And can she keep this love at bay? Can she make him, who has been accustomed to triumph over other women, tremble? Can she conduct herself, as to make him, at times, question whether she loves him or any man; “yet not have the requisite command over the passion itself in steps of the highest consequence to her honour, as she thinks,” (I am trying her, Jack, by her own thoughts), “but suffer herself to be provoked to promise to abandon her father’s house, and go off with him, knowing his character; and even conditioning not to marry till improbably and remote contingencies were to come to pass? What though the provocations were such as would justify any other woman; yet was a Clarissa to be susceptible to provocations which she thinks herself highly censurable for being so much moved by?”
But let us see the dear creature resolved to revoke her promise, yet meeting her lover; a bold and intrepid man, who was more than once before disappointed by her; and who comes, as she knows, prepared to expect the fruits of her appointment, and resolved to carry her off. And let us see him actually carrying her off, and having her at his mercy—“May there not be, I repeat, other Lovelaces; other like intrepid, persevering enterprisers; although they may not go to work in the same way?
“And has then a Clarissa (herself her judge) failed?—In such great points failed?—And may she not further fail?—Fail in the greatest point, to which all the other points, in which she has failed, have but a natural tendency?”
Nor say thou, that virtue, in the eye of Heaven, is as much a manly as a womanly grace. By virtue in this place I mean chastity, and to be superior to temptation; my Clarissa out of the question. Nor ask thou, shall the man be guilty, yet expect the woman to be guiltless, and even unsuspectible? Urge thou not these arguments, I say, since the wife, by a failure, may do much more injury to the husband, than the husband can do to the wife, and not only to her husband, but to all his family, by obtruding another man’s children into his possessions, perhaps to the exclusion of (at least to a participation with) his own; he believing them all the time to be his. In the eye of Heaven, therefore, the sin cannot be equal. Besides I have read in some places that the woman was made for the man, not the man for the woman
. Virtue then is less to be dispensed with in the woman than in the man.
Thou, Lovelace, (methinks some better man than thyself will say), to expect such perfection in a woman!
Yes, I, may I answer. Was not the great Caesar a great rake as to women? Was he not called, by his very soldiers, on one of his triumphant entries into Rome, the bald-pated lecher
? and warning given of him to the wives, as well as to the daughters of his fellow-citizens? Yet did not Caesar repudiate his wife for being only in company with Clodius, or rather because Clodius, though by surprise upon her, was found in hers? And what was the reason he gave for it?—It was this, (though a rake himself, as I have said), and only this—The wife of Caesar must not be suspected
!—
Caesar was not a prouder man than Lovelace.
Go to then, Jack; nor say, nor let anybody say, in thy hearing, that Lovelace, a man valuing himself upon his ancestry, is singular in his expectations of a wife’s purity, though not pure himself.
As to my Clarissa, I own that I hardly think there ever was such an angel of a woman. But has she not, as above, already taken steps, which she herself condemns? Steps, which the world and her own family did not think her capable of taking? And for which her own family will not forgive her?
Nor think it strange, that I refuse to hear anything pleaded in behalf of a standard virtue from high provocations. “Are not provocations and temptations the tests of virtue? A standard virtue must not be allowed to be provoked to destroy or annihilate itself.
“May not then the success of him, who could carry her thus far, be allowed to be an encouragement for him to try to carry her farther?” ’Tis but to try. Who will be afraid of a trial for this divine creature? “Thou knowest, that I have more than once, twice, or thrice, put to the fiery trial young women of name and character; and never yet met with one who held out a month; nor indeed so long as could puzzle my invention. I have concluded against the whole sex upon it.” And now, if I have not found a virtue that cannot be corrupted, I will swear that there is not one such in the whole sex. Is not then the whole sex concerned that this trial should be made? And who is it that knows this lady, that would not stake upon her head the honour of the whole?—Let her who would refuse it come forth, and desire to stand in her place.
I must assure thee, that I have a prodigious high opinion of virtue; as I have of all those graces and excellencies which I have not been able to attain myself. Every free-liver would not say this, nor think thus—every argument he uses, condemnatory of his own actions, as some would think. But ingenuousness was ever a signal part of my character.
Satan, whom thou mayest, if thou wilt, in this case, call my instigator, put the good man of old upon the severest trial. “To his behaviour under these trials that good man owed his honour and his future rewards.” An innocent person, if doubted, must
