John Milton: Paradise Lost Book IX (Lines 795–833) IMPORTANT POINTS AND MCQS

John Milton: Paradise Lost, Book IX (Lines 795–833)

UG TRB – COMPETITIVE EXAMINATION UNIT – II BRITISH LITERATURE – I (Poetry)

IMPORTANT POINTS AND MCQS:

1. The Poet and His Works

John Milton (1608–1674): Born in London, educated at St Paul's School and Christ's College, Cambridge. Poet, pamphleteer and Latin Secretary to the Council of State under the Commonwealth.

Early poems: "On the Morning of Christ's Nativity" (1629), L'Allegro and Il Penseroso, the masque Comus (performed 1634), and the pastoral elegy Lycidas (1638), on the drowning of Edward King.

Prose: Areopagitica (1644), a defence of unlicensed printing; divorce tracts; and political defences of the regicide.

Later works: Paradise Lost, and in 1671 Paradise Regained together with Samson Agonistes.

Blindness: Milton was totally blind by about 1652; Paradise Lost was composed in blindness and dictated to amanuenses.

2. The Epic: Publication and Design

Publication: First published in 1667 in ten books; the second edition of 1674 rearranged it into twelve books (Books VII and X of the first edition were each divided).

Verse: Blank verse — unrhymed iambic pentameter. Milton's prefatory note "The Verse" defends the absence of rhyme as a recovery of "ancient liberty" from "the troublesome and modern bondage of Rhyming".

Purpose: Announced in Book I — to "justify the ways of God to men".

Book IX in outline: The poet declares he must change his notes "to Tragic". Satan returns to Eden and enters the serpent. Eve proposes that she and Adam work apart; Adam reluctantly consents. The serpent flatters Eve, claims that the fruit gave him speech and reason, and persuades her to eat. Eve eats — "Earth felt the wound" — then, after the soliloquy studied here, goes to Adam. Adam, resolving to die with her, eats as well, "not deceav'd" but overcome by love for her. The book ends with lust, shame and mutual accusation.

Invocation: In Book IX Milton speaks of his "Celestial Patroness", who visits him nightly and dictates his "unpremeditated Verse".

3. The Immediate Context of Lines 795–833

Before the passage: Eve has eaten greedily, unaware that she was "eating Death"; she is "hight'nd as with Wine", elated and intoxicated. The passage is her first speech after the Fall — a soliloquy addressed partly to the Tree and partly to herself.

After the passage: "So saying, from the Tree her step she turn'd" — but first she does "low Reverence" to the Tree as to a divine power within it, and then goes to find Adam.

4. Detailed Analytical Summary (Movement by Movement)

(i) Hymn to the Tree (c. 795–807): Eve opens with an apostrophe: "O Sovran, vertuous, precious of all Trees". The fruit, she says, is blessed in its operation "To Sapience" (wisdom), yet till now it has hung "obscur'd, infam'd", as if created to no purpose. She vows that henceforth her "early care", "Not without Song, each Morning, and due praise", shall tend the Tree and ease its laden branches. She will feed on it until she grows "mature / In knowledge, as the Gods who all things know". She adds that "others envie what they cannot give" — implying that the prohibition springs from divine envy. Critical point: the morning hymn that Adam and Eve once offered to God (Book V) is now transferred to a tree. This is the first act of idolatry in human history as Milton imagines it.

(ii) Hymn to Experience (c. 807–810): Eve then turns to "Experience", personified as her "Best guide", which opens "Wisdoms way". Without following Experience, she says, she would have remained in ignorance. Critical point: Knowledge gained by disobedient experiment replaces knowledge received through obedience and revelation; the speech reverses the true order of Raphael's teaching.

(iii) Theology of the Fallen Mind (c. 810–816): "And I perhaps am secret; Heav'n is high". Eve imagines that God, remote in heaven, may not have seen her deed, distracted by other cares; she calls him "our great Forbidder, safe with all his Spies / About him". Critical point: God is reduced to a jealous, short-sighted earthly monarch dependent on informers. The language echoes Satan's own rhetoric of divine tyranny. It also shows the first effect of the Fall: the darkening of reason, for Eve forgets God's omniscience.

(iv) Deliberation about Adam (c. 816–825): "But to Adam in what sort / Shall I appeer?" Should she share her new happiness with him, or keep "the odds of Knowledge" in her power "Without Copartner", so as to supply what is lacking in the female sex, win more of his love, render herself "more equal", and perhaps "sometime / Superior: for inferior who is free?" Critical point: The newly fallen Eve thinks in terms of power, rivalry and advantage; love becomes something to be gained by superiority. The rhetorical question links the passage to Milton's lifelong concern with liberty and hierarchy, but here the desire for freedom is corrupted into a desire for mastery.

(v) Fear and Resolve (c. 826–833): "This may be well: but what if God have seen, / And Death ensue?" She imagines herself "extinct" and Adam "wedded to another Eve" — "A death to think". Therefore she resolves: "Adam shall share with me in bliss or woe". The passage closes with a declaration of love: so dearly does she love him that with him she could endure all deaths, and without him "live no life". Critical point: The tragic irony is sharp. What she calls love is mixed with jealousy and the will to draw Adam into her own fate. The decision is the hinge of the human tragedy, for it prepares Adam's fall.

5. Themes

Idolatry and inverted worship: The creature now worships a created thing in place of the Creator.

Corruption of reason: Eve's soliloquy is sophistry — plausible argument used to justify what desire has already chosen.

Pride and the desire for godhead: To be "as the Gods" is Satan's promise and Eve's ambition.

Hierarchy, equality and freedom: "For inferior who is free?" raises the poem's political and domestic questions — but in the voice of a fallen mind.

Love and jealousy: The thought of "another Eve" introduces the first jealousy into human love.

Death: Eve still imagines death as simple extinction — she does not understand what the Fall truly means.

6. Style and Devices

Apostrophe: To the Tree ("O Sovran …") and to Experience.

Personification: Experience as guide; Wisdom as a retiring figure whose way is opened.

Dramatic soliloquy: The epic voice gives way to a dramatic monologue revealing inner conflict — evidence of Milton's early plan to treat the Fall as a tragedy.

Rhetorical questions: "Shall I to him make known …?", "for inferior who is free?", "what if God have seen …?"

Dramatic irony: Eve believes she has risen to godlike wisdom while the reader knows she has fallen.

The Grand Style: Latinate diction ("Sapience", "operation"), inversions, enjambed blank-verse paragraphs and archaic spellings ("Sovran", "appeer", "Femal").

7. Critical Opinions

Joseph Addison wrote a series of Spectator papers (1712) on Paradise Lost, establishing its standing as a classical epic.

Samuel Johnson, in his "Life of Milton", praised its sublimity but remarked that none ever wished it longer than it is.

William Blake, in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, said Milton was "of the Devil's party without knowing it".

Matthew Arnold applied the phrase "grand style" to Milton's verse.

8. Table of Images, Figures and Allusions

Allusion / Image / Figure	Where	Function
"O Sovran, vertuous, precious of all Trees"	Opening (c. 795)	Apostrophe that turns the Tree into a deity — the first idolatry
"To Sapience"	c. 797	The Tree as giver of wisdom; Eve's false theology of the fruit
Morning song and "due praise"	c. 800–801	Parody of the unfallen morning hymn to God (Book V)
"as the Gods who all things know"	c. 803–804	Echo of the serpent's promise; ambition for godhead
"others envie what they cannot give"	c. 805	Accusation of divine envy borrowed from Satan
Experience, "Best guide"	c. 807–808	Personification exalting experiment above obedience
"Heav'n is high"	c. 811	Fallen reason forgetting God's omniscience
"our great Forbidder" with "his Spies"	c. 815–816	God reduced to a suspicious earthly tyrant
"for inferior who is free?"	c. 825	Desire for equality corrupted into desire for superiority
"Adam wedded to another Eve"	c. 828	Jealousy; motive for involving Adam
"in bliss or woe"	c. 831	Resolve that prepares Adam's fall; love mixed with self-interest

Note: Line references marked "c." are approximate positions within lines 795–833 of Book IX (1674 text).

50 Deeply Analysed Multiple Choice Questions (UG TRB Standard)

1. Paradise Lost was first published in:

A) 1658

B) 1667

C) 1671

D) 1674

2. The first edition of Paradise Lost was divided into:

A) 12 books

B) 9 books

C) 10 books

D) 24 books

3. In the second edition of 1674 the epic was rearranged into:

A) 12 books

B) 10 books

C) 11 books

D) 14 books

4. Paradise Lost is written in:

A) Heroic couplets

B) Spenserian stanzas

C) Ottava rima

D) Blank verse

5. Book IX of Paradise Lost deals chiefly with:

A) The War in Heaven

B) The Creation of the world

C) The temptation and Fall of Eve and Adam

D) The expulsion from Eden

6. Lines 795–833 of Book IX are:

A) Eve's soliloquy after eating the fruit

B) Eve's speech to Adam

C) Eve's dialogue with the serpent

D) Eve's prayer to God

7. Eve's opening apostrophe in the passage is addressed to:

A) Adam

B) The serpent

C) God

D) The Tree of Knowledge

8. In "O Sovran, vertuous, precious of all Trees", the word "Sovran" means:

A) Sacred

B) Sovereign

C) Severe

D) Saviour

9. Eve calls the Tree blest in its operation "To ___".

A) Sapience

B) Immortality

C) Innocence

D) Obedience

10. Eve vows to tend the Tree each morning with:

A) Sacrifice

B) Fasting

C) Song and due praise

D) Tears

11. Eve's worship of the Tree is best interpreted as:

A) Natural devotion

B) The first act of idolatry

C) A pastoral convention

D) An act of penance

12. Eve hopes to grow mature in knowledge like:

A) The Angels

B) The serpent

C) Adam

D) The Gods who all things know

13. The second abstraction Eve personifies and praises is:

A) Wisdom

B) Reason

C) Nature

D) Experience

14. Eve calls Experience her:

A) Foe

B) Best guide

C) Master

D) Ruin

15. "Heav'n is high, / High and remote" shows that Eve imagines:

A) God may not have seen her deed

B) Heaven is closed to her forever

C) The angels will punish her at once

D) Adam has gone to heaven

16. In the passage Eve refers to God as:

A) Great Creator

B) Almighty Father

C) Great Forbidder

D) Sovran Lord

17. Eve imagines God as safe, surrounded by His:

A) Cherubim

B) Seraphs

C) Spies

D) Thunderbolts

18. Eve's picture of God as a distant monarch relying on spies chiefly echoes:

A) Raphael's teaching

B) Michael's prophecy

C) Adam's counsel

D) Satan's rhetoric of divine tyranny

19. The first option Eve weighs regarding Adam is to:

A) Confess her sin to God

B) Keep the knowledge to herself to gain an advantage over him

C) Flee from Eden

D) Destroy the Tree

20. "For inferior who is free?" reveals Eve's desire for:

A) Equality and even superiority

B) Solitude

C) Repentance

D) Obedience

21. What finally decides Eve to share the fruit with Adam?

A) The fear that she may die and Adam be wedded to another Eve

B) Her love of God

C) The serpent's command

D) Pity for the animals

22. The thought of "another Eve" introduces into human love the emotion of:

A) Generosity

B) Humility

C) Jealousy

D) Repentance

23. Eve's resolve that "Adam shall share with me in bliss or woe" is best described as:

A) Purely selfless

B) Commanded by God

C) The fruit of sincere repentance

D) Love mixed with jealousy and self-interest

24. The closing declaration that with Adam she could endure all deaths is ironic because:

A) Adam hates her

B) Her professed love masks the will to draw him into her doom

C) She does not intend to see him again

D) Adam has already eaten

25. Immediately after the soliloquy, before leaving the Tree, Eve:

A) Curses it

B) Makes low reverence to it

C) Plants its seeds

D) Hides beneath it

26. Just before the passage, Eve's elation after eating is compared to the effect of:

A) Sleep

B) Fire

C) Poison

D) Wine

27. When Eve eats the fruit, "Earth felt the ___".

A) wound

B) shock

C) fall

D) grief

28. In Book IX Satan enters the body of a:

A) Toad

B) Cormorant

C) Serpent

D) Lion

29. In the separation scene of Book IX, Eve proposes that she and Adam should:

A) Leave Eden

B) Pray separately

C) Visit Raphael

D) Work separately in the garden

30. According to Milton, Adam eats the fruit because he is:

A) Not deceived, but overcome by his love for Eve

B) Deceived by the serpent's arguments

C) Commanded by Eve

D) Curious about godhead

31. At the opening of Book IX Milton says he must change his notes to:

A) Pastoral

B) Comic

C) Tragic

D) Lyric

32. Milton's stated aim in Book I of Paradise Lost is to:

A) Praise Cromwell

B) Justify the ways of God to men

C) Glorify King Arthur

D) Imitate Spenser

33. In Book IX Milton refers to his Muse as his:

A) Calliope

B) Clio

C) Celestial Patroness

D) Erato

34. Milton's dates are:

A) 1608–1667

B) 1608–1674

C) 1600–1674

D) 1618–1680

35. Milton's sequel to Paradise Lost, published in 1671, is:

A) Comus

B) Samson Agonistes

C) Lycidas

D) Paradise Regained

36. Milton's Areopagitica (1644) is a plea for:

A) Freedom of the press from licensing

B) Divorce

C) Education of women

D) Restoration of monarchy

37. Paradise Lost was composed:

A) After Milton had become blind, by dictation

B) During his Cambridge years

C) During his Italian journey

D) Before the Civil War

38. Milton's pastoral elegy on Edward King is:

A) Il Penseroso

B) Comus

C) Adonais

D) Lycidas

39. "Though others envie what they cannot give" suggests Eve now believes the prohibition was motivated by:

A) Love

B) Envy

C) Justice

D) Ignorance

40. Eve claims that Experience:

A) Closes the way of Wisdom

B) Obscures the truth

C) Opens the way to Wisdom

D) Replaces Adam

41. The chief dramatic irony of the passage is that:

A) Eve knows she will die

B) Adam overhears her

C) Satan repents

D) Eve believes she has risen to godlike knowledge while she has actually fallen

42. "For inferior who is free?" connects the passage to Milton's wider concern with:

A) Monarchy alone

B) Predestination

C) Liberty and hierarchy

D) Chivalry

43. Eve's reasoning in this soliloquy is best described as:

A) Sophistry and self-deceiving rationalisation

B) Strict logical proof

C) Prophetic vision

D) Penitent confession

44. The style of Paradise Lost, with its Latinate diction and elevated syntax, is often called:

A) The metaphysical style

B) The Grand Style

C) The plain style

D) The Euphuistic style

45. Who said Milton was "of the Devil's party without knowing it"?

A) Coleridge

B) William Blake

C) Shelley

D) Samuel Johnson

46. Who remarked of Paradise Lost that none ever wished it longer than it is?

A) Samuel Johnson

B) T.S. Eliot

C) F.R. Leavis

D) Joseph Addison

47. Which critic wrote a celebrated series of Spectator papers on Paradise Lost?

A) John Dryden

B) Alexander Pope

C) Samuel Johnson

D) Joseph Addison

48. Eve's fear of being "extinct" while Adam enjoys another Eve shows that she:

A) Fully understands spiritual death

B) Longs for death

C) Imagines death as annihilation yet cannot bear to be replaced

D) Believes herself immortal

49. The emotional movement of the passage is from:

A) Despair to hope

B) Humility to repentance

C) Exultation and idolatry, through calculation, to jealous resolve

D) Anger to forgiveness

50. Adam and Eve are expelled from Paradise in Book:

A) IX

B) X

C) XI

D) XII

Complete Answer Key with Detailed Explanations

1. B | 1667 — Paradise Lost first appeared in 1667; the revised second edition followed in 1674, the year of Milton's death.

2. C | 10 books — The first edition had ten books, a structure that recalls no single classical model.

3. A | 12 books — In 1674 two books were divided, giving twelve books on the Virgilian model.

4. D | Blank verse — Unrhymed iambic pentameter, defended in Milton's note "The Verse".

5. C | The temptation and Fall of Eve and Adam — The War in Heaven is in Books V–VI, Creation in VII, expulsion in XII.

6. A | Eve's soliloquy after eating the fruit — She speaks alone, to the Tree and to herself, before going to Adam.

7. D | The Tree of Knowledge — "O Sovran, vertuous, precious of all Trees" is addressed to the forbidden Tree.

8. B | Sovereign — "Sovran" is Milton's spelling of "sovereign"; Eve hails the Tree as a ruling power.

9. A | Sapience — Sapience means wisdom; Eve credits the Tree with power to make the eater wise.

10. C | Song and due praise — Her morning care, "Not without Song", parodies the unfallen morning hymn to God.

11. B | The first act of idolatry — Worship due to the Creator is transferred to a created thing.

12. D | The Gods who all things know — She echoes the serpent's promise that eating would make them as gods.

13. D | Experience — Eve turns from the Tree to praise Experience as the source of her new knowledge.

14. B | Best guide — Experience is "Best guide", having opened the way to Wisdom.

15. A | God may not have seen her deed — Her fallen reason forgets divine omniscience.

16. C | Great Forbidder — "Our great Forbidder" defines God solely by the prohibition.

17. C | Spies — She imagines God "safe with all his Spies / About him", like an insecure earthly king.

18. D | Satan's rhetoric of divine tyranny — Satan consistently presents God as a jealous tyrant; Eve has absorbed this view.

19. B | Keep the knowledge to herself to gain an advantage over him — She considers keeping "the odds of Knowledge" in her power.

20. A | Equality and even superiority — She wishes to be "more equal" and "sometime / Superior".

21. A | The fear that she may die and Adam be wedded to another Eve — This fear turns her to the resolve to involve him.

22. C | Jealousy — The imagined rival introduces jealousy, unknown in the unfallen state.

23. D | Love mixed with jealousy and self-interest — The resolve follows directly from her fear of being replaced.

24. B | Her professed love masks the will to draw him into her doom — Her words sound devoted, but they prepare Adam's fall.

25. B | Makes low reverence to it — She does "low Reverence" to the Tree as to a power dwelling within it.

26. D | Wine — She is "hight'nd as with Wine", intoxicated and elated.

27. A | wound — "Earth felt the wound", and Nature sighed, signalling cosmic consequence.

28. C | Serpent — Satan possesses the sleeping serpent; the toad and cormorant are his disguises in Book IV.

29. D | Work separately in the garden — Eve proposes dividing their labour; Adam reluctantly agrees.

30. A | Not deceived, but overcome by his love for Eve — Milton states Adam was "not deceav'd" but "fondly overcome with Femal charm".

31. C | Tragic — The poet announces that he must now change his notes to tragic.

32. B | Justify the ways of God to men — The theodicy is announced in the opening invocation of Book I.

33. C | Celestial Patroness — In Book IX the Muse is his "Celestial Patroness"; Urania is named in Book VII.

34. B | 1608–1674 — Milton was born in London in 1608 and died in 1674.

35. D | Paradise Regained — Published in 1671 with Samson Agonistes; it treats Christ's temptation in the wilderness.

36. A | Freedom of the press from licensing — Areopagitica argues against pre-publication licensing of books.

37. A | After Milton had become blind, by dictation — Blind by about 1652, Milton dictated the epic to helpers.

38. D | Lycidas — Lycidas (1638) mourns Edward King; Adonais is Shelley's elegy on Keats.

39. B | Envy — Eve suggests the gods begrudge a gift they cannot give, repeating Satan's charge.

40. C | Opens the way to Wisdom — She says Experience "op'nst Wisdoms way".

41. D | Eve believes she has risen to godlike knowledge while she has actually fallen — The reader sees the gap between her exultation and her real condition.

42. C | Liberty and hierarchy — Milton's prose and verse repeatedly examine true and false liberty; here it is voiced by a fallen mind.

43. A | Sophistry and self-deceiving rationalisation — Eve constructs reasons for what desire has already decided.

44. B | The Grand Style — Matthew Arnold applied the term "grand style" to Milton.

45. B | William Blake — The remark occurs in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell.

46. A | Samuel Johnson — In the "Life of Milton" (Lives of the Poets), Johnson made this remark alongside high praise.

47. D | Joseph Addison — Addison's Spectator papers of 1712 judged Paradise Lost by classical epic standards.

48. C | Imagines death as annihilation yet cannot bear to be replaced — She thinks of death as being "extinct", and the idea of a rival is worse than death.

49. C | Exultation and idolatry, through calculation, to jealous resolve — The soliloquy moves from hymn to scheming to the fatal decision.

50. D | XII — Michael leads Adam and Eve out of Paradise at the close of Book XII.