Paradise Lost

Reading Milton the last couple of days. Does anyone know if there's a feminist reading of Paradise Lost? I'm partly joking...

In the first book Satan is cast from heaven in a fight to overtake its throne from God, as we all, I suppose, know the story. Or maybe heard somewhere once. And dusting himself off in hell, he's got to make the best of a pretty...um, bad (?) situation. But, I am thinking of him also as a member of the family of heaven, and as a relation to "God the father" he is implicitly a "son" of god...maybe as much as Jesus? Is Satan the lost son of God? The son who wanted for himself the powers of his father? But for this immortal son, in an immortal family, there is no time or place for him to mature into a being separate from his father. No wonder then that his lot is hell. And he can only conceive of himself, as an adolescent might, as living to thwart the will of the power that rules his life. And consider the adolescent in this position...I mean, what are his feelings? At once, an inflamed and inflated ego, a fair sense of being victimized in his repression, and a misunderstanding about his "entitlement" to ascend to power. He has the conflated goals of self possession and becoming the "master" of the house. Basically, it's a suck-ass time to grow up if you don't have parents that give you the room to come into your own. And does anyone doubt that God was not the most understanding parent to Lucifer? So, L tries God and gets cast to Hell. Now L is wounded doubly. At once he is defeated, sure; but, doesn't he also want, in some part, approval and recognition from his father? Or if not "approval" exactly, its twisted counterpart, fear.

Here is Satan addressing to Beelzebub post fall:

...O how fall'n! how changed
From him, how in the happy realms of light
Clothed with transcendent brightness didst outshine
Myriads though bright:

Ok, "Happy realms of light"? Yeah, I bet that's how it was. It was the same for me. That's why Satan wanted to rule, becasue it was such a happy place to begin with. So "ideal".

...if he whom mutual league,
United thoughts and counsels, equal hope
and hazard in glorious enterprise
Joined with me once, now misery hath joined
In equal ruin: into what pit thou seest
From what highth fall'n, so much the stronger proved
He with is thunder: and till then who knew
The force of those dire arms?

What son can't identify with this question: Till then who knew / The force of those dire arms? Long after your father is dead, he will go on defeating you. That's the truth if you keep engaging the old battle. Do we all know that? Am I preaching to the seraphic choir?

...Yet not for those,
Nor what the potent victor in his rage
Can else inflict, do I repent or change,
Though changed in outward luster, that fixed mind
And high disdain, from sense of injured merit,
That with the mightiest raised me to contend,
And to the fierce contention brought along
Innumerable force of Spirits armed
That durst dislike his reign, and me preferring,
His utmost power with adverse power opposed
In dubious battle on the plains of heav'n,
And shook his throne. What though the field be lost?

I love these last lines..."And shook his throne." Crap, that line just says it all. Look how I made you feel: fear. You feared me, and that's my power now. Don't the following lines confirm?

All is not lost; the unconquerable will,
And study of revenge, immortal hate,
And courage never to submit or yield:
And what is else not to be overcome?
That glory never shall his wrath or might
Extort from me. To bow and sue for grace
With suppliant knee, and deify his power
Who from the terror of this arm so late
Doubted his empire, that were low indeed,
That were an ignominy and shame beneath
This downfall; since by fate the strength of gods
And this empyreal substance cannot fail,
Since through experience of this great event
In arms not worse, in foresight much advanced,
We may with more successful hope resolve
To wage by force or guile eternal war
Irreconcilable, to our grand foe,
Who now triumphs, and in th' exess of joy
Sole reigning holds the tyranny of heav'n."
So, spake th' apostate angel, though in pain,
Vaunting aloud, but racked with deep despair...

Pride, despair: Isn't this a boy's adolescence?

None of the other carpenters are working today says my Foreman: still snowing, and snowing, and snowing.