ay in Beneath Paradise Lost's tale of sin and reconciliation lies an erotic undertone that Milton uses to depict the consequences of selfish desire among both the mortal and divine. Through the sexualities of his characters, Milton contrasts this selfish desire with selfless obedience to God and untainted virtue. Paradise, ripe with untainted virtue, embraces human sexuality as a righteous act of love, ordered by God, between man and wife. Sexuality only becomes sinful when it strays from serving God to serving the flesh. Milton illustrates God's condemnation of lust and his praise of love by pitting the pre and post-lapsarian sexualities of Adam and Eve against the perversions of Satan and Sin.
Satan desecrates the sacred rite of sex by using it as means to satisfy his own selfish desire. Sin, the daughter of Satan, is born just as Satan's mind floods with "bold conspiracy against Heaven's King" (2.750). Her existence and birth, by splitting from his head, represents the manifestation of Satan's selfishness, for he seeks to reign superior to all beings, including God. He wants all of the power for himself and makes room for no other. Satan expresses narcissism when his lust for Sin, due to her embodiment of his "perfect image" ,(2.764) and drives him to conceive "a growing burden" in her womb. Here, Satan's lust for flesh, his own flesh, leads him to incest. At conception, Sin notes that "war arose", war that casts them into a deep fall from Heaven. The war she is referring to is the damaging act of incest driven by Satan's selfish desires. Satan's incest produces Death, the fruit of selfish desire and the manifestation of lust. Death embodies lust by "[tearing] through [Sin's] entrails with fear and pain…and [overtaking] his mother…in embraces forcible and foul." (2.783-793) Lust tainted sexuality and lead to the immoral act of rape. Rape sacrifices the victim's honor and pleasure in order to serve the rapist's voracious appetite for flesh. Such a selfish act has no root in love-making that serves God. After the rape, Sin continues to be tortured by the conceived creatures that hourly "gnaw at [her] bowels" and "burst forth afresh with conscious terrors" (2.799-8001). Rape, sex tainted with selfishness and lust, bears great evil and torment. Milton warns, through the narrative of Satan and his descendants, against the evils of lust and self-serving sex.
In stark contrast with Satan, Adam and Eve, before their fall, engage in selfless sex as an act of love and service rather than lust. Upon Eve's birth, Adam is taken by her great beauty, but his attraction surpasses mere physical attraction, for he tells Raphael that their union is a "union of the mind or [them] both [in] one soul". Adam recognizes Eve's "words and actions mixed with love and sweet compliance" as a source of his love for her. He sees Eve as a human being, with a mind, rather than an object of sexual pleasure. In fact, Adam and Eve have sex not to serve their own sexual pleasure, but to serve God. Milton describes their sex as a holy rite of marriage. He notes that God declares wedded sex as "pure" (4.747) and refers to it as the "mysterious law" of "connubial love" with the "sole propriety" of "human offspring" (4.751). Pure, untainted sex is marital sex with the purpose of reproduction that serves God. This sex is free from carnal desire and pleasure and remains "mysterious", as the miracle of certain religious sacraments are. Prior to sex, Eve decorates her "nuptial bed" while the "[Hymenæan] sing heav'nlyly Quires", expressing the sanctity of their marital sex. They also pray to before joining together in their "blissful bower", showing nothing but their pure adoration and willingness to please God. Milton further expresses the innocence and purity of their sex, by describing their love as a being who "lights his constant lamp and waves his purple wings". Light is a symbol of heaven, as it guides humans through a, sometimes, dark path towards sanctity and purity. Purple signifies priesthood, as Christian priests tend to wear purple robes on sacred days like Easter. Milton is personifying the love between Adam and Eve as an angel, a beacon of heaven, that further sanctifies their sex. After they engage in "mutual love…to fill the Earth" (4.728-4.733), they fall into "[God's] gift of sleep" (4.735). God is rewarding them with peaceful slumber after they had selflessly served him. Milton praises the love Adam and Eve share, as it leads them to act in accordance with God's will.
After their fall, the sex between Adam and Eve bears more similarity to that of Satan and Sin than to their own sex before the fall. Their sex goes from righteous to sinful, as it becomes perverted with selfish desire. Upon first bite of the forbidden fruit, the pair's new attitude is apparent before actually having sex. They become gluttonous and devour the fruit as if they are "intoxicated" (9.1008) with wine. Their toxin was lust, as it took over their mind and influenced their reason as alcohol would. Wine is also very rich and delectable, as the fruit that they lusted after was. Their appetite for the fruit parallels their appetite for each other sexually. "Carnal desire" intoxicates Adam and Eve and they turn to each other with "lascivious eyes". This time, physical attraction is their only source of attraction to each other, as Adam speaks only of how Eve's beauty "enflames" him. The word "enflames" suggests that his feeling towards Eve has hellish roots, as "flame" and "fire" is commonly associated with Hell. He becomes filled with flames that represent his burning desire for Eve, desire which is evil in nature. These same evil flames probably filled Satan before he ravaged Sin. Such desire is evil because it objectifies the person of that desire. Adam and Eve did not see each other as fellow humans with more to offer than eye candy, for they saw each other as objects to satisfy the lust in them. This attitude is dangerously selfish as it robs others of value and dignity in order to please the lustful. Adam, in initiating sex, tells Eve that they will "play". "Playing" is an act that is done solely for pleasure and instant gratification that is usually mindless in nature, as playing is usually done by animals and small children rather than rational adults. By euphemizing sex with "play", Adam degrades the holy gift of sex by reducing it from a sacred act of love and procreation between nuptials to a shallow pleasure-seeking game. When sex is done only for pleasure and not reproduction, it becomes selfish as it fails to serve God. Adam and Eve have completely forgotten God in their fit of pleasure and they fail to pray to him as they did before the fall. The nuptial bed adorned with roses where they once laid becomes a bed of common flowers signifying their fall from divinity. Their sex and love have lost divinity and is no longer personified with the purple wings of an Angel, but rather with "breeding wings" (9.1010) Breeding is the act of sex between animals, sex devoid of love. Milton compares Adam and Eve to animals who fornicate mindlessly without concern for God or each other. They share no more "mutual love", in fact, they only share "mutual guilt" (9.1043) and unrestfully sleep after fornicating. The guilt they feel signifies that they know they did something wrong and acted sinfully and God punishes them for that by revoking the peaceful sleep that they previously enjoyed. Milton expresses the evils of Adam and Eve's lustful corruption of God's gift of sex.
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