Let's start with Helen's question: "Man is enemy to virginity: how may we barricade it against him?" (107-108). Instead of a consensual act between two parties, sex here is clearly depicted as an assault upon a woman's honor by a lustful man. Problem number one. Virginity is put upon a pedestal; a woman who has her virginity intact is pure, clean, and desirable, and as soon as she loses it, she is ruined. We've all heard it before.
With that in mind, I found Paroles's answer to be particularly hilarious. He says "there was never a virgin got till virginity was first lost" (121-122), and that "To speak on the part of virginity is to accuse your mothers, which is most infallible disobedience" (128-129).
Paroles makes me laugh here, because what he says is so true. Virginity in Shakespeare's day was idolized; a woman's entire worth depended upon her chastity (remember Lavinia?). Today, while a woman isn't completely valued based on the status of her virginity, it is still of the utmost importance. I like what Paroles says because his tongue-in-cheek comments ring true. The concept of virginity as a means to value and devalue women is ridiculous. On the most visible level, if all women strove to preserve their virginity, humanity would cease to exist. Sex, as Paroles points out, is not only natural; it's common. Every mother was once a virgin, yet we don't denounce our own parents as whores.
Though I don't agree with Paroles's main point, that women should have sex solely to procreate, I do appreciate a Shakespearean voice denouncing the value of the protected virginal status. Somewhere hidden in his snarky humor and off-the-cuff remarks lies a real argument against the practicality of coveting a woman's virginity, and that is something I can agree with.
You bring up some great points about the cheeky comments of Paroles. At Shakespeare's time, I'm sure this scene, though with some hilarity to it, also had some underlying sense of a viewpoint that was not commonly accepted, that view being it is stupid that virginity as a coveted “item” of society. It is still a radical view today, with the standards that Allison from The Breakfast Club lays out clearly. Quotes like “there was never a virgin until virginity was first lost” (121-122) implies that Shakespeare was well-aware that the concept of virginity had a beginning, and maybe if it had not have been taken the way it was, the concept he held in his times and that we hold today would be vastly different. The variance in sexual morality versus sexual norms plays an enormous role to how we still view virginity today. It is interesting how, especially in All’s Well with Helen but also in several cultures today, that the loss of a woman’s virginity is considered an “attack on [her] honor by a lustful man,” as you phrase it. At any rate, there is a lot of conversation to be had in regards to the concept of virginity.
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