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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
After the initial intoxication, the Fall of Man is delineated in Paradise Lost largely in terms of the charges and counter-charges, the fear and hatred, the self-aggrandizement and the isolation of Adam and Eve. Only after Adam's most bitter denunciation of Eve is the direction changed with Eve's famous “Forsake me not thus, Adam … ”(x.914–936). Eve's speech is the turning point, for it is here that one of the guilty pair first attempts to take upon herself the burden of guilt, shows love and asks for love. The direction once taken, Adam is moved to similar affection, and the resulting reconciliation between man and woman is the inevitable prologue and type of the ensuing reconciliation between man and God.
page 1083 note 1 All my quotations are from the text of Helen Darbishire, The Poetical Works (Oxford 1952), Vol. i.