Virginia Woolf on Reading Paradise Lost

I was rereading James Turner’s essay “The Aesthetics of Divorce” (which I think will be useful if only because–in the parlance of the thesis class–it stands as an emblematic example of a specific critical folly regarding the divorce tracts), and I was struck by this quotation from Virginia Woolf that Turner starts the essay off with:

“I get no help in judging life; I scarcely feel that Milton lived or knew men and women; except for the peevish personalities about marriage and the woman’s duties”

I guess I’d just sort of ignored this before–Turner is not an elegant or subtle writer, so his arguments tend to have these obvious pushing off points that can usually just be skipped over. But I like the part about doubting whether Milton lived or knew people. I’m not sure what to make of her reading of PL–it strikes me as obviously wrong, but it’s certainly the case that the powerful rhetoric of DDD makes a more conspicuously personal impression on the reader, and I wonder whether I’m having trouble separating my readings of those two texts.