It is clear that St. Augustine is gradually changing his views about everything in life through the course of his life story. Book VI in particular takes as its theme the subject of love and women, which is an important issue for St. Augustine to turn his attention to in his walk towards embracing Christianity. It is important to remember that the church at the time preached abstinence and only recommended having sexual relations within a marriage context. For Augustine, who was a self-confessed lover of women and sex, this was a great challenge. However, by the end of this section, note what practical steps he has taken in response to the church's teachings:

My mistress was torn from my side as an impediment to my marriage, and my heart which clung to her was torn and wounded till it bled. And she went back to Africa, vowing to thee never to know any other man and leaving with me my natural son by her.

At great personal cost, Augustine dismisses his mistress who was very dear to him and pledges himself to be married, even though he has to wait at least another two years before he can marry. This is obvious proof of the change in heart he has experienced through the course of this section.

In Book VI of Confessions, how does Augustine view women and love?

Book VI of this autobiographical text concerns the issue of sex and women, and how Augustine had to change his views from being a young man in love with women and sex to agreeing to adapt his lifestyle and habits in accordance with the teachings of the church, which stated that you should only enjoy sexual relations within the context of a marriage. At the time, Augustine reflects that he was a slave to lust in his need to have sex and his inability to abandon his hedonistic pursuits. Note how he comments on this, looking back at what he did after he sent his concubine away in order to prepare for marriage:

And so, since I was not a lover of wedlock so much as a slave of lust, I procured another mistress--not a wife, of course. Thus in bondage to a lasting habit, the disease of my soul might be nursed up and kept in its vigor or even increased until it reached the realm of matrimony. Nor indeed was the wound healed that had been caused by cutting away my former mistress; only it ceased to burn and throb, and began to fester, and was more dangerous because it was less painful.

Note the kind of language Augustine uses to describe his lust-seeking habits. He classifies it as a "wound," and this powerful metaphor is enhanced through Augustine's description of the way in which it "festers" when he satisfies his lustful desires and becomes more dangerous because it is less painful. The reader sees that Augustine's views about women and love are gradually moving more and more towards the church's view of women and love, though his flesh still exerts a power over his body that Augustine struggles against, as suggested through words like "bondage."