In Paradise Lost by John Milton, Eve gains pivotal importance as a character when she eats from the forbidden fruit and sets in motion the fall of mankind; likewise, in the novels Diana of the Crossways by George Meredith and Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy, Diana Warwick and Sue Bridehead are vital characters who trigger many of the events in the novels through their desire for knowledge and independence. The three women are connected not only by this, but also by the temptation to assuage their vanity, their struggle in choosing between the spirit and the flesh. Eve, Diana and Sue seek to find their own identities in their male dominated environments, where they are seen by men as the necessary companions for their external completion. According to Luiz Sá, Jacques Derrida’s concepts of Destinerrance "unites under one heading destiny, inheritance, and errancy" (102) which can be applied to the connection between these three characters; it can be said that Diana and Sue are heirs of Milton and Eve through Meredith and Hardy. In Diana of the Crossways and Jude the Obscure, Diana and Sue inherit from Eve not only the desire to learn and be independent, but also the supposed blame of being the cause of men’s falls and mistakes, they are the new Eves of their societies.
In Paradise Lost Eve is not allowed to take part in the conversations between the visiting angels and Adam. When Raphael is sent by God to warn them about the presence of an enemy in Eden he is told to “Converse with Adam” (5.230); later, when Michael is sent to show Adam the future, he “drenched [Eve’s] eyes” (11.367) so that she would sleep while they talked. In a similar way, Diana and Sue are kept from positions of power and decision making, even if they have some access to knowledge. Diana is an intelligent woman who knows a lot about politics, but she can only have the position of hostess in her own home, throwing dinner parties where politics, literature and other subjects are discussed; she cannot be a member of the Parliament herself and her published novels are signed with a pen name . Sue is also intelligent and had more opportunities to study and learn than Jude had; however, she needs the endorsement of a man to get a position of training teacher. Furthermore, Jude withholds from her the information that he is married; he purposefully avoids telling her something that is essential for her to make decisions about her own life. Diana and Sue are, in a way, in a better position than Eve because they have a chance to acquire more knowledge than she had before eating from the Tree of Knowledge; nonetheless, their situation is very similar, Diana and Sue, like Eve, do not truly retain the power to choose as they wish because society imposes their ideals and beliefs on them; Eve was put to sleep, Diana and Sue need to submit to their husbands, the church and society rules.
Marriage is an important discussion in Diana and Jude, the lives of Diana and Sue revolve around the need to be married in order to be respected by society. Redworth and Jude see the two women as the companions they need for their completion, in the way that Adam asks God for a companion (PL book 8) and later decides to eat form the Tree of knowledge so that he and Eve could stay together (PL book 9). Diana marries Mr. Warwick following an implusive need to distance herself from her best friend's husband who had made advances towards her. She understands that the only way to avoid living with her friend is to have her own home, which she can achieve only by marriage. Sue marries Phillotson in an impulsive move to distance herself from Jude as soon as she learns that he is married. These impulsive decisions prove to have been wrong for both women because they are too different from their husbands and cannot have a real connection to them. Eve does not choose to be Adam's wife, but she also does not feel like she has an equal relationship with him and when Satan, disguised as a serpent, plays on her vanity she chooses to appease the flesh, in detriment of the spirit, which would be obdience to God.
Following in the footsteps of their predecesor, Diana and Sue also give in to their vanity in ways that gain society's disaproval and their banishement from its good grace. Diana not only has an affair and abandons her husband to live on her own, she also sells the secrets of the man she falls in love with to assuage her vanity of being better informed than a famous newspaper editor, she has a vision of "Mr. Tonans petrified by the great news, drinking it, and confessing her ahead of him in the race for secrets" (4478). Sue also shows her vanity in many instances, for example when, after she is already married, she writes Jude that if he wants he can love her (3133). Sue's abbandonment of her husband and her unmarried life with Jude also places her as an outcast from society. Diana and Sue regret their decisions and choose to live according to what is expected of them by marrying respectably and being good wives; however, they do not find the contentment and peace that Eve finds with Adam when they leave Eden for Earth. The difference in their feelings adds meaning to the original ideas in Paradise Lost and are in agreement with Milton's ideas on marriage expressed in his The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce, in which he advocates that a marriage where there is "indisposition, unfitnes, or contrariety of mind, arising from a cause in nature unchangeable" should not be enforced on any couple.
Eve is blamed for eating from the forbbiden fruit and leading to the loss of Eden by both her and Adam, who also eats from the fruit to accompay her. It is ironic that Sue, while asking Phillotson to let her go live with Jude, also accuses Eve of being the cause of her problems and wishes she had never fallen, she tells him that "no poor woman has ever wished more than I that Eve had not fallen" (4302). The irony is accentuated by the fact that as soon as Phillotson lets her go she is also blamed for the misfortunes that he encounters becasue of this. Like Eve and Sue, Diana is also blamed by society for Mr. Warwick's decline in health, they argue that he is sick because of her abandonment and that if she went back to him, he would certainly get better.
It is clear that Eve, Diana and Sue are connected to one another by their personalities and the events in their lives. Analyzing their conection through the concept of Destinerrance it can be said that Milton's Eve errs and meets Diana and Sue, even though they were not the intended destiny the author had for her. Diana and Sue are heirs of Eve through Meredith and Hardy, who are in their turn heirs of Milton through the tradition that they have elected to be a part of. Diana and Sue are the new Eves of their society because they choose to search for knowledge and freedom, trying to find their identities independetly of a man and marriage. They defy society as Eve defied God's orders and the angels' and Adam's counsels for caution. Eve finds peace in the end with Adam because she is now on equal footing to him and she can reach her inner paradise. Diana and Sue do not have such a happy end, they have to choose between the life they really wish for and that would banish them from society, and a life of contentement at most which is the price they pay to be respect in their enviroments. The choice they make is to appease society and become good, obdient wives, which shows that they are heirs of Eve not only becasue of who they are, but also because society in general still expects women to present a certain behaviour in order to avoid being another Eve, destined to fall and take men with them.
Works Cited
Hardy, Thomas. Jude the Obscure. Ed. Amy M. King. New York: Barnes & Noble Classics, 2003. Ebook.
Meredith, George. Diana of the Crossways. United States of America, 2004. Project Gutenberg. Ebook.
Milton, John. Paradise Lost. Ed. Philip Pullman. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2005. Ebook.
Milton, John. "The Doctrine & Discipline of Divorce." The John Milton Reading Room. Ed. Thomas H. Luxon. Dartmouth College, 2014. Web.
Sá, Luiz F. F. "Shalimar, the Ex-Centric: Rushdie Reads Milton Through Derrida." Itinerários, 37 (2013): 97-109.
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