"Domestick Adam" versus "Adventrous Eve": arguments about gardening in Milton’s Eden

This essay emphasizes the importance Eden's qualities as garden space in accounting for the dispute between Adam and Eve on the morning of the Fall (Paradise Lost, Book 9). Reading Adam and Eve's conversation in the light of husbandry manuals and the companionship ideals embraced by Milton, it argues that both stray from their culturally and textually sanctioned roles. Eve uses the garden’s growth to justify separation from Adam, signaling a mental departure from her husband prior to her physical one. As this moves her away from female-aligned spaces and activities, so Adam's increasingly unproductive leisure renders him "domestick."