Magazine: Studies in English Literature, WINTER 1992
PUNISHMENT, SURVEILLANCE, AND DISCIPLINE IN PARADISE LOST
---------------------------------------------------------
In Paradise Lost John Milton chronicles crimes against God, first by
Satan and then by man. Ironically the chronicler himself had been
involved in the defense of regicide, the crime considered most heinous
next to those against God. Such tales of great crimes and punishments,
told by one who had narrowly escaped execution, might be profitably
compared with the ideas of French historian Michel Foucault whose work
has changed the way of looking at social practices, including those of
the control of crime and disease, and of the treatment of madness. Barry
Smart, in Foucault, Marxism and Critique, points out that Foucault is
"preeminently concerned with the historical inscription of forms of
power on the body, or with the emergence of the 'social' and the modern
forms of regulation and administration of populations with which it is
concomitant."[1] Foucault considers these practices to be an integral
part of the power structure of society where they may be read and
interpreted as discourses. As discursive practices, they are also
present to be read and interpreted in literature. In their roles as
observers of the human condition both Michel Foucault in the twentieth
century and John Milton in the seventeenth focus their attention on
knowledge, power, sexuality, surveillance, discipline, and punishment or,
in other words, on areas of authority and control in society. With the
exception of sexuality, these are the topics of Foucault's book,
Surveiller et Punir, which in English is entitled Discipline and Punish;
Milton uses them as major motifs in Paradise Lost. This is not to say
that other works of these writers do not involve these ideas, but for
the purpose of this paper my attention will be limited primarily to
these two.[2]
As political writers, both Foucault and Milton choose points of change
or times of paradigm shift as their loci for attempting to understand
and interpret human interactions. In Milton's case, interpretation
extends to intercourse among heavenly beings and then between God and
man. Milton's locus of change is the Fall of Man; Foucault, as a
follower of Nietzsche for whom God is dead, does not analyze history in
terms of religion. Instead, Charles C. Lemert and Garth Gillan note that
Foucault
challenges, in particular, the concepts causality and continuity in
traditional history. Behind both is the idealistic axiom of a meaningful
history of events originating in a transcendental subject. . . . [He]
performs a materialist critique of metaphysical history, of histories
which assume a causal force . . . or, alternatively assume a meaningful
continuity founded in a transcendental Logos.[3]
Whereas Foucault intends to "provoke an interface between our reality
and the knowledge of our past history,"[4] Milton examines religious
history and "justif[ies] the ways of God" for his audience.[5] Foucault
writes from a twentieth-century perspective about changes and
developments in the penal system in the past which have led to an
internalizing of control more suited to today's capitalist politics and
economics. I propose that, without the advantage of a three century
perspective, Milton has inscribed within the text of Paradise Lost the
very change described by Foucault, a change which was happening while
Milton lived and wrote. Under the headings of punishment, surveillance,
and discipline, therefore, I will compare Foucault's ideas with those of
Milton in Paradise Lost.
In Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics, Hubert L.
Dreyfus and Paul Rabinow state that Foucault
uses Nietzsche's genealogy as a starting point for developing a method
that would allow him to thematize the relationship between truth, theory,
and values and the social institutions and practices in which they
emerge. This leads him to pay increased attention to power and the body
in their relation to the human sciences.[6]
They go on to point out that "[i]n Discipline and Punish, Foucault
proposes that we approach punishment and prisons as a complex social
function, not merely a set of repressive mechanisms. . . . Punishment is
political as well as legal."[7] Barry Cooper, in Michel Foucault: An
Introduction to the Study of His Thought, summarizes Foucault's
discussion of the development of the penal system from ancient to modern
times. Punishment in classical Greece and Rome could be exile,
banishment, exclusion from certain areas, confiscation of property, or
destruction of homes. The antique Germanic tradition was one of
atonement, compensation, and fines. In the Middle Ages the body itself
became the site of the inscription of power and bore the marks of
extreme torture. This inscription of power on the body was frequently
followed by execution in a manner which prolonged as long as possible
the dying process. Modern punishment places the offender in jail where,
although originally intended only as a place to hold someone for ransom
or for public protection, the offender is kept under surveillance.
Prisons, therefore, become penitentiaries where a reformation of
conscience and a rehabilitation of social behavior may be effected.[8]
In Paradise Lost two separate groups of offenders are judged and
punished, Satan and his cohorts, and Adam and Eve; the serpent also
undergoes judgment and punishment for its participation in the Fall. For
Satan the punishment comes in all of the forms with the exception of the
more humane Germanic use of atonement and the modern possibility of
reformation and rehabilitation through imprisonment. These latter
possibilities are denied to Satan only by his own action. When he cries
out, "[Is] there no place/Left for Repentance, none for Pardon left?",
the question is purely for rhetorical effect (4:78-79). Satan knows that
the price of repentance and pardon is submission to the will of God. Any
repentance would only be an outward show of "feign'd submission . . .
For never can true reconcilement grow/Where wounds of deadly hate have
pierc'd so deep" (4:96, 98-99). Satan is aware that "This knows my
punisher; therefore as far/From granting hee, as I from begging peace"
(4:103-104). The eternal nature of Satan's punishment results, therefore,
not from God's will but from his own. Any "short intermission" of
punishment would be falsely and dearly purchased at a cost of "a worse
relapse,/And heavier fall" followed by "double smart" (4:102, 100-101,
103).[9]
In this self-knowledge Satan differs from Belial who thinks that the
punishment or
doom; which if we can sustain and bear,
Our Supreme Foe in time may much remit
His anger, and perhaps thus far remov'd
Not mind us not offending, satisfi'd
With what is punisht; --whence these raging fires
Will slack'n, if his breath stir not thir flames.
(2:209-14)
Belial's speech is conditional and, therefore, uncertain, containing as
it does two "ifs" and a "perhaps." His hopes for a quasi-parole depend
on the passage of time to diminish God's anger, and on the distance at
which they are exiled from heaven to reduce their offensiveness to God.
Since both time and space are meaningless to God who sees everything at
once, Belial's hopes for parole are also unfounded and meaningless.
Although the more humane punishments are denied to Satan and the fallen
angels, they must "endure/Exile, or ignominy, or bonds, or pain,/The
sentence of thir Conqueror" (2:206-208). This statement by Belial
summarizes the forms of both classical and medieval punishments as they
are outlined by Foucault. The distance of the exile is great: "As far
remov'd from God and light of Heav'n/As from the Center thrice to th'
utmost Pole" (1:7374). The condition of their exile, "utter darkness,"
is the absolute antithesis of heavenly light (1:72). Their "ignominy"
excludes them from their place in the heavenly society. The "bonds" and
"pain" of medieval punishment are "Adamantine Chains and penal Fire"
(1:48); Hell becomes the "Prison of [God's] Tyranny" where "the
Scourge/Inexorably, and the torturing hour/Calls [the fallen angels] to
Penance" (2:59; 90-92), that is, to suffering but not to repentance or
rehabilitation. This physical punishment is "endless" (2:159), violent
and cruel. As Balachandra Rajan points out, "In the universe of Hell,
God's rule is felt in terms of superior force, 'Whether upheld by
Strength or Chance or Fate.' God is the thunderer, the torturer, the
great enemy, the supreme foe, the conqueror, the potent, victor, and in
Mammon's sarcasm 'Heavn's all ruling Sire.'"[10] Rajan also notes
William Empson's criticism of the tyrant God in the poem. Consideration
must be given, however, to the fact that Satan and the fallen angels
create this tyrannous god for themselves through their own choice and
actions. As Satan says:
The mind is its own place, and in itself
Can make a Heav'n of Hell, a Hell of Heav'n
Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heav'n.
(1:254-63)
They choose their own government of tyranny and punishment because they
have left ungoverned their own dissensions, jealousies, outrages, rapine,
and lusts, as have the people Milton describes in Second Defense of the
English People.[11]
Foucault begins Discipline and Punish with a gruesome and graphic
account of the punishment and execution in 1757 of Robert-Franqois
Damiens "the regicide [who] was condemned to make the amende honorable
before the main door of the Church of Paris."[12] He quotes from the
legal documents of the procedure and the Gazette d'Amsterdara issued on
I April 1757. The date and the details make the account seem to be a
sadistic April Fool joke. Damiens undergoes mutilation, tortures of hot
lead, melted wax, and sulphur poured into wounds torn into chest, thighs,
and buttocks by pincers, ineffective quartering followed by
dismemberment, and burning of his trunk and body parts. An eye witness
claims to have seen the man's lips moving as if to speak after he had
been pronounced dead by the executioner.[13]
The punishment inflicted by men upon Damiens in the name of the king,
God's representative on earth, and at the door of the church seems to be
an attempt to duplicate, if not to exceed, those of God on Satan in
Hell. The torment is as prolonged as the human body is able to sustain.
The entire process, Foucault claims, is a social ritual involving the re-
enactment of the crime and the inscription of the crime on the body of
the criminal, by cutting off the hand of a thief or splitting the tongue
of a blasphemer, for example. The ritual of punishment, enacted publicly
as a dramatic spectacle, reinforced the absolute power and authority of
the king. In Paradise Lost the final scene of Satan's dramatic
punishment shows the inscription of his crime directly on his body by
his transformation into a serpent. This metamorphosis also effectively
reenacts the crime, as does the constant torment of unattainable fruit
which, like apples of Sodom, will never appease the further torture of
"scalding thirst and hunger fierce" (10:550, 556). In Foucault's terms,
Satan's body is "directly involved in a political field; power relations
have an immediate hold upon it, they invest it, mask it, train it
torture it, force it to carry out tasks, to perform ceremonies, to emit
signs,"[14]
In the case of Adam and Eve, too, the same forms of punishment, as
outlined by Foucault, are used. They are exiled from Eden in "Perpetual
banishment" (11:108). they and their descendants are excluded forever
from Paradies which is to be guarded to prevent reentry by a "Cherubic
watch, and of a Sword the flame/Wide waving, all approach far off to
fright" (11:12021). When later generations of Adam and Eve's offspring
prove corrupt beyond redemption, Paradise is destroyed in the Flood.
Michael shows Adam a Paradise uprooted, displaced, and transformed
beyond recognition into "an Island salt and bare,/The haunt of Seals and
Orcs, and Sea-mews' clang" (11:834-35). The place over which they had
dominion and which was their home is, therefore, confiscated and
destroyed in the classical manner. Not only are Adam and Eve "banisht
hence" (12:619), but they will also be aliens and excluded in the world
of their banishment. To them Wall places else/Inhospitable appear and
desolate,/Nor knowing us nor known" (11:305-307).
After the medieval fashion, Adam and Eve's punishment, like Satan's, is
inscribed on their bodies. Adam will feel the sweat on his brow and Eve
the pains of childbirth as a reminder of their offense against God
(10:205; 194-95). The body will suffer Wall maladies/Of ghastly Spasm,
or racking torture" (11:480-81). As both punisher and executioner, death
shakes his deadly "Dart" but "delay[s] to strike" (11:491, 493), while
the offender cries out for death's release from torture. Adam cries out
against the "inhuman pains" of such torture (11:511). The resulting
"deformities" deface, as the serpent's form defaces Satan, the "Divine
similitude" and "Maker's Image" from the body of man and leave him
branded as a sinner (11:513, 512, 514). Michael points out, however,
that man himself chooses not only to deface God's image but also to
bring on the torture through servitude to "ungovern'd appetite . . . a
brutish vice" (11:517-18). In other words, what appears to be punishment
inflicted by God for man's crime of disobedience against him is self-
generated in the way that Sin was generated from Satan.
The ritual of torture described by Foucault in his account of books can
be considered to be this sort of spectacle, meant for both Adam and the
reader to witness. Michael proposes "to show [Adam] what reward/Awaits
the good, the rest what punishment;/Which now direct thine eyes and soon
behold' (11:709-11).
In the drama of justice the death of the victim marked the limit of the
sovereign's power and therefore had to be delayed to a greater extent
each time that the spectacle was performed. In this way the sovereign
was able to maintain an excess of power to exert. In Paradise Lost the
Fall marks a break in the fealty of Adam and Eve to God as their
sovereign. Death now rules instead, demonstrating its power and
authority through repeated and prolonged displays of torture. After the
Fall, Adam meditates upon Death and later learns its meaning from
Michael. Although Adam accepts the justice of God's "doom" and
"punishment," he questions
why delays
His hand to execute what his Decree
Fix'd on this day? why do I overlive,
Why am I mockt with death and length'n'd out
To deathless pain? How gladly would I meet
Mortality my sentence, and be Earth
Insensible, how glad would lay me down
As in my Mother's lap!
(10:771-78)
These lines emphasize a similarity between the torture of Damiens and
that of Adam, that is a desire to escape from prolonged pain by dying
more quickly.
Adam decides that endless wrath, a "living" or a "deathless Death," is a
"strange contradiction" of how God operates and is, therefore, an
"Argument/Of weakness, not of Power" (10:788, 798, 799, 800-801). In
spite of this, Adam continues to dwell on the possibilities of prolonged
torture. He wonders whether
Death be not one stroke, as [he] suppos'd,
Bereaving sense, but endless misery
>From this day onward, which [he feels] begun
Both in [him], and without [him], and so last
To perpetuity.
(10:809-13)
Twice more Adam refers to the prolongation of the punishment and accuses
Death of "tardy execution" (10:852-53). He continues to question: "Why
comes not Death,/Said he, with one thrice acceptable stroke/To end me?"
(10:854-56). Adam concludes that "Death comes not at call, Justice
Divine/Mends not her slowest pace for prayers or cries" (10:858-59).
Later he tells Eve that, for them and all subsequent generations of
mankind, "Death . . ./Will prove . . . but a slow pac't evil,/A long
day's dying to augment our pain" (10:962-64).
This lingering death ironically inverts the state of man prior to the
Fall. Then God was the constant and central presence toward whom Adam
and Eve devoted their thoughts, activities, obedience, adoration, and
worship. Now Death and "his gloomy power" have become their central
preoccupation. This centrality is inscribed into the poem by the
frequent references to Death's power to delay or prolong its tortures.
The new sovereign, Death, metes out a punishment suited to Sin's tyranny
in man's life which is similar to the tyranny Satan and the fallen
angels claim issues from God. In terms of Hell or from a fallen
perspective, God is a tyrant.[15] But the tyrant is created by the
sinner himself.
The Germanic form of punishment--atonement, compensation, or fines-is
unavailable to Adam and Eve through their own powers. God points out
that in their crime
Man disobeying,
Disloyal breaks his fealty, and sins
Against the high Supremacy of Heav'n,
Affecting God-head, and so losing all,
To expiate his Treason hath naught left,
But to destruction sacred and devote,
He with his whole posterity must die,
Die hee or Justice must.
(3:203-10)
The Son also states that Man "once dead in sins and lost;/Atonement for
himself or offering meet,/Indebted and undone, hath none to bring"
(3:233-35). Through their crime Adam and Eve have lost everything as
their exile and the destruction of Paradise indicate. They have nothing
left to offer as compensation. Furthermore, if death is their penalty
and they are allowed to live, there is no "Justice." Atonement is
necessarily, therefore, of the Old Testament variety, "death for death"
of a "Patron or Intercessor" (3:219).[16]
Before proceeding to a discussion of surveillance, the most modern form
of discipline, one final similarity between the judicial proceedings in
Paradise Lost and the punishments of the feudal period discussed by
Foucault remains to be noted. In Discipline and Punish Foucault
describes the trial process which precedes the exercise of sovereign
power through torture and execution. It is held in secret and produces
truth in the absence of the accused: "the establishment of truth was the
absolute right and the exclusive power of the sovereign and his
judges."[17] In Paradise Lost the trial of Adam and Eve takes place in
Book 3 where, in feudal fashion, they are judged and condemned in
absentia for a crime they have not as yet committed.
This same scene develops from the feudal aspects of the judicial process
into God's plan for a more modern approach to punishment. In a more
progressive way than the infliction of torture to establish power, God
does not rule out the possibility of reformation and rehabilitation. He
says,
Man shall not quite be lost, but sav'd who will,
Yet not of will in him, but grace in me
Freely voutsaf't; once more I will renew
His lapsed powers, though forfeit and enthrall'd
By sin to foul exorbitant desires.
(3:173-77)
As an aid to rehabilitation through "Prayer, repentance, and obedience"
(3:191), God
will place within them as a guide
My Umpire Conscience, whom if they will hear,
Light after light well us'd they shall attain,
And to the end persisting, safe arrive.
(3:194-97)
God, therefore, establishes an internal mechanism, personified as an
"Umpire Conscience," which will aid mankind in maintaining "obedience"
as the ultimate aim of existence. In Discipline and Punish a picture of
an inmate in a Panopticon setting illustrates the similarity between a
prayerful, repentant sinner in a Christian context and a prisoner in a
rehabilitative setting.[18]
This more modern form of justice, that is imprisonment with a view to
the reformation and rehabilitation of the offender, belongs under my
second heading, surveillance. For Foucault surveillance is best depicted
by Jeremy Bentham's Panopticon (1791), an architectural device which
provides maximum opportunities to watch over prisoners. Briefly, the
Panopticon is a circular structure of cells with two glass walls which
is built around a central tower. From this vantage point the inmates of
the cells are kept under constant surveillance. The prisoners' movements
are exposed against a background of light for maximum visibility, while
the observer remains invisible to them within his tower. The constancy
of the surveillance, as well as the uncertainty of the observer's actual
presence or absence, causes the prisoner to internalize the sense of
being watched. Eventually the need for an observer is eliminated.
The principle behind Bentham's Panopticon seems to me analogous to the
idea of an omniscient, omnipresent God. In Psalm 139 the Psalmist asks,
"Whither shall I go from thy Spirit or whither shall I flee from thy
Presence?" and goes on to state that he cannot escape from God anywhere.
Whether he seeks to distance himself from God on the "wings of the
morning" or in the "uttermost parts of the sea," whether he seeks refuge
in heaven or in hell, God is present and sees him. Such constant and
inescapable surveillance becomes internalized or written on the heart of
the believer. Ideally he surveys himself constantly in order always to
be obedient to the will of God and always to act as if the eye of God
were focused directly on him.
Surveillance in Paradise Lost is as pervasive as in a modern panoptic
setting and emulates the omnipresence of God in the Bible. In the poem
the concrete image for surveillance and for a very limited understanding
of God's omniscient panopticism is the optic glass (1:287-91; 3:589-90;
5:261-63). This seventeenth-century invention made the viewing of
distant objects easier than it had ever been. Distant objects became
close; details became apparent. The device opened up to the observer
secrets of the universe which had previously been totally mysterious and
now were less so. The best modern paradigms for panopticism are the
western world's concept of life as it was in the USSR or George Orwell's
depiction of society in his novel 1984. A hierarchy or network of
surveillance controls life, invading, as the optic glass in nature, the
private lives of individuals. Within Paradise Lost a similar network of
watching exists with God at the apex watching Satan, the Angels, Adam
and Eve, and by extension, all of mankind and all of history to the end
of time.
A second panoptic system, following the reader response reading in
Stanley Fish's Surprised by Sin, places Milton as narrator and his "fit
audience though few" into the sequence.[19] The reader may be either the
object of the reformation and rehabilitation goal of the poem as Fish
would have it, or a privileged observer who is somewhat handicapped by a
lack of omniscience. In the latter instance, I think that the reader's
position is more mobile and complex. It can be at the apex and external
to the poem, or within the poem at a variety of positions equaling or
exceeding those of Satan, Adam, or Eve, but not those of Milton/narrator
or God. Regardless of where the reader finds himself positioned, however,
he is part of the network of observation operating within the poem just
as the observer in the Panopticon's tower participates in a larger
network, and is watched by his superiors. The scene in the Garden in
Book 4 best exemplifies this watching network. God, the narrator, the
reader, and Satan are all watching Adam and Eve.
>From the position of an observer, the reader watches both God and Satan
acting as surveillants within the poem. This allows for a comparison of
these characters on the basis of how they function in this role. God is
described with epithets of seeing which frequently link the ability to
see with power, for "what can scape the Eye/Of God All-seeing" (10:5-6).
To Satan and his fellows, God is a "wakeful Foe" (2:463) who is able to
view "all things at one view" (2:190). God sees all time at once (3:78)
with an "Eye" that is "unsleeping" and "Eternal" (5:647, 711). The total
nature of God's vision extends to the secret plans of Satan, both in
Heaven when he makes gunpowder and in Hell when he plans to take his
revenge on God through his creation and mankind. God, therefore, is the
ultimate panopticist; he is able to see not only physically but
psychically.
Satan, on the other hand, has a severely limited capacity to see. In
order to gain knowledge he is forced to get close to Adam and Eve. He
can only do so by disguising himself in animal form. Alternatively, he
needs height to procure a wider view; Satan surveys the created universe,
for example, from the vantage point of the sun, and Paradise from the
prospect of a limb in the Tree of Life. In this, the reader and Satan
share an affinity. For the reader the prospect is a position outside of
the poem and the illusion created by the omniscient narrator that the
reader is seeing everything. At no time, however, is the reader or Satan
privileged to see with the unobstructed view of God.
In addition to these limitations, Satan also displays weakness by
underestimating the panoptic powers of God. When he arrives in Paradise,
Satan discloses his true nature: "alone,/As he suppos'd, all unobserv'd,
unseen" (4:129-30). In Raphael's account of the Battle in Heaven, Satan
speaks to Beelzebub "in secret" (5:672). He concludes the conversation
by saying that "more in this place/To utter is not safe" (5:682-83). The
reader realizes, however, that the "secret" conversation has been
overheard and is being repeated verbatim. When Gabriel confronts Satan
in Paradise, the "celestial Sign" of scales hung out in the heavens
demonstrates that God has been watching and has seen everything (4:1011)
. In addition the scales are both a symbol of judgment and a visual
image of weakness versus power.
Within the poem, God's omniscience is aided by an elaborate and
unnecessary system of Angel observers who act as his eyes. Uriel is
referred to as "one of the sev'n/Who . . . are [God's] eyes" (3:648-50);
he acts in a watching capacity and enhances his perfect sight by using
the vantage point of the sun. Satan emulates Uriel by taking his first
view of the created universe from the same point. Gabriel, who guards
the gate of Paradise, calls himself "vigilance" (4:580); Zophiel's name
means "Spy of God" (6:535n). The guard placed at the gate of Paradise
after Adam and Eve's expulsion is
the Cohort bright
Of watchful Cherubim; four faces each
Had, like a double Janus, all thir shape
Spangl'd with eyes more numerous than those
Of Argus, and more wakeful than to drowse,
Charm'd with Arcadian Pipe, the Pastoral Reed
Of Hermes, or his opiate Rod.
(11:127-33)
Even the "Chariot of Paternal Deity" is fitted with many eyes:
convoy'd
By four Cherubic shapes, four Faces each
Had wondrous, as with Stars thir bodies all
And Wings were set with Eyes, with Eyes the Wheels
Of Beryl.
(6:750, 752-56)
The presence of so many surveillants whose very names and appearances
proclaim their role has a deterrent force. Like the empty patrol cars on
modern highways they act as reminders of God and his Law.
There are, however, frequent failures in surveillance, such as Uriel's
failure to detect Satan in the disguise of a stripling Cherub, and
Gabriel's failure to discover Satan before he had influenced Eve's
dream. These failures on the part of the Angels remind the reader of the
internal locus of responsibility for obedience to God. In a less
idealized reading, however, the failures in surveillance suggest a less
than perfect system with God at its head. Surveillance of the Gate of
Hell might have been more effective done by more loyal subjects than Sin
and Death, Satan's daughter and incestuously begotten son. More
effective guardianship of Paradise might have been maintained. The scene
by the pool when a voice intervenes and leads Eve from her own image to
Adam is another example. God sees and intervenes in this instance to
govern or guide Eve's choice and action. Why does this happen? Why does
this not happen in the Temptation scene with the Serpent? To insist on
answers leads to the conclusion that free will exists when it suits God
but not otherwise.
In the world of Paradise Lost the desire to avoid surveillance belongs
to the fallen, to Satan, to Eve, and then to Adam and Eve together. The
prelapsarian state is one of shame-free openness in which no concealment
is necessary; there is no need to shun the sight of God. In a fallen
state, however, unlimited exposure to the eye of an all-knowing, all-
seeing God overwhelms the individual* The knowledge of this surveillance
causes Adam to become "increasingly aware (through an excruciating
process of self-justification, then confusion, then despair, then
remorse and penitence) of his desperate need for renovation and
regeneration."[20] The external manifestation of this struggle is Adam's
reluctance to face his Judge. He says to Him, "I heard thee in the
Garden, and of thy voice/Afraid, being naked, hid myself" (10:116-17).
Adam realizes that his Judge knows all and "wouldst easily detect what I
conceal" (10:136).
In the fallen state, too, Satan and Eve attempt to capitalize on the
advantages of both concealment and surveillance as a means to knowledge
and power. When Satan comes to Paradise to "pry" (1:655) "with
inspection deep" (9:83) and through "narrow search . . . no corner leave
unspi'd" (4:528-29) he employs disguise, the cover of shadow, and the
darkness of night as aids. These allow him to disappear from Uriel's
view, to remain himself "unespi'd" (4:399; 6:523) to get close enough to
Adam and Eve to learn their vulnerabilities, and finally to succeed in
his planned revenge to bring man down with him. The reader, nevertheless,
is kept aware of the weaknesses of concealment when Satan betrays his
inner nature to Uriel. In addition, Satan's repetitious use of disguise
in animal form, first to get close to Adam and Eve, then to infuse his
evil into Eve's dream, and finally to tempt Eve, displays the
limitations of Satan's ability to act as a surveillant. Fallen, Eve
considers first whether God may have missed her action and then what
advantage she might have gained because Adam did not have her under
surveillance at the time:
And I perhaps am secret; Heav'n is high,
High and remote to see from thence distinct
Each thing on Earth; and other care perhaps
May have diverted from continual watch
Our great Forbidder, safe with all his Spies
About him. 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 mee, 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?
(9:811-27)
Like Belial, Eve uses conditional language to bend circumstances into a
more favorable possibility than God's omniscience allows. Like Belial,
too, she depends on distance to blur God's vision and on preoccupation
with more important matters to deflect God's attention from her. Her
uncertainty is greater than Belial's and is indicated by the number of
questions in the passage. Like the fallen Angels she creates her own god,
the "great Forbidder . . . with all his Spies/About him" (9:815-16).
Just as Satan capitalizes on voyaging alone to lie to his comrades in
Hell about the difficulties he faced and the magnitude of his conquest,
Eve considers maintaining an advantage over Adam through secrecy. Once
again, repetition leads the reader/observer to realize the limitations
of evil.
The ultimate goal of surveillance in either a Miltonian or a Foucauldian
sense is discipline. Discipline controls, not by an actual or threatened
fragmentation and destruction of the body as does the ritual of
punishment, but by the establishment of order, regularity, and efficient
obedience within the mental, moral and physical orders of the body.
Milton envisions a society of reformed, redeemed individuals who observe
God's laws spontaneously and not through fear, a society in which
"Discipline, [is] spiritually executed, not juridically."[21] In
"Milton's Antiprelatical Tracts: The Poet Speaks in Prose," John Via
discusses the function of Milton's poetry and prose as a tool to effect
the regeneration of the English people. Milton uses these media in an
attempt to "induce in the English historical situation a regenerate
response."[22] Milton himself claims "with usefull and generous labours
preserving the bodies health, and hardinesse; to render lightsome,
cleare, and not lumpish obedience to the minde, to the cause of religion,
and our Countries liberty."[23]
Foucault, on the other hand, observes the shift in the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries from a sovereign-subject relationship associated
with a feudal society to a more disciplinary form of power which
"effected an increase in the economic utility and political docility of
bodily forces."[24] For Foucault, "the conception of power as repression,
constraint, or prohibition is inadequate for an understanding of the
contemporary mechanisms through which a positive and productive power is
exercised over life."[25] The positive, productive power of discipline
in contemporary life channels energy into production for a capitalist
economy. In Foucault's analysis of "power-knowledge in industrial
society," he found that "in hospitals, schools, and the army, as well as
in prison, disciplinary power was uninterrupted and continuous, but also
invisible rather than glorious. Discipline would no longer be only a
means to neutralize danger but could become the purpose of society. A
disciplined society was useful, efficient and productive."[26] Foucault
uses the model of Jeremy Bentham's Panopticon: "These exemplars . . .
show us how our culture attempts to normalize individuals through
increasingly rationalized means, by turning them into meaningful
subjects and docile objects." [27]
>From Milton's Christian point of view, self-surveillance or discipline
is also positive and productive in that it focuses one's attention on
God as the central, dominant force in an individual's life. Milton's
ideal society, therefore, results from the reestablishment of the divine
image within the individual-an image which forsook man when he chose to
serve Satan (11:515-25). Such a change would lead to a radical
reformation within the self and subsequently within society as a whole.
In Milton and the English Revolution, Christopher Hill points out that
judging by his own high standards, it seemed to Milton wholly reasonable
to ask all men to behave 'as ever in my great Taskmaster's eye.' . . .
The assumption underlying Areopagitica was that in the new freedom being
established God's Englishmen would internalize discipline, would acquire
self-respect, self-control and temperance?
In "Second Defense of the English People," Milton praises Cromwell as a
soldier disciplined to perfection in the knowledge of himself. He had
either extinguished, or by habit had learned to subdue, the whole host
of vain hopes, fears, and passions which infest the soul. He first
acquired the government of himself and over himself acquired the most
signal victories, so that on the first day he took the field against the
external enemy he was a veteran in arms, consummately practised in the
toils and exigencies of war.[29]
In other words, Milton admired Cromwell for being the sort of individual
who had overcome his faults by internalizing obedience in the way that
mankind is required to do after the Fall.
Such discipline results in true liberty: "liberty which is of such a
kind as arms can neither procure nor take away, which alone is the fruit
of piety, of justice, of temperance, and unadulterated virtue, [which]
shall have taken deep root in your minds and hearts."[30] Liberty is
acquired through the training and education of a mind and spirit
disciplin'd
>From shadowy Types to Truth, from Flesh to Spirit,
>From imposition of strict Laws, to free
Acceptance of large Grace, from servile fear
To filial, works of Law to works of Faith.
(12:302-306)
William Ingram and Kathleen Swaim cite the use of the word "discipline"
only twice in Paradise Lost.[31] The one I have discussed above has the
sense of discipline as an educative process. The other use has the
meaning of subjection to authority and appears in relation to Satan.
Gabriel asks Satan:
Was this your discipline and faith ingag'd,
Your military obedience, to dissolve
Allegiance to tb' acknowledg'd Power supreme?
(4:954-56)
Satan is guilty of disobedience, self-assertion, ambition, and pride or,
in other words, undisciplined behavior.[32] These are the antithesis of
what Adam may achieve through self-discipline or self-surveillance, that
is, the internalized controls of faith, virtue, patience, and temperance
or the qualities of a "paradise within" (12:581-87). Hill writes that
"self-discipline comes from an awareness of what God wants. Liberty and
self-discipline are both individual virtues, self-regarding. . . .
Nevertheless, discipline is based on the consent of the congregation and
self-discipline is needed to make community life possible. Without it we
have anarchy."[33]
In "Religion and Ideology," Fredric Jameson comments on the "self-
criticisms and guilty introspection" which mark the aftermath of a
defeated revolution. In the case of Milton and Paradise Lost, he notes
that "this inward turn-a displacement from politics to psychology and
ethics-is marked not merely by the revival of the Calvinist meditation
on original sin and the Fall, but very explicitly by the emphasis on
personal, private salvation."[34] It is this very inward turn which the
surveillance of the Panopticon uses to produce a docile and obedient
subject. Such an individual serves a useful function in a modern
community by internalizing discipline. For Milton this internalizing
process is designed to produce individuals fit for membership in God's
kingdom on earth.
Both Milton and Foucault, therefore, examine punishment, surveillance,
and discipline but from quite different perspectives. For Milton changes
in punishment reflect a movement from Old to New Testament views of God,
from absolute and punitive power to redemptive love. For Foucault such
changes are in manifestations of power which move from a fracturing of
the human body in the most violent and prolonged ways possible to an
individualizing process of surveillance which maintains the body as a
useful commodity in an industrial society. As Foucault points out,
shifts in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries from sovereignty to
disciplinary power "effected an increase in the economic utility and
political docility of bodily forces."[35] Milton places God at the apex
of a system of surveillance, whereas Foucault sees a network of
surveillance in which all of society functions. Both Milton and Foucault
view discipline as the ultimate goal of the system, the former for its
spiritual benefits, the latter for its social value as a positive and
productive force.
Milton is thought of as the last person to have acquired a complete and
comprehensive understanding of all human knowledge. In Paradise Lost he
demonstrates an understanding of the judicial procedures for punishment
for which Foucault outlines the development over the centuries in
Surveiller et Punir. He inscribes into the text of the poem changes
which have actually taken place although the focus of the change has
ceased to be religious. In his introduction to The Foucault Reader, Paul
Rabinow states that "in [Foucault's] opinion, the universal intellectual,
whose task was to speak the truth to power in the name of universal
reason, justice, and humanity, is no longer a viable cultural figure;
the reign of that individual is over."[36] In spite of this, I think
that Foucault would have enjoyed meeting Milton. They seem to me to be
kindred spirits.
NOTES
1 Barry Smart. Foucault Marxism and Critique (London and Boston:
Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1983), p. 73.
2 As an introduction to Foucault's work, The Foucault Reader, ed. Paul
Rabinow (New York and Boston: Pantheon, 1984) provides useful excerpts
from Foucault's writing. In Michel Foucault: Social Theory as
Transgression (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982), Charles C.
Lemert and Garth Gillan present a comprehensive and comparative analysis
of Foucault's oeuvre. This book also includes a helpful glossary of
Foucauldian terminology and an extensive chronological bibliography of
Foucault's work from 1954-81.
Much of Milton's twenty years of work with his left hand, The Reason of
Church Government and the De Doctrina Christiana, for example, also
treats interests similar to those of Foucault. Milton's case differs
from Foucault's primarily in that he presents his ideological views in
religious, Christian terms whereas Foucault does not.
3 Lemert and Gillan, pp. 10-11.
4 Lemert and Gillan, p. 86.
5 John Milton, Paradise Lost (1:26). All references to Paradise Lost are
from John Milton: Complete Poems and Major Prose, ed. Merritt Y. Hughes
(Indianapolis: The Odyssey Press, 1957). Subsequent references appear in
the body of the essay and are to book and line numbers unless otherwise
indicated.
6 Hubert L. Dreyfus and Paul Rabinow, Michel Foucault: Beyond
Structuralism and Hermeneutics, 2nd edo. (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago
Press, 1983), p. xxv.
7 Dreyfus and Rabinow, p. 143.
8 Barry Cooper, Michel Foucault: An Introduction to the Study of His
Thought Studies in Religion and Society 2 (New York: Edwin Mellen Press,
1981), pp. 80-84.
9 This passage repeats the position on the possibility of reprieve or
rehabilitation taken by Beelzebub in 2:323-40.
10 Balachandra Rajan, "The Style of Paradise Lost" in Milton's Epic
Poetry: Essays on "Paradise Lost" and "Paradise Regained," ed. C.A.
Patrides (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1967), pp. 276-97, 283.
11 John Milton, "Selections from The Second Defense of the English
People" in John Milton: Complete Poems and Major Prose, ed. Merritt Y.
Hughes (Indianapolis: The Odyssey Press, 1957), pp. 817-38, 837.
12 Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison,
trans. Alan Sheridan (New York: Random House, 1979), p. 3.
13 Foucault, pp. 3-6. Foucault's source here is A.L. Zevaes, Damiens le
regicide (1937), pp. 201-14.
14 Foucault, quoted in Lemert and Gillan, p. 74.
15 Rajan, p. 283.
16 In his note to 3:219, Merritt Y. Hughes points out that "Patron, in
its Latin sense of a defender in a court of law, and Intercessor both
reflect the conception of Christ in I John ii, 1: 'And if any man sin,
we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.'"
17 Foucault, p. 35.
18 Foucault, Plate 4, N. Harou-Romain. Plan for a penitentiary, 1840. "A
prisoner, in his cell, kneeling at prayer before the central inspection
tower."
19 Stanley Fish, Surprised by Sin: The Reader in "Paradise Lost" (rpt.
1971; Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1967).
20 Desmond M. Hamlet, "Recalcitrance, Damnation, and the Justice of God
in Paradise Lost" in MiltonS 8 (1075): 267-91, 275.
21 John Milton, History of Britain in The Complete Prose Works of John
Milton Vol. 5, Pt. 1, ed. Don M. Wolfe et al. (New Haven: Yale Univ.
Press, 1953), p. 212.
22 John Via, MiltonS 5 (1973): 87-127, 116.
23 Via, quoted from John Milton, Apology for Smectymnus, p. 117. 24
Smart, pp. 84-85.
25 Smart, p. 86.
26 Cooper, p. 88.
27 Dreyfus and Rabinow, p. xxvii.
28 Christopher Hill, Milton and the English Revolution (London: Faber
and Faber, 1977), p. 256.
29 Second Defense, p. 832.
30 Second Defense, p. 835.
31 William Ingram and Kathleen Swaim, A Concordance to Milton's English
Poetry (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972).
32 Hamlet, p. 280.
33 Hill, p. 257.
34 Fredric Jameson, "Religion and Ideology," in 1642: Literature and
Power in the Seventeenth Century, ed. Francis Barker et al. (Univ. of
Essex, 1981), p. 316.
35 Smart, pp. 84-85.
36 Rabinow, p. 23.
~~~~~~~~
By WILMA G. ARMSTRONG
Wilma G. Armstrong, a doctoral candidate at the University of Toronto,
is writing a dissertation on hospitality in Charlotte Bronte's novels.
She teaches this year at the University of Lethbridge.
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