of one so resistant to change— it is quite genuine in the mouth of Eve; she desires change and she acts. She does not fear knowledge; she welcomes it, regardless of its unknown consequences. Essentially, Eve is as certain as Milton that knowledge will leave her bettered. Is there not then a possibility that Milton is o f Eve’s party? 31 Indeed, I hope that I have already shown that an unbending archangel, despite his many revolutionary qualities, is a heroic near-miss; and, furthermore, that Milton’s portrayal of humanity embodies the very malleability which his Satan lacks. Consider then, how the most favorable qualities of these players, the necessary qualities of a successful revolutionary, are all united in Eve. For on top of her inherently human adaptability, Eve, like Satan, is also bright, ambitious and daring. And her state is signally distinguished from Adam’s, for as a woman, she is again and again placed in a position of subjection from which her ambition goads her to rise. Furthermore, it is ultimately because of Eve’s logical questioning of authority that humanity escapes from its perfect, but originally static state. And while her initial desire for power only extends so far as equality, it is, for a woman deemed “in the prime end/ Of Nature . . . th’ inferior” (Milton

VIII.540-41), an undeniably bold pursuit.

And Milton is not unaware of these qualities in his Eve, for boldness, ambition and a total intolerance for stasis become the very motives which spur Eve toward temptation. Milton achieves this by again bringing the “side” into play, and its I appearance in response to Eve’s ambitious proposal to briefly separate does much to provoke her natural drive. For though Adam’s pleading “leave not the faithful side/ That

^ave thee being” (Milton IX.265-66) immediately recalls the physical connection which has echoed through all of their interactions, it also recalls the moment when Eve chose

Adam over her own reflection—the moment when she sensed the promise of equality and growth. Yet, despite the supple potential of their human state, Adam’s “leave not” proposes rigidity and tradition. Indeed any change to their routine, especially if it 32 necessitates their parting, has little appeal to Adam. After a period of loneliness, he has at last gained companionship, his “likeness . . . fit help [and] other self’ (Milton VIII.450).

Thus, he is far more loathe to part with Eve than he ever was his own rib; and were it not for Eve’s insistence, Adam would surely choose stasis.27 But Eve has never known either the pain or the luxury of independence, and there is something in her which welcomes challenge, change and experience. Close on the heels of her Areopagitical query into the value of “Faith, Love, Vertue unassaid” (Milton IX.335), Eve asserts that she does not

“suspect [their] happy state/ Left so imperfet by the Maker wise” (Milton IX.337-38). But what, for Eve, constitutes imperfection? Surely a world “not secure to single or combined” (Milton IX.339), but almost just as surely a world unassaid, without trial and forever doomed to wasting sameness. Eve would try the suppleness of this flesh, for she seems to sense that it is capable of more than it has yet achieved. Ambitious and daring, she believes, like any true revolutionary, that something greater is achievable. She is perfectly primed for Satan’s temptation.

Yet, the seemingly inevitable success of that temptation is more a result of Satan’s luck than his cunning; in the course of appealing to ambition as he understands it— rooted in pride and vengeance— Satan inadvertently stumbles upon a motive which Eve cannot resist: the genuine betterment o f her kind. For in truth, Satan merely appeals to Eve using all of those elements which appeal to his own revolutionary spirit: first with power, “O

Sacred, Wise, and Wisdom-giving Plant,/..., Now I feel thy Power/ Within me

27 “In Milton’s Eden, the love o f solitude is a gender-specific trait, and it belongs to the female, not the male” (Dipasquale 60). 33 clear” (Milton IX.679-81); then with ascent, . .look on mee,/ Mee who have touch’d and tasted, yet both live,/ And life more perfet have attain’d than Fate/ Meant mee, by vent’ring higher than my Lot” (Milton IX.689-90); and finally with challenge and ensuing godhead:

Why then was this forbid? Why but to awe,

Why but to keep ye low and ignorant,

His Worshippers; he knows that in the day

Ye eat thereof, your Eyes that seem so clear,

Yet are but dim, shall perfetly be then

Op’n’d and clear’d, and ye shall be as Gods,

(.Paradise Lost IX.703-08)

Yet while something in the essence of these arguments appeals to Eve, the transference from archangel to human yields a revolutionary spirit unique to the mother o f mankind, for her concerns revolve around human betterment, around the earthly and the good. Thus

Satan is only able to capture her attention insofar as he is able to appeal to her pride in humanity, and further to present an opportunity for the expansion of that “substantial life” she chose over stasis. For, from the moment Eve first encounters the disguised Satan, she is entirely preoccupied by his human-ness: “What may this mean? Language of Man pronounc’t/ By Tongue of Brute, and human sense exprest?” . . . “Thee, Serpent, subtlest beast of all the field/1 knew, but not with human voice endu’d” (Milton IX.553-54 &

560-61). The very existence of a speaking serpent fuels Eve’s sense of lack; indeed she is chafed by her ignorance and goaded by the idea that a “Brute” is in some way her equal. 34 Thus spurred, Eve follows Satan’s lead by dwelling on the very literal interpretation o f

“the Tree/ of Knowledge, knowledge both of good and evil” (Milton IX.751-52), yet it is clearly the pursuit of good, of self-betterment which most occupies her:

. . . but his forbidding

Commends thee more, while it infers the good

By thee communicated, and our want:

For good unknown, sure is not had, or had

And yet unknown, is as not had at all.

In plain then, what forbids he but to know,

Forbids us good, forbids us to be wise?

CParadise Lost IX.753-59)

Forbidden to know, forbidden goodness, forbidden to be wise— indeed, no restrictions could more inflame the woman who believes herself capable of more than she has yet achieved, who believes her strengths not yet assayed. Thus, “she eat” (Milton IX.781).

And while the first words that will spew from her mouth thereafter will be far from her most admirable, there seems to indeed be something o f wisdom in her rebellious act; for while Satan’s revolution leads only to downfall, Eve’s revolution leads to growth.

For unlike Satan, Eve’s response to consequence is invention. Even in her darkest moment, as she considers taking her own life, Eve displays a braveiy and resilience of which Satan is entirely incapable; she, unlike the archangel, is not content to wallow in her own misery and never before has Eve’s language yielded such a revolutionary peal:

Then both ourselves and Seed at once to free

i, 35 From what we fear for both, let us make short,

Let us seek Death, or he not found, supply

With our own hands his Office on ourselves;

Why stand we longer shivering under fears,

That show no end but Death, and have the power,

Of many ways to die the shortest choosing,

Destruction with destruction to destroy.

{Paradise Lost X.999-1006)

Yet while Eve proposes destruction, her end is far from Satan’s uniquely immortal nihilism; for while her consideration may echo some elements of Satan’s “farewell Hope, and with Hope farewell Fear,/ Farewell Remorse,” “all Good” (Milton IV. 108-10) is not lost to Eve and she is far from asking Evil to stand in its stead. The actions she proposes are not meant to wound, but to liberate; she considers how she might free her Seed, how she might free the masses, from an oppressive existence. Eve entertains the sacrifice of her own life not because she desires oblivion, but because she maintains hope. And her boldness is unprecedented, for never again will death be a greater mystery than it was to

Adam and Eve; they are, as it were, the very pioneers o f death. Even still, Eve dares to stare directly into the face o f this ominous eventuality, and it is as a direct result o f this boldness that she and Adam come to realize the value of earthly existence, of flesh and bone.

For Eve’s proleptic venture comes directly on the heels of another proposal:

“Conversing, looking, loving, to abstain/ From Love’s due Rites, Nuptial embraces 36 sweet” (Milton X.993-94). The entertainment of death stems from the improbability of abstinence, and yet it is exactly this mental experiment which realizes a stark truth: in seeking death, they risk the loss of all earthly joy; not only “Love’s due Rites,” but

“Conversing, looking, loving,”—the joy of the other. And perhaps it is the thought of this, even more than the mystery of death, which “[dyes Eve’s] cheeks with pale” (Milton

X.1009), and which leads both she and Adam to view their sentence in a new light: as

Adam concludes, the pangs of their labor will ultimately gamer joy (Milton X.

1051-55).28 Thus, existence remains a gift, both to themselves and to their progeny. For who knows what death may hold, but life, even after the Fall, holds the joy of human companionship.

Thus, it is through Eve’s daring, through the transference and transformation of

Satan’s revolutionary spirit that our first parents fall from innocence and rise into experience, for it is only in the wake of their fall that they can truly appreciate the trials, joys and changes of earthly existence. And yet, by the final two books of Milton’s epic, many of the corporeal themes explored above fade into disuse. The lilting cadence of

“Bone of my Bone, Flesh of my Flesh” does not appear again. But then, the trough which that cadence represents has surpassed its form; from here on out is ascent, and while gradual and wavering, it is ascent nonetheless. The Adam and Eve who repair to the place of judgement are not the Adam and Eve of a day hence; their penitent prayers form

“Fruits o f more pleasing savor than those/ Which [their] own hand[s].../.. .could

28 The concept o f parallel labor, I owe entirely to Dr. Jennifer Mylander. 37 have produc’t, ere fall’n/ From innocence” (Milton XI.26-30), for they have known earthly trial and they have emerged bettered. Thus it is not some intangible, spiritual substance which enables this ascendent communication with God, but the corporeal; for one earthly word makes its final appearance, and through a sort of second creation,

“Prevenient Grace descending had remov’d/ The stony from thir hearts and made new flesh” (Milton XI.3-4, emphasis added). The reward for their trial is the expansion o f their humanity, for what better way to celebrate the uniquely human ability to undergo— even to exact—change.

It is in this first revolution of the flesh that Milton finds his hero, his epitome of human potential whose curiosity and ambition bring movement—whose resilience molds failure into strength. Thusly, Milton revolutionized the tale o f our Fall from Grace; he found in its narrative not shame and futility, but hope. He detected in this Old Testament text, not a tragedy nor an end to innocence, but the beginning of human potential— not some archaic excuse for earthly suffering, but a reflection of the values so prevalent in his own epoch. Thus, Milton molded an ancient anachronism into the picture of contemporary relevance. He found such ample space within elliptical scripture, that he was able to bring the tale of the Fall not only into his present, but into the present of every era to follow. For at the root o f Paradise Lost lies a timeless image of the beauty of human potential: not only is ours a substance made to withstand trial; ours is a substance elevated through trial. And at the root o f this elevation are the purifying effects o f growth 38 and change— of revolution. Indeed, Milton exposes the ridiculousness that is bemoaning the loss of innocence, for perpetual innocence is neither feasible nor desirable; to desire to remain ever as one began yields only a substance coated and overpowered by the grit o f trial. In essence, true stasis is impossible, for such wasting passivity leads not to any real preservation, but to a form o f eternal deterioration. If we stand still, we are no better than some embalmed corpse. We waste the gift that is our existence. For as Milton is well aware, the world will act upon us; evil and good alike will gust through our being. Will we stand rigid, will we allow these forces to petrify us, or will we allow ourselves to be moved—to join in the dance of life, contribute to it and be altered by it? Only thusly can we maintain the freshness with which we began; only thusly can we put to use this magnificent, corporeal vessel.

In essence, Paradise Lost is Milton’s own exploration of the human condition, and the result grants nobility to qualities long-vilified; for within humanity’s original rebellion, within Eve’s bold act, Milton detects root and reason: mankind’s path must plummet, not because mankind is doomed to fall, but because it is destined to rise, to improve, to become bettered through the revolution that is change. This is the path o f human potential— this is the path unearthed by Eve. And in Eve’s resilience and invention, Milton finds the inspiration for his own most beautiful creation. Indeed, the poet must have known that he could not have written Paradise Lost without the risks, experiences and knowledge gained throughout the falls and ascents of his own existence; and while the failure of the body politic toward which he focused so much of his energy might easily have shattered his faith in humanity, while the failure of his sight might 39 easily have shattered his faith in God, while both might easily have shattered his faith in himself, Milton is no Satan. He is simply and beautifully human; and his curiosity, his ambition, his daring and his restlessness, he inherited from humanity’s first mother.

Milton is undeniably a son of Eve. 40

Chapter II: The Byronic Female: Emily Dickinson and the Voice of Poetic Revolution

“Women talk: men are silent: that is why I dread women. ” Emily Dickinson, as qtd. by T.W. Higginson

To hypothesize as to the whys and wherefores of criticism’s neglect of a revolutionary Eve far exceeds the scope of this thesis; but what can be addressed is the comparably rampant attention paid to a revolutionary Satan. For as the daring of Paradise

Lost's heroine was swept under the proverbial carpet, John Milton’s rebellious archangel gained a degree o f acclaim whose tremors are felt within English literature to this day.

And the profound endurance of this seventeenth-century anti-hero owes much to the

Romantics, specifically to Lord Byron and his infamous Byronic hero: from Childe

Harold to Manfred, Byron’s self-reflexive appropriation of Milton’s Satan cemented an archetype recognizable even to those unaware of its parentage. Indeed, most, upon being presented with the characteristics of the Byronic hero, can immediately bring to mind some contemporary figure who is “proud, moody, cynical, with defiance on his brow, and misery in his heart, a scorner o f his kind, implacable in revenge, yet capable o f deep and strong affection” (Christiansen 201); and while the present-day Byronic hero is more likely to be furnished with a cigarette than angel’s wings, Milton’s Satan is indelibly stamped upon his character—the impressions o f this enduring archetype are rarely difficult to recognize or classify. 41 Thus it may seem puzzling that I would propose any link between the Byronic hero and the notoriously elliptical Emily Dickinson, for the Victorian poet has never tolerated classification. Her work refuses to be pinned down and even her legacy, clouded in mystery, is in a constant state of flux. Indeed, there is nothing static about Dickinson; if ever she adheres to the predictable, it is merely so that she can later shatter that predictability with aplomb. And as for archetypes— well, it is enough to simply state that

Dickinson is unprecedented; her poetry speaks to and with every voice, leaving one with the impression that nothing lay outside of her scope. In other words, Dickinson is far too fluid to suffer any stamp for long.

It is this fluidity which both baffles and intrigues Dickinson scholars; for it is not only next to impossible to detect a single voice between Dickinson’s poems, but also within them. Much as the Bible demands interpretation and interaction,29 so too does

Emily Dickinson’s poetiy; what is detected within her work can shift dramatically from person to person, reading to reading, day to day— indeed, there is no “right answer” when it comes to examining Dickinson’s work. And while critics have attempted to grapple with this anomaly in various ways, none have achieved an approach so graceful as Cynthia Griffin Wolff’s isolation of the three primary voices of Dickinson: Child, Wife and Proleptic.30 The concept of “voice” provides liberating insight into an intimidatingly eclectic body of work, prompting the recognition that Dickinson can easily embody any

29 As Auerbach states of the mysterious elements o f the Bible, “they require subtle investigation and interpretation, they demand them” {Mimesis 15). / 30 See Wolff’s chapter, “The Voice,” pages 163-259. 42 psyche and does. Thus, when Dickinson makes use of any archetypal role, one must acknowledge the vast spectrum of voices at her disposal; in other words, there is something to be gleaned from each choice, for Dickinson was as little confined to her own persona as she was to the strictures of poetic form.31

Viewed through this lens, there is one constant in the work of Emily Dickinson: calculated design. Bemused readers find time and again that no choice, whether it be punctuation, variation of meter, diction or the presence of multiple variants, is ever meaningless. The whole of Dickinson’s writing, from the poetic to the epistolary, reveals a woman who attended to every detail of perception; whether engineering the general impression o f her art or o f herself as artist, Dickinson took special care in creating her elusive image. Therefore, while we will never know the total nature o f this literary enigma, we certainly possess ample evidence of how Dickinson desired to be perceived; and her efforts reveal two inarguable facets of her chosen persona: ambition and self- awareness. Indeed, Dickinson’s projected self shares two of its most constant qualities with her Satanically inspired predecessors, but unlike them, these qualities are not the poet’s undoing— far from it, for these very characteristics led to a body o f work keenly aware of the cultural epoch into which it was bom.

While Dickinson’s intricate appropriation o f her literary inheritance has been the focus of many scholars, Joanne Feit Diehl articulates the phenomenon with particular

31 As Dickinson once clarified in a letter to T.W. Higginson, “When I state myself, as the Representative o f the Verse— it does not mean— me— but a supposed person” (qtd. in Johnson 268). 43 concision: “no poet can develop in isolation from the word of his or her poetic predecessors and hope to achieve [Emily] Dickinson’s stature” (4). Essentially,

Dickinson’s awareness of her inherited canon is undeniable, not only through concrete references in her own work and correspondence, but through poetry which cleverly works with and against the conventions established by both her predecessors and contemporaries. In tracing these influences, the impact of Lord Byron has been largely ignored, yet the literary seed that would become the Byronic hero was planted nearly 20 years before Dickinson’s birth. Thus, by the time she was able to take a book in hand, this enduring archetype had already sent forth a multitude of branches; from Byron’s own

Manfred to the dark protagonists of the Brontes' Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights, the

Byronic hero had become an established cultural staple and was undeniably a part o f

Dickinson’s literary reality.

It is likely the Bronte sisters’ Byronic appropriation which most influenced

Dickinson’s conception of the archetype, for she admired the literary sisters greatly. Her elegiac poem to Charlotte Bronte, “All overgrown with cunning moss,” along with letters containing multiple references not only to both Charlotte and Emily but to their work,32 stand as solid proof that Dickinson was intimately acquainted with the most contemporary versions of the heretofore male antihero. And within this trope, rendered via a Romantic fascination with Milton’s ambitiously brilliant, rebellious Satan,

Dickinson would have encountered a “handsome devil” who harbored not only a defiance

32 See Johnson Letters 442, 813b & 873. Unless specified otherwise, letters will be referred to by Johnson’s assigned numbers for the duration o f this paper. 44 o f God and authority, but a sort o f Oedipal desire to subsume his precursor (Gilbert 201).

In other words, the Byronic hero emerges as the perfect mascot for any revolutionary epoch . . . so long as revolution equates to male subsuming male.

Dickinson must have noted this uniquely feminine injustice, for who could possibly feel a Byronic affinity more sharply than a brilliant woman desirous of power, especially when that woman exists in a society whose God insists upon feminine submission? Gilbert and Gubar imagine this must have been a source of significant conflict for most of Dickinson’s female contemporaries; the woman writer, “feeling keenly the discrepancy between the angel she was supposed to be and the angry demon she knew she often was, must have experienced the same paradoxical double consciousness of guilt and greatness that afflicts both Satan and . . . Manfred” (203).

However, rather than be deterred by the incongruousness o f society’s expectations and her own, Dickinson seems to have only become more motivated. She desired more of the world and more of herself; and the manifestation of these desires was a uniquely feminine rebel.

Thus, I propose that a fourth voice exists in the work o f Dickinson: the Byronic female. Often existing in conjunction with the Child, Wife and Proleptic, the Byronic female is perhaps the voice with which Dickinson desired to be associated most; it is the expression of the heroic, immortal, woman poet which she knew herself to be; one cultivated in defiance o f an unquestioning society and its static God— one who dreads no man. And it is through this feminization of the Byronic male that Dickinson reverses his stereotypical downfall; where the traditional hero resigns himself to despair, Dickinson’s 45 hero persists, resulting in the quintessential voice of her own ambitious, poetic venture.

Met with countless hardships in the cultivation of artistic immortality, Dickinson herself continued to push forward, resulting in a body of work which draws upon the feminine capacity to endure. This quality, uniquely gained through the religious and social constructs imposed upon women of Dickinson’s era, finds within it the singular element which can raise the Byronic from the tragic to the triumphant: invention in the face o f loss. It is this attribute which buoys the Byronic female’s ascent to power, for to rebel and gain autonomy, she must find a means of rising from the lowest point; to substantiate her brilliance, she must not only be unique, but somehow improve upon male achievements; to prove her courage, she must dare to plunge deeper into the unknown than any man before her— her revolution must be one of dramatic change indeed, for she must better every authority which ever laid claim to her, from man to God himself.33 In the pages that follow, I will maintain that Dickinson’s feminine appropriation of a traditionally male archetype successfully challenges the limitations placed upon her gender, rendering a hero greater than her predecessors; the voice of the Byronic female is the voice of the revolutionary woman poet.

I) Sacrificial Solitude

It is not unreasonable to imagine that the Byronic female voice emerged out of

Dickinson’s genuine identification with the traditional antihero, the most readily drawn

33 For a compelling discussion of Dickinson’s competitive struggle with God, see Cynthia Griffin Wolff’s Chapter, “The Wrestle for Dominion.” 46 parallel being their professed need for seclusion. Indeed, the Byronic hero always exists in brooding isolation. Echoed by his choice of physical remoteness, he is a cerebral hermit, one whose sheer brilliance separates him from his fellow man. He is perpetually preoccupied with the discourses of his mind, distracted to the point of torture by a constant inner dialogue from which there is no rest. Indeed, one of the first phrases from

Manfred’s mouth bemoans this state: “in my heart/ There is a vigil, and these eyes but close/ To look within” (Byron 11. 5-7). For the Byronic hero, then, isolation is bom of necessity, of a mind already too crowded to entertain other voices. To some degree,

Dickinson understood this need: “her decision to lead a life devoid of significant event may well have been the necessary condition for her art” (Wolff 167). Yet, Dickinson was never entirely isolated. She was not so tortured nor so jaded as to reject the value of human interaction. In fact, whether as a form of release or calculated self-styling, she seems to have reveled in exchanges which allowed her to act the part o f the brilliant, brooding artist.

While it is impossible to know her exact motives, it can be said with certainty that

Dickinson frequently utilized the isolated artist pose in corresponding with her long-time friend, Samuel Bowles. On a superficial level, it appears that these exchanges were often playful, as if the constant volley of inquiry and refusal were an amusing game the two engaged in. One can imagine that Gertrude Graves’ account o f an incident between

Bowles and Dickinson was not isolated: “Bowles once called upstairs... ‘Emily, you wretch! No more of this nonsense! I’ve traveled all the way from Springfield to see you. 47 Come down at once.’ She is said to have complied and never have been more witty” (Johnson 515).34

However, we know that Dickinson did not always comply; many of her letters to

Bowles contain explanation of her refusal to receive him. In late 1862, Dickinson playfully states: “Because I did not see you, Vinnie and Austin upbraided me—They did not know I gave my part that they might have the more— but then the Prophet had no fame in his immediate town” (Johnson 277). Yet, this identification with the self- sacrificing Prophet is not entirely tongue-in-cheek. The compiling of over 11 fascicles35 is attributed to this year alone. Dickinson was in the depth o f her efforts to preserve her poetic legacy. Like the message of some misunderstood Prophet, the fruits of her exertion would be recognized only after death. Furthermore, the latter portion o f the letter makes quite clear that she did genuinely feel this sacrifice: “Did I not want to see you? Do not the Phebes want to come? ... Few absences could seem so wide as your’s has done, to us...and friends are nations in themselves— to supersede the Earth— ” (Johnson 277).

These words contain no note of the earlier lightness, no indication that these sentiments are disingenuous. These are the words of a woman who held friends so dear as to consider them the very substance o f her earth. Yet, Dickinson’s ambition demanded that the world of her mind take precedence, and for this she begs Bowles’ patience. Packing her letter with thoughtful dashes, this wordsmith reveals diction achieved through

34 For this quotation, see Johnson’s note following Letter 515 on page 240.

35 Dickinson copied “more than 1,100 poems in fair hand onto folded sheets o f stationary, binding the majority of the sheets into the booklets Dickinson scholars call fascicles” (Miller 1). 48 concerted effort; considerable thought went into how best to appeal to a friend’s compassion: “Perhaps you tire— now—a small weight—is obnoxious— upon a weary

Rope— but had you Exile— or Eclipse— or so huge a Danger, as would dissolve all other friends— ‘twould please me to remain” (Johnson 277). There is fear of loss in these words: fear that perhaps Bowles tires of the game which, for Dickinson, is more necessity than sport. In a final appeal to his sense o f compassion, Dickinson reminds Bowles that come Exile or Eclipse, she will remain his devoted friend. Thus, in her time o f trial, she silently asks that he do the same.

This theme spans the entirety of Dickinson’s correspondence with Bowles. An earlier letter chronicles similar attempts at supplication, citing Dickinson’s adoration as the only regret or defense she can offer for a seclusion too engrained to be relinquished:

“If I amazed your kindness—My Love is my only apology. To the people of “Chillon”— this— is enough” (Johnson 249). Here, the somewhat esoteric reference to Byron’s The

Prisoner of Chillon, strongly aligns Dickinson with that poem’s closing themes of necessary isolation:

And thus when they appear’d at last,

And all my bonds aside were cast,

These heavy walls to me had grown

A hermitage— and all my own!

My very chains and I grew friends,

So much a long communion tends 49 To make us what we are...

(The Prisoner ofChillon, 11. 375-378 & 389-391)

Just like Byron’s prisoner, Dickinson had come to view her isolation as an old friend, to embrace her bonds of poetry as more liberating than stifling. She had been so long in conversation with the vastness of her own mind that the exchange had become a part of her, an internal examination that, once begun, monopolized much o f her existence.

Thus, those she kept as friends would have needed to accept this idiosyncratic removal as simply another aspect of Dickinson herself; it was not a personal affront, but a quality as inescapable as height or hair color. And in the poem which closes this letter to Bowles,

Dickinson reminds him that her isolation holds no weight in the measure of her affection for him. Moving briskly from perfectly rhymed trimetric and dimetric lines, the single line of enjambed iambic tetrameter brings the poem to a standstill, a climactic pause before Dickinson reveals her proposed action:

Should you but fail at— Sea—

In sight o f me—

Or doomed lie—

Next Sun— to die—

Or rap— at Paradise— unheard

/ (“Should you but fail at— Sea— ,” 11. 1-5).

Here, enjambment serves as a breath, a suspension, before slamming down a surprising rebellion against form and authority: “I’d harass G o d / Until he let you in!” (II. 6-7).

Quickly subverting the predictability of perfect rhyme, Dickinson accentuates the 50 boldness of her words; whether it is Bowles’ rap which goes unheard or Dickinson’s

hounding, she promises to relentlessly harass the highest authority she knows: God. Like

an invading army whittling away at the enemy, Dickinson plans to make herself heard

through her greatest weapon: language. She claims that the power of her words, the very

power which demands her isolation, will break down even God.36 Therefore, while her

reclusiveness may be a strain on any relationship, her friendship is invaluable; she

possesses the power and willingness to take on the most daunting of adversaries.

Thus emerges the voice of the Byronic female; childlike in its invincible daring, it

is a direct offshoot of a male antihero who fears no god, who seeks to be greater than the

supreme Deity. Consequently, the nuances of Dickinson’s Byronic choices can always be

traced back to her criticisms o f God, and this by no means excludes her brand o f

isolation. For Dickinson, God’s greatest weakness is his chosen alienation, the deaf ear he turns to the raps of his children. He is inundated with requests for communication, yet

remains mute.37 Conversely, while Dickinson may have become increasingly reclusive,

she maintained a deluge of correspondence. In fact, it seems there was no greater affront

to Dickinson’s values than neglect of that correspondence : “Dont remember a letter I was

to receive when you got back to Boston . . . but you have sent my father a letter— so there

remains no more but to fight. War sir—” (Johnson 29). These words may have been in

good fun when bantering with an uncle, but when it came to God, the war was quite

36 This insight is owed to Wolff’s articulation of Dickinson's project, especially within her chapter “The Wrestle for Dominion.”

37 According to Wolff, it was Dickinson’s belief that “we have been abandoned by God” (265). 51 literal; as proof that God could do better, Dickinson created a voice with all o f God’s powers and afflictions and none o f his apathy. Brilliant, powerful and decidedly different from the common man, Dickinson’s Byronic voice never once indicates that it somehow feels itself too elevated for this earth. This voice emerges superior to a God who would isolate himself to Heaven and, even worse, never return a letter.

This is a considerable deviation from the traditional Byronic cynicism, for

Dickinson seems to have noted that this antihero’s failure to better God was rooted in a simple lack of invention. One cannot become greater than one’s predecessor by simply mimicking his actions. Thus, Dickinson astutely perceived that a voice of rebellion and revolution must also be a voice of distinction; and what could possibly be further from an aloof, ireful God than the voice o f a compassionate, yet powerful woman? Not only can such a voice prove itself more loving and merciful, but also more powerful; for God and even men are bom into power; a woman must fight for it.

II) Almighty Autonomy

This empowered female figure is the resonant voice behind Dickinson’s “I’m ceded— I’ve stopped being Theirs— ,” an exultant transformation from forced, Puritanical servitude to perfect autonomy. Here, the Wife’s voice, that bride of Christ,38 rejects so much more than her confinement to a woman’s sphere. Within the first two lines,

38 This popular ideology of the revival especially pressured women to accept the “Lord of the covenant... ,this Christ Who came to call for them so importunately— offering himself as the ‘Bridegroom’ of salvation and beseeching them to become ‘brides of Christ’” (Wolff 103). 52 Dickinson has already set the stage for a religious rebellion: the perfect iambic tetrameter of line one suggests a poem in hymn measure, even allows the ear to wander three iambs into the second line under this assumption before the fourth, roguishly relevant foot makes it quite clear that this poem is no standard hymn. Rather, the anticipated lines o f iambic trimeter come unpredictably, hitting the ear with the kind of punctuation only afforded by the unexpected:

I’m ceded— I’ve stopped being Theirs—

The name they dropped upon my face

With water in the country church

Is finished using now,

And They can put it with my Dolls

My childhood, and the string of spools,

I’ve finished threading—too

(“I’m ceded—I’ve stopped being Theirs— 11. 1-7)

While this stanza blatantly avoids the perfect rhyme expected from the trimetric lines, both contain the poignant “finished.” This repetition links the two not through an ending rhyme, but an internal echo, stressing, both through diction and subversive form, an end to submission.

This theme exists throughout in the interplay of languages of liberation and oppression: the speaker, like a colony, is ceded, answerable only to herself. No longer the property of another, she recalls the means by which a foreign identity or name, was so ruthlessly forced or dropped upon her, a verb not only suggestive o f a carelessly 53 administered fall, but in its biblical context, a silencing: “After my words, they spake not again; and my speech dropped upon them” (Job 29:22). The dropping of this name becomes a robbery of words and of self. It is the name to which each helpless child is unwittingly baptized, the name allotted to Eve by Adam39 (Genesis 3:20), the “name o f

God” in which all must place full faith and power (Daniel 2:20). It is a name assigned by

God and man, wherein woman is always the passive recipient of a forced identity. This motif continues with that final, unexpected foot of line two: my face. These words recall the newly created sea of Genesis, aligning the speaker with this powerful, but still very much controlled, entity: “And darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the spirit of

God moved upon the face of the waters” (Genesis 1:2). Yet viewed through the speaker’s lens, this biblical moment appears in a less than pleasant light. For the speaker recognizes something in that fledgling sea; indeed, she too once had her bubbling power hushed and shadowed by an oppressive God. Thus, in an extremity of rebellion, the speaker takes the very act of creation, conventionally seen as beautiful, and paints it as the prelude to an era of a stifling and conceited God, a deity more interested in creating that which reflects and worships him than a being of free will— a God who originated the very concept of subsumption. Yet when the speaker wages war upon this spiritual tyrant, she does not do so by merely mimicking his tactics; for she not only reverses their positions entirely, but declines to subsume the lesser entity. Name, deity, God, becomes the belittled it which can be stored away with all of the earthly constructs that the speaker no longer has use

39 For further discussion of the cultural significance of Adam as “Namer,” see Margaret Homans' Chapter, “Emily Dickinson.” 54 for: Dolls, childhood, spools, the limited religious and social expectations projected upon a woman. These are all things which the speaker has finished, even perfected. She is now conscious of her own power and potential, flatly refusing the existence of a perpetual child.

Like Satan and Manfred before her, the speaker realizes this potential, this crowning glory, not in the service of God, but by becoming her own god. Yet her ascent, unlike those o f the archangel and the brilliant aristocrat, moves from utter powerlessness to complete supremacy. She must claw her way from peon to deity:

I’ve finished threading— too—

Baptized, before, without the choice,

But this time, consciously, Of Grace—

Unto supremest name—

Called to my Full— The Crescent dropped—

Existence’s whole Arc, filled up,

With one— small Diadem—

(“I’m ceded— I’ve stopped being Theirs— ,” 11. 7-13)

The dashes surrounding “too” render its affiliation double. The speaker has finished threading a string o f spools too, but she was also “too — / Baptized, before...” (11. 7-8), too cleansed of self, too bound to God and a name that had been projected upon her without the choice. These words offer the usual interpretation of an act against one’s will, but choice also contains a more loaded suggestion: chosen, implying baptism without the 55 guarantee o f eternity, without any sort o f compensation for her relinquishing o f self. Yet, in this second baptism, she is aware of Grace or favor; she senses the genuine possibility o f immortality. Baptized to the supremest name, she consciously chooses an identity in which her self will not be lost, a name which proclaims herself supreme, deified, her own god and her own creator. Like the biblical Jacob, the speaker earns her new name or identity by bettering God, yet unlike Jacob, it is she, not God, who bequeaths it.40 Thus through a final usurping of power, the speaker proves herself entirely autonomous: she grants her own name and ensures her own immortality. Echoing this independent transcendence, the scene moves from the earthbound to the celestial: the speaker’s entire

Existence, her life and purpose, are embodied by a firmamental Arc. She becomes a Full, realized moon. The Crescent which represented only a sliver of her potential becomes the final recipient of the action which once sought to contain her: as a name was once dropped upon her, so now that same mask o f inferiority drops away from her. In her independence, she becomes whole: her existence is not only “filled up, /With one— small

Diadem” (11. 12-13), but quite simply with one.

Yet, the importance of the Diadem cannot be ignored. This imagery of crown and crowning is the thread which binds the entire poem. It begins with the biblical: with the

“robe and diadem” of righteousness which Job imagines as God’s reward for perfect faith

{Job 29:14); with the “crown of conversion” granted each bride or queen of Christ (Wolff

272). The speaker wore this sort of crown once; “Crowned— Crowing on [her] Father’s

40 For Dickinson’s affinity for Jacob and his wrestle with God, see Wolff’s Biography, Emily Dickinson, 139-150. 56 breast—/ A half unconscious Queen” (11. 15-16), she was the passive recipient of an emblem she did not yet have the power to reject, one which left her half realized in her subservience to God. In this context, the crown is alluded to only by the action of crowning and the explicitly feminine title of Queen. The action of the authoritative

Father grants her limited power while she, like a helpless, crowing infant, can only numbly receive it.

Yet, another possibility exists in these lines, for the action of crowning is not assigned to a specific subject; rather, one is left to assume that it is either the Father who does the crowning or perhaps the “They” of the opening stanza. The latter possibility combined with the approximal placement of crowned to crowing provides an even darker tinge to the action; crowing recalls the realization of Christ’s words upon the dawn of the

Crucifixion: ‘‘Verily I say unto thee, That this night, before the cock crow, thou shalt deny me thrice” (Matthew 26:34). Thus, her crowning echoes Christ’s own crown o f thorns:

“And when they had plated a crown of thorns, they put it upon his head.. .and they bowed the knee before him and mocked him” (Matthew 27:29). Suddenly, this scene of crowning is not simply the application of a forced identity, but a clawing, jeering deification by those who refuse to recognize her power; and all upon the breast of a

Father who ignores her crows o f pain and passively observes. In essence, the speaker describes a crowning more akin to shackling, an act meant to enforce some imagined ideal to which an ominous “they” demand she adhere.

Thus the appearance of Diadem as subject, noun, is already in stark contrast to the violating act of crowning', a diadem is concrete and tangible— not the fruition of some 57 debilitating action, but the realization of a self which has existed within the speaker all along. And this crown is not of conversion, but poetry: it is the crown of laurel which represents the only path to immortality entirely dependent upon a supreme and autonomous self. Bearing this poetic deification in mind, the second stanza contains an even more blasphemous possibility, again through its conspicuous absence of subject.

Whereas They acted upon the speaker in the first stanza, the second does not make it entirely clear who receives the actions. Thus it could be as explored above, a speaker baptized into her own poetic kingdom and fully realized potential; or perhaps it is They who are called to her Full; They whose entire arc o f existence is filled by her crown of laurel, by the crown she earned in the defiance of God. Through this poetic dominance, she becomes not only her own deity, but a god to the very They which once oppressed her. It then becomes clear that this once ominous They represents not only religious and social authorities, but also, metaphorically, poetic authorities. This rebellion is not only against the constructs of religion, but against an overly structuralized, male-dominated art form.

In this vein, the final moments of the poem enact one last, playful defiance of poetic form: for the first time, a perfect rhyme emerges, but even it (or perhaps especially it) rebels against convention:

But this time— Adequate— Erect,

With Will to choose,

Or to reject,

And I choose, just a Crown. 58 (“I’m ceded—I’ve stopped being Theirs— 11. 17-20)

With the exception of the very first line, the pattern prior to this moment has been 4-4-3,

a sort of pared hymn measure. Yet, in these final moments, the second line of iambic

tetrameter is broken in half, defying even Dickinson’s own established convention. This

break leaves choose conspicuously hanging in a position of prominence, and the forced

pause of this broken, end-stopped line creates a moment of suspense as yet unequaled. All this makes the appearance of the lone, perfect rhyme all the more poignant: erect and reject. Through these two simple words, the speaker appropriates all that was lacking in her pursuit o f power. The masculine erect at last renders her both male and female; like

God, she now possesses within her singular arc of existence, the ability to create. Reject, the sole negative of the entire poem, encompasses the long awaited assertion of “no.”

While refusal and rebellion have dominated the poem thematically, there is not a single concrete “I will not” or “I refuse.” Any semblance of “no” is absent until this final moment, this final manifestation of complete power and autonomy through the will and ability to deny. She rejects all of the complexities and confusions of self once forced upon her, instead choosing distillation, a whole and independent existence: ju st a Crown; just a cohesive, empowered, poetic self.

The sheer jubilance of this transformation already sets Dickinson’s Byronic female apart. Unlike the Byronic male, for whom the achievement of power and autonomy seem proof that earth holds no further allure or mystery, for whom the days are

“endless, and all alike” (Byron 553), this feminine hero’s ambition flourishes under the attainment of, what is for her, an initial goal. Far from perceiving the realization o f power 59 as the end, she views it as the genesis— her revolution has only just begun. Thus, her crown of laurel becomes not a “crowning achievement,” but a right, even a responsibility to create. It is not so difficult to imagine that Dickinson herself identified with this liberated sense of urgency. Again, the prolific nature of her work emerges as proof of one uniquely compelled to produce and to do so during the only period of power and existence she could be assured of: her time on earth.

Ill) End Everlasting

O f the Lord’s prayer, Dickinson recalled “When a little Girl I remember hearing that remarkable passage and preferring the ‘Power,’ not knowing at the time that

‘Kingdom’ and ‘Glory’ were included” (Johnson 330). For Dickinson, power was all and there was no rush toward death or possible resurrection, for “If roses had not faded, and frosts had never come, and one had not fallen here and there whom I could not waken, there were no need of other Heaven than the one below” (Johnson 185). This is not to say that loss did not affect her deeply nor that she did not puzzle over the mystery o f death, but she did not allow these passions to destroy her. Unlike Manfred at the loss o f Astarte or Heathcliff at the loss o f Catherine, there is no evidence that Dickinson went seeking death as some final adventure. She possessed more than a “lurking love of something on earth” (Byron 1. 27). Thus, Dickinson’s exploration of death through the Proleptic voice can be viewed as the Byronic female’s response to the traditional antihero’s pursuit of

“oblivion” (Byron 1.144): whereas he welcomes death because he has nothing to lose, she has everything to lose, yet does not shrink from a plunge into the unknown. 60 Dickinson’s “I died for Beauty— but was scarce,” explores what would be the

Byronic female’s most terrifying moment: the end of her power and creativity. This loss is accentuated by pairing her with the great John Keats; the first stanza’s reference to

“Truth” and “Beauty,” strongly channels the final lines of his “Ode on a Grecian Urn”:

‘“Beauty is truth, truth beauty,’— that is all / Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know” (Keats 11. 49-50).41 Thus, as Diehl states, “I died for Beauty— but was scarce” can be viewed as two poets engaged in “a post-mortem interview” (120), a reading which presents “Truth” and “Beauty” as artistic inquiries for which these poets have sacrificed their lives. Yet, the results of this martyrdom are not easily assessed. As is so often the case with Dickinson’s work, multiple possibilities exist, each dependent upon exactly how one interprets the gradual shifts within the poem’s structure. As Dickinson prepares to explore the aftermath of a life devoted to art, she first launches into flawless hymn measure, a poetic perfection strongly juxtaposed to the macabre content:

I died for Beauty— but was scarce

Adjusted in the Tomb

When One who died for Truth, was lain

In an adjoining Room—

(“I died for Beauty— but was scarce,” 11. 1-4)

41 Miller notes in her variorum that Dickinson may also have been inspired by more recent poetic allusions within the work of Emerson and Barrett Browning; see pages 757-758. 61 The enjambment of the first line allows “scarce” a syntactic doubling: the poet is not only barely settled in her tomb, but her skill and sacrifice o f life are scarce or rare. Here, the poet’s worldly talents, all she knew on Earth, seem still within her grasp, for even in this state o f limbo, she can still compose in perfect form. Yet, as the poem progresses, this ability seems to slowly deteriorate:

He questioned softly “Why I failed”?

“For Beauty”, I replied—

“And I— for— Truth— Themself are One—

“We Brethren, are”, He said—

(“I died for Beauty— but was scarce,” 11. 5-8)

Though she maintains perfect hymn measure, by this second stanza the poet seems to have lost the ability to create a perfect rhyme. The slant rhyme of “replied” with “said” maintains solid consonance, but the assonance is slightly off. Here, the perfect symmetry o f Beauty, the very thing for which the poet sacrificed her life, is beginning to slip away.

Even more distressing is the gradual loss of individualized self. The opening line of the stanza strongly asserts this individuality, with the second poet rather awkwardly asking

“Why I failed”? Were this phrase not in quotations, it would make perfect grammatical sense. Instead, Dickinson seems intent upon drawing attention to “I.” Not only paired with the loaded “failed,” “I” is housed within the only concretely end-stopped line of the entire poem: a question. Thus, while perhaps less elliptical than Dickinson’s fluid dashes, this single question mark signals the antithesis of the absolute and the slow decline of a conceivable, singular self. By line 7, the second poet’s words are fraught with dashes. He . 62 seems to stumble over the poem’s final attempts at individualization: “And I— for—Truth

— Themself are One— The confusion of this endeavor reaches its peak in themself, a

fusion of the singular and the plural which then settles into a decidedly generic “One.”

This oneness is not that of a whole, realized self, but the result of a belittling fusion of two formerly unique individuals. Ultimately morphing into the undistinguished “We,” they join a brethren of every other poet who thought he might leave an immortal mark upon the world, but all of whom failed, both bodily and artistically, to achieve any sort of everlasting existence.

The final stanza takes this loss of poetic prowess and identity further still, dominated entirely by “We” and “Our” and achieving only the slightest semblance of rhyme:

And so, as Kinsmen, met a Night—

We talked between the Rooms—

Until the Moss had reached our lips—

And covered up— Our names—

(“I died for Beauty— but was scarce,” 11. 8-12)

Consonance is the only remaining vestige of rhyme; “Rooms” and “names” have only the trailing echo of their ends to bind them, softly sounding the slow fade of control and relevance in these fa iled poets.42 Furthermore, because the names (and lips) belong to the communal “We,” they, unlike any other noun in the poem, are not even granted

42 For Diehl’s reading evoking the “double failure” of these poets, see pages 120-121. capitalization; far from an immortalized name, these great poets are not even afforded the

small distinguishment of an individual from a group. In death, they have lost not only the

chance to communicate and gain immortality of “name,” but any sort of recognition that

they were once individuals at all. Thus death reveals itself to be nothing more than a

slow, final loss o f expression and identity. As for life on earth, it was merely an exercise

in futility.

This is a decidedly depressing reading, one that fits quite seamlessly into the

traditional and cynical sense o f ennui ascribed to the Byronic hero. Yet one cannot help

but imagine that if Dickinson herself believed this to be true, she would not have so

voraciously pursued her own poetic legacy. “I died for Beauty— ” is far from an artistic

swan song; written in 1862 or earlier, it has far more successors than predecessors. Why

would a poet who genuinely believed her efforts would be fruitless continue to produce

on such a prolific scale? Thus, the poem demands viewing from another angle. What if the loss of “I” were not a loss at all, but a gaining of canonization, an induction into the

Brethren of great poets? What if that slipping of perfect form were not a sign of failing

faculties, but an echo of the revolutionary Truth and Beauty which raise an artist above the common throngs? What if the poets’ stumbling over pronouns were not a struggle to maintain identity, but an awestruck disbelief that a lifetime’s pursuit had at last been attained? In this context, “We” becomes an initiation, an almost royal induction into the ranks of those immortal dead toward whom every earthly poet aspires. Suddenly, the final

lines take on an entirely new meaning, especially in taking note of the shift from our to

Our. “Until the Moss had reached our lips — / And covered up — Our names” (11. 11-12). 64 This is no casual variation, but a significant change: our lips, bodily vestiges of life on

earth, moulder as any other physical matter; the names upon their graves are overcome by

moss; but the Our that is tied to those names maintains identity and importance. Bodies

and epitaphs will eventually be taken back by nature, but the names o f the canonical

poets are not subject to such earthly processes; they live on through their work. Here, failure o f the “I” does not refer to a lack o f success, but to failure in its original context: a

cessation of supply. “‘Why I failed’?” becomes a query into the successful pursuit which

bled the poet of both life and poetic invention; for at the end of earthly existence, both

self and creation must cease. Yet, while death may be the end, while body, speech and

even consciousness may fade, life on earth is far from futile; rather, it is the single

assured opportunity to leave one’s mark. It is all ye need to know.

Thus, the Byronic female follows a path of uncompromising ascent; her ultimate

realization both defies those characteristics that could be considered flaws and

accentuates those which are her greatest assets: via her canonization, all isolation is shed

like an outgrown skin and even in death she retains her resilience, invention and power—

because she has joined the ranks o f the great, some part o f her is left behind to continue

correspondence with her fellow man. And it is here that the Byronic female most strongly

individuates herself from her male counterpart; while he allows his brilliance to consume

him and his isolation to increase, while he dwells upon loss and finds less and less value

in life on earth, the Byronic female perseveres. Even God finds himself surpassed by this 65 unflappable entity; whether as the searingly innocent child,43 the newly autonomous wife or the immortalized proleptic poet, the voice of the Byronic female proves again and again that power need not result in ire and jaded apathy; if she were “the Gentleman/ In the ‘White Robe’—/And they — were the little Hand — that knocked— ,” she would not forbid.44

Thus, Emily Dickinson’s appropriation of the Byronic hero, just as her appropriation o f any other literary device, is calculated in its parallels and departures; a self-conscious molding of her own poetic image, the voice of the Byronic female continues to engender a perception of Dickinson which befits the artistic stature she has attained. If a nineteenth-century, woman poet hopes to be perceived as a true artist, she needs to be both rebel and revolutionary; she needs to covet the power of her predecessors and embody brazen audacity. Yet here the parallels must cease; for the traditional Byronic heroes and their Satanic archetype are also tragic, inaccessible and cynical. Bom into a generally charmed existence, their struggles are self-imposed and power is achieved too easily for them to truly appreciate its gain. Their attempts to subsume a higher power always lead to some great loss, one they do not possess the strength to overcome, thus brilliance and ambition prove to be not a gift, but a curse.

43 As Joanne Feit Diehl states, “Those poems which adopt a vision of the young innocent are often her most searing comments” (Diehl 16).

44 The final lines of Dickinson’s “Why— do they shut me out of Heaven?”: “Oh, if I— were the Gentleman/ In the ‘White Robe’— / And they—were the little Hand—that knocked— / Could I forbid?” (11. 9 - 1 2 ). 66 Melting into a joyless, insipid apathy, the Byronic hero inevitably proves himself to be weak.

But weakness has never suited the legacy that is Emily Dickinson; enigmatic though she may be, the very nature of her ambitions as a woman poet reveal her to be anything but fragile. For that Byronic voice within her knew that brilliance was more than a gift; it was a right and a responsibility, a call to arms for her silenced gender and a blessing far exceeding some afterlife of perfect oblivion. How ironic that femininity, the quality which made Dickinson’s own pursuit of power so harrowing, was the very point o f departure which enabled her success; feminine resilience imbued her with purpose, and where the Byronic hero molded his grief into death wishes, Dickinson molded her own into creation. 67

Chapter III: Revolutionized Madonna: Dickinson’s Realization of the Miltonic Eve

The clay breathes; it lives. God fashioned it and awakened it to life, but He is not in it. Therein lies the possibility offreedom and of alienation. ” Stephen Greenblatt, The Rise and Fall of Adam and Eve

“I have dared to do strange things—bold things, and have asked no advice from any—I have heeded beautiful tempters, yet do not think I am wrong. ” Emily Dickinson, c. 1850

In essence, when Dickinson created the Byronic female, a bit of literary history

repeated itself: just as Satanic traits emerged genuinely heroic upon their transfer to

Milton’s Eve, so too did the resultant Byronic traits emerge successful upon their transfer to Dickinson’s Byronic female. Yet neither of these heroic figures has garnered the kind of recognition enjoyed by their masculine counterparts, and perhaps it is this fact alone which has prevented their being explored as a unit—as archetype and trope, formation and realization. Even still, their qualities are so startlingly similar that criticism itself has explored both Dickinson and Milton’s Eve along parallel paths, even while it has never truly allowed the two to intersect.

Indeed, once one is looking, it becomes apparent that the critical conversations surrounding Milton’s Eve and Dickinson’s poetic persona are rife with similarities: where

Milton grants his Eve “perfect wisdom . . . for she names the flowers” (Danielson 133),

Dickinson playfully refers to her own words as flowers, toying with “the metaphor of flowers and falsehood” (Homans 167); where “[i]n Milton’s Eden, the love of solitude is a gender-specific trait, and it belongs to the female, not the male” (Dipasquale 60),

Dickinson’s “decision to lead a life devoid of significant event may well have been the 68 necessary condition for her art” (Wolff 167); where Milton’s temptation sees Eve and

Satan engaging in a contest “for the authority to interpret prelapsarian

language” (Danielson 140), Dickinson’s “poetic self-creation” is “achieved through

working in a genre that has been traditionally the most Satanically assertive, daring, and therefore precarious o f literary modes for women: lyric poetry” (Gilbert and Gubar 382).

The alignment of these critical themes can hardly be mere coincidence; and at the end of the day, the basis for their existence lies less within the critics than the poets around which those themes revolve. Thus, I am led to once again consider the calculated nature of all things Emily Dickinson; for when Dickinson herself claims “I am Eve” (qtd. in

Homans 169) it seems she has a very specific Eve in mind—Milton’s.

That such a possibility has been generally ignored is an oversight rooted in an insidiously pervasive mentality: that the female inheritance from Milton is one of either debilitation or combat— that for the women poets who read Milton, Paradise Lost

“magnifies religious misogyny while conveying it into literary tradition” (Homans 29), thus leaving the woman poet not only “burdened by the greatness of Milton’s poetry,” but

“by [its] masculinity” (Homans 8). Yet I do not agree with this assessment, at least in the case of Dickinson. For even if some literary women have felt stifled by Paradise Lost,

Dickinson has shown time and again that what suffocates the majority only ignites her creative powers. Now, I do not mean to imply that Dickinson’s response to Milton is anything like that of her combative conversation with the masculine authorities of poetry or even with God, for I do not think that she viewed her inheritance from Milton as the slightest attempt at oppression. Rather, while others may have shrunk under Milton’s 69 greatness or felt spurred to battle by his supposed misogyny, Dickinson never doubted that, as a woman, she might enter into a purely literary conversation with the poet behind

Paradise Lost, in other words, Dickinson had the clarity and confidence of mind to detect her true inheritance: an heroic Eve.

Yet it seems this realization was a process. For as Margaret Homans points out,

Dickinson claimed certain affinities with both Satan and Eve in many of her earlier letters;45 the poet seemed to both recognize and struggle with the clever, questioning rebel within herself—the “sinner” so unwilling to relinquish power and experience in favor of following blindly. Certainly there is little evidence that Dickinson ever associated her inclinations with the singularly literal Adam; thus Homans makes a fine point when she observes that:

[T]o read Genesis (and Milton) and see oneself in Eve rather than Adam would

lead to an entirely different sense of self, [specifically] in relation to language.

. . . Adam becomes the traditional symbol for literal language in which words are

synonymous with meaning, but Eve is the first to question that synonymity, the

first critic, the mother o f irony. It is in this sense that she is similar to

Satan, and in making tempter and tempted synonymous Dickinson is recognizing

this aspect of her inheritance from Eve. (170-171)

45 For an insightful examination of Dickinson’s early epistolary references to Eve, the serpent and Satan, see Homans chapter “Emily Dickinson.” I am, in fact, very much indebted to the exploration therein and depart with Homans only in her assessment of the literary inheritance left by Milton. 70 Yet what begins as mere recognition evolves into whole-hearted acceptance, an

acceptance that would not have been possible had Dickinson continued to view Satan and

Eve as essentially interchangeable. For at some juncture something shifts and Dickinson

seems to recognize that Satan and Eve, while similar in some facets, are far from

synonymous. Indeed, the poet not only detects but makes use of those qualities which

separate Eve from Satan, for they are the same qualities which elevate the Byronic female above her masculine predecessor: an inventive resilience and a self-sacrificing love of humanity and earth.

And Dickinson’s understanding and employment of these qualities differs greatly from what has been critically afforded to Milton’s Eve. For while scholars have in fact noted the self-sacrificing aspect of Eve,46 that “Eve’s words echo the genuinely redemptive self-offering of the Son,” or bring to mind that idea of a “Mary second

Eve” (Dipasquale 66), none o f these afford humanity’s mother the role o f a true hero; her words are mere echoes of genuine redemption— her life and acts simply the precursor for some second, better version of woman. But is this all of value that Milton intended to place in his Eve? Is his concept of a Fortunate Fall so black and white as to require total antithesis in the figural relationship between Mary and the first woman? The text itself would say no, for Eve offers up not only her body, but her life for the betterment her kind; “Destruction with destruction to destroy” (X.1006), she “anticipates that a death

46 Recall Eve’s words as discussed in the opening chapter: “Then both ourselves and Seed at once to free/ From what we fear for both, let us make short,/ Let us seek Death,” (X. 999-1001). 71 must be paid, even anticipates Christ’s sacrifice.”47 The difference (and perhaps the allure for Dickinson) is that there is something far more autonomous in Eve’s tactics; whereas

Christ and the prophesied Madonna consciously adhere to God’s will, Eve looks to subvert that will, to invent, to do anything for the betterment of humanity. God has deemed that death shall be to her “Seed (O hapless Seed!) deriv’d” (X.965) and Eve dares to consider how this divine decree might be avoided, her proposal foiled only by her own love o f humanity and earth; in fact, directly in the wake o f being told that “to thy

Husbands will/Thine shall submit” (X.195-196), Eve entertains avoiding the will of the highest authority there is— Milton’s Eve is martyr and rebel in one. And while this is not an aspect of Eve that we are allowed to see fully realized within the span of Paradise

Lost, Dickinson picks up where Milton left off; she advances upon Eve’s heroic inclinations, and at the figural crux that is the incarnation, the beginning of the path to

Salvation, the poet entertains a blasphemously beautiful possibility: that there need not be a Madonna to absolve Eve— Eve is enough.

In essence, the conventional idea of a Fortunate Fall does not appear to be sufficient for Dickinson, because there is within that concept the insidious implication that Eve’s curiosity and love o f earthly experience are things which need to be rectified— that boldness in woman-kind must be corrected, remedied by the unquestioning innocence of a virgin mother who will not save humanity in and of herself, but merely serve as the vessel for humanity’s true savior. It is an antithetical narrative which cancels

47 For both these words and this concept, I am entirely indebted to Dr. Jennifer Mylander. 72 out one type of woman with another. As Stephen Greenblatt so eloquently summarizes,

“[t]he knot o f disobedience that Eve had tied by her unbelief Mary opened by her belief

and her obedience. Eve gave birth to sin; Mary gave birth to grace. Eva became

Ave” (128, emphasis added). Yet, it is this very line of logic which robs Eve and womankind of all recognition and all power, for it implies that the resultant election and final Salvation are only available to one kind of woman: devout, unquestioning and passive.

Thus we again return to the feminine ideal which necessitated the voice of the

Byronic female in the first place, the ideal whose blinding purity would leave all outside of its scope in shadow. And there is some brilliance within this mode of oppression, for it advocates an ideal which is the antithesis of revolution; it glorifies the woman who not only keeps her eyes toward God and heaven, but who willingly surrenders herself to the powers that be. And as for the woman who questions, the woman who confounds and dares to find pleasure and value in anything other than God, well, she is wicked; the

Byronic female is wicked; Eve is wicked—revolution, in female form, is wicked.

And while it does seem there was a time in Dickinson’s younger years when she entertained some part o f this belief, it should come as no surprise that her particular method of coping was not one of conformity; rather, it was the adoption of a voice which could explore, even embrace, its supposed wickedness, until finally that voice could proclaim “I have heeded beautiful tempters, yet do not think I am wrong” (Dickinson qtd. in Homans 172); this is the voice of the Byronic female—this is the voice of Milton’s

Eve. Her inventiveness and power ring through “I’m ceded— I’ve stopped being Theirs 73 — her self-sacrifice and love of earth flow within “I died for Beauty—but was scarce.”

Hers is an unapologetically feminine voice, fully fledged and ready to rewrite woman’s fate. And Dickinson must have sensed this readiness as she penned her masterful poem

“Of all the Souls that stand create— there, the concept of the Fortunate Fall is turned in

Eve’s favor; the promises of the New Testament are turned on their head; the terms of

Salvation are completely rewritten— within the lines of “Of all the Souls that stand create

— ”, Dickinson embraces the revolutionary heroism of Milton’s Eve and forms the

Byronic Madonna.

I) Perfectly Formed, Grounded in Time

Not too surprisingly, Dickinson appoints the realization of this feminine force to a very provocative moment in biblical history.48 Indeed, by adopting much of the language o f Matthew and Revelation, “Of all the Souls that stand create— ” makes no secret of its scene: words such as stand and Elected place the poem in the moment of the Last

Judgement, where “the dead, small and great, stand before God” (Revelation 20:12), where the Son of man “shall send his angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they shall gather together his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other” (Matthew 24:31). Bearing this theologically loaded subject matter in mind, one

48 As this chapter will be working with Revelation and with a poem which echoes its use of the prophetic perfect tense, the narrative constructed will also make use of this mode; in other words, the narrative will appear to be taking place in the past but should also be understood as prophetic— as so certain to occur that it is spoken of as though it already 74 almost anticipates that the poem will make use of hymn measure; for as even the most fledgling Dickinson scholar is aware, it is not at all unusual for Dickinson to adopt the so- called common meter. She utilizes it with undeniable frequency. What is unusual is for

Dickinson to allow a poem in hymn measure to reach its finish without any variation or break in its perfection. More often than not, her approach follows something similar to the previously examined “I died for Beauty— but was scarce”; the poet establishes her ability to flawlessly compose in the faithful meter before somehow trifling with the lulling cadence or its rhyme. It is a choice which effectively draws the ear to some detail or other and which can serve as a point of entry into the poet’s otherwise elliptical verse.

Thus when one familiar with Dickinson first encounters “Of all the Souls that stand create— ,” when those first few lines establish the familiar cadence of hymn measure and ring with the language of the Last Judgement, the ear hangs in suspense; when will she break the pattern? How will she shatter the perfection?— in this instance, she will not:

O f all the Souls that stand create—

I have Elected— One—

When Sense from Spirit— files away—

And Subterfuge— is done—

When that which is— and that which was—

Apart— intrinsic— stand—

And this brief Tragedy of Flesh— 75 Is shifted— like a Sand—

When Figures show their royal Front—

And Mists— are carved away,

Behold the Atom— I preferred—

To all the lists of Clay!

(“O f all the Souls that stand create— ” 11.1-12)

In terms o f its form, the poem is irrefutably flawless. And yet it bears considering that

Dickinson is in fact playing with form simply by maintaining it throughout; she has broken her own frequent convention. In other words, perfection is as much a commentary as a variation; for if considered as a poem in conversation with all the rest, “O f all the

Souls that stand create— ” stands isolated from the majority o f its relations, such that we are forced to consider whether this instance of perfection is a point of favorable distinguishment or a flaw. Why utilize God’s language with such matchless fluency? With no variation in meter to guide us, the secret must be sought within the punctuation, the grammar and the words themselves— and rest assured, those things are enough.

For even while the meter is perfect, there is something quite jarring in that very first line; because in order to adhere to said meter, the grammar and logic of the line must break with expectation. One would expect that for a soul to stand (even statically), it must already have been created; and yet the souls to which the speaker refers are defined by the uninflected “create.” Now, while the idea of an uninflected verb may at first seem quite pretty and timeless, while there is something alluring in the notion of a creation 76 with no beginning and no end, create’s immediate juxtaposition to a verb grounded in

time and motion not only demands comparison but suggests judgement.49 Indeed the “ed”

so conspicuously absent from the first line, finds its way into the second, and we are left

with some unaddressed creator placed in direct contrast with the speaker— with “I”: “Of

all the Souls that stand create— / 1 have Elected— One— ” (11. 1 -2). The proximity of these

lines highlights the speaker as the only source of action, of movement; even the

appearance of the lines themselves points to this juxtaposition, for while the first circles

about itself, almost contained by its closing dash, the second is elongated by its punctuation— it palpably moves. And the product o f that movement? It is none other than the blasphemous appropriation of divine election. More blasphemous still, that election, unlike the creation it follows, is afforded the Bible’s own prophetic perfect tense;50 it tells o f a future event so certain to occur that it must be spoken o f as though it already has; past and future at once, the fluidity o f “Elected” is everything which the static “create” is

Thus contrasted with the activity of “Elected,” “create” loses any note of timeless whimsy. Instead, these souls and their creation become bound to a sort of eternal present;

49 As Miller so astutely observes, “Dickinson’s interest in action corresponds to those aspects of meaning carried by a verb’s inflection. She writes of how action is perceived, what its agent may be, what transformations it effects, and the process of change, or action, itself’ {Emily Dickinson: A Poet’s Grammar 64).

50 These first two lines strongly echo Revelation’s own jarring interplay of present and prophetic perfect tenses, with the following passage being a fine example of the phenomenon: “And the four beasts had each of them six wings about him; and they were full of eyes within: and they rest not day and night, saying, Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty, which was, and is, and is to come” {Revelation 4:8). 77 they have no past, but neither do they have a future; for in order to achieve selfhood, in

order to either reflect or look forward, one’s creation must be in the past. Thus, these

souls are merely the object of some being’s perpetual exploit, one which will never be

finished— one which will never actually result in a thing created and thus in a being of

independent existence. And if we place the scene above at the site of the Last Judgement,

the accusation is clear: God the creator never intends to finish his task, to yield

independent beings— from genesis to final judgement, he will create, he will toy, and

without ever granting his projects a moment of autonomy, he will at last absorb them into

himself for all eternity— each less a living soul than some “beast that was, and is not, and

yet is” (Revelation 17:8). Yet with a single line of verse, the speaker foils this plan, for

whatever “One” she has elected, has been synonymously saved from this static state of

non-existence. Indeed within a mere two lines the speaker is established as both the poem’s hero and victor: she has Elected— Won.

II) The Soul o f Sense

Yet what it is that the speaker has won is less certain than the victory; it is one

soul of her election, but the ensuing line complicates exactly what is meant by “Soul.”

Conjuring images of Christ’s division of the sheep from the goats,51 and robes “made

white in the blood of the lamb” (Revelation 7:14), we are told o f a moment “When Sense

si “And before him shall be gathered all nations: and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats:/ and he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left” (Matthew 25:32-33). 78 from Spirit—files away—/And Subterfuge is done— ” (11. 3-4); when that which is blessed— elect— is divided from the cursed, and humanity is again made spotless and devoid of selfish deceit. Of course, the standard assumption would be that the elected soul is the spirit in this scenario— that it is that immortal, immaterial essence so superior to transient flesh. Yet if it is action over stasis which has earned the speaker that soul, if her prize must be actively moved away from its prison, then the above words suggest a soul of far more substance— for it is not the spirit which moves, but sense.

Sense files away from spirit—sense, that multifaceted allusion to all manner of feeling, from bodily perception to “common sense” to the perception of meaning itself.52

Indeed, the very concept of sense is irrevocably bound to the human condition; it is the method by which we interpret our world— our earth. And while it may be argued that one can sense God, that one can have a sense of heaven or of any other intangible entity, sense is, at its root, feeling53—it is a thing received through the magnificent complexities of this corporeal vessel. And if any doubt remains that this particular use of “Sense” is steeped in the earthly and tangible, its direct juxtaposition to the heavenly intangibility of

“Spirit” renders that doubt especially difficult to justify.

52 It is worth noting that my exploration of “sense” does not address the juxtaposition of sense and sensibility so prevalent in the 18th and 19th centuries. I do not think that this particular use of the word is totally inapplicable (sanity and realism are certainly more affiliated with that which is grounded than that which is ethereal), but based upon the surrounding diction, I do not that think that this particular juxtaposition was the one at the forefront of Dickinson’s mind when she penned “Of all the Souls that stand create— ”.

53 According to the Oxford English Dictionary, sense takes its origin from the “Latin sensus, ‘faculty of feeling, thought, meaning,’ from sentire, ‘feel.’” 79 Thus we again return to a theme we have seen before, not only in Dickinson, but

in Milton: a juxtaposition o f the earthly and the spiritual which results in an

unconventional valuation of the corporeal— of the experiences of the flesh. But in this

particular poem, Dickinson adds yet another layer to what is already a somewhat

subversive ideology— and it is again rooted in her choice of “Sense.” For in grouping this

earthly experience with “Spirit” (a word rooted in breath)54 and “Soul,” Dickinson is

referencing a very specific equation: “And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the

ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath o f life; and man became a living so u r (Genesis 2:7, emphasis added). Indeed, according to Genesis and thus the Word o f

God, dust or earth combines with breath to form the soul; yet Dickinson chooses neither

dust nor earth— in this instance, she does not even choose the biblically loaded “flesh” or

“clay.” Instead she chooses “Sense,” a word not only steeped in the meanings explored above, but in meaning itself—in the sense o f a word and the tantalizing instability o f its meaning. Not only is it this version of “sense” which defines postlapsarian language, that word-play which both complicates and enlivens Dickinson’s verse, but it is also a word which predominates a very specific portion of Paradise Lost; for in no other book does

“sense” occur with greater frequency than Book IX— the temptation, the moment when

Eve first entertains both double entendre and her hopes for all things earthly. Thus within

“Sense” Dickinson finds a single word which embodies all that her Byronic female once

explored as wicked and all that she can no longer think to be wrong; for within the

54 Again, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, spirit takes its origin from the “Latin spiritus, ‘breath, spirit,’ from spirare, ‘breathe.’” 80 faculty o f sense is both the love o f earth and the love o f language. And so in an ultimate

acceptance of these vilified qualities, “Of all the Souls that stand create— ” makes a bold

claim: divided from the spirit, divided from the breath of God, sense still constitutes a

soul; indeed, this fallen flesh and fallen language are not wicked, but the very things which form the self. The subterfuge then, is not mankind’s but God’s.

And this is not the only instance in Dickinson’s poetry where “Sense” occupies this role. Within the lines of “Much Madness is divinest Sense— ”, the burden of harboring an affection for language and earth is inherently bound to the burdens of womanhood within a Christian order:

Much Madness is divinest Sense—

To a discerning Eye—

Much Sense— the starkest Madness—

’Tis the Majority

In this, as all, prevail—

Assent— and you are sane—

Demur—you’re straightway dangerous—

And handled with a Chain— /

(“Much Madness is divinest Sense— ”) 81 Here, a Sense still bound to divinity and thus the breath of God, is much madness to the discerning “I” or individual;55 conversely, for that same individual, there is much sense in what the majority deems madness: the belief that stark Sense— bare, earthly, ungodly

Sense— is “Much” or ample; it is enough in the absence of a divinity so trivial it cannot even be afforded capitalization. And for this individual, her madness is as stark as her sense; it is unpleasantly clear, for even as she feels the truth of her individual adequacy, the majority would brand her subversive and dangerous. She is no demure virgin mother, but a demurring Eve; and her ideas surrounding the autonomy of humanity and its Sense find her enslaved and deemed a menace to a Christian order. Because of her love of language and earth, because o f her faith in Sense, she is “handled with a Chain.” It is a state of affairs which sharply clarifies the motives of “Of all the Souls that stand create

— ”: it has always been for the sake of autonomy that the speaker has sought to prove the sanity o f her madness, and the madness o f the Word o f God.

Ill) Time of Life

Thus, “O f all the Souls that stand create—■” is not at all as it first appears; for, what on a cursory level might be read as a pretty meditation upon the day of Salvation, shifts entirely; God’s deceit has been exposed, and where Revelation promises “that there should be time no longer” {Revelation 10:6), “Of all the Souls that stand create— ”

55 For Dickinson’s interchangeable use of “eye” and “I” along with even more witty observations surrounding the poet’s employment of these words, see Wolff’s chapter “The Voice of the Child.” 82 aggressively separates its own promises into a timeline. In essence, Salvation is transformed into an exit from stasis and an entry into existence:

When that which is— and that which was—

Apart— intrinsi c— stand—

And this brief Tragedy of Flesh—

Is shifted— like a Sand—

(“O f all the Souls that stand create— ” 11. 5-8)

Here the profusion of dashes tactfully stretches, separates nearly every line. The present, that which is, is at last parted from that which was or that which will be, their ultimate separation natural, intrinsic to the realization of creation. It is a moment so fraught with movement, that this second occurrence of “stand” loses all earlier sense of some passive, motionless state. Via the commencement of time, “stand” is transformed into action and agency. It becomes something far more akin to Milton’s own “Sufficient to have stood, though free to fall” (III.99),56 for the line itself is so luxuriously stretched as to allow the envisioning of both a choice and a change; we are first presented with the present—which is then conjoined with past and future— then these elements suddenly part— and actively stand. Conversely, “this brief Tragedy of Flesh,” swirls about itself. Dash-less and static, it is both the antithesis o f the lines preceding it and a far cry from some standard allusion to earthly suffering. For if we hold all of the assertions above to be true, the only tragedy of flesh is God’s deceitful devaluation of it— His attempts to keep our eyes toward the

56 Milton’s redefinition of “stand” as the active opposite of “fall” not only appears in Paradise Lost, but in Sonnets 7 & 19 as well. 83 timeless stasis of heaven that we might willfully relinquish our autonomy and never

realize the potential of this earthly vessel— the true conduit to our souls.

But with this separation of present from past, sense from spirit, creation from

creator, God’s deceit is at last exposed. All is “shifted,” changed— revolutionized, because the hourglass has been tipped and its sand allowed to move at last. And it is no mistake that the summation of this process should subtly recall the birth of postlapsarian

language; like “sense” itself, the words echo with serpent-like sibilance: “Is shifted— like a Sand— .” It is arguably the most beautiful line o f the poem; both in sound and in

imagery, it is as subtle, soft and elusive as the most beguiling of language. Yet here it is freed from the brand of deception, for it summarizes the very moment when “Subterfuge

— is done.” Thus liberated, the elliptical line demands exploration not as deceit but as truth, an entity revealed to be far too complex to be explored as one meaning or one interpretation. Indeed this line exists in layers, for even as it rewrites the valuation of postlapsarian language, it at once references God’s tyranny and reclaims the language by which he kept creation under his thumb. For after humanity’s fall from grace, God cultivated beings willing to yield their autonomy; and to Abraham he declares “I will multiply thy seed as the stars o f heaven, and as the sand which is upon sea shore;.../ ... because thou hast obeyed my voice” (Genesis 22:17-18, emphasis added). Here God compares the number of Abraham’s progeny to sand using the definite “the,” but in

Dickinson’s hands, the article becomes the indefinite “a.” Where God’s words follow the

standard in language, where the sand refers to one overarching, God-like entity composed

of countless particles, Dickinson’s “a sand” is both elusive and all-encompassing; it is a 84 sand of innumerable particles and a single grain at once, a vast and powerful entity wherein individual autonomy can still exist— it is one soul and all souls.

Thus in this final scene both individual and group begin to emerge, as if each grain of sand in the sea was slowly lit from within and defined. And as this group begins to form, the day o f Salvation takes an unexpected turn: souls do not stand to greet their judgement; they stand to form a united front against it. Thus in this third and final occurrence of a line containing only a single, closing dash, the effect is not one of stasis, but of an indivisible force— of one soul and all souls: “When Figures show their royal

Front—/ And Mists— are carved away,” (11. 9-10). The choice of “Figures” here is a loaded one; for not only were these beings once ill-defined or seen indistinctly while under God’s tyranny, but now that they have separated themselves from His spirit, they are what had long been deemed only an external form.57 Yet here they stand, complete, all flesh and sense and earth. And they, like the sense which defines them, are earth and language at once; they are figure and figural— body and that distinctly postlapsarian phenomenon, metaphor. And as for their front, whether each individual visage or their united stand, it is royal, answerable to no other power. Thus the mist that “watered the whole face of the ground” as God breathed his spirit into man (Genesis 2:6-7), the “black mist low creeping” by which Satan entered the serpent (Paradise Lost IX. 180), that

57 “Figure” is assigned a multitude of senses. What follows are only a few of many, yet I believe these to be the most applicable to this particular use: “[a] person’s bodily shape”; “[a] person seen indistinctly or from a distance”; '‘‘'archaic The external form or shape of something” (Oxford English Dictionary). Lastly is, of course, metaphor, or a figure of speech. For this last insight into the word, I am indebted to Dr. Meg Schoerke. 85 breath-like entity which nurtured only to deceive, is at last carved away. And it must be

carved, for it has become more like stone than air or water; it has not truly moved or

altered since its creation.

IV) Victory by Entendre

Finally, with the poem’s first instance of concrete punctuation, the spirit of God

departs with a comma, a breath, an exhalation— and humanity is left triumphant: “And

Mists— are carved away,/ Behold the Atom— I preferred— / To all the lists of Clay!” (11.

10-12). In essence, this liberation, this rewritten salvation is a second creation. For where

God once “saw everything he had made, and, behold, it was very good” (Genesis 1:31, emphasis added), where “[m]ale and female created he them;. . . and called their name

Adam” (Genesis 5:2, emphasis added), the speaker too beholds her creation: a second race, pure ‘adama,5S it is as indivisible as the atom itself59—it is composed only of those intrinsic human elements, sense and soul.

Yet, in the wake of this clear valuation of ‘adama or clay, the speaker seems to contradict herself: “Behold the Atom— I preferred— / To all the Lists of Clay!” If clay

and atom are essentially one and the same, and if the battle here has been to expel the

spirit o f God and reclaim this earthly vessel, then why should one atom be preferred to

any other? The secret here lies both in the meaning of “Lists” and the referent of “Atom.”

58 “[C]lay in Hebrew is ‘adama, and the word for human is ‘adam” (Greenblatt 57).

59 Here it is important to note that the first “splitting” of the atom did not occur until 1917, long after Dickinson’s death. Thus, her epoch would still have considered the atom to be indivisible. 86 But let us briefly put the consideration of “Atom” on hold, for “Lists” alone is a bear to

unpack— it is an instance not merely of double, but triple entendre.

In terms of its contemporary usage, “Lists” does not immediately strike one as a

term ripe for punning; furthermore, with the poem’s many allusions to Judgement Day, the mind naturally imagines “List” as referring to that list of names in the book of life.

Yet this association is the product of later exegesis, for nowhere in the Bible is the word

“list” utilized in this way; rather, it is always employed in its archaic sense: desire.60

Thus, “All the Lists of Clay” are transformed from some extensive index of humanity, to all the desires of the flesh; the document that was meant to determine Salvation becomes those very inclinations upon which it would have passed judgement. And dismantling the idea o f the book o f life further still is yet a third, historical sense o f “list”: the “[p]alisades enclosing an area for a tournament” or “the scene o f a contest or combat.”61 Thus “Lists of Clay” again subverts its initial conception, and the book of life morphs into a very public battlefield, an arena which has hosted “this brief Tragedy of Flesh,” wherein humanity has been engaged in some gladiatorial struggle for its individuation. Bearing these alternate definitions in mind, it would seem that the key to Salvation has not lain in

60 The Bible consistently adheres to the following definition: archaic “desire or inclination” (Oxford English Dictionary). For example, Christ says the following of mans’ treatment of the prophet Elijah, or Elias: “But I say unto you, That Elias is come already, and they knew him not, but have done unto him whatsoever they listed” (.Matthew 17:12). The word is used in the same fashion in its other biblical appearances: M ark 9:13, John 3:8 and James 3:4.

61 This is the second sense of the noun “list” according to the Oxford English Dictionary. For pointing to this definition and its applicability to my argument, I am entirely indebted to Dr. Meg Schoerke. 87 the careful indexing of God’s surveillance, but in humanity’s intrinsic inclination toward both its desires and its autonomy— Salvation has lain in the very seeds of revolution.62

And the Atom desired above all the rest? The Atom preferred to the arenas of battle? The key to this riddle in fact lies within Paradise Lost: for Adam himself describes “this Earth a spot, a g rain ej An Atom, with the Firmament compar’d” (VIII.

15-18, emphasis added). Then the fleshly desire preferred over all others, the entity preferred to the battlefield, is the earth itself—a grain, a sand and yet the source o f all desire and sense at once. Won at last from its spiritual antagonist, the earth is the sole entity needed for a realized and autonomous existence. Thus, by the speaker’s election, this earth has been parted from the despotism o f God and rendered as indivisible as the atom to which it is compared. It will not pass away to be replaced by some new heaven and new earth;63 the being who promised this has taken his breath and departed, and the speaker at last has what she desires; a world which celebrates earthly existence, a world which has “no need of other Heaven than the one below” (Johnson 185).

62 Dickinson employs the triple entendre of “list” to similar, though less hopeful, purposes in “They dropped like Flakes— ”, a poem generally interpreted as describing the aftermath of a battlefield. In the final stanza, the “Eye” or “I” is lost, absorbed only to be summoned to God’s irrevocable election: They perished in the seamless Grass— No eye could find the place— But God can summon every face On his Repealless—List. (They dropped like Flakes— ”, 11. 6-9) Here the dash preceding “List” provides an especially embittered pause; God will not tolerate challenge or change— not to his elections, not to his insistence upon the battle or tragedy of flesh, and certainly not to his desires.

63 “And I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away” (Revelation 21:1). 88 Thus, “Subterfuge— is done— concluded upon the parting of Sense from Spirit; and that self-serving deceit, that notion of beguilement long projected upon the temptation and humanity’s yielding to the desires of the flesh, is transferred to God. God and his word claimed that there is no soul, no existence without the spirit or the breath o f life and that this dust, this vessel, will one day turn to refuse; that its sullied will and inclinations are to be stifled in the interest o f cultivating the spirit— the only thing o f value as it will one day unite with God. Yet here we are told of a new, inevitable prophecy; one wherein the speaker stands in the aftermath of Judgement Day, a sensing, substantial soul surrounded by the royal front of her fellow man; let God have his spirit, his breath, his attempt to subsume his creation. The speaker will take this bit o f earth, this new-found autonomy— the sole prize after this “brief Tragedy of Flesh.”

V) Death & the Birth o f Eve

And it is flesh which distinguishes this speaker, her love of all things earthly and active— her election of every sense of sense. And this singular fact makes it quite clear that the speaker is not the figure we would expect to find at the scene of the Last

Judgement. This is not, as Revelation relays, the Lamb of God— indeed no Christ figure or any figure so bound to God would grant preference to the corporeal, nor would he doubt and dissect God’s words so. This is no innocent Madonna, all spirit and breath and obedience. This is not even, in some Satanic twist, the Evil One come to foil the day of

Salvation; for the victor here is active, and Satan is stasis incarnate. Rather, the speaker of this poem is the Byronic female through and through; bold, visceral, and as relentlessly 89 active as she is inventive, she has prepared for this moment for millennia— she is

Milton’s Eve.

For what other figure could both doubt God’s word and reinvent Salvation? What other figure has more strongly shown both the propensity and the desire? Indeed this earthly triumph must belong to the mother of mankind, for she was the first to risk all for the sake of human potential. And she has suffered greatly for her act of bravery: from the

Fall to the end of days she has been deemed the source and substance of humanity’s suffering; from mystery plays to sermons to literature, she has been crucified again and again, all o f her daughters made to surrender themselves in subservience or be branded as wicked as she— she who first saw the true beauty and possibility in flesh and bone, she who first desired more for herself and her progeny. And yet she has never once asked

“My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46); she has simply endured, awaiting the opportunity to bring about her own absolution.

And the key to this release lies in the ellipticality of language, the same ellipticality which sparked Eve’s desire for knowledge in a long-ago garden. For she has long been told that she will “surely die” (Genesis 2:17), yet without ever knowing with certainty what those words might mean. It is a mystery which Dickinson herself explores in her poetry time and again, yet read through the lens o f “O f all the Souls that stand create— ”, read as the voice of Milton’s Eve, these proleptic poems become both newly illuminated and illuminating: death is not all as the Word has promised, and within this discovery lies the key to Eve’s absolution. 90 This is especially true of “It was not Death, for I stood up,” despite being a poem which scholars might consider as done to death. Yet read through the narrative constructed above, even a cursory glance suggests a poem which is the precursor to “Of all the Souls that stand create— its references to Judgement Day along with multiple shared themes— from flesh and sense to breath, from figures to timelessness and battle— yield an Eve moments after God’s breath has departed. Newly autonomous from the

Spirit, she first reflects with wonder upon this renegotiation o f the meaning o f death:

It was not Death, for I stood up,

And all the dead lie down—

It was not Night, for all the Bells

Put out their Tongues, for Noon.M

It was not Frost, for on my Flesh

I felt Siroccos— crawl—

Nor Fire— for just my marble feet

Could keep a Chancel, cool—

And yet, it tasted, like them all,

(“It was not Death, for I stood up,” 11. 1-9, emphasis added)

64 Wolff convincingly asserts that “Noon” is Dickinson’s own code for “both a zero hour and eternity” as it has both a double zero and an infinity symbol at its core; “thus are boundlessness and nothingness fused in this single syllable” (192). 91 Within these lines, the speaker has taken inventory of those faculties and senses she was certain death would eliminate: she still stands, still hears the bells of time, still feels the heat of her flesh and the coolness of her extremities. She has not entered the frosty perfection of Heaven nor been tossed into the fieiy burning lake of hell. And yet it tastes of all these, for it is the taste of autonomy— of choice and extremes and, most importantly, movement.

Still, while these observations connect beautifully to “Of all the Souls that stand create— ”, they are no substantial departure from a standard reading. Rather, the pivotal s moment is to be found in the following lines, where the tense shifts from past or prophetic perfect to past perfect, to those things which occurred in an earlier past. Thus, what is described thereafter is not a depiction of death, but of the restrictive life that preceded it:

And yet, it tasted, like them all,

The Figures I have seen

Set orderly, for Burial,

Reminded me, of mine—

As if my life were shaven,

And fitted to a frame,

And could not breathe without a key,

And ’twas like Midnight, some— 92 When everything that ticked— has stopped—

And space stares— all around—

Or Grisly frosts— first Autumn moms,

Repeal the Beating Ground—

But, most, like Chaos65—Stopless— cool—

Without a Chance, or spar—

Or even a Report o f Land—

To justify— Despair.

(“It was not Death, for I stood up,” 11. 9-24, emphasis added)

We hear of a life where “Figures,” both bodily and metaphorical are systematically buried, stifled, fitted to God’s frame wherein breath over sense is the key to life. We hear o f a world o f timeless stasis, where all that would tick has stopped. We hear o f an existence without a “spar,” without argument or weapon— without “even a Report of

Land” or the promise of the joys of earth to “justify— Despair.” This was God’s idyllic human existence. No wonder Eve would stare down death for the chance at another.

And so “Of all the Souls that stand create— ” describes the aftermath of a mortal risk taken, a repetition of the same word play which once brought the forbidden fruit to

Eve’s lips: that she will “surely die” is God’s Word, the Word o f a deity who deems his

65 This is the sole appearance of “Chaos” in Dickinson’s poetry, a word which strongly recalls Paradise Lost; both its use here as well as the applicability of this poem to Milton’s Eve, certainly suggest further scholarship. 93 spirit the breath o f life; thus death is merely the cessation of breath, the absence of God’s

spirit. Indeed, without that entity to shackle Eve to God, she is as good to Him as dead.

Yet what is she, what is humanity without these fetters?— pure sense and soul. For these creatures of clay, that which is their death in the eyes of God is simply a new life— autonomous, full of movement and possibility. Far from God’s promise that on the day of

Salvation “there should be time no longer” (Revelation 10:6), time and life for humanity have commenced at last. A sand has shifted and a revolution has begun.

And all of this is brought about by Eve, by this woman who has long been labeled as inherently flawed. But it is these supposed flaws, from her defiance to her creativity to her curiosity and ambition, which first granted humanity the opportunity to pursue its potential and which ultimately yielded this autonomous version of Salvation. Indeed the speaker composes in God’s own perfect form because she has rewritten what constitutes perfection: it is experience over innocence, movement over stasis, defiance over submission— it is the well-earned griine of earthly existence over the monotonous purity of heaven. Since the moment Eve tasted the forbidden fruit, humanity has been on the path to Salvation; and not because that act ensured the appearance of a virgin mother or a heavenly savior, but because that act signaled the beginning of growth and change, of an insatiable desire for betterment— of a perfect imperfection. This alone is the purpose of existence; this alone is the path to Salvation. Thus humanity needs no outside Savior, no blood to wash it clean; it is enough. Eve is enough. Thus “O f all the Souls that stand create— ” yields a true Byronic Madonna: willful, daring and rooted in sense, she is no yielding virgin mother, no mouthpiece of

God—but she is not wrong. She has questioned God, solved the riddle of his words, and in so doing she has both exposed His deceit and rendered humanity autonomous. She has at last absolved herself of guilt; she has absolved the flesh of guilt; and not via some antithetical exchange, but by advancing upon the very inclinations which branded her wicked. And this masterfully brilliant heroine does not—cannot stem from the mind of a poet stifled by Milton’s Eve; she is Milton’s Eve realized. Each beautiful quality which

Milton planted within the first woman, each bit of humanity, empathy and heroism which he granted her where the Bible did not, is brought to bear in Dickinson’s Byronic

Madonna. Milton did not stifle Dickinson; he inspired her.

For where the Bible accords Eve little more than her womanhood and her sin,

Milton imbues his Eve with qualities both human and admirable; the impetus for her supposed transgression is so much more complex than seeing that the tree is “good for food” or “pleasant to the eyes” or “desired to make one wise” (Genesis 3:6). Milton grants his Eve a complexity of motive relatable enough to make the Fall seem inevitable

— logical enough to make any person imagine that they might have done the same. And while it can be argued that this is merely Milton’s way of making his readers recognize 95 their own fallenness,66 while this inevitability can be labeled the bane of literary women, while Milton’s intentions can be debated until kingdom come, the fact of the matter is that not everyone has inherited a hapless Eve. For in his subtle way, Milton has opened a world of possibility for women whose curiosity and ambition will not be stifled, women who are far from weak in mind or morals— women like Dickinson and her Byronic female.

And while it cannot be said with certainty that it was Milton’s Eve who led

Dickinson out of the mire of her imagined wickedness, it is difficult to imagine that this nuanced version of the first mother did not play some part. For Milton invests his Eve with the kind of potential which the Bible does not, the same potential which Dickinson claims for herself through the voice of her Byronic female. With minds ever-searching, altering, adjusting and challenging, these women know the kind of resilience which only invention can yield. They are neither vessel nor agent to a higher power, for their revolution is humanity’s; their kingdom, earth; their weapon, words; their Salvation, creation— they are the Byronic Madonna.

ee According to Stanley Fish, Milton’s intention is to confront the reader “with evidence of his corruption” such that he “becomes aware of his inability to respond adequately to spiritual conceptions” (iv). 96 -Conclusion-

I cannot praise a fugitive and cloister'd Dare you see a Soul at the “ White Heat ”? virtue, unexercis'd and unbreath’d, that never Then crouch within the door— sallies out and sees her adversary, but slinks Red—is the Fire's common tint— out of the race, where that immortall garland But when the quickened Ore is to be run for, not without dust and heat. John Milton, Areopagitica Has sated Flame’s conditions— She quivers from the Forge Without a color, but the Light O f unannointed Blaze—

Least Village, boasts its Blacksmith— Whose Anvil's even ring Stands symbol for the finer Forge That soundless tugs—within—

Refining these impatient Ores With Hammer, and with Blaze Until the designated Light Repudiate the Forge— Emily Dickinson, c. 1862

At her core, the Byronic Madonna is the embodiment of both Milton and

Dickinson’s humanistic values; malleable and curious, daring and ambitious, her mind is ever-turned toward refinement by experience— cloistered, she is not. Yet while this figure beautifully encompasses those values which the poets share, I do anticipate some objection to my insistence upon a collaborative alignment of these two very different giants o f English Literature. Indeed, it must be acknowledged that the works o f John

Milton and Emily Dickinson do not morally align in all things; especially within her more blasphemous explorations, Dickinson is hardly seeking to “justifie the wayes of God to men” (1.26). Yet, the fact that these two poets seem to depart in their treatment o f God is, in my humble opinion, far less relevant than the fact that they intersect in their treatment of humanity. And while I will not deny the theological brilliance of either, I would 97 certainly argue that such a quality is exceeded by the empathic and creative brilliance possessed by both; each excels in the ability to grant both depth and voice to figures long silenced and, as a result, to reveal those aspects of humanity worth celebrating. What these elliptical poets in fact justify is the value and responsibility of human existence.

And ellipticality is pivotal to this equation: from the Bible, so ripe for dilation, to the quiet empathy and subtle valuations of Paradise Lost, to Dickinson’s subversive multiple entendre and slippery dashes, there is the common element of necessary interpretation and thus the insertion of one’s own humanity. These texts are a postlapsarian playground of language, but the result is far from wicked— the result is the expansion of both our humanity and our minds. And it must have been the beauty of this phenomenon which inspired the subtle valuation which closes Paradise Lost: for while

Adam and Eve “looking back, all the Eastern side beheld/ Of Paradise,” they then “hand in hand, with wandring steps and slow,/ Through Eden took thir solitarie way” (XII.

641-642 & 648-649, emphasis added)— Eden was not behind, but before them.67

And even if unconsciously, some part of Dickinson must have understood that she was picking up the thread o f Milton’s narrative; her sense o f “Paradise” versus “Eden” so strongly adheres to the infamous juxtaposition which closes Paradise Lost, that it would seem that the final lines of Milton’s epic were a frequent echo within the woman poet’s mind. Indeed, Dickinson’s use of Paradise almost exclusively references the spiritual and

67 I’ll never forget examining this passage with Dr. Jennifer Mylander upon my first reading of Paradise Lost. It is to that moment that I owe my enduring passion for Milton’s epic. 98 heavenly— some mysterious realm defined by God, where a hand might “rap— at

Paradise— unheard” (“Should you but fail at— Sea— 1. 5), or where “Cherubim—and

Seraphim” compose “The unobtrusive Guest— ” (“’Twas a long Parting— but the time,”

11. 15-16). But her use of Eden? It is so richly bound to the earth, to desire, pleasure and possibility, that it can only be defined as postlapsarian; for both Dickinson and Milton,

Eden lies in the aftermath o f the Fall.

In no place is this parallel more exaggerated than in Dickinson’s “As if some little

Arctic flower”; in fact, the themes of this poem are such a perfect echo of the final lines o f Paradise Lost that the two may be read in succession without any gap in logic.

Dickinson simply appends Milton’s words with an extended metaphor and we too are allowed to “wandr” beyond the isolated perfection of Paradise—we are allowed to behold all o f the possibility that is Eden:

They looking back, all th’Eastern side beheld

Of Paradise, so late thir happie seat,

Wav’d over by that flaming Brand, the Gate

With dreadful Faces throng’d and fierie Armes:

Som natural tears they drop’d, but wip’d them soon;

The World was all before them, where to choose

Thir place o f rest, and Providence thir guide:

They hand in hand with wand ring steps and slow,

Through Eden took their solitarie way.

(XII.641-649) As if some little Arctic flower

Upon the polar hem—

Went wandering down the Latitudes

Until it puzzled came

To continents o f summer—

To firmaments o f sun—

To strange, bright crowds of flowers—

And birds, of foreign tongue!

I say, As if this little flower

To Eden, wandered in—

What then? Why nothing,

Only, your inference therefrom!

(“As if some little Arctic flower”)

Thus in typical postlapsarian fashion, Milton’s choice of a single word sparks an entire narrative within Dickinson. And while Milton’s juxtaposition is subtle, Dickinson seems to comprehend the full depth of its meaning: for this tentative movement toward Eden is less a movement from East to West, birth to death, than it is a movement from the white chill of innocence to the bright heat of experience; from isolation to strange multitudes and foreign tongues; from a world where a flower is just a flower to a world where crowds can exist in a single word. And the immediate consequence of this movement? It 100 is nothing68—and everything: nothing because no bolt of death has thundered down from f above; everything because the future lies within the power of individual inference. This vibrant world of possibilities is humanity’s to do with as it lists. Far from the untouchable perfection of Paradise, this land of Eden is the seat of human potential— and its entry was gained by the daring of Eve.

Thus there is something inevitable in the formation of the Byronic Madonna; for one cannot fully treasure this earthly journey without privileging the act which began it and one cannot truly embrace the idea of Heavenly perfection when the love of earthly process is so great. How, when change and revolution have yielded such edification of humanity, can Salvation be a mere return to our original state? How, if we accept this cyclical return to innocence, is our fate so very different from Satan’s own lake of fire?

Will we allow ourselves to be cleansed of the evidence of our existence? No. Let us wear our scars with pride— let us never cease to strive and hope.

This is the brand o f Salvation bom o f the Byronic Madonna, and I imagine that both Milton and Dickinson found comfort in her voice; for it is through her ideals that these poets have defied cyclicality and ensured an ever-evolving earthly presence. Indeed, with every reading of their work John Milton and Emily Dickinson are changing, altering, adapting; their immortality is no static state— their relevance and humanity expand each time their words enter a new mind. Just as the Byronic Madonna they

68 The popular early modem sexual pun can also be applied here: “nothing” or “no thing” as it alludes to the female genitalia (Kieran 71) or the void of the womb, is at once everything— it is the seat o f creation. engendered, these poets have brought about their own Salvation: theirs is a beautiful, unending process and this malleable earth will always be their Eden. 102 Bibliography

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