Examine the Relationship Between Adam and Eve in Paradise Lost Before Their Disobedience
Author: MARTIN MUNYAO MUINDE
Email: Ephantusmartin@gmail.com
Introduction
John Milton’s Paradise Lost, first published in 1667, presents one of the most complex and enduring literary portrayals of humanity’s first couple, Adam and Eve, before their tragic disobedience. The relationship between Adam and Eve in Paradise Lost before the Fall represents Milton’s vision of ideal human marriage, divine love, and the proper ordering of human relationships within God’s created order. Milton dedicates substantial attention to depicting their prelapsarian existence in Books IV, V, VIII, and IX, crafting a portrait of marital harmony that combines physical attraction, intellectual companionship, spiritual devotion, and complementary roles. Their relationship in Paradise serves as a template for understanding Milton’s views on gender, hierarchy, marriage, and human nature in its unfallen state. Through detailed descriptions of their conversations, their labor in the Garden, their worship practices, and their physical intimacy, Milton creates a nuanced picture of marriage that reflects both seventeenth-century social conventions and timeless theological truths about human relationships. The relationship between Adam and Eve before their disobedience reveals tensions between equality and hierarchy, unity and difference, reason and affection that become crucial for understanding the dynamics that ultimately contribute to the Fall. This essay examines the multifaceted relationship between Adam and Eve in Paradise Lost before their disobedience, analyzing their emotional bond, intellectual partnership, hierarchical structure, physical relationship, spiritual practices, and the complexities that characterize their prelapsarian marriage in Milton’s epic vision of humanity’s original state.
The Foundation of Love and Mutual Affection in Paradise
The relationship between Adam and Eve in Paradise Lost before their disobedience is fundamentally grounded in genuine love and mutual affection, though Milton carefully distinguishes between different types and expressions of love within their union. Milton portrays their love as both passionate and rational, combining physical attraction with intellectual compatibility and spiritual harmony. Adam’s first sight of Eve awakens in him an immediate and powerful attraction, and throughout their prelapsarian existence, Milton emphasizes the authentic emotional connection between them. Adam describes Eve in language that reveals deep affection and admiration, calling her “Best image of myself and dearer half” and acknowledging that she completes him in ways that other created beings cannot (Milton, Book V). This affection manifests not merely in romantic declarations but in daily interactions characterized by tenderness, consideration, and genuine delight in each other’s company. Their conversations reveal partners who enjoy being together, who seek each other’s perspectives, and who find pleasure in shared activities and mutual companionship.
However, Milton’s portrayal of prelapsarian love between Adam and Eve also includes important distinctions and hierarchies that reflect both theological convictions and social assumptions of his era. While their love is mutual, Milton makes clear that it operates differently in each partner according to their respective natures and roles within the created order. Adam’s love for Eve includes an element of instruction and guidance, reflecting his position as her superior in reason and his responsibility for her spiritual welfare. Eve’s love for Adam includes admiration and voluntary submission, recognizing his greater wisdom and authority (Turner, 1993). This hierarchical dimension of their love does not negate its authenticity or mutuality but rather shapes its expression and function within Paradise. Milton suggests that perfect love in an unfallen state operates according to divinely established order, where hierarchy and affection coexist harmoniously without the complications that sin introduces. Their prelapsarian love thus serves as Milton’s model for Christian marriage, where emotional bonds and structural roles complement rather than contradict each other, creating a union that satisfies both partners’ needs while honoring divine design.
Physical Beauty, Attraction, and Embodied Love
Milton’s depiction of Adam and Eve’s relationship before disobedience includes frank acknowledgment of physical attraction and embodied love, presenting sexuality within marriage as part of God’s good creation rather than a consequence of sin. Milton describes both Adam and Eve with attention to their physical beauty, emphasizing that their bodies reflect divine artistry and purpose. Eve is portrayed with particular aesthetic richness, her beauty described through images of natural perfection—her hair like gold, her movements graceful, her appearance surpassing all created beauty. Adam, though less elaborately described, possesses the dignity and strength appropriate to his role as first among humans. Crucially, Milton emphasizes that their nakedness in Paradise involves no shame, stating that they go “nor those mysterious parts were then concealed” (Milton, Book IV). This unfallen sexuality represents Milton’s conviction that physical intimacy within marriage constitutes a holy pleasure ordained by God, fundamentally different from the lustful sexuality that characterizes post-Fall human experience.
The physical dimension of Adam and Eve’s relationship serves multiple functions in Milton’s prelapsarian vision, expressing love, creating unity, and fulfilling divine command to be fruitful and multiply. Milton dedicates Book IV to describing their evening rituals, including their physical union presented with a combination of reverence and celebration. He emphasizes that their lovemaking occurs within proper bounds, sanctified by marriage and untainted by excessive passion or disordered desire. Milton declares that “wedded Love” is “Founded in Reason, Loyal, Just, and Pure” and contrasts prelapsarian sexuality with the “bought smile of Harlots” and “loveless, joyless, unindear’d” relations that characterize fallen sexuality (Milton, Book IV). This distinction reveals Milton’s Protestant theology of sexuality, affirming marital physical intimacy while condemning extramarital or disordered sexual expression (Halkett, 1970). For Adam and Eve before disobedience, physical attraction and sexual union represent the fullest expression of their complementary natures and their divinely sanctioned partnership, demonstrating that embodied existence and spiritual purity can coexist harmoniously when ordered according to divine intention. Their physical relationship thus models Milton’s vision of sanctified sexuality, where reason governs passion, where mutual consent and delight characterize intimate expression, and where physical union deepens rather than detracts from spiritual communion.
Intellectual Companionship and the Exchange of Ideas
Beyond physical attraction and emotional affection, the relationship between Adam and Eve before their disobedience includes significant intellectual companionship, though Milton portrays this dimension as hierarchically structured according to their respective capacities for reason and wisdom. Adam and Eve engage in substantive conversations about theology, nature, their duties in Paradise, and their relationship with God, demonstrating that their prelapsarian existence includes mental stimulation and shared inquiry. Milton presents these exchanges as evidence of their rational natures and their capacity for understanding divine truth, though he consistently portrays Adam as the primary teacher and Eve as the learner within their intellectual partnership. When Raphael visits Paradise to warn against disobedience, Eve initially participates in the conversation but eventually withdraws, preferring to hear the angel’s instruction filtered through Adam’s later explanation rather than receiving it directly (Nyquist, 1987). This pattern reflects Milton’s view that while Eve possesses genuine intellectual capacity, her mind operates most effectively through Adam’s mediation rather than through direct engagement with complex theological concepts.
The intellectual dynamics between Adam and Eve reveal both partnership and hierarchy, raising questions about equality and difference that have generated extensive scholarly debate. Adam clearly values Eve’s companionship on intellectual as well as emotional and physical levels, explaining to Raphael that he sought a partner with whom he could share thoughts and feelings, someone capable of rational conversation rather than merely instinctive behavior. However, Milton also suggests that Adam’s intellectual need for Eve differs from his emotional and physical need, implying that while she satisfies his desire for companionship, she does not fully equal him in rational capacity (McColley, 1983). This portrayal reflects seventeenth-century assumptions about gender and reason while also serving Milton’s theological purposes by establishing the prelapsarian hierarchy that will later prove significant in the Fall narrative. Eve’s intellectual capabilities are genuine but circumscribed, sufficient for her duties in Paradise but requiring Adam’s guidance in more complex matters. Their intellectual relationship thus combines real companionship with clear hierarchy, suggesting that Milton envisions ideal marriage as including shared mental life while maintaining gender-based differences in rational authority and theological understanding.
The Hierarchical Structure of Prelapsarian Marriage
The relationship between Adam and Eve in Paradise Lost before their disobedience operates within an explicitly hierarchical framework that Milton presents as divinely ordained and naturally appropriate for their respective natures. Milton establishes this hierarchy through multiple means: creation order, with Adam created first and Eve formed from his rib; explicit statements about their relative positions, with Adam described as “for God only, she for God in him”; and behavioral patterns that consistently show Adam exercising authority and Eve practicing submission (Milton, Book IV). This hierarchical structure pervades every aspect of their relationship, from theological instruction to daily labor to decision-making about Paradise affairs. Milton presents this hierarchy not as oppressive or unjust but as the proper ordering of creation that produces harmony when accepted and chaos when violated. Adam’s authority over Eve reflects his greater reason and closer relationship to God, while Eve’s submission to Adam reflects both her derivative creation and her orientation toward beauty and emotional life rather than abstract theological understanding.
However, Milton’s portrayal of prelapsarian hierarchy includes important nuances that complicate simple readings of the relationship as merely authoritarian or patriarchal. Eve’s submission to Adam is presented as voluntary and rational, the free choice of an autonomous agent who recognizes Adam’s wisdom and authority as legitimate. Milton emphasizes that this submission does not diminish Eve’s dignity or value but rather expresses it appropriately according to her nature and role (Webber, 1979). Furthermore, Adam’s authority over Eve carries corresponding responsibilities, including her education, protection, and spiritual guidance. The hierarchy functions reciprocally, with each partner’s role creating obligations toward the other rather than simply granting privileges to the superior. Milton suggests that in unfallen creation, hierarchy and mutuality coexist without contradiction, authority exercises itself through service and love rather than domination, and submission expresses strength rather than weakness. This vision of prelapsarian hierarchy reflects Milton’s attempt to reconcile Protestant emphasis on spiritual equality before God with social convictions about proper gender roles and marital structure, creating a model where difference in function coexists with equality in worth and where authority and submission both serve the goal of mutual flourishing within divinely established order.
Work, Labor, and Shared Purpose in the Garden
Adam and Eve’s relationship before their disobedience includes a crucial dimension of shared labor and common purpose through their work maintaining and cultivating the Garden of Eden. Milton presents their agricultural and horticultural duties not as burdensome toil but as pleasant activity that gives structure and meaning to their days while allowing them to exercise their capacities and fulfill divine command. Their work in the Garden represents humanity’s original vocation, demonstrating that labor itself is not a consequence of sin but part of God’s design for human flourishing. Adam and Eve approach their gardening tasks with diligence and creativity, pruning, training, and arranging the abundant vegetation of Paradise to prevent overgrowth and promote order (Revard, 1980). This shared work creates opportunities for companionship and conversation, strengthening their bond through common purpose and collaborative effort. Their labor also reflects their respective characters and roles, with Adam typically taking the lead in planning and directing their efforts while Eve contributes her aesthetic sensibility and careful attention to detail.
The organization of their labor reveals both unity and differentiation within their prelapsarian relationship, anticipating tensions that will emerge more prominently in the Fall narrative. Generally, Adam and Eve work together, their combined efforts more effective than either could achieve alone, illustrating the principle that marriage creates partnership superior to solitary existence. However, Milton also describes occasions when they work separately, each attending to different areas of the Garden or different types of tasks. This separation of labor becomes particularly significant in Book IX, when Eve proposes that they work apart to accomplish more, initiating the sequence of events leading to her solitary encounter with Satan. In the prelapsarian context, their work patterns demonstrate complementarity and interdependence, with each partner contributing according to their strengths and preferences (DuRocher, 1985). Their shared purpose in maintaining Paradise expresses their joint stewardship of creation and their common responsibility to honor God through faithful execution of their assigned duties. The work dimension of their relationship thus reveals how practical cooperation, shared goals, and collaborative effort contribute to marital unity while also establishing patterns of togetherness and separation that will prove crucial in understanding their vulnerability to temptation.
Spiritual Life, Worship, and Religious Practice Together
The relationship between Adam and Eve before their disobedience includes essential spiritual dimensions, as their marriage exists within the context of their primary relationship with God and their shared responsibility for worship and religious devotion. Milton depicts morning and evening prayers as regular features of their daily routine, presenting these devotional practices as natural expressions of gratitude and reverence rather than burdensome obligations. Their prayers demonstrate theological sophistication and poetic beauty, praising God for creation’s wonders, acknowledging their dependence on divine providence, and expressing wonder at their privileged position within Paradise. Significantly, Adam typically leads these prayers while Eve participates, maintaining even in worship the hierarchical pattern that characterizes other dimensions of their relationship (Kerrigan, 1983). Their shared spiritual life strengthens their marriage by orienting both partners toward their Creator, establishing proper perspective on their relationship as subordinate to their relationship with God, and creating regular opportunities for united expression of faith and devotion.
The spiritual dimension of Adam and Eve’s prelapsarian relationship also includes their shared responsibility for obedience to divine command, particularly the prohibition against eating from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. This shared obligation creates both unity and potential vulnerability in their relationship, as their spiritual fates are intertwined and each partner’s choices affect the other. Milton emphasizes that both Adam and Eve understand the prohibition and its consequences, establishing that they share responsibility for maintaining obedience despite their different capacities for theological reasoning. Their spiritual partnership thus involves mutual encouragement toward faithfulness, shared accountability for obedience, and common identity as creatures obligated to honor their Creator through willing submission to divine will (Fish, 1971). However, this spiritual interdependence also means that one partner’s disobedience can tempt or pressure the other, introducing vulnerability into their relationship precisely at the point of their shared religious obligation. The spiritual dimension of their prelapsarian marriage reveals how their relationship functions within the larger context of divine-human relationship, how their unity in worship expresses and reinforces their marital bond, and how their shared spiritual obligations create both strength and potential weakness in their life together in Paradise.
Communication Patterns and Emotional Expression
The relationship between Adam and Eve before their disobedience is characterized by open communication and free emotional expression within the hierarchical framework that structures their interactions. Milton presents numerous conversations between them that reveal their communication styles, emotional patterns, and relational dynamics. These exchanges demonstrate genuine dialogue rather than mere monologue from Adam with passive agreement from Eve, showing that prelapsarian marriage includes authentic conversation despite hierarchical structure. Eve speaks her thoughts, asks questions, expresses preferences, and even proposes courses of action, as when she suggests they work separately in Book IX. Adam listens to Eve’s perspectives, responds to her concerns, and engages with her ideas, though he retains final authority in decision-making. Their communication includes expressions of affection, theological discussion, planning for daily activities, and reflection on their experiences in Paradise, demonstrating the range of topics that constitute their shared life (Lewalski, 1985).
However, patterns in their communication also reveal the hierarchical structure and potential tensions within their prelapsarian relationship. Adam more frequently initiates conversations, particularly on theological or philosophical topics, while Eve more often raises practical concerns or emotional matters. When they disagree, as in the crucial conversation about working separately in Book IX, Adam’s initial inclination to refuse Eve’s proposal ultimately gives way to reluctant consent, illustrating the complex negotiation between authority and affection within their marriage. Milton presents this negotiation as partly reflecting admirable mutual respect but also foreshadowing dangerous accommodation of Eve’s will despite Adam’s better judgment. Their emotional expression includes both tender affection and the restraint appropriate to rational beings, avoiding excessive passion while allowing genuine feeling. Milton emphasizes that their prelapsarian communication operates according to reason and truth, free from the deception, manipulation, and defensiveness that characterize post-Fall marital communication (Walker, 1988). Their conversations reveal partners who generally understand each other, who speak honestly without fear, and who approach disagreements with goodwill rather than hostility, modeling Milton’s vision of ideal marital communication where hierarchy and dialogue coexist, where authority and affection balance each other, and where reason governs emotional expression without suppressing genuine feeling.
Adam’s Creation Narrative and the Desire for Companionship
Milton devotes significant attention in Book VIII to Adam’s account of his own creation and his request to God for a suitable companion, providing crucial insight into the foundations of the Adam-Eve relationship before disobedience. Adam recounts awakening to consciousness in Paradise, immediately recognizing God as his Creator and engaging in theological conversation about his nature and purpose. Importantly, Adam quickly recognizes that despite Paradise’s perfections and despite fellowship with animals and angels, he lacks a companion of his own kind capable of satisfying his need for intimate relationship. He explains to God that the animals, though pleasant company, cannot provide rational conversation or true partnership because of their inferior nature, and that angelic beings, though superior in wisdom, differ too greatly from his own nature to satisfy his desire for companionship. Adam argues that true happiness requires “collateral love and dearest amity” with a being similar yet complementary to himself (Milton, Book VIII). This request demonstrates Adam’s self-awareness, his understanding of his own needs, and his capacity for rational argument even with his Creator.
God’s response to Adam’s request and the subsequent creation of Eve establish both the legitimacy and the limits of their relationship. God tests Adam by suggesting that He Himself should provide sufficient companionship, to which Adam responds that fellowship with God differs from the horizontal relationship among equals that he seeks. God approves Adam’s reasoning and creates Eve from Adam’s rib, establishing her derivative status and her complementary relationship to him. When Adam first sees Eve, he immediately recognizes her as the answer to his longing, describing her with language that combines appreciation for her physical beauty, recognition of her similarity to himself, and acknowledgment of her appropriate subordination to him (Schwartz, 1988). This creation narrative establishes several crucial aspects of their prelapsarian relationship: Adam’s need for companionship is legitimate and divinely approved; Eve exists specifically to satisfy this need; their relationship involves both similarity and difference, with Eve similar enough to provide true companionship yet different enough to complement rather than merely duplicate Adam; and the hierarchical structure is built into their creation order rather than imposed afterward. The narrative thus provides theological and emotional foundations for understanding their relationship before disobedience as simultaneously fulfilling Adam’s companionship needs and establishing the structured order that will shape all their interactions in Paradise.
Eve’s Awakening and Self-Knowledge
Milton provides a contrasting narrative in Book IV through Eve’s account of her first moments of consciousness, offering insight into her character and her initial relationship with Adam from her own perspective. Eve recounts awakening beside a lake and being immediately captivated by her reflection in the water, an episode that has generated extensive critical discussion about her character and potential flaws even in her prelapsarian state. Some scholars interpret her fascination with her own image as evidence of nascent narcissism or vanity, while others see it as innocent self-discovery without moral implications before the Fall (Froula, 1983). A divine voice calls Eve away from her reflection toward Adam, who initially seems less attractive to her than her own image until she learns to appreciate his greater worth and authority. This narrative establishes that Eve’s orientation toward Adam involves some degree of redirection and education rather than immediate instinctive attraction, suggesting that her submission to him requires learning and choice rather than constituting pure natural inclination.
Eve’s creation narrative reveals important dimensions of her character and her relationship with Adam that persist throughout their prelapsarian existence. Her initial attraction to her own image suggests her responsiveness to beauty and her orientation toward the aesthetic rather than the immediately rational or abstract. Her gradual learning to prefer Adam over her reflection demonstrates capacity for growth and proper ordering of affections through instruction. Her account also reveals her dependence on Adam for identity and purpose, as she learns that she is “flesh of his flesh” and created to be his companion (Milton, Book IV). This dependence differs from Adam’s relationship to God, as Adam was created first and independently, while Eve’s very existence derives from and orients toward Adam. The narrative thus establishes Eve’s particular character, combining beauty, aesthetic sensitivity, and potential for proper development under Adam’s guidance, while also introducing tensions around self-awareness, attraction to beauty, and the need for external direction that will become crucial in the Fall narrative (Lanyer, 1993). Her awakening story provides the complementary perspective to Adam’s creation account, revealing how both partners enter their relationship with particular characters and orientations that shape their prelapsarian marriage and create both its strengths and its vulnerabilities.
The Role of Reason and Passion in Their Relationship
The relationship between Adam and Eve before their disobedience involves careful negotiation between reason and passion, with Milton consistently emphasizing that prelapsarian marriage operates according to reason’s governance over emotion and desire. Milton presents reason as the highest human faculty, the aspect of human nature most directly reflecting the divine image and the proper governor of all other aspects of personality including will, emotion, and physical appetite. In Adam and Eve’s prelapsarian relationship, reason properly orders their affections toward each other, ensuring that their love expresses itself appropriately without excess or disorder. Their physical attraction operates within rational bounds, their emotional attachment serves rational purposes, and their communication proceeds according to logical discourse rather than manipulative emotion (Revard, 1980). This rational ordering does not make their relationship cold or mechanical but rather ensures that passion serves proper ends and that emotion expresses truth rather than distorting it.
However, Milton also suggests that even in Paradise, the relationship between reason and passion requires careful maintenance and that Eve’s particular constitution inclines her more toward beauty and feeling than toward abstract reason. This gendered distribution of rational capacity creates both complementarity and potential tension in their relationship. Adam’s stronger reason makes him responsible for instructing and guiding Eve, particularly in theological and moral matters, while Eve’s stronger aesthetic sense contributes beauty and grace to their shared life (Guillory, 1983). Yet this distribution also creates vulnerability, as Eve may be more susceptible to appeals to emotion and beauty than to rational argument, a vulnerability that Satan will exploit in the temptation narrative. Milton implies that Adam bears special responsibility for maintaining proper rational order in their relationship precisely because his reason is superior and because Eve’s safety depends partly on his vigilance. The tension between reason and passion in their prelapsarian relationship thus reveals both the ideals toward which Milton believes marriage should strive—passionate love governed by reason, emotional warmth regulated by wisdom, physical attraction channeled through rational choice—and the potential vulnerabilities that exist even in Paradise when the proper hierarchy of faculties becomes disrupted or when passion begins to influence reason rather than remaining subject to it.
Vulnerability and Foreshadowing of the Fall
Even in Milton’s portrayal of Adam and Eve’s relationship before their disobedience, careful readers can detect subtle foreshadowing and potential vulnerabilities that will contribute to their eventual Fall. These vulnerabilities do not constitute sinfulness in their prelapsarian state but rather represent characteristics or dynamics that, while innocent in Paradise, create openings for temptation and disobedience. Adam’s excessive affection for Eve, acknowledged by Raphael who warns him to maintain proper perspective, suggests that his love may lead him to prioritize Eve over God or obedience. Eve’s aesthetic orientation and her initial attraction to her own reflection suggest potential for being deceived by beautiful appearances or for valuing beauty over substance. The hierarchical structure of their relationship creates dependency that becomes dangerous when Eve encounters temptation without Adam’s immediate guidance. Their communication patterns, particularly Adam’s tendency to yield to Eve’s preferences despite his own better judgment, establish precedents for the fatal decision to allow her to work alone (Gallagher, 1991).
These prefigurative elements in Adam and Eve’s prelapsarian relationship demonstrate Milton’s sophisticated narrative technique and his theological convictions about human freedom and the origins of sin. Milton cannot present Adam and Eve as simply perfect and then inexplicably fallen; instead, he must show how prelapsarian perfection includes genuine freedom, how that freedom creates vulnerability, and how vulnerability to temptation differs from sinfulness itself. Their relationship before disobedience thus contains seeds of their eventual transgression without being itself sinful or flawed in ways that would compromise divine justice in judging them. The subtle tensions between hierarchy and affection, reason and emotion, togetherness and separation all operate innocently in Paradise but create possibilities for exploitation by evil (Evans, 1968). Milton’s portrayal of these vulnerabilities within their prelapsarian relationship serves both artistic and theological purposes: artistically creating narrative coherence and psychological realism in the Fall account, and theologically defending divine justice by showing that Adam and Eve possessed genuine freedom that made disobedience possible without being necessary. Their relationship before the Fall thus represents both Milton’s ideal of marriage and his recognition that even ideal relationship between free beings creates vulnerabilities that require constant vigilance to maintain innocence.
Conclusion: The Significance of Prelapsarian Marriage in Paradise Lost
The relationship between Adam and Eve in Paradise Lost before their disobedience represents Milton’s complex vision of ideal marriage, combining romantic love with hierarchical structure, physical intimacy with spiritual devotion, intellectual partnership with gender differentiation, and individual identity with marital unity. Milton’s extensive attention to their prelapsarian relationship serves multiple purposes within his epic: establishing the goodness of creation before the Fall, demonstrating what humanity has lost through sin, modeling ideal Christian marriage despite its seventeenth-century patriarchal assumptions, exploring the relationship between freedom and obedience, and preparing readers to understand the dynamics that contribute to the Fall. Their relationship in Paradise reveals tensions and complexities that prevent simple idealization while nonetheless presenting marriage as a divinely ordained institution capable of producing profound human flourishing when ordered according to reason and divine will.
The enduring significance of Milton’s portrayal of Adam and Eve’s prelapsarian relationship extends beyond its immediate narrative function to raise profound questions about gender, hierarchy, freedom, and human relationships that remain relevant centuries after Paradise Lost‘s publication. Modern readers struggle with Milton’s hierarchical framework and his assumptions about gender and reason, finding his vision of ideal marriage problematic in ways that reflect changed social attitudes toward equality and partnership. Yet even readers who reject Milton’s hierarchical vision can appreciate his psychological insight into marital dynamics, his recognition that intimate relationships involve both unity and difference, his understanding that love and structure must somehow coexist, and his acknowledgment that even ideal relationship between free beings creates vulnerabilities requiring wisdom and vigilance (Wittreich, 1987). The relationship between Adam and Eve before disobedience thus offers both a historical window into seventeenth-century views on marriage and gender, and timeless insight into the challenges and possibilities of intimate human relationship, making their prelapsarian Paradise simultaneously remote from contemporary experience and surprisingly relevant to ongoing discussions about love, partnership, equality, and the nature of human flourishing in relationship with others.
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