Becoming America - An Exploration of American Literature from Precolonial to Post-Revolution, 2018a

BECOMING AMERICA
REVOLUTIONARY AND EARLY NATIONAL PERIOD LITERATURE
No. My treatment of you henceforth will be regulated by one principle. I regard
you only as one undergoing a probation or apprenticeship; as subjected to trials of
your sincerity and fortitude. The marriage I now propose to you is desirable, because
it will make you independent of me. Your poverty might create an unsuitable bias
in favour of proposals, one of whose eects would be to set you beyond fortune’s
reach. That bias will cease, when you cease to be poor and dependent.
Love is the strongest of all human delusions. That fortitude, which is not
subdued by the tenderness and blandishments of woman, may be trusted; but no
fortitude, which has not undergone that test, will be trusted by us.
This woman is a charming enthusiast. She will never marry but him whom
she passionately loves. Her power over the heart that loves her will scarcely have
limits. The means of prying into your transactions, of suspecting and sifting
your thoughts, which her constant society with you, while sleeping and waking,
her zeal and watchfulness for your welfare, and her curiosity, adroitness, and
penetration will aord her, are evident. Your danger, therefore, will be imminent.
Your fortitude will be obliged to have recourse, not to ight, but to vigilance. Your
eye must never close.
Alas! what human magnanimity can stand this test! How can I persuade myself
that you will not fail? I waver between hope and fear. Many, it is true, have fallen,
and dragged with them the author of their ruin, but some have soared above even
these perils and temptations, with their ery energies unimpaired, and great has
been, as great ought to be, their recompence.
But you are doubtless aware of your danger. I need not repeat the consequences
of betraying your trust, the rigour of those who will Judge your fault, the unerring
and unbounded scrutiny to which your actions, the most secret and indierent,
will be subjected.
Your conduct, however, will be voluntary. At your own option be it, to see or
not to see this woman. Circumspection, deliberation forethought, are your sacred
duties and highest interest.
Chapter VIII
Ludloe’s remarks on the seductive and bewitching powers of women, on the
diculty of keeping a secret which they wish to know, and to gain which they employ
the soft artillery of tears and prayers, and blandishments and menaces, are familiar
to all men, but they had little weight with me, because they were unsupported by
my own experience. I had never had any intellectual or sentimental connection
with the sex. My meditations and pursuits had all led a dierent way, and a bias
had gradually been given to my feelings, very unfavourable to the renements of
love. I acknowledge, with shame and regret, that I was accustomed to regard the
physical and sensual consequences of the sexual relation as realities, and every
thing intellectual, disinterested, and heroic, which enthusiasts connect with it as
idle dreams. Besides, said I, I am yet a stranger to the secret, on the preservation
of which so much stress is laid, and it will be optional with me to receive it or not.
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