A CHALLENGE TO CHASTITY

Correlative Attitudes in Milton and Valmiki

 

Prof. S. JAGADEESAN

Dr. M. S. NAGARAJAN

 

            Camus is a masque and The Ramayana an epic, a mahakavya Each is sui generis: each employs systems of literary conventions appropriate to its form. This paper attempts a study in comparison of the myth of temptation as handled by Milton and Valmiki. The term “myth”, as Cassirer uses it, is a kind of perspective. Any body of knowledge, at the time it is received, involves a synthesising activity of the mind. Myth is not just story-telling. It is a mode of understanding the truth of an experience, a way, of envisaging it. Milton’s use of the myth of temptation in Camus and Valmiki’s use of it in The Sundarakanda are set against each other. They are both seen as literary; myths employed for the sake of laying bare, as it were, two apposed natures, two realms of being.

 

I

 

            Dr. Johnson always affords us a convenient point of departure. He attacks Camus on several counts and concludes, “It is a drama in epic style, inelegantly splendid, and tediously instructive (Italics rirs).”1 True to the facts of the case, Johnson read it as a masque and found it wanting in action, for Milton titled the work, “A Masque presented at the Ludlow Castle, 1634,” and it was very much later in time renamed “Comus”, to suit the needs of the 18th century stage evidently. Well, as a masque it is evidently unsatisfactory, being heavily loaded with a pair of weighty debates which are our main points of reference. The substance of the debate is that moral purity is always threatened by dangers; but the dangers can be overcome by steadfast human action helped all the time by the grace of God. This argument of the poem is quite in consonance with the system of the history of religious ideas prevalent in the 17th century England.

 

            Camus opens with the arrival of the attendant spirit promising aid to those mortals who, despite being confined in this earth, “by due steps aspire/Today their just hands on that golden key/That opes the palace of eternity”. 2 True knowledge lies in virtue and can be had only from it. Succumbing to temptation destroys the will and leads to fall from grace. This is Milton’s doctrine in Paradise Lost. The attendant spirit has come to offer protection to the Lady caught up in this world and exposed to danger any moment. Comus is Circe’s son and his enchanted cup has the effect of reducing the human to the level of the beast. In the chain of being, man degrades in the ladder of creation. Comus and his rout of monsters with their “riotous and unruly noise” are associated with chaos and disintegration whereas the Lady with her song of “divine ravishment” stands for order and harmony. Hearing the Lady’s approach, Comus makes his designs clear:

 

            Baited with reasons not unplausible

            Wind me into the easy-hearted man,

            And hug him into snares.                                   (161-4)

 

The Lady understands her situation and openly declares in strong theological terms that Conscience, Faith, Hope, Chastity are her guardsmen and that her life and honour would be kept unassailed. Evil’s testimony to beauty is seen in Comus’s reaction to the Lady’s song

 

            But such a sacred and home-felt delight,

            Such sober certainty of waking bliss

            I never heard till now.                                       (262-5)

 

The Lady deceived by Comus’s courtesy and its vibrant mani­festations, pins her faith to providence. Thematic variations of the basic debate continue during the reflections of the two brothers about the nature of the plight of their sister. The elder brother speaks about the strength of virtue and purity insisting that danger lies within oneself and, docs not come from without.

 

            He that hides a dark soul, and foul thoughts,

            Himself is his own dungeon                               (383-5)

 

            Heaven and Hell are states of mind and they are essentially within us. The elder brother’s speech aptly portrays the two realms of being – Comus’s and the Lady’s. The former is linked by “carnal sensualily to a degenerate state” while the latter is clad in chastity.

 

            So dear to Heaven is saintly chastity,

            That when a soul is found sincerely so,

            A thousand liveried angels lackey her.               (453-6)

 

As Milton prepares us for the key episode of the battle royal between Comus and the Lady, we have a firm declaration of faith in Virtue.

 

            Virtue may be assailed, but never hurt,

            Surprised by unjust force, but not enthralled.

 

            But evil on itself shall back recoil.                      (586-93)

 

            The major premises of Comus’s specious argument, set in persua­sive oratory, are (i) appeal to the sensual appetites, (ii) a pretended concern for the Lady’s welfare, (iii) charging her with acting against Nature’s design, and (iv) seeking public sanction for his way, as it is everybody’s way.

 

            Refreshment after toil, ease after pain,

            That have been tired all day without repast,

            And timely rest have wanted..   .                       (686-9)

 

The Lady’s mind is free though her body is cast under spell and she charges Comus with betraying her credulous innocence. She declares unequivocally:

 

            I would not taste thy treasonous offer

            And that which is not good is not delicious

            To a well-governed and wise appetite.              (702-5)

 

The heart and core of Camus’s temptation is when he offers a deliberate misinterpretation of Nature’s bounty to man. He subverts the whole edifice of the virtues of abstinence. The riches of the world are created for the benefit of man: they are to be enjoyed and not wasted away unused, for then “the All-giver would be unthanked, would be unpraised.”

 

            Beauty is Nature’s coin, must not be hoarded,

            But must be current                                           (739-40)

 

The, Lady’s answer settles the issue once and for all. She answers Comus not because his seductive offer needs a reply but virtue must check the pride of vice. “Lewdly-pampered Luxury” must not go unchecked. Nature

 

            Means her provision only to the good,

            That live according to her sober law,

            And holy dictates of spare Temperance,            (765-7)

 

            Comus cannot understand the “high-mystery” and “serious doctrine of virginity.” The Lady brings to a grinding halt the debate between the two mutually exclusive orders of existence. There can be no common ground, no meeting point between the two. The argument is clinched in favour of the Lady and so the poem celebrates the triumphal dance of virtue over folly and intemperance. The epilogue rounds off the victorious        debate reinforcing the strength of virtue.

 

            Mortals, that would follow me,

            Love Virtue: she alone is free;

            She can teach ye how to climb

            Higher than the sphery chime;

            Or if Virtue feeble were.

            Heaven itself would stoop to her.                      (1018-23)

 

            Chastity for which the Lady stands is the virtue. It always goes along with ‘right’ reason and understanding. It encloses restraint, temperance, continence; it is a way of living in the world and loving it too. During the course of the Lady’s harangue against Camus, one cannot fail noticing the transform­ation in the Lady herself She condescends to him towards the close, her voice is “a flame of sacred vehemence.” While recognising who Comus is, she recognises her true self. Having discovered herself rather than be seduced by him, it is she who seduces him to lead a life governed by virtuous temperance. And Comus amply illustrates, by the convincing victory of the Lady over Comus, the doctrine of Christian Liberty. “Know that to be free is the same as to be pious, to be wise, to be temperate and just, to be frugal and abstinent, and lastly, to be magna­nimous and brave”. 3

 

II

 

            In the Sundarakanda of Srimad Valmiki Ramayana, the episode of the Sita-Ravana samvada is treated in Sargas 19, 20 and 21. Sita is languishing’ grief-stricken in Ashokavan from the separation from her husband and Lord, Rama, on the one hand, and the threat of Ravana’s visit on the other. In Comus, just when the lady completes her song addressed to sweet Echo with the line “And give resounding grace to all Heaven’s harmonies,” seeking aid protection in the wilderness in which she is caught, enters Comus.

 

            Sarga 19 shows Ravana’s arrival and the whole Sarga is a poetic rendering of Sita’s plight, preparing us, as it were, for the debate.

           

           

 

           

 

            This is the part of the Sanskrit poetic tradition where, Sita in distress, is described in terms of conventional similes: she is like a banana tree caught in cyclone  like a ship drowned in the deep sea  like the felled branches of a tree spread-eagled on the floor,   like the lotus rotting in the mire  –All these striking botanical similes, reiteratively employed, fix Sits, the lone figure, in the broader context of Ashokavana, a lush and wild forest. Ashoka­vana, the forest dedicated to ebullience and joy beyond measure, as the name implies, is the prison-house for Sitadevi so immersed in sorrow and grief. She is wholly out of tune with the surround­ings. All the time the sensuousness in his description of Sita is heightened by Ravana’s fixed gaze  repeated again and again. Sita is the single object of attention all through.

 

           

 

            In the midst of the huge forest, surrounded by Rakshasa women, the only strength for Sita is  her, Tapas. The term Tapas in Sanskrit means one’s spiritual strength, inner resources and here it is Sita’s chastity.

 

            Ravana’s long address to Sita in the 20th Sarga has been variously interpreted by Bashyakars. For some it has a Rahasyarth according to which Sita is Ravana’s  and he worships and offers her Pooja, for others it is Ravana’s  We may slur over these commentaries and take Ravana’s words as they mean literally in the context without recourse to such readings. The basic promise of Ravana’s philistinism is the subversion of conventional morality. It is the very negation of Adi Sankara’s philosophy in Bhajagovindam. Ravana praises Sita’s beauty, extols her to the skies; she is non pareil.

 

           

 

           

 

All earthly pleasures and worldly enticements are offered to Sita. Arguments in favour of youth, its short-lived splendour and transitory nature are built one over the other. Youth is likened to the flooded river, the water of which flows never to come back.

 

           

 

The recurrent term in al1 Ravana’s offer  Ravana advises Sita to cast away all fear, leave all  and become his wife:

 

           

 

To force women to lose their chastity, to command them to act in obedience to the wishes, argues Ravana, is his kuladharma and there is no sin in it.

 

           

 

Sita’s fitting reply to Ravana in 33 Slokas is appropriately called, by commentators, Sita’s Gita. In fact, there is no need for Sita to reply; yet she replies, for silence on her part might be misconstrued as acceptance of Ravana’s offer. Placing a small blade of dried grass between her and Ravana, Sita opens her debate which can be summed up as her advice to Ravana to uphold and pursue the course of Righteousness, to protect and spread dharma.

 

           

 

From a position of the meek and lowly, beset by dangers all around, threatened by Ravana’s intentions, one sees Sita trans­cending these and speaking to Ravana with a high degree of condescension. Ravana was all the time pedestrian, believing that the here and now was the be-all and end-all of human existence. Sita meets every argument of Ravana on individual merits and preaches to him swadharma, opening up to his consciousness a whole world of truth, so far unknown to him or held by him as non-existent.

 

           

 

Sita’s strong faith in virtuous living, her adherence to the moral code is seen in the Sloka where she talks of the impossibility of accepting Ravana.

 

           

 

            The whole domestic image of  using as pillows, seeking support from, embracing and leaning upon and  the hands, the shoulders, that are meant for embracing, support and protection with all the associations of mutual dependence of the husband and wife, the indivisibility of the divine, mutual contract is organically set in Sita’s rebuttal. The two lines of the Sloka demonstrate the two mutually exclusive levels of being. The supporting arm of Rama and the proffered arm of an anamadheya, a stranger. These are two metaphors for two distinct ways of living. The ordered and organised value-system where every ele­ment is an organic part of the whole is set against sheer anarchy and disintegration caused by easy acceptance and simple com­promises. A spatial look at Valmiki’s employment of animal imagery in Sita’s reply – the snake-eagle and the tiger dog com­binations, for instance – reveal the world of bestiality of Ravana. It is this he repudiates firmly. Sita’s protective armour is her faith in her lord and her chastity. This chastity does not merely guard her but also Rama. More than anything else, the first that is in the protective armour is Sita’s chastity.

 

III

 

            To sum up, in both these works we have chastity under challenge. Milton’s portrait of the Lady is based upon a Christian view of chastity derived from the New Testament. Doctrine. Valmiki presents Sita as the victim of an outrageous combination of cajolery and coercion, following upon deception and abduc­tion. The Hindu concept that a woman is an abala does not exclude the strength of the inner spirit in woman which is rooted in chastity as an end in itself. The ideal of chastity does not involve any spiritual subordination of woman to man but a recognition of the spiritual harmony that inspires the concept of marriage and of love. What is involved is not a sacrifice of her rights by the woman but a resolute acceptance by the woman of a transcendent ideal that love and marriage are in­stitutional devices to enable man and woman to work in harmony with the concept of the divya dampati and the concept of that all human relationships involve the principle of inviolable swadharma appertaining to each human being.

 

            Temptation as a rule, involves first a fall from a state of innocence to corruption or loyalty to treachery followed by redemption and grace. In the case of the Lady and Sita, however, it is chastity, the highly developed inner spiritual strength, that not only withstands temptation but overcome it and what more, conquers the tempter.

 

Notes

 

1 Samuel Johnson. Life of Milton. The English Critical Tradition. The Macmillan Co of India, 1977 p. 227.

2 John Milton, Camus (Cambridge University Press. 1909). p.7. All subsequent citations are from this text.

3 John Milton, “Second Defence” in Prose Works I, ed. J. A. St. John for Bohn’s ‘Libraries” London. 1843-53. p. 298.

4 Valmiki, Sundarakanda, Stimad Valmiki Ramayanam (Sri Vani­vilas Press. Srirangam, 1973) p. 118. All subsequent cita­tions are from this text.

 

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