Elizabeth Cary Essay

In both Elizabeth Cary’s The Tragedy of Mariam and John Milton’s Paradise Lost the issue of gender politics is shown. Both poems show how women are not equal and that men are placed in a more superior role than them. Each author writes about women with a different idea in mind, but in both poems women are regarded less superior than men, in The Tragedy of Mariam Elizabeth Cary is trying to show the difference between the two genders, women should be submissive, that women are treated like property and men get the final say in everything, while in Paradise Lost John Milton is just showing that women are less superior to men, must obey without question, would succumb to temptation without man and men get to decide everything.
In The Tragedy of Mariam, we read right away the gender politics of women where in the introduction Mariam is thought of as a possession. Herod leaves for Rome and tells his uncle “to kill Mariam in the event of his death so no other man could possess her” (pg. 1). We see right away what this …show more content…
Eve “who for my willful crime art banished hence,” gives in to her inferiority and takes the blame for the fall of mankind even though both her and Adam ate from the forbidden tree (12.619). And since falling Eve is now adapting to what was suggested of Adam, to be submissive and obedient. After taking the blame, Adam did not comfort her or try to help her feel as it was not solely her fault, “So spake our mother Eve, and Adam hears/Well please, but answered not” his silence is please at her submissiveness (12.624-625). Towards the end of book end Adam and Eve “hand in hand with wand’ring steps and slow/Though Eden took their solitary way,” leave Eden seeming equal by leaving hand in hand, but because Eve submits to Adam and takes the blame for the fall of mankind they are not. Eve leaves Eden still inferior to Adam, while he got everything he