The Collected Dramas of George Bernard Shaw (Illustrated Edition). GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
to hear the pious people talk you would suppose it was a bed of roses.
VIVIE. Still, you consider it worth while. It pays.
MRS WARREN. Of course it’s worth while to a poor girl, if she can resist temptation and is goodlooking and well conducted and sensible. It’s far better than any other employment open to her.
I always thought that it oughtn’t to be. It can’t be right, Vivie, that there shouldn’t be better opportunities for women. I stick to that: it’s wrong. But it’s so, right or wrong; and a girl must make the best of it. But of course it’s not worth while for a lady. If you took to it youd be a fool; but I should have been a fool if I’d taken to anything else.
VIVIE [more and more deeply moved] Mother: suppose we were both as poor as you were in those wretched old days, are you quite sure that you wouldn’t advise me to try the Waterloo bar, or marry a laborer, or even go into the factory?
MRS WARREN [indignantly] Of course not. What sort of mother do you take me for! How could you keep your selfrespect in such starvation and slavery? And whats a woman worth? whats life worth? without selfrespect! Why am I independent and able to give my daughter a firstrate education, when other women that had just as good opportunities are in the gutter? Because I always knew how to respect myself and control myself. Why is Liz looked up to in a cathedral town? The same reason. Where would we be now if we’d minded the clergyman’s foolishness? Scrubbing floors for one and sixpence a day and nothing to look forward to but the workhouse infirmary. Don’t you be led astray by people who don’t know the world, my girl. The only way for a woman to provide for herself decently is for her to be good to some man that can afford to be good to her. If she’s in his own station of life, let her make him marry her; but if she’s far beneath him she can’t expect it: why should she? it wouldn’t be for her own happiness. Ask any lady in London society that has daughters; and she’ll tell you the same, except that I tell you straight and she’ll tell you crooked. Thats all the difference.
VIVIE [fascinated, gazing at her] My dear mother: you are a wonderful woman: you are stronger than all England. And are you really and truly not one wee bit doubtful — or — or — ashamed?
MRS WARREN. Well, of course, dearie, it’s only good manners to be ashamed of it: it’s expected from a woman. Women have to pretend to feel a great deal that they don’t feel. Liz used to be angry with me for plumping out the truth about it. She used to say that when every woman could learn enough from what was going on in the world before her eyes, there was no need to talk about it to her. But then Liz was such a perfect lady! She had the true instinct of it; while I was always a bit of a vulgarian. I used to be so pleased when you sent me your photos to see that you were growing up like Liz: you’ve just her ladylike, determined way. But I can’t stand saying one thing when everyone knows I mean another. Whats the use in such hypocrisy? If people arrange the world that way for women, theres no good pretending it’s arranged the other way. No: I never was a bit ashamed really. I consider I had a right to be proud of how we managed everything so respectably, and never had a word against us, and how the girls were so well taken care of. Some of them did very well: one of them married an ambassador. But of course now I daren’t talk about such things: whatever would they think of us! [She yawns]. Oh dear! I do believe I’m getting sleepy after all. [She stretches herself lazily, thoroughly relieved by her explosion, and placidly ready for her night’s rest].
VIVIE. I believe it is I who will not be able to sleep now. [She goes to the dresser and lights the candle. Then she extinguishes the lamp, darkening the room a good deal]. Better let in some fresh air before locking up. [She opens the cottage door, and finds that it is broad moonlight]. What a beautiful night! Look! [She draws the curtains of the window. The landscape is seen bathed in the radiance of the harvest moon rising over Blackdown].
MRS WARREN [with a perfunctory glance at the scene] Yes, dear; but take care you don’t catch your death of cold from the night air.
VIVIE [contemptuously] Nonsense.
MRS WARREN [querulously] Oh yes: everything I say is nonsense, according to you.
VIVIE [turning to her quickly] No: really that is not so, mother.
You have got completely the better of me tonight, though I intended it to be the other way. Let us be good friends now.
MRS WARREN [shaking her head a little ruefully] So it has been the other way. But I suppose I must give in to it. I always got the worst of it from Liz; and now I suppose it’ll be the same with you.
VIVIE. Well, never mind. Come: goodnight, dear old mother. [She takes her mother in her arms].
MRS WARREN [fondly] I brought you up well, didn’t I, dearie?
VIVIE. You did.
MRS WARREN. And youll be good to your poor old mother for it, won’t you?
VIVIE. I will, dear. [Kissing her] Goodnight.
MRS WARREN [with unction] Blessings on my own dearie darling! a mother’s blessing!
[She embraces her daughter protectingly, instinctively looking upward for divine sanction.]
ACT III
[In the Rectory garden next morning, with the sun shining from a cloudless sky. The garden wall has a five-barred wooden gate, wide enough to admit a carriage, in the middle. Beside the gate hangs a bell on a coiled spring, communicating with a pull outside. The carriage drive comes down the middle of the garden and then swerves to its left, where it ends in a little gravelled circus opposite the Rectory porch. Beyond the gate is seen the dusty high road, parallel with the wall, bounded on the farther side by a strip of turf and an unfenced pine wood. On the lawn, between the house and the drive, is a clipped yew tree, with a garden bench in its shade. On the opposite side the garden is shut in by a box hedge; and there is a little sundial on the turf, with an iron chair near it. A little path leads through the box hedge, behind the sundial.]
[Frank, seated on the chair near the sundial, on which he has placed the morning paper, is reading The Standard. His father comes from the house, red-eyed and shivery, and meets Frank’s eye with misgiving.]
FRANK [looking at his watch] Half-past eleven. Nice hour for a rector to come down to breakfast!
REV. S. Don’t mock, Frank: don’t mock. I am a little — er — [Shivering] —
FRANK. Off color?
REV. S. [repudiating the expression] No, sir: unwell this morning. Where’s your mother?
FRANK. Don’t be alarmed: she’s not here. Gone to town by the 11.13 with Bessie. She left several messages for you. Do you feel equal to receiving them now, or shall I wait til you’ve breakfasted?
REV. S. I h a v e breakfasted, sir. I am surprised at your mother going to town when we have people staying with us. They’ll think it very strange.
FRANK. Possibly she has considered that. At all events, if Crofts is going to stay here, and you are going to sit up every night with him until four, recalling the incidents of your fiery youth, it is clearly my mother’s duty, as a prudent housekeeper, to go up to the stores and order a barrel of whisky and a few hundred siphons.
REV. S. I did not observe that Sir George drank excessively.
FRANK. You were not in a condition to, gov’nor.
REV. S. Do you mean to say that I — ?
FRANK [calmly] I never saw a beneficed clergyman less sober. The anecdotes you told about your past career were so awful that I really don’t think Praed would have passed the night under your roof if it hadnt been for the way my mother and he took to one another.
REV. S. Nonsense, sir. I am Sir George Crofts’ host. I must talk to him about something; and he has only one subject. Where is Mr Praed now?
FRANK. He is driving