His poetic mastery may have finally won me round to blank verse but Milton's notion of ' Paradise ' was lost on me considerably before that first fateful forbidden bite. Then again, perhaps that's not surprising, as he seems convinced it was designed for Man (and no, I don't mean in the 'masculine generic' sense). As were women, naturally. A utopia of male entitlement and supremacy is no very entrancing abode for a woman who believes that she was made first and foremost for relationship with God, not for servitude to her husband. I reined in my desire to throw things – a lucky escape for my Kindle – and instead settled down to providing some constructive feedback. Maybe, with a bit of help (I'm sure he'd definitely thank me for it, *ahem*), he could salvage some of that lovely poetry after all... Researching the above I stumbled on an illustrative, wryly amusing example of why Milton's poetic take on God's paradisal gender norms s