Apply Marxist Literary Criticism to the Hierarchical Structures in Paradise Lost
Author: MARTIN MUNYAO MUINDE
Email: Ephantusmartin@gmail.com
Introduction
John Milton’s Paradise Lost, published in 1667, stands as one of the most significant epic poems in English literature, exploring themes of rebellion, authority, divine justice, and human freedom. While traditional literary criticism has predominantly examined the theological and moral dimensions of Milton’s masterpiece, applying Marxist literary criticism to Paradise Lost reveals profound insights into the hierarchical structures that govern both Heaven and Hell. Marxist literary theory, rooted in the philosophical writings of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, examines literature through the lens of class struggle, economic relationships, power dynamics, and ideological structures that maintain social hierarchies. This critical approach enables readers to understand how Paradise Lost reflects and interrogates the social, political, and economic tensions of seventeenth-century England while simultaneously presenting timeless questions about authority, labor, and resistance.
The application of Marxist criticism to Paradise Lost illuminates the poem’s complex representation of hierarchical power structures, class consciousness, and the dialectical relationship between oppressors and the oppressed. Milton’s epic presents multiple hierarchical systems: the divine monarchy of God’s Heaven, Satan’s rebel aristocracy in Hell, and the nascent human society in Eden. Each of these structures can be analyzed through Marxist concepts such as base and superstructure, ideology, alienation, and class consciousness. Furthermore, Milton’s own historical context—writing during the English Civil War and Commonwealth period—infuses the text with revolutionary potential and ambivalent attitudes toward authority that resonate with Marxist concerns about power and liberation. By examining the hierarchical structures in Paradise Lost through a Marxist lens, we can uncover how the poem both reinforces and challenges dominant ideologies about authority, obedience, and the legitimacy of existing power relations.
The Divine Hierarchy: Heaven’s Feudal Structure and Absolutism
The celestial hierarchy in Paradise Lost presents a rigid, authoritarian structure that mirrors both feudal systems and absolute monarchies of early modern Europe. God occupies the apex of this hierarchy as an absolute sovereign whose authority is unquestionable and whose power is unlimited. The angels exist in carefully ranked orders, from archangels like Michael and Raphael to the ordinary angelic hosts, each occupying a designated position within the heavenly social structure. This vertical organization of power reflects what Marxist theorists identify as a superstructure—the ideological and institutional framework that legitimizes and maintains the existing distribution of power and resources. In Heaven, obedience to divine authority is presented as both natural and moral, with dissent characterized as sin rather than legitimate political resistance. The Son of God functions as the heir apparent in this monarchical system, elevated above all other created beings, which Satan and his followers perceive as an unjust redistribution of power and status.
From a Marxist perspective, Heaven’s hierarchy operates through what Antonio Gramsci termed “hegemony”—the dominance of one group over others achieved not merely through force but through the successful propagation of the ruling class’s ideology as universal truth and common sense. The loyal angels accept their subordinate positions without question because they internalize the belief that God’s authority is inherently legitimate and that the hierarchical structure reflects a natural, divinely ordained order. This ideological apparatus prevents class consciousness from developing among the angelic masses, ensuring that they identify with the interests of the ruling deity rather than recognizing their own potential agency. Milton presents this system ambiguously; while the narrator generally endorses divine authority, the poem’s dramatic structure allows readers to perceive the authoritarian nature of Heaven’s government. The absence of consent, representation, or any mechanism for challenging divine decrees suggests a political system fundamentally incompatible with democratic or egalitarian principles, raising questions about whether obedience secured through absolute power can truly be considered virtuous.
Satan’s Rebellion: Revolutionary Consciousness or Aristocratic Rivalry
Satan’s rebellion against God represents one of the most controversial elements of Paradise Lost when examined through Marxist criticism, as it can be interpreted simultaneously as revolutionary resistance against tyranny and as an aristocratic power struggle among elites. Satan’s initial motivation for rebellion stems from his perception that God’s exaltation of the Son represents an arbitrary redistribution of power that diminishes his own status within the heavenly hierarchy. His famous declaration, “Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven” (Milton, Book I, line 263), articulates a preference for sovereignty over subordination that resonates with revolutionary rhetoric about freedom and self-determination. Satan employs the language of liberty, merit, and natural rights when rallying his followers, arguing that angels possess inherent freedom and should not be subjected to monarchical rule. This revolutionary discourse appeals to Marxist concerns about exploitation, alienation, and the right of the oppressed to resist their oppressors.
However, a deeper Marxist analysis reveals that Satan’s rebellion does not constitute a genuine proletarian revolution aimed at dismantling hierarchical structures altogether. Instead, Satan seeks to replace one absolute ruler with another—namely, himself. His rebellion represents what Marxists would identify as a conflict within the ruling class rather than a movement for fundamental social transformation. After the Fall, Satan establishes his own hierarchical government in Hell, complete with a demonic aristocracy, a council of peers, and himself as supreme leader. He does not liberate his followers from subjugation but merely transfers their allegiance from one authoritarian regime to another. The fallen angels remain stratified in ranks and continue to serve a sovereign power, albeit one who achieved his position through rebellion rather than divine appointment. This reveals the limitations of Satan’s revolutionary consciousness; he recognizes the injustice of his own subordination but fails to conceptualize a social order without domination and hierarchy. From a Marxist perspective, Satan represents the bourgeois revolutionary who challenges feudal authority not to establish universal equality but to secure his own position within or at the top of an alternative hierarchy, leaving fundamental power structures intact.
Labor, Production, and Alienation in Paradise Lost
Marxist criticism’s emphasis on labor, production, and material conditions provides crucial insights into the economic dimensions of Paradise Lost. In Heaven, before the rebellion, the angels engage in what appears to be non-alienated labor—their work consists primarily of worshipping God, fulfilling divine missions, and maintaining the celestial realm. This labor is presented as joyful and fulfilling, suggesting that work aligned with one’s nature and purpose need not be oppressive. However, the requirement that angels continuously praise God can also be read as a form of ideological labor that reproduces the existing power structure by constantly reaffirming divine authority. The angels’ work produces nothing material for themselves; rather, their labor serves exclusively to glorify the ruling power, which bears resemblance to feudal obligations where peasants’ labor enriched lords while providing minimal benefit to the laborers themselves.
The nature of labor undergoes a dramatic transformation after the Fall, particularly in the human realm. Before disobeying God, Adam and Eve engage in the pleasant task of tending Eden, work that Milton describes as light, agreeable, and suited to their capacities. The garden’s natural abundance requires minimal labor, and their work serves their own sustenance and pleasure rather than producing surplus value for another’s benefit. This prelapsarian labor represents what Marxists might envision as non-alienated work—creative, meaningful activity that fulfills human potential without exploitation. However, after the Fall, God curses the ground, declaring that Adam will henceforth earn his bread “In the sweat of thy face” (Milton, Book X, line 205). Labor becomes toilsome, the earth yields thorns and thistles, and humans must struggle against nature for survival. This transformation from pleasant, fulfilling work to alienated toil mirrors Marxist accounts of how capitalism alienates workers from their labor, the products of their labor, and their own human essence. The punishment for disobedience is not merely spiritual but fundamentally economic—humans are condemned to exploitative labor relations and material scarcity, conditions that will generate class divisions and social hierarchies in subsequent human history.
Ideology and False Consciousness in Paradise Lost
The concept of ideology—the system of beliefs, values, and representations that supports existing power structures—is central to Marxist literary criticism and offers powerful tools for analyzing Paradise Lost. Throughout the epic, Milton presents competing ideological systems that justify different visions of legitimate authority. The dominant ideology in Heaven asserts that God’s absolute power is righteous, that hierarchy reflects natural and moral order, and that obedience constitutes the highest virtue. This ideology operates through various mechanisms, including the public spectacle of the Son’s exaltation, the warnings delivered by loyal angels like Abdiel, and the theological explanations offered by Raphael to Adam. These ideological interventions work to naturalize divine authority, making it appear inevitable and legitimate rather than historically contingent or politically constructed. The repetition of this ideology by multiple authoritative voices creates what Louis Althusser called the “Ideological State Apparatus”—institutions and practices that reproduce dominant beliefs and secure consent for existing power relations.
Satan, in contrast, articulates a counter-ideology that challenges divine legitimacy by appealing to concepts of freedom, merit, and self-determination. He argues that angels are “self-begot, self-raised / By our own quickening power” (Milton, Book V, lines 860-861), denying God’s role as creator and asserting angelic autonomy. This ideological move attempts to delegitimize God’s authority by questioning the very foundation of divine claims to rule. However, Milton’s narrator consistently identifies Satan’s ideology as false, characterizing his arguments as lies, sophistries, and delusions. From a Marxist perspective, we might say that Satan’s followers suffer from false consciousness—they accept Satan’s ideological framing of their rebellion as a fight for liberty when, in reality, they are merely exchanging one master for another and condemning themselves to worse conditions. The War in Heaven demonstrates the material consequences of this false consciousness, as the rebels discover their inability to overcome the material superiority of God’s forces, revealing the limits of ideology divorced from material reality.
Class Struggle and the War in Heaven
The War in Heaven, recounted by Raphael in Books V and VI, represents the most explicit manifestation of class struggle in Paradise Lost. This cosmic conflict pits Satan’s rebel faction against God’s loyalist forces in a battle that determines the distribution of power in the universe. Marxist criticism encourages us to read this war not merely as a theological parable about pride and obedience but as a representation of class conflict between competing factions within a stratified society. The immediate cause of the war—God’s elevation of the Son—can be interpreted as a change in the relations of production or power distribution that disrupts the existing equilibrium and generates resistance from those who perceive their status and interests threatened. Satan and his followers constitute approximately one-third of the angelic host, suggesting widespread discontent with the existing order rather than the isolated grievance of a single malcontent.
The dynamics of the War in Heaven reveal important truths about power, resistance, and revolutionary struggle. Initially, the conflict appears relatively balanced, with neither side achieving decisive victory through conventional combat. The rebel angels demonstrate considerable military capacity, and their invention of gunpowder weaponry shows innovative adaptation to the demands of warfare—a technological development that changes the means of combat. However, God’s deployment of the Son with unlimited power definitively crushes the rebellion, revealing the material superiority of the ruling power. From a Marxist perspective, this outcome illustrates that successful revolution requires not only ideological critique and organized resistance but also sufficient material force to overcome the coercive apparatus of the state—or in this case, Heaven. The rebels’ defeat and expulsion from Heaven can be read as the brutal suppression of a revolutionary movement by a ruling class that ultimately relies on violence rather than consent to maintain its authority. The War in Heaven thus serves as Milton’s meditation on the possibilities and limitations of revolutionary action, a theme particularly relevant to his own experience of England’s failed republican experiment and the Restoration of the monarchy.
The Fall and the Origins of Human Class Society
The Fall of humanity in Paradise Lost carries profound implications for understanding the origins of class society and social inequality from a Marxist perspective. Before the Fall, Adam and Eve exist in a state approximating primitive communism—they share all resources equally, perform collective labor in Eden, and experience no scarcity, private property, or social differentiation. Their relationship is characterized by partnership rather than domination, though Milton’s text contains troubling suggestions of gender hierarchy that complicate this reading. The prelapsarian paradise represents an idealized vision of human existence without exploitation, alienation, or class division—a state of grace that mirrors Marxist visions of communist society where material abundance and social equality allow full human flourishing.
The act of disobedience that constitutes the Fall introduces not only sin but also the material and social conditions that will generate class society in human history. God’s curse transforms the relationship between humans and nature, creating scarcity and the necessity of toilsome labor. As Michael reveals to Adam in the final books, this fallen condition will lead to the emergence of private property, violence, oppression, and tyranny. Cain’s murder of Abel represents the first manifestation of the class violence that will characterize subsequent human history. The development of cities, the rise of tyrants like Nimrod, and the proliferation of warfare all flow from the Fall’s disruption of original human equality. From a Marxist reading, the Fall can be understood as Milton’s mythological account of the transition from primitive communism to class society—a fall from grace that is simultaneously a fall into history, characterized by exploitation, domination, and the struggle between classes. This interpretation suggests that the hierarchical structures governing human society are not divinely ordained or natural but rather the contingent result of human choices and the subsequent transformation of material conditions. The possibility of redemption thus carries not only theological but also political implications, suggesting that humanity might recover the equality and community of prelapsarian existence through collective transformation of social relations.
Gender Hierarchy and Patriarchal Structures
Any Marxist analysis of Paradise Lost must address the gender hierarchies that structure relationships in the epic, as Marxist feminists have demonstrated that patriarchal oppression constitutes a crucial dimension of class society and capitalist exploitation. Milton’s portrayal of Eve reveals deeply patriarchal assumptions about gender roles, intellectual capacity, and social authority. Adam is created first and directly by God, while Eve is created from Adam’s rib as a derivative being designed to serve as his companion and helpmate. This creation narrative establishes a fundamental inequality between the sexes, with Eve explicitly characterized as subordinate to Adam. The poem frequently emphasizes Eve’s beauty and charm while suggesting her intellectual inferiority to Adam, particularly in matters of reason and theological understanding. When Raphael visits to warn about Satan’s threat, he directs his instruction primarily to Adam, and Eve’s departure to tend the garden is presented as appropriate given her lesser capacity for abstract thought.
The gender hierarchy in Eden prefigures and legitimizes patriarchal structures in human society after the Fall. Eve’s primary role in humanity’s disobedience—she eats the forbidden fruit first and then persuades Adam to join her—allows Milton to participate in a long tradition of misogynistic interpretation that blames women for human suffering and uses female moral weakness to justify male authority. After the Fall, God explicitly institutes patriarchal domination as part of the curse, declaring to Eve: “he over thee shall rule” (Milton, Book X, line 196). This divine mandate transforms what Milton portrayed as natural hierarchy in Eden into enforced subjugation in fallen society. From a Marxist feminist perspective, this gender hierarchy serves crucial ideological functions in maintaining class society by dividing the potential working class along gender lines, naturalizing domination and subordination, and channeling male resentment away from ruling-class exploitation toward women. The unpaid reproductive and domestic labor that women perform in patriarchal households subsidizes capitalist production while remaining invisible and devalued. Milton’s portrayal of Eve thus participates in constructing and legitimizing gendered divisions of labor and authority that serve both patriarchal and class interests, demonstrating how gender oppression and class exploitation are interconnected systems of domination.
Milton’s Historical Context: Revolution and Restoration
Understanding Paradise Lost requires situating the poem within its historical and material context—the revolutionary upheaval and political disappointment that characterized mid-seventeenth-century England. Milton wrote and published Paradise Lost following the collapse of the English Commonwealth and the Restoration of the monarchy under Charles II in 1660. Milton had been a passionate defender of the republican cause, serving as Latin Secretary for Cromwell’s government and publishing numerous tracts arguing for regicide, religious liberty, and republican government. The Restoration represented the failure of Milton’s revolutionary hopes and his own political and social marginalization. He was briefly imprisoned, his books were burned, and he lived the remainder of his life under a restored monarchical regime he considered tyrannical and illegitimate. These experiences profoundly shaped Paradise Lost, infusing the epic with Milton’s reflections on revolution, authority, and the problem of failed political transformation.
The poem’s treatment of rebellion, authority, and hierarchy reflects Milton’s complex and conflicted relationship with revolution itself. On one hand, Milton could not explicitly endorse rebellion after the Restoration without risking severe consequences, and he likely struggled with the theological implications of his own revolutionary activities given his deep religious faith. The poem appears to endorse divine authority and condemn Satan’s rebellion, suggesting a conservative political theology. However, numerous readers have noted that Satan receives some of the poem’s most compelling rhetoric, that God’s authority is portrayed in troublingly authoritarian terms, and that the poem’s dramatic structure generates sympathy for the rebels despite the narrator’s condemnation. This tension reflects what Marxist critics call the text’s “ideology” and “unconscious”—the contradictory impulses between what the text explicitly claims and what its formal structures and dramatic power actually convey. Milton’s epic thus becomes a site where revolutionary and conservative impulses struggle with each other, reflecting the author’s own historical position as a defeated revolutionary attempting to make sense of political catastrophe while living under a restored regime he deplored. The poem’s power derives partly from this productive tension, which prevents it from collapsing into simple propaganda for either rebellion or submission.
The Dialectic of Freedom and Necessity in Paradise Lost
Marxist thought emphasizes the dialectical relationship between freedom and necessity, human agency and material constraints, and Paradise Lost explores these themes through its treatment of free will, predestination, and divine sovereignty. Milton was deeply committed to defending human free will against Calvinist doctrines of predestination, arguing that genuine moral responsibility requires the freedom to choose between good and evil. The poem repeatedly emphasizes that both angels and humans possess free will and that their choices, rather than divine compulsion, determine their fates. God explicitly defends himself against charges of predetermining the Fall, asserting that he created humans “Sufficient to have stood, though free to fall” (Milton, Book III, line 99). This insistence on human freedom resonates with Marxist commitments to human agency and the possibility of transforming social conditions through collective action rather than accepting existing arrangements as inevitable or naturally determined.
However, the poem simultaneously emphasizes divine omniscience and omnipotence in ways that complicate its defense of free will. If God knows with absolute certainty what choices humans and angels will make before they make them, in what sense are those choices genuinely free? The theological problem of reconciling free will with divine foreknowledge mirrors Marxist debates about the relationship between human agency and material determination—the question of whether historical development follows inevitable laws or whether conscious human action can redirect historical processes. Milton’s solution involves distinguishing between God’s foreknowledge and causation, arguing that God’s knowledge of future choices does not cause those choices. Similarly, Marxist theory rejects both pure voluntarism (the belief that will alone determines history) and mechanical determinism (the belief that material forces make human agency irrelevant), instead proposing that humans make history but under conditions not of their choosing. The dialectic between freedom and necessity in Paradise Lost thus reflects broader philosophical problems about agency, determination, and the possibilities for transformative action that remain central to Marxist thought and to any politics of liberation.
Conclusion: Paradise Lost as Ideological Battleground
Applying Marxist literary criticism to the hierarchical structures in Paradise Lost reveals Milton’s epic as a complex ideological battleground where competing visions of authority, justice, and freedom contend with one another. The poem’s treatment of celestial hierarchy, Satan’s rebellion, the Fall, and the origins of human society illuminates fundamental questions about power, legitimacy, class struggle, and the possibilities for social transformation. While Milton’s explicit theology appears to endorse divine authority and condemn rebellion, the poem’s dramatic structure, compelling revolutionary rhetoric, and historical context create tensions that prevent simple ideological resolution. These contradictions make Paradise Lost particularly valuable for Marxist analysis, as they reveal how literary texts can simultaneously reflect dominant ideology and contain revolutionary potential, supporting existing power structures while providing resources for imagining alternative social arrangements.
The hierarchical structures in Paradise Lost—Heaven’s divine monarchy, Hell’s demonic aristocracy, and Eden’s emerging patriarchy—all merit Marxist scrutiny as representations of class society, ideological legitimation, and the dynamics of domination and resistance. By examining these structures through concepts such as class consciousness, alienation, ideology, and dialectical materialism, we gain deeper understanding both of Milton’s epic and of the social and political dynamics it represents. The poem’s enduring power derives partly from its refusal to provide easy answers to questions about authority and freedom, instead staging dramatic conflicts that invite readers to think critically about power relations in their own historical contexts. For contemporary readers, Paradise Lost remains relevant not as a theological tract but as a profound exploration of timeless political questions about who should rule, whether hierarchical authority can be legitimate, and whether revolutionary transformation of oppressive structures is possible or desirable. Milton’s epic thus continues to serve as a site where readers can interrogate the hierarchical structures that govern their own societies and imagine alternatives to domination and exploitation.
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