“Here Only Weak”: Sexuality and the Structure of Trauma in Paradise Lost*

Whether the whole relation be not Allegorical, that is, whether the temptation of the Man by the Woman, be not the seduction of the rational and higher parts by the inferiour and feminine faculties: or whether the Tree in the midst of the Garden, were not that part in the Center of the body, in which afterward was the appointment of Circumcision in Males, we leave it unto the Thalmudist.'

—Sir Thomas Browne, Pseudodoxia Epidemica

In Book VIII of Paradise Lost, near the end of his lengthy colloquy with Raphael beginning in Book V, Adam describes his extreme susceptibility to Eve's beauty. In contrast to the “delight” that he feels in objects of the natural world, but which induce in his mind “no change, / Nor vehement desire,” Adam acknowledges the tumult aroused in him by his fair consort:

These lines, together with the remainder of Adam's speech in praise of Eve, are greeted by the angel “with contracted brow”