It is not only virtue triumphing over lust but the disempowered and feminised Holofernes surrendering to the
desexualised but behaviourally masculine Judith both militarily and dialectically.
But in the process he has let down Zoe, who, as his appropriately
desexualised and patronising familial analogy indicates, represents for him virtuous girlhood in general.
Women may have achieved "an internalised female virtue" in men's eyes, but having been "taught to perceive themselves as
desexualised embodiments of spiritual value," they were to be celebrated principally for their passivity.
She has completely defeminised and
desexualised herself.