Eve's "Fancy" - Paradise Lost Books 4-5 // Emma Dalgety

 Book 4 paints a rather startling image of Satan's first attempt to corrupt the world. As soon as he hears about the forbidden Tree, he immediately sets out to exploiting its existence. Satan apparently sits "like a toad, close at the ear of Eve, / Assaying by his devilish art to reach / The organs of her fancy" (IV.800-802). Eve's side of the story, however, is not what I expected. She dreams of a wild adventure to the Tree of Knowledge, where Satan in his angelic form tries to convince her to eat the fruit. The dream is full of beauty; Eve describes vividly the smell of the fruit, the almost-taste, and the sensation of soaring above the earth. When compared to the previous image of Satan as a toad, it is clear that this "fancy" carries the same paradox of the hideously-beautiful evil Satan represents.

Satan targets Eve by appealing to her natural weakness first - her own beauty - and then leads her on a wild ride of deception before presenting a final "benefit": "The Earth outstretched immense, a prospect wide / And various: wond'ring at my flight and change / To this high exaltation" (V.87-89). This final, climactic moment of Eve's dream is not her own; it is most definitely Satan's. It remains to yet be seen if this dream indeed had the intended effect on Eve, but it has an ominous sense of deja vu. Sin was born through not only Satan contriving his plan to rebel, but also deciding to go through with it. Paradise hangs by a thread in a way Adam and Eve cannot yet comprehend, as the idea has already been planted. All it will take is for Eve to act upon the idea. 

One nagging question I do have is why Adam responds the way he does; troubled, he says, "This uncouth dream, of evil sprung I fear; / Yet evil whence?" (98-99). How does he know how to recognize evil? I wonder if perhaps he recognizes that something is deeply jarring and wrong about Eve's beautiful, yet horrible dream. No matter how it is observed, this fancy is deeper and more sinister (and possibly more effective) than it appears.

 I commented on Ian Blair and Raygan Boster's posts.

Comments

  1. Samantha TSeptember 13, 2021 at 11:47 PM

    I also was troubled by Adams apparent knowledge of evil. I know the poem is embellishing the story of the fall but this is a key shift in details from the biblical narrative where they have absolutely no knowledge of evil.

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  2. Hailey WalshSeptember 15, 2021 at 12:40 AM

    This is an interesting point. If evil had not yet been presented to Adam and Eve before Satan's entrance to Eden, how would they be able to tell what evil looked like? Perhaps God gave them the mental capacity to know before hand what evil looked like. A sixth sense, so to speak.

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