She has not.
'Well then, if love be at the bottom, is there not another fault lurking beneath the shadow of that love?—Has she not affectation?—Or is it pride of heart?'
And what results?—'Is then the divine Clarissa capable of loving a man whom she ought not to love? And is she capable of affectation? And is her virtue founded in pride?—And, if the answer to these questions be affirmative, must she not then be a woman?'
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 enterprizers; 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 daughter 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.