XPost: rec.arts.sf.written   
   From: kilroy@elvis.rowan.edu   
      
   Discussing _Paradise Lost_, Dorothy J Heydt  wrote:   
   > Milton wants his females to be brainless, will-less nitwits who regard   
   > their husbands as gods and never do *anything* except what their   
   > husbands tell them to.   
      
   I suggested that this was at odds with his other writings, and she   
   remarked:   
      
   > But ... Eve *is* a mindless nitwit.   
      
   The source material Milton was working from does seem to have it that   
   Eve is the one who screwed up the entire human race by doing the one   
   thing she wasn't supposed to do.  Was he supposed to do a complete   
   rewrite?  One could argue that by having Eve foolishly ignore the   
   advice Raphael is giving, Milton actually softens he sin of her   
   disobedience which causes the Fall.   
      
   For my own part, as a teacher and a parent, I see the "didn't pay   
   attention while getting directions and got stuck" problem on a regular   
   basis, so I don't find it particularly out of line to see Eve do the   
   same thing.  Of course she would have done differently if she'd known   
   how important it was going to be.  But isn't that true of every time   
   something goes wrong that could have been prevented?   
      
   It seems to me that you're arguing either (a) there should never be   
   anyone in a story who makes a disastrously foolish decision, or (b) any   
   character who makes a disastrously foolish decision should be male.   
   If you mean (a), then we lose a lot of interesting stories; if you   
   mean (b), that seems to me a rather sexist position to take.   
      
    *   
      
   You've got Milton's marriage roughly correct.  He was 33, Mary was 16,   
   and while her family was large and sociable his was small and studious.   
   She went home to her family, which gave him a different perspective on   
   marriage and divorce (he seemed to realize they'd been a bad match all   
   around, the marriage no better for her than for him).  They reconciled   
   after 3 years apart, and she returned to him, and they had three   
   daughters.   
      
   Of course, lots of people change their views of the world once they   
   have actually been out in it.  Many people find that their opinions   
   about love, marriage, childrearing, and other topics were far too   
   simple before they had experienced the thing in question.   
      
      
   Darren Provine ! kilroy@elvis.rowan.edu ! http://www.rowan.edu/~kilroy   
   "Democrats do have an historic race going. Hillary Clinton vs. Barack   
    Obama.  Normally, when you see a black man or a woman president an   
    asteroid is about to hit the Statue of Liberty." -- Jon Stewart   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)