Pamela, Or Virtue Rewarded

I would not have excused her to let me twice enjoin the same thing,

while I took so much care to make her compliance with me reasonable, and

such as should not destroy her own free agency, in points that ought to

be allowed her: And if I was not always right, that yet she would bear

with me, if she saw me set upon it; and expostulate with me on the right

side of compliance; for that would shew me, (supposing small points

in dispute, from which the greatest quarrels, among friends, generally

arise,) that she differed from me, not for contradiction-sake, but

desired to convince me for my own; and that I should, another time, take

better resolutions. This would be so obliging a conduct, that I should, in justice, have

doubled my esteem for one, who, to humour me, could give up her

own judgment; and I should see she could have no other view in her

expostulations, after her compliance had passed, than to rectify my

motions for the future; and it would have been impossible then, but I

must have paid the greater deference to her opinion and advice in more

momentous matters. In all companies she must have shewn, that she had, whether I deserved

it altogether or not, a high regard and opinion of me; and this the

rather, as such a conduct in her would be a reputation and security

to herself: For if we rakes attempt a married lady, our first

encouragement, exclusive of our own vanity, arises from the indifferent

opinion, slight, or contempt, she expresses of her husband.

I should expect, therefore, that she should draw a kind veil over my

faults; that such as she could not hide, she would extenuate; that she

would place my better actions in an advantageous light, and shew that I

had her good opinion, at least, whatever liberties the world took with

my character. She must have valued my friends for my sake; been cheerful and easy,

whomsoever I had brought home with me; and, whatever faults she had

observed in me, have never blamed me before company; at least, with such

an air of superiority, as should have shewn she had a better opinion of

her own judgment, than of mine.

Now, my Pamela, this is but a faint sketch of the conduct I must have

expected from my wife, let her quality have been what it would; or have

lived with her on bad terms. Judge then, if to me a lady of the modish

taste could have been tolerable.

The perverseness and contradiction I have too often seen, in some of my

visits, even among people of sense, as well as condition, had prejudiced

me to the married state; and, as I knew I could not bear it, surely I

was in the right to decline it: And you see, my dear, that I have not

gone among this class of people for a wife; nor know I, indeed, where,

in any class, I could have sought one, or had one suitable to my mind,

if not you: For here is my misfortune; I could not have been contented

to have been but moderately happy in a wife.