Is Your Thermostat Sexist?

Even before Adam and Eve picked and ate the fatal fruit of the tree of knowledge, condemning humanity to lives of sweat-soaked toil, they knew the meaning of good thermoregulation. Halfway through Milton’s “Paradise Lost,” God sends Raphael down to Eden for a chat with Adam. The archangel finds him in the doorway of his “cool bower,” taking shelter from the midday sun, which provides “more warmth than Adam needs.” (No adjusting the thermostat in Paradise.) Later, after God learns of the couple’s misdeed, he punishes them in part with inclement weather. He tilts Earth on its axis and gives the sun nefarious new instructions—“scorching heat” in summer, “pinching cold” in winter. Adam and Eve learn for the first time about ice, rain, hail, and snow. They must seek better clothing, Adam says, some new source of warmth, “to cherish / Our limbs denumbed.”