Ignorance is Bliss...?

I have always had this problem with the story of Adam and Eve, and I think it is because I am at heart an academic and I like to learn so much. The problem is with the idea that the cause of all human suffering is...because people knew too much. I hope I'm not harping too much on an a tired question, but this has always been really relevant to me, and I think that the readings I've been doing this week (both for this class and for Core 250) have been engaging with it in a really interesting way.

First of all, in Milton's Paradise Lost, there is a relatively long period of time between Eve eating the fruit and Eve convincing Adam to eat the fruit. In that time period, Eve is really pretty happy about her new state of knowing. As she tells Adam, she would have suffered her fate alone if the apple had adversely affected her, but instead, "I feel / Far otherwise th' event, not death, but life / Augmented, opened eyes, new hopes, new joys" (lines 983-985). It's like in The Wakefield Mysteries when Eve eats the apple and says, wide-eyed, "It's good!" I suppose there's a chance that Eve is only telling Adam because she wants them to suffer their fate--whatever it is--together, but she does thank the snake for telling her to eat the apple, because "not following thee, I had remained / In ignorance" (lines 808-809). At first, they really enjoy the knowledge, and for awhile they're really happy that they've eaten the apple. The misery and the realization of fallenness doesn't happen right away, and Milton emphasizes this idea in Paradise Lost. (In the NIV translation of the Bible, it seems like Eve eats the apple and immediately hands it to Adam, and then both of their eyes are opened at once (Genesis 3:6-7)). Why would Milton emphasize this? Why would there be a pocket of time where knowledge makes them really happy?

I think it's interesting when you compare this idea with what are actually my favorite lines from Lanyer's "Eve's Apology in Defense of Women": "Yet men will boast of knowledge, which he took / From Eve's fair hand, as from a learned book" (lines 63-64). Even though knowledge is what ultimately brought the Fall upon humanity, it is something that men brag about, something that they take pride in. We value it.

My thoughts really didn't come together until I was reading an excerpt from Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov for Core 250 this weekend. In the selection, Ivan's character, the Grand Inquisitor, argues that the church officials help keep the people happy, because they keep them in ignorance of the true terror of the world. They pretend like they are following Jesus, while they have actually made a deal with the devil, and only the church officials are sad because they have to carry with them the truth. They have "taken upon themselves the curse of the knowledge of good and evil" (Baird 380), and because of that they pay. But the thing is, those church officials still take on the curse willingly. When given the choice, they make the decision to know, as Adam and Eve both do--and at first, this is not a decision that they regret. And I think that's an interesting thing that the readings this week kind of discuss: as Lanyer might argue, while women brought the curse of the knowledge of good and evil, at least that's a curse that men value. No one values that Jesus was killed, so whose sin was really greater?

I don't know, this isn't an issue that gets solved...but I've been thinking about it a lot this weekend, so I thought I would reflect on it. At any rate, it's made me read the passages with a different moral type of eye. Was Milton trying to privilege knowledge at least a bit in his writing? I don't know, but I certainly know that this is something I think about a lot...and it's nice to know that this is a debate that is not dead in literature.

Citation for the BOSS:
Baird, Forrest E., Leonard A. Oakland, Meredith T. Shimizu, and Kathleen H. Storm. The Rationalist Worldview: Readings for Core 250. 2nd ed. Spokane: Whitworth University, 2013. Print.