• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

As the Mother of the Infant and the Mistress of the Mate!

And when Babe and Man are lacking and she strides unclaimed to claim

Her right as femme (and baron), her equipment is the same.

She is wedded to convictions—in default of grosser ties;

Her contentions are her children, Heaven help him who denies!—

He will meet no suave discussion, but the instant, white-hot, wild,

Wakened female of the species warring as for spouse and child.

Unprovoked and awful charges—even so the she-bear fights,

Speech that drips, corrodes and poisons—even so the cobra bites,

Scientific vivisection of one nerve till it is raw

And the victim writhes in anguish—like the Jesuit with the squaw!

So it comes that Man, the coward, when he gathers to confer

With his fellow-braves in council, dare not leave a place for her

Where, at war with Life and Conscience, he uplifts his erring hands

To some God of Abstract Justice—which no woman understands.

And Man knows it! Knows, moreover, that the Woman that God gave him

Must command but may not govern—shall enthral but not enslave him.

And She knows, because She warns him, and Her instincts never fail,

That the Female of Her Species is more deadly than the Male.

From Paradise Lost

JOHN MILTON

Eve to herself after eating the apple:

I grow mature

In knowledge, as the gods who all things know;

Though others envy what they cannot give;

. . .

But to Adam in what sort

Shall I appear? shall I to him make known

As yet my change, and give him to partake

Full happiness with me, or rather not,

But keep the odds of knowledge in my power

Without copartner? so to add what wants

In female sex, the more to draw his love,

And render me more equal, and perhaps,

A thing not undesirable, sometime

Superior; for inferior who is free?

This may be well: but what if God have seen,

And death ensue? then I shall be no more,

And Adam wedded to another Eve,

Shall live with her enjoying, I extinct;

A death to think. Confirmed then I resolve,

Adam shall share with me in bliss or woe:

So dear I love him, that with him all deaths

I could endure, without him live no life.

. . .

Adam to himself after learning that Eve has eaten the apple:

O fairest of Creation, last and best

Of all God’s works, creature in whom excelled

Whatever can to sight or thought be formed,

Holy, divine, good, amiable or sweet!

How art thou lost, how on a sudden lost,

Defaced, deflow’red, and now to death devote?

Rather how hast thou yielded to transgress

The strict forbiddance, how to violate

The sacred fruit forbidd’n! Some cursèd fraud

Of Enemy hath beguiled thee, yet unknown,

And me with thee hath ruined, for with thee

Certain my resolution is to die;

How can I live without thee, how forgo

Thy sweet convérse and love so dearly joined,

To live again in these wild woods forlorn?

Should God create another Eve, and I

Another rib afford, yet loss of thee

Would never from my heart; no no, I feel

The link of nature draw me: flesh of flesh,

Bone of my bone thou art, and from thy state

Mine never shall be parted, bliss or woe.

. . .

And later on:

Covered, but not at rest or ease of mind,

They sat them down to weep, nor only tears

Rained at their eyes, but high winds worse within

Began to rise, high passions, anger, hate,

Mistrust, suspicion, discord, and shook sore

Their inward state of mind, calm region once

And full of peace, now tossed and turbulent:

For understanding ruled not, and the will

Heard not her lore, both in subjection now

To sensual appetite, who from beneath

Usurping over sov’reign reason claimed

Superior sway: from thus distempered breast,

Adam, estranged in look and altered style,

Speech intermitted thus to Eve renewed.

Would thou hadst hearkened to my words, and stayed

With me, as I besought thee, when that strange

Desire of wand’ring this unhappy morn,

I know not whence possessed thee; we had then

Remained still happy, not as now, despoiled

Of all our good, shamed, naked, miserable.

Let none henceforth seek needless