George Moore

Eve’s Food Preparation:
Art and Experience in Eden

The arts of the first couple before the Fall have been
extensively written on. It seems that most critics view prelapsarian art
as congruous and natural to Eden, as evidence of prelapsarian splendor.
Ann Torday Gulden states that art in Eden is socially neutral: “Surely
art is innocuous [in Eden], an integral part of paradisal bliss” (18).
Indeed, Eve’s artistic activity makes Eden seem all the more delightful
to the reader. However, with a careful examination of how Eve’s art
is perceived by the poem’s male characters, it becomes evident that
Eve’s aesthetics do not quite fit. It is tempting for the reader, who
lives in a “fallen” world, so unequivocally in favor of artistic culture,
to praise Eden for examples of cultural activity within it. However,
just about every example of Eve’s artistic activity is characterized by an
aloofness from divine discourse. The male authoritative characters of
Paradise Lost primarily ignore Eve’s examples of talented artistry, giving
neither praise nor disapproval. But while the lack of recognition speaks
volumes about her low status, it allows her an expansive autonomy from
the divinely recognized modes of Edenic worship and devotion which
serve to revere God. If the authoritative male characters regard her
creativity as inconsequential, then there is almost no limit to the degree
of autonomous creativity she can have within that localized sphere of
artistry; no one is watching her or correcting her. The way in which
Eve prepares food for the dinner guest, the angel Raphael, is a prime
illustration of both Eve’s removal from the divine discourse and her
expansion of a cultural, creative realm in which she can act, rather than
follow.

The first thing to recognize about the scene of Raphael’s arrival
to instruct Adam and Eve is that Eve is excluded from proximity to the
divine by Adam. To some degree, Adam actually forces her removal.
The first one to see Raphael coming is Adam, of course. He says:

Adam’s language is unquestioning. It is clear that he knows a guest
from Heaven is on his way. The speed with which he recognizes that
the thing on the horizon is from Heaven shows that he has an intuitive
knowledge of the workings of Heaven. Eve’s role in Adam’s language
here is to take commands, not to corroborate Adam’s judgment. The
first command, “Haste hither,” prompts her to see and recognize divine
immanence. The second command tells her to prepare food for the
guest. An easy observation would be to say that Eve is confined to the
domestic sphere, while Adam is allowed to receive Raphael from Heaven
and talk to him intellectually.

Eve’s confinement to the domestic sphere at Raphael’s arrival,
however, is not simply an act of subservience, as Milton portrays it
superficially. Her movement to Eden’s “kitchen,” at Raphael’s arrival,
represents her profound separation from the words and ways of
Heaven. Following Adam’s imperative to serve up some supper, the
narrator describes Eve’s actions and intentions:

Eve’s thoughts and actions here are aesthetically, rather than piously,
motivated. Though she wants to be “hospitable” to Raphael, the focus
of her energy is on how certain tastes go together to create “kindly”
sensations. The line, “Taste after taste upheld with kindliest change,”
exemplifies one of the first human aesthetic inclinations in this epic
about human origins. Eve’s attitude toward the act of eating goes
beyond the pious appreciation of God’s work; instead, it moves into
the realm of creating an aesthetic effect using the materials of nature
in specific patterns or combinations. Eve’s culinary activity is the first
instance of endowing food with a capability of offering a sensual
experience beyond the base satiation of the natural appetite. It is clear
that Eve creates a culture of aesthetics in this scene, and the creation
of this culture is not prompted by God or by piety. What is important
to be aware of is that Eve’s food-art here occurs in an enclosed, local
realm. It is therefore a relatively closed conversation between Eve and
the food. Eve’s art is neither approved, nor condemned.

While Eve engages in the artful preparation of food, we
imagine Adam in keen preparation for meeting Heaven’s emissary.
After the description of Eve’s culinary efforts, we read, “Meanwhile,
our primitive great sire, to meet / His godlike guest, walks forth”
(5.350). If I may misread for a moment, it is interesting “primitive”
is Adam’s key adjective following the description of Eve’s culinary
sophistication. Because Milton is intent to show an Adam who is in
touch with God intuitively, Adam has no need or understanding of
Eve’s aesthetic process. The ensuing conversation between Adam and
Raphael is primarily concerned with origins, with how the world has
been set in motion by God. This conversation typifies Adam’s interest
in the primordial, in ultimate origins, placing his cultural interest with
the world’s author. Eve, who is one who always seems absent from
Raphael’s teaching, is immersed in an artistic culture which emphasizes
immediacy and human creativity.

As the three sit down to their meal, we receive a pious, rather
than aesthetic, account of the food by Adam, a piety that reflects his
inability to recognize Eve’s artistic engagement. Adam says to Raphael,
“Heavenly Stranger, please to taste / These bounties, which our
Nourisher, from whom / All perfect good, unmeasured-out, descends”
(5.398). Adam does not credit Eve for her culinary arts but, rather, the
ultimate or primitive source of the food, God.

Similarly, Raphael will give credit for the meal to the ultimate
origin of things, God-given fertility, rather than to Eve’s specific artistic
process. Milton critic Barbara Lewalski is well known for her efforts
to highlight a sense of dignity in Milton’s Eve. Lewalski shows how
Eve transcends her biological status as a mother by being creative in
ways that go beyond motherhood. Eve’s creativity, Lewalski says, is
not “confined to her maternal role” (8). The validity of Lewalski’s
statement can fluctuate depending on who we may imagine is doing
the confining. Raphael does indeed confine Eve to her reproductive
capability. After dinner, he says, regarding Eve, “Hail! Mother of
mankind, whose fruitful womb / Shall fill the world more numerous
with thy sons / Than with these various fruits the trees of God / Have
heaped this table!” (5.388). Like Adam, Raphael does not praise Eve’s
artistic sensibility in the arrangement of taste. Instead, he praises God’s
creation of the fruit trees. The exultation of Eve’s fertility is offered
because it is praise for God, not Eve. Eve has no responsibility for her
ability to procreate; it is her natural function as determined by God, and
therefore the compliment does not actually go to her.

If Adam and Raphael miss the profundity of Eve’s work here, it
is because her artistic work is incongruous with the hierarchical scheme
of creation. The arrangement of various tastes is Eve’s autonomous
creation and work, one that the “primitive” Adam and Raphael cannot
see. Lewalski’s statement that Eve is not confined to the maternal
role as evidenced by the phenomenon of feminine autonomy is true.
Lewalski’s analysis, however, does not acknowledge a dissonance caused
by Eve’s creativity in Eden, but treats the subject as if her creative spirit
was mandated by heaven. In the case of her food preparation, her talent
has not been accepted in any way by the authorities above her.

Opposing Lewalski, Marcia Landy absolutely denies Eve’s
creative capabilities. In one of the most well known works of feminist
Milton criticism, Landy argues that Eve cannot demonstrate any
action of her own will because familial roles as daughter, mother and
spouse confine her to being no more than a type. Landy says, “The
principle of creativity, the highest principle of the cosmos, is denied
to woman...Woman’s creativity is restricted to her progeny” (11). Such
an understanding of Eve as a creature derived from and absolutely
colonized by male authority prompted this response from Lewalski: “A
feminist analysis of Paradise Lost, with its nearly exclusive emphasis upon
the image and role of women in the poem, may do real violence to a
woman reader’s imaginative experience of and response to everything
else the poem contains” (4). If Landy’s analysis characterizes what a
feminist response might be, one can understand Lewalski’s fear. The
Landy analysis makes the poem an example of conventional misogyny
in which Eve’s place is absolutely set as a subordinate non-character.

Yet, in the dinner scene, Eve’s artistic superiority clearly
soars beyond Adam’s and Raphael’s understanding, despite the
subordinating language of the two male characters. The evidence that
Eve demonstrates control that expands beyond Eden’s male authorities
invigorates the feminist analysis by showing her capacity to be a real
actor in Milton’s epic.

Works Cited

Gulden, Ann Torday. “Is Art ‘nice’? Art and Artifice at the Outset of Temptation in Paradise Lost.” Milton Quarterly 34.1 (2000): 17-24.

Landy, Marcia. “Kinship and the Role of Women in Paradise Lost.” Milton
Studies 4 (1972): 3-18.

Lewalski, Barbara K. “Milton on Women—Yet Once More.” Milton
Studies 6 (1975): 3-20.

Milton, John. The Complete Poetry of John Milton. Ed. John T. Shawcross.
New York: Doubleday, 1971.