Equality in Eden?

It seems that the majority of what I've been reading over the last couple of weeks has centred around perfect copulation. No self-help guide or women's lifestyle magazine in sight, the first man and woman's marital relations has been constantly at the forefront of my reading, and presently at the forefront of my mind.

Having been educated sans males for a decade, a certain feminist attitude has become engraved in a part of my thought, despite my attempts to put them off and retreat back to my pinny and baking ingredients. The feminist twinge comes out when I read such lines as PL IV.297-9:

For contemplation he and valour formed,
For softness she and sweet attractive grace,
He for God only, she for God in him:

Looking back to an older copy of PL, my first impression, jotted in the margin, questions why only woman would need a mediator, whereas it would seem that Adam, the man, has direct access to God, his head. I don't dismiss that a call to grace and a certain 'softness' are appealing and positive attributes for any woman, and are honourable qualities. However, argues that corner of my brain, surely a woman can call on the 'one mediator between God and men' (1 Tim 2.5)?

Of course, I'm becoming up in arms without considering the natural or beautiful nature of the prelapsarian couple's relationship. It is essentially one of halves and completion - Adam's first call to Eve, after all, beckons her -

Part of my soul I seek thee, and thee claim
My other half (IV.487-8)

Equally, Eve is unreluctant to enter the nuptual bower with her new husband:

though divinely brought,
Yet innocence and virgin modesty,
Her virtue and the conscience of her worth,
That would be wooed, and not unsought be won (VIII.500-3)

To this latter passage, Helen Gardner comments that 'Love between man and woman is thus an image of the love between God and his creatures, freely given and accepted as a gift' (A Reading of Paradise Lost. Oxford, 1965. 84). Just as God is separate and uniquely different to man (and by this I include woman too, of course) so is man separate and different to woman. And, before I entrap myself in an argument that infers the vast superiority of man to woman, just as God chose to become man in Christ, and be in relationship with man (human), so man can enjoy relationship with woman, his 'other'.

It seems I've attempted a brief explanation of sexual politics, whereas what I really wanted to do was share another beautiful piece of criticism on sexuality in Eden. Again, Gardner writes:

Milton will have nothing to do with the horrible patristic conception of the virtuousness of cold copulation. Other feelings than shame make the heart beat faster and bring the blood to the cheeks. (85)

Sexuality for the first married couple was not a chore, and was of more worth than just a means to 'bear/Multitudes' (IV.473-4), but a heart-palpitating union, and a physical symbol of the differing but complimentary natures of the genders.