Reflecting on A Pilgrim's Regress

I. Intro Summary

As John continued to struggle with the rules that the Landlord had given, he had somehow managed to wander off into the wood to escape the harsh realities set before him. He loved the wood. But most importantly the wood gave him a sense of expectancy for through a window in the wood was an island of peace and tranquility and better than that, no rules and no Landlord. The wood was great, but there was something that he was sure the Island could give him, that the wood didn’t have. John would sit in the wood and try very hard to imagine that island with hopes that one day he would be able to go there.

II. Excerpt from "A Pilgrim's Regress"

"But no feeling began: and just as he was opening his eyes, he heard a voice speaking to him. It was quite close at hand, and very sweet, and not at all like the old voice of the wood. When he looked round he saw what he had never expected, yet he was not surprised. There in the grass beside him sat a laughing brown girl of about his own age, and she had no clothes on.
‘It was me you wanted’, said the brown girl. ‘I am better than your silly Islands’. And John rose and caught her, and in all haste, committed fornication with her.
After that John was always going to the wood. He did not always have his pleasure of her in the body, though it often ended that way: sometimes he would talk to her about himself, telling her lies about his courage and cleverness. All that he told her she remembered, so that on other days, she would tell it over to him. Sometimes, even, he would go with her though the wood looking for the sea and Island, but not often. Meanwhile, the year went on and the leaves began to fall in the wood: Until now, as I dreamed, John had slept in the wood and woke up in the wood. The girl was still there, and her appearance was hateful to John: and he saw that she knew this and the more she knew the more she stared at him smiling....
‘I shall not come back here,’ said John. ‘What I wanted is not here. It wasn’t you I wanted, you know.”
‘Wasn’t it? said the brown girl ‘Then be off. But you must take your family with you.’
With that she put up her hands to her mouth and called. Instantly from behind every tree there slipped out a brown girl: each of them was just like herself. The little wood was full of them.
‘What are these?’
‘Our daughters’, said she. ‘Did you not know that you were a father? Did you think I was barren you fool? And now children,’ she added turning to the mob, ‘go with your father!’ "

II. Refective Question:
- -metaphorically speaking- -

As pleasurable as she was, did you think she was barren you fool?