Essay | Is Femininity as Much of a Threat in "Paradise Lost" as It Is in "The Aeneid"?

Is Femininity as Much of a Threat in "Paradise Lost" as It Is in "The Aeneid"?

Summary: A comparison of the portrayal of women in Virgil's "The Aeneid" and John Milton's "Paradise Lost." Both Virgil and Milton inextricably link femininity with emotional instability and portray women as a threat to the divine higher order of things and whose emotions can bring about the downfall of not just the men around them, but ultimately even whole nations. However, Milton presents femininity as a greater threat than Virgil; Milton describes the ability of a woman to subvert his tripartite hierarchy that places God above man, and man above woman, whereas Virgil never allows the male characters in the Aeneid to forget their superiority over women.

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