60 Plays: The George Bernard Shaw Edition (Illustrated). GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
the maker of cannons and the maker of armor plates to keep the cannon balls out. You build a ship proof against the best gun known: somebody makes a better gun and sinks your ship. You build a heavier ship, proof against that gun: somebody makes a heavier gun and sinks you again. And so on. Well, the duel of sex is just like that.
MRS. CLANDON. The duel of sex!
VALENTINE. Yes: you’ve heard of the duel of sex, haven’t you? Oh, I forgot: you’ve been in Madeira: the expression has come up since your time. Need I explain it?
MRS. CLANDON (contemptuously). No.
VALENTINE. Of course not. Now what happens in the duel of sex? The old fashioned mother received an old fashioned education to protect her against the wiles of man. Well, you know the result: the old fashioned man got round her. The old fashioned woman resolved to protect her daughter more effectually — to find some armor too strong for the old fashioned man. So she gave her daughter a scientific education — your plan. That was a corker for the old fashioned man: he said it wasn’t fair — unwomanly and all the rest of it. But that didn’t do him any good. So he had to give up his old fashioned plan of attack — you know — going down on his knees and swearing to love, honor and obey, and so on.
MRS. CLANDON. Excuse me: that was what the woman swore.
VALENTINE. Was it? Ah, perhaps you’re right — yes: of course it was. Well, what did the man do? Just what the artillery man does — went one better than the woman — educated himself scientifically and beat her at that game just as he had beaten her at the old game. I learnt how to circumvent the Women’s Rights woman before I was twenty-three: it’s all been found out long ago. You see, my methods are thoroughly modern.
MRS. CLANDON (with quiet disgust). No doubt.
VALENTINE. But for that very reason there’s one sort of girl against whom they are of no use.
MRS. CLANDON. Pray which sort?
VALENTINE. The thoroughly old fashioned girl. If you had brought up Gloria in the old way, it would have taken me eighteen months to get to the point I got to this afternoon in eighteen minutes. Yes, Mrs. Clandon: the Higher Education of Women delivered Gloria into my hands; and it was you who taught her to believe in the Higher Education of Women.
MRS. CLANDON (rising). Mr. Valentine: you are very clever.
VALENTINE (rising also). Oh, Mrs. Clandon!
MRS. CLANDON And you have taught me n o t h i n g. Goodbye.
VALENTINE (horrified). Goodbye! Oh, mayn’t I see her before I go?
MRS. CLANDON. I am afraid she will not return until you have gone Mr. Valentine. She left the room expressly to avoid you.
VALENTINE (thoughtfully). That’s a good sign. Goodbye. (He bows and makes for the door, apparently well satisfied.)
MRS. CLANDON (alarmed). Why do you think it a good sign?
VALENTINE (turning near the door). Because I am mortally afraid of her; and it looks as if she were mortally afraid of me. (He turns to go and finds himself face to face with Gloria, who has just entered. She looks steadfastly at him. He stares helplessly at her; then round at Mrs. Clandon; then at Gloria again, completely at a loss.)
GLORIA (white, and controlling herself with difficulty). Mother: is what Dolly told me true?
MRS. CLANDON. What did she tell you, dear?
GLORIA. That you have been speaking about me to this gentleman.
VALENTINE (murmuring). This gentleman! Oh!
MRS. CLANDON (sharply). Mr. Valentine: can you hold your tongue for a moment? (He looks piteously at them; then, with a despairing shrug, goes back to the ottoman and throws his hat on it.)
GLORIA (confronting her mother, with deep reproach). Mother: what right had you to do it?
MRS. CLANDON. I don’t think I have said anything I have no right to say, Gloria.
VALENTINE (confirming her officiously). Nothing. Nothing whatever. (Gloria looks at him with unspeakable indignation.) I beg your pardon. (He sits down ignominiously on the ottoman.)
GLORIA. I cannot believe that any one has any right even to think about things that concern me only. (She turns away from them to conceal a painful struggle with her emotion.)
MRS. CLANDON. My dear, if I have wounded your pride —
GLORIA (turning on them for a moment). My p r i d e! My pride!! Oh, it’s gone: I have learnt now that I have no strength to be proud of. (Turning away again.) But if a woman cannot protect herself, no one can protect her. No one has any right to try — not even her mother. I know I have lost your confidence, just as I have lost this man’s respect; — (She stops to master a sob.)
VALENTINE (under his breath). This man! (Murmuring again.) Oh!
MRS. CLANDON (in an undertone). Pray be silent, sir.
GLORIA (continuing). — but I have at least the right to be left alone in my disgrace. I am one of those weak creatures born to be mastered by the first man whose eye is caught by them; and I must fulfill my destiny, I suppose. At least spare me the humiliation of trying to save me. (She sits down, with her handkerchief to her eyes, at the farther end of the table.)
VALENTINE (jumping up). Look here —
MRS. CLANDON. Mr. Va —
VALENTINE (recklessly). No: I will speak: I’ve been silent for nearly thirty seconds. (He goes up to Gloria.) Miss Clandon —
GLORIA (bitterly). Oh, not Miss Clandon: you have found that it is quite safe to call me Gloria.
VALENTINE. No, I won’t: you’ll throw it in my teeth afterwards and accuse me of disrespect. I say it’s a heartbreaking falsehood that I don’t respect you. It’s true that I didn’t respect your old pride: why should I? It was nothing but cowardice. I didn’t respect your intellect: I’ve a better one myself: it’s a masculine specialty. But when the depths stirred! — when my moment came! — when you made me brave! — ah, then, then, t h e n!
GLORIA. Then you respected me, I suppose.
VALENTINE. No, I didn’t: I adored you. (She rises quickly and turns her back on him.) And you can never take that moment away from me. So now I don’t care what happens. (He comes down the room addressing a cheerful explanation to nobody in particular.) I’m perfectly aware that I’m talking nonsense. I can’t help it. (To Mrs. Clandon.) I love Gloria; and there’s an end of it.
MRS. CLANDON (emphatically). Mr. Valentine: you are a most dangerous man. Gloria: come here. (Gloria, wondering a little at the command, obeys, and stands, with drooping head, on her mother’s right hand, Valentine being on the opposite side. Mrs. Clandon then begins, with intense scorn.) Ask this man whom you have inspired and made brave, how many women have inspired him before (Gloria looks up suddenly with a flash of jealous anger and amazement); how many times he has laid the trap in which he has caught you; how often he has baited it with the same speeches; how much practice it has taken to make him perfect in his chosen part in life as the Duellist of Sex.
VALENTINE. This isn’t fair. You’re abusing my confidence, Mrs. Clandon.
MRS. CLANDON. Ask him, Gloria.
GLORIA (in a flush of rage, going over to him with her fists clenched). Is that true?
VALENTINE. Don’t be angry —
GLORIA (interrupting him implacably). Is it true? Did you ever say that before? Did you ever feel that before — for another woman?
VALENTINE (bluntly). Yes. (Gloria raises her clenched hands.)
MRS. CLANDON (horrified, springing to her side and catching her uplifted arm). Gloria!! My dear! You’re forgetting yourself. (Gloria, with a deep expiration, slowly relaxes her threatening attitude.)
VALENTINE. Remember: a man’s power of love and admiration is like any other of his powers: he