What Kind of Creature is Sin?
I know that I said that I will only post prompts to discuss further what we have already discussed in class, but since we only have Milton for next week, and I KNOW Eve will be a topic for the following week, I'm looking ahead to the description of Sin in Book II. That being said, I will also not expect you to respond to this blog before class on Tuesday if you tend to save your reading for the night before.
What is familiar about the description of Sin in Paradise Lost? What is significant about her own birth? You might recall that Athena sprang from the forehead of Zeus, and so what is Milton doing with this allusion, warped though it may be? What about Death? Does the depiction of Sin matter in our general agenda of how women are characterized in canonical literature?
Your discussion here is so awesome it is a little daunting for me to come up with a suitable prompt!!
What is familiar about the description of Sin in Paradise Lost? What is significant about her own birth? You might recall that Athena sprang from the forehead of Zeus, and so what is Milton doing with this allusion, warped though it may be? What about Death? Does the depiction of Sin matter in our general agenda of how women are characterized in canonical literature?
Your discussion here is so awesome it is a little daunting for me to come up with a suitable prompt!!
posted by Dr. Battles at 10:38 AM
8 Comments:
Sin's description is that she came from the head of Satan, having been sprung while Satan was still an angel. Similiar to the description of Athena coming from the forehead of Zeus. The significance of her birth is that she is part of Satan and therefore has evil in her from the start. After Satan impregnates Sin, who is his daughter, she gives birth to Death.
I don't think Milton's depiction of Sin really matters to our agenda on how women are characterized in canonical literature. If there is one person who sets an example of the treatment of women it would be Eve, but that's not the question here.
Sin is described as a half-woman, half-snake creature; more importantly, the bottom half is the snake, which alludes to the bestiality of a woman’s sexuality, much like Lear does with his centaur analogy. I find it interesting that Milton doesn’t make Sin a monster until after she gives birth because she implies everyone in heaven found her beautiful and that Death’s birth caused the transformation into beast.
Milton’s description of Sin alludes to several Greek myths. The first one being her birth: Sin is born out of Satan’s head, like Athena. As the Goddess of wisdom (and warfare), Athena’s birth through the forehead of Zeus makes some sense because wisdom resides in your mind. Milton could be implying that Sin also resides in the mind.
The important part of Sin’s birth is the absence of God’s help. Up until her birth, God created everything. For the first time, another creature (Satan) was the responsible party. But we still see creation as a man’s job: first by God and then Satan. Sin, the first female to bear a child, gives birth to a horrible monster (Death) and in turn changes into one herself. So, though women hold the power of creation (through childbearing), they do so at the cost of sexual bestiality.
Personally, I don’t get why God, omnipotent creature that he is, would place a known consort of Satan at the Gates of Hell to keep him from escaping. Sin is Satan’s daughter and lover so why wouldn’t God have realized she would help Satan? Sounds like a set-up to me.
And Death. Freud would have a field day with him. His first action out of the womb is to attack and rape his mother. Can you say Oedipus Complex? Death is the offspring of Satan and Sin, which automatically gives him a negative connotation. Add to that the fact that God threatens to use Death as a punishment should Adam and Eve disobey and we know he is evil. But why does Milton make Death evil when everyone has to die? Death is a stage of life and after death, the good will travel to Heaven, so shouldn’t Death be a neutral creature, found somewhere between Heaven and Hell, not a guardian of the Gates?
Britabeth,
Since you are the only one to respond by the time I am responding, I'll give you my thoughts on this.
I also don't understand why god would put Satan's daughter, Sin, to guard the gates of Hell. Of course she would help her father. Could it be that God was setting them both up to fail yet again? As far as death is concerned, you raise a good question. Why is death looked at as evil, since we all die at some point. Or was it that we would live eternally but when Adam and Eve disobeyed him, that is was then that Death was looked at as evil? Maybe I'm just grasping at straws here. If I was a mind reader, then I would know what Milton was thinking, so assuming is all I and everyone can do.
Its interesting because we do have sin because of Satan was it not for him it may never have exsisted because he did create her and made her come out of his head. Also at first she is beautiful, ironic because when thinking in theological terms you just don't think of sin as beautiful. Later she is changed and is made ugly which is what sin is. so her true appearance is revealed once she has committed sin herself, which again in theological terms happens when we sin. At first it is dequised and made to look pleasing to us but once we do it we later see the true ugliness about it. It's also interesting to me that death is born of sin. This is so because the consequinces of sin is death, and is something that nobody can escape. I think the description of sin matters somewhat because it seems to follow what other men have written about women. She is no different in the eyes of man. If anything she is described as worse than the other women we have studied so far.
Brittany- Yes God is alknowing and he knew from the beginning that all this was going to happen. Death is made evil because it is the punishment for sin. those who believe, not just do good, are the ones who get to heaven once they die because their punishment has already been paid. however those who do not repent from their ways musy be punished and death is thier punsihment along with an eternity in hell. But before the fall there was no reason for people to die because the human race had yet to sin.
Shelley, how can you say that Sin doesn’t factor in to how women are characterized in canonical literature? In class, we discussed how Sin supports the long-held view of a woman’s sexuality as monstrous, especially through Medea, Regan, and Goneril. All of these women play into how we see women in literature, so doesn’t it stand that Sin should be as well?
Sin is the very first female figure in Paradise Lost and she’s evil. That must mean something significant in the way Milton, and his contemporaries, viewed women. Even before God created Eve, Milton has a female creature acting as temptress (remember, everyone in Heaven found her beautiful). Women’s role as seductress was set even before Eve entered the picture. We were doomed from the start.
Cicely,
I think you may have missed my point. My point was not the temptation but that "sin" itself can be fun and pleasurable at the moment, and later after the sin has been committed the punsihment comes about and then the sin is seen as something bad or ugly, however, death is the wage of sin. Once Sin was born from Satan she herself later committed sin by sleeping with Satan and thus Death was born. You can't have sin without death.
I don't know why the image of the dogs maybe to have her constantly reminded of what she had done. Why Satan didn't have a more equal punishment is beyond me. Maybe because a man wrote it, he doesn't think he should have the same punishment as women and that women's should be far worse.
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