Mrs. Warren’s Profession quotes

Is it more enlightened, more liberal, more tolerant than the comparatively infinitesimal office of the Lord Chamberlain? On the contrary, it has reduced itself to a degree of absurdity which makes a Catholic university a contradiction in terms.

All censorships exist to prevent anyone from challenging current conceptions and existing institutions.

All progress is initiated by challenging current concepts, and executed by supplanting existing institutions. Consequently the first condition of progress is the removal of censorships. There is the whole case against censorships in a nutshell.

On the contrary, it has reduced itself to a degree of absurdity which makes a Catholic university a contradiction in terms. All censorships exist to prevent anyone from challenging current conceptions and existing institutions.

All progress is initiated by challenging current concepts, and executed by supplanting existing institutions.

Consequently the first condition of progress is the removal of censorships. There is the whole case against censorships in a nutshell.

Nobody can feel that such conventions are really compulsory; and consequently nobody can believe in the stage pathos that accepts them as an inexorable fate, or in the genuineness of the people who indulge in such pathos.

Sitting at such plays, we do not believe: we make-believe.

And the habit of make-believe becomes at last so rooted that criticism of the theatre insensibly ceases to be criticism at all, and becomes more and more a chronicle of the fashionable enterprises of the only realities left on the stage:

Happily the St. James Gazette here speaks in its haste.

Mrs. Warren’s defence of herself is not only bold and specious, but valid and unanswerable.

But it is no defence at all of the vice which she organizes. It is no defence of an immoral life to say that the alternative offered by society collectively to poor women is a miserable life, starved, overworked, fetid, ailing, ugly.

Though it is quite natural and right for Mrs. Warren to choose what is, according to her lights, the least immoral alternative, it is none the less infamous of society to offer such alternatives.

For the alternatives offered are not morality and immorality, but two sorts of immorality.

The man who cannot see that starvation, overwork, dirt, and disease are as antisocial as prostitution—that they are the vices and crimes of a nation, and not merely its misfortunes—is (to put it as politely as possible) a hopelessly Private Person.

Warren is not wicked enough, and names several romancers who would have clothed her black soul with all the terrors of tragedy. I have no doubt they would; but if you please, my dear Grein, that is just what I did not want to do.

Nothing would please our sanctimonious British public more than to throw the whole guilt of Mrs. Warren’s profession on Mrs. Warren herself.

Now the whole aim of my play is to throw that guilt on the British public itself. You may remember that when you produced my first play, Widowers’ Houses, exactly the same misunderstanding arose.

I have no doubt they would; but if you please, my dear Grein, that is just what I did not want to do. Nothing would please our sanctimonious British public more than to throw the whole guilt of Mrs. Warren’s profession on Mrs. Warren herself.

Now the whole aim of my play is to throw that guilt on the British public itself.

You may remember that when you produced my first play, Widowers’ Houses, exactly the same misunderstanding arose.

They might as well ask what good Lord Shaftesbury did by devoting his life to the exposure of evils (by no means yet remedied) compared to which the worst things brought into view or even into surmise by this play are trifles.

The good of mentioning them is that you make people so extremely uncomfortable about them that they finally stop blaming “human nature” for them, and begin to support measures for their reform.

Can anything be more absurd than the copy of The Echo which contains a notice of the performance of my play?

But I can go further than that myself. I have seen an Oxford agricultural laborer’s wife looking cheerful on eight shillings a week; but that does not console me for the fact that agriculture in England is a ruined industry.

If poverty does not matter as long as it is contented, then crime does not matter as long as it is unscrupulous.

The truth is that it is only then that it does matter most desperately. Many persons are more comfortable when they are dirty than when they are clean; but that does not recommend dirt as a national policy.

If poverty does not matter as long as it is contented, then crime does not matter as long as it is unscrupulous. The truth is that it is only then that it does matter most desperately.

Many persons are more comfortable when they are dirty than when they are clean; but that does not recommend dirt as a national policy.

Here I must for the present break off my arduous work of educating the Press. We shall resume our studies later on; but just now I am tired of playing the preceptor;

there was no good fellowship. Nothing real. Only gallantry copied out of novels, and as vulgar and affected as it could be. Maidenly reserve! gentlemanly chivalry! always saying no when you meant yes! simple purgatory for shy and sincere souls.

Yes, I imagine there must have been a frightful waste of time. Especially women’s time.

Oh, waste of life, waste of everything. But things are improving. Do you know, I have been in a positive state of excitement about meeting you ever since your magnificent achievements at Cambridge: a thing unheard of in my day.

Oh yes I do. I like working and getting paid for it.

When I’m tired of working, I like a comfortable chair, a cigar, a little whisky, and a novel with a good detective story in it.

Rising in a frenzy of repudiation. I don’t believe it. I am an artist; and I can’t believe it: I refuse to believe it. It’s only that you haven’t discovered yet what a wonderful world art can open up to you.

Aggressively. I’m no older than you, if you come to that.

Yes, you are, my dear fellow: you were born old.

I was born a boy: I’ve never been able to feel the assurance of a grown-up man in my life.

Taken aback by his assurance.

Well, you have got a nice healthy two inches of cheek all over you.

I don’t know where you got it—not from your father, anyhow. Voices and footsteps in the porch. Sh! I hear the others coming in. She sits down hastily. Remember: you’ve got your warning. The Rev. Samuel Gardner comes in, followed by Crofts.

Thank you.

Your love’s a pretty cheap commodity, my lad.

If you have no means of keeping a wife, that settles it; you can’t have Vivie.

Coolly.

The sort the world is mostly made of, I should hope. Otherwise I don’t understand how it gets its business done.

Come: taking her mother by the wrist and pulling her up pretty resolutely pull yourself together. That’s right.

My own opinions and my own way of life! Listen to her talking! Do you think I was brought up like you—able to pick and choose my own way of life?

Do you think I did what I did because I liked it, or thought it right, or wouldn’t rather have gone to college and been a lady if I’d had the chance?

Everybody has some choice, mother. The poorest girl alive may not be able to choose between being Queen of England or Principal of Newnham; but she can choose between ragpicking and flowerselling, according to her taste. People are always blaming circumstances for what they are.

The poorest girl alive may not be able to choose between being Queen of England or Principal of Newnham; but she can choose between ragpicking and flowerselling, according to her taste. People are always blaming circumstances for what they are. I don’t believe in circumstances.

The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and, if they can’t find them, make them.

Oh, it’s easy to talk, isn’t it? Here!—would you like to know what my circumstances were?

What is any respectable girl brought up to do but to catch some rich man’s fancy and get the benefit of his money by marrying him?—as if a marriage ceremony could make any difference in the right or wrong of the thing!

Oh, the hypocrisy of the world makes me sick!

Liz and I had to work and save and calculate just like other people; elseways we should be as poor as any good-for-nothing, drunken waster of a woman that thinks her luck will last forever. With great energy. I despise such people: they’ve no character;

Of course it’s worth while to a poor girl, if she can resist temptation and is good-looking 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 you’d be a fool;

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.

That’s all the difference.

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;

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?

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.

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.

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 hadn’t been for the way my mother and he took to one another.

Curious thing it must be writing a sermon every week.

Ever so curious, if he did it. He buys ’em.

He’s gone for some soda water.

My mother was a very poor woman who had no reasonable choice but to do as she did. You were a rich gentleman; and you did the same for the sake of thirty-five percent.

You are a pretty common sort of scoundrel, I think.

That is my opinion of you.

Believe me, Miss Vivie, the world isn’t such a bad place as the croakers make out. So long as you don’t fly openly in the face of society, society doesn’t ask any inconvenient questions; and it makes precious short work of the cads who do.

There are no secrets better kept than the secrets that everybody guesses.

In the society I can introduce you to, no lady or gentleman would so far forget themselves as to discuss my business affairs or your mother’s. No man can offer you a safer position.

When I think of the society that tolerates you, and the laws that protect you—when I think of how helpless nine out of ten young girls would be in the hands of you and my mother—the unmentionable woman and her capitalist bully—

You need not. I feel among the damned already.

She raises the latch of the gate to open it and go out. He follows her and puts his hand heavily on the top bar to prevent its opening.

Mr. Praed: once for all, there is no beauty and no romance in life for me.

Life is what it is; and I am prepared to take it as it is.

Enthusiastically. You will not say that if you come to Verona and on to Venice. You will cry with delight at living in such a beautiful world.