Gender and generation: Individual and family in Milton's poetry.

Abstract

At the heart of most of Milton's poetry is the family: many works revolve around familial interaction and, inevitably, familial tension. In each poetic family, a central figure strives for individual identity, and the possibility of attaining desired individuality is prescribed by familial limits, a position in the family network sometimes aiding and usually obstructing the goal of individuality. The first section, "Gender," focuses on how the political, social, economic, and religious climate of Milton's England was oppressive to women's individuality. Specifically, in Comus, the Lady's identity as daughter and sister is implicitly defined in economic terms, her beauty and sexuality more explicitly valued as Nature's "coin" that can be borrowed, spent, hoarded, or circulated by men who exercise control over women and regulate their sexual currency. In Paradise Lost and Samson Agonistes, Eve and Dalila are wives who strive for equality within their marriages by working, sometimes imitating and at times even improving on the work of their husbands, Work being defined, both in Milton's poetry and in his contemporary England, as public (as opposed to the private sphere of the home), Eve and Dalila are also encroaching on the masculine realm when they pursue work. While men are clearly empowered and privileged over women, the locus of power is more difficult to identify between different generations of men. The second section, "Generation," addresses how, in Ad Patrem and Samson Agonistes, the ambition of the adult-age son is simultaneously encouraged and stifled by the patriarchal family, which demands a degree of subjection from the younger generation. In Paradise Regained, however, the goal of the individual family member and the desires of the family are reconciled. In this late work about a more ideal family unit, oppositions established by Milton's England and upheld in his other poetry--between private and public, home and work, feminine and masculine--are dissolved.