Pamphilus makes a double response to her concern about fading beauty: more than its “dwelling place,” he says first, he loves her mind, “whose beauty will forever increase with age”; and he adds, second, “[b]esides, we’ll renew our youth repeatedly in our children.” In this crucial second remark, Pamphilus, speaking no longer of “I” but of “we,” tacitly concedes their mortality and confesses a desire for children, indeed, for “our children.”
But though these remarks are music to her ears, Maria does not let on that she is pleased; on the contrary, she makes explicit, for the first time, the ever-latent theme of her threatened virginity. Modern readers, tempted here to tune out or roll their eyes, might instead try to discover what the fuss over virginity was once all about.
MARIA: But meantime my virginity will be gone.
PAMPHILUS: True, but see here: if you had a fine orchard, would you want it never to bear anything but blossoms, or would you prefer, after the blossoms have fallen, to see the trees heavy with ripe fruit?
MARIA: How artfully he argues!
PAMPHILUS: Answer this at least: which is the prettier sight, a vine rotting on the ground or encircling some post or elm tree and weighing it down with purple grapes?
MARIA: You answer me in turn: which is the more pleasing sight, a rose gleaming white on its bush or plucked and gradually withering?
PAMPHILUS: In my opinion the rose that withers in a man’s hand, delighting his eyes and nostrils the while, is luckier than one that grows old on a bush. For that one too would wither sooner or later. In the same way, wine is better if drunk before it sours. But a girl’s flower doesn’t fade the instant she marries. On the contrary, I see many girls who before marriage were pale, run-down, and as good as gone. The sexual side of marriage brightened them so much that they began to bloom at last.
MARIA: Yet virginity wins universal approval and applause.
PAMPHILUS: A maiden is something charming, but what’s more naturally unnatural than an old maid? Unless your mother had been deflowered, we wouldn’t have this blossom here. But if, as I hope, our marriage will not be barren, we’ll pay for one virgin with many.
MARIA: But they say chastity is a thing most pleasing to God.
PAMPHILUS: And therefore I want to marry a chaste girl, to live chastely with her. It will be more a marriage of minds than of bodies. We’ll reproduce for the state; we’ll reproduce for Christ. By how little will this marriage fall short of virginity! And perhaps some day we’ll live as Joseph and Mary did. But meantime we’ll learn virginity; for one does not reach the summit all at once.
MARIA: What’s this I hear? Virginity to be violated in order to be learned?
PAMPHILUS: Why not? As by gradually drinking less and less wine we learn temperance. Which seems more temperate to you, the person who, sitting down in the midst of dainties, abstains from them or the one secluded from those things that invite intemperance?
MARIA: I think the man whom abundance cannot corrupt is more steadfastly temperate.
PAMPHILUS: Which more truly deserves praise for chastity, the man who castrates himself or the one who, while sexually unimpaired, nevertheless abstains from sexual love?
MARIA: My vote would go to the latter. The first I’d regard as mad.
PAMPHILUS: But don’t those who renounce marriage by a strict vow castrate themselves, in a sense?
MARIA: Apparently.
PAMPHILUS: Now to abstain from sexual intercourse isn’t a virtue.
MARIA: Isn’t it?
PAMPHILUS: Look at it this way. If it were a virtue per se not to have intercourse, intercourse would be a vice. Now it happens that it is a vice not to have intercourse, a virtue to have it.
MARIA: When does this “happen”?
PAMPHILUS: Whenever the husband seeks his due from his wife, especially if he seeks her embrace from a desire for children.
MARIA: What if from lust? Isn’t it right for him to be denied?
PAMPHILUS: It’s right to reprove him, or rather to ask him politely to refrain. It’s not right to refuse him flatly – though in this respect I hear few husbands complain of their wives.
Maria here strategically exploits the major weapon in her arsenal, her chastity. By linking the loss of her virginity not to the satisfaction of erotic desire but to procreation, she compels Pamphilus to become simultaneously a respectful defender of her chastity and a proponent of the proper reason for its sacrifice. He is made to argue for the superiority not of eros selfishly regarded but of its procreative fruit. Once he does so, Maria herself aggressively turns the tables and makes him speak to the matter of eros in the face of lost maidenhood: “You answer me in turn: which is the more pleasing sight, a rose gleaming white on its bush or plucked and gradually withering?” Translation: Will you still love me once I have yielded, once I am an aging mother, no longer a virginal maiden?
Maria’s remark makes clear that chastity has been her prime concern not because she lacks sexual desire; on the contrary, the tenacity of her argument betrays the ardor beneath her outward coolness. Neither does she esteem her virginity because “it wins universal approval and applause,” nor because “it is a thing most pleasing to God”; these opinions she puts into the mouths of others (“they say . . .”), and she readily accedes to Pamphilus’s rejoinders to both these points, even accepting his implicit argument about the goodness of sexual pleasure. Rather, as one can fully see only at the end, her virginity is in the service of satisfying her own erotic longings, but only with someone who is worthy of being their object and, looking ahead to marriage, of satisfying them long-term.
As the colloquy moves to a close, Maria forces Pamphilus to address certain genuine and enduring worries about married life: loss of liberty, economic hardships, the cares of childrearing, the risks of losing a child or of raising bad children. In all his answers, which we will not rehearse here, Pamphilus speaks the speech of strong, confident, and responsible manhood, willing and able to undertake all the risks of family life in the service of virtue and holiness. He concludes:
PAMPHILUS: We’ll try, therefore, to be good ourselves. Next, we’ll see that our children are imbued from birth with sacred teachings and beliefs. What the jar is filled with when new matters most. In addition, we’ll see that at home we provide an example of life for them to imitate.
MARIA: What you describe is difficult.
PAMPHILUS: No wonder, because it’s lovely. (And you’re difficult too, for the same reason!) But we’ll labor so much the harder to this end.
MARIA: You’ll have tractable material to work with. See that you form and fashion me.
Maria, in so many words, appears to have accepted his suit. But she keeps her composure. Pamphilus begs for her pledge; she refers him instead to seek the consent of their parents.
PAMPHILUS: But meanwhile say just three words.‡
MARIA: Nothing easier, but once words have flown out they don’t fly back. I’ll give better advice for us both: confer with your parents and mine, to get the consent of both sides.
PAMPHILUS: You bid me woo, but in three words you can make success certain.
MARIA: I don’t know whether I could. I’m not a free agent. In former times marriages were arranged only by the authority of elders. But however that may be, I think our marriage will have more chance of success if it’s arranged by our parents’ authority. And it’s your job to woo; that isn’t appropriate to our sex. We girls like