SOURCE: Gregerson, Linda. “Fault Lines: Milton's Mirror of Desire.” In The Reformation of the Subject: Spenser, Milton, and the English Protestant Epic, pp. 148-97. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995.

In this excerpt, Gregerson discusses the development of subjectivity in Paradise Lost, focusing on the issue of sexual difference and subordination.

Satan and Recognition

I have discussed Eve's tale of origins as though we had somehow been given unmediated access to it. But though the story is our first encounter with Eve's speaking voice in Paradise Lost, it is addressed in the first place not to us but to Adam and if “oft remembered” is presumably often rehearsed as well, reiterated as a kind of vow or devotional offering to him “from whom I was form'd … / And without whom am to no end” (IV 441-42). Much like the morning orisons of Book V, the narration serves a ceremonial function: it...