Paradise Lost - Book 9 - Critics

Lewis - Adam

Adam fell by uxoriousness (excessive dependence to, or dependence on, a wife)

Rudat

(Milton) expresses Adam and Eve's symbiotic oneness (through his descriptions of their separate falls)

Tillyard

(Milton) fails to convince us that Adam and Eve are happy, (they) are in the hopeless position of Old age pensioners enjoying perpetual youth

Carey

The Romantics famously admired Satan as the passionate rebel

Johnson

(Milton) thought women made only for obedience, and man only for rebellion

Rogers

Eve is the first feminist

Frye

Adam is the opposite of heroic as he abandons his responsibilities

Williams

Adam's decision to eat the apple is heroic

Lewis - Satan

(Satan is) a personified self-contradiction

Evans

Eve's failure is primarily intellectual, Adam's is moral