1'I will love you always, because you will always be worthy of love.'
Lady C expresses her undying love, but expresses it as conditional
2'To the world, as to myself, you have been an ideal always. Oh! be that ideal still.'
Lady C's idealised and naïve expectations of SRC
3'Our state cannot be severed, we are one, / One flesh; to lose thee were to lose myself.'
Adam promises to fall with Eve
4'Oh! I am not at all romantic. I am not old enough. I leave romance to my seniors.'
Lord Goring claims his not identifying with romance, viewing it as something not yet for him
5"Sole Eve, associate sole, to me beyond / Compare above all living creatures dear! / Well hast thou motioned, well thy thoughts employed, / How we might best fulfil the work which here / God hath assigned us.”
Adam is somewhat condescending to Eve in his first lines, and carefully reminds her at the end of the duty they have been charged to follow
6"nothing lovelier can be found / In woman, than to study household good, / And good works in her husband to promote."
Adam expresses the idealisation of womanhood
7“leave not the faithful side / That gave thee being, still shades thee, and protects."
Adam expresses the responsibility and paternity he feels to Eve
8"The wife, where danger or dishonour lurks, / Safest and seemliest by her husband stays, / Who guards her, or with her the worst endures."
Adam expresses his fear of what Eve could bring about, and therefore suggests she stay with him
9"His fraud is then thy fear, which plain infers / Thy equal fear that my firm faith and love / Can by his fraud be shaken or seduced."
Eve reacts indignantly to Adam's fear of her seduction by Satan
10"And what is faith, love, virtue, unassayed / Alone, without exterior help sustained?"
Eve questions the validity of their virtue; here she arguably employs Blakeian thought
11"How are we happy, still in fear of harm?"
Eve questions how they can be happy if they must live in constant fear of some unknown foe; she arguably here employs Satanic thinking.
12"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."
Eve decides to bring Adam to fall as well
13"Adam the while, / Waiting desirous her return, had wove / Of choicest flowers a garland, to adorn / Her tresses, and her rural labours crown"
Adam, in waiting for Eve, performs an act of love in the form of gift-giving
14"May join us, equal joy, as equal love; / Lest, thou not tasting, different degree / Disjoin us…”
Eve tries to persuade Adam to eat the fruit, warning him of what could be if he did not
15“Down dropt, and all the faded roses shed:"
Adam drops his gift, an action symbolic of the Fall
16“And me with thee hath ruined; for with thee / Certain my resolution is to die"
Adam proclaims Eve's ruination, and how it have ruined him too
17"The parts of each from other, that seem most / To shame obnoxious, and unseemliest seen;"
Adam expresses shame, and asks for Eve to hide from him herself and for he to do the same
18"Too facile then … Hadst thou been firm and fixed in thy dissent, / Neither had I transgressed, nor thou with me."
Eve tells Adam that he gave in too easily to her when she told him what she wanted to do
19"Thus they in mutual accusation spent / The fruitless hours, but neither self-condemning; / And of their vain contest appeared no end. "
No one has the definite end sentence in book IX demonstrating that they are equal in position. There is mutual bickering, neither of them self-condemn choosing instead to blame each other for their faults. The ending of the poem of anger and argument, is a complete contrast to how we first met them working together to combat 'their growing work' they were living in harmony, they now hate each other because both blame the other for their fall.
20"Love was not in their looks, either to God, / Or to each other; but apparent guilt, / And shame, and perturbation, and despair, / Anger, and obstinacy, and hate, and guile."
The pair have become corrupt with unheavenly feelings, both for each other and for God, and these feelings are magnified by Milton's listing of them in succession
21"This Woman, whom thou madest to be my help, / And gavest me as thy perfect gift, so good, / So fit, so acceptable, so divine, / That from her hand I could suspect no ill, / And what she did, whatever in itself, / Her doing seemed to justify the deed;"
Adam talks of the idealised Eve that he thought he had, listing her supposed heavenly qualities to contrast the previous list of all of their current unheavenly ones
22"She gave me of the tree, and I did eat."
Milton has transposed this in Genesis 3:12, having Adam in monosyllabic tones implicate Eve for the Fall
23"Adorned / She was indeed, and lovely, to attract / Thy love, not thy subjection; and her gifts / Were such, as under government well seemed;"
Jesus tells Adam of how Eve was meant to be lovely but not autonomous; Adam is implicated for the Fall for not controlling his wife's femininely wiles better
24"Thy sorrow I will greatly multiply / By thy conception; children thou shalt bring / In sorrow forth; and to thy husband's will / Thine shall submit; he over thee shall rule."
Jesus' sentences Eve to childbirth and subjection
25"Because thou hast hearkened to the voice of thy wife, / And eaten of the tree, concerning which / I charged thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat thereof: / Cursed is the ground for thy sake; thou in sorrow / Shalt eat thereof, all the days of thy life;"
Jesus' prefaces Adam's sentencing with falling prey to Eve's femininely wiles, and then sentences him
26"Eve, / Not so repulsed, with tears that ceased not flowing / And tresses all disordered, at his feet / Fell humble; and, embracing them"
Eve gives indication of following Jesus' sentencing through tears and begging for forgiveness
27“Out of my sight, thou serpent!”
Adam insults Eve and puts her in league with Satan
28"Both have sinned; but thou / Against God only; I against God and thee; / And to the place of judgement will return, / And with my cries importune Heaven"
Eve talks of how her crimes are doubled, as she has hurt both God and her husband through her actions; Eve is subject to a doubled authority
29"Soon his heart relented / Towards her, his life so late, and sole delight, / Now at his feet submissive in distress"
Adam forgives Eve in her tears and importuning cries; he arguably takes a similar role to Jesus here. The 'sole' also references the first lines of Adam spoken in this chapter
30"LB: The man who took me in to dinner talked to me about his wife the whole time. / MM: How very trivial of him!"
LB and MM express a certain disinterest in marriage, or at least in the marriage of other people
31"LB: What did your man talk about? / MM: About myself. / LB: [Languidly.] And were you interested? / MM: [Shaking her head.] Not in the smallest degree."
LB and MM are languid and almost bored of their beauty
32"[With a little curtsey.] I hope to let you know very soon, Lord Caversham!"
Mabel hints towards a romantic relationship blooming between her and LG
33"Ah, nowadays people marry as often as they can, don't they? It is most fashionable."
Marriage as a social function
34"Oh! I have brought a much more charming person than Sir John. Sir John's temper since he has taken seriously to politics has become quite unbearable. Really, now that the House of Commons is trying to become useful, it does a great deal of harm."
Lady Markby comments on the boredom of her husband
35"Ah! the strength of women comes from the fact that psychology cannot explain us. Men can be analysed, women . . . merely adored."
Mrs C’s theory of men and women
36"It is too matrimonial. People are either hunting for husbands, or hiding from them."
Mrs C’s analysis of ‘the London season’
37"Without the dreadful disadvantage of having a Penelope waiting at home for him."
Mrs C’s allusion to a Greek myth
38"[With a sigh.] Our husbands never appreciate anything in us. We have to go to others for that!"
MM talks of her husband’s failings
39"My poor Olivia! We have married perfect husbands, and we are well punished for it."
Lady Basildon speaks of the curse of the ideal
40"You have a splendid position, but it is your splendid position that makes you so vulnerable."
Mrs C on SRC’s ‘position’
41"And Lady Chiltern has a very ennobling effect on life, though her dinner-parties are rather dull sometimes"
Comments on LC and her ‘effect’
42"We women worship when we love; and when we lose our worship, we lose everything. Oh! don't kill my love for you, don't kill that!"
LC’s imploration and analysis of women to SRC