VIVIE.  So that’s how it is done, is it?  You must have said all that to many a woman, to have it so pat.

MRS WARREN [passionately] What harm am I asking you to do? [Vivie turns away contemptuously.  Mrs Warren continues desperately] Vivie:  listen to me:  you don’t understand:  you were taught wrong on purpose:  you don’t know what the world is really like.

VIVIE [arrested] Taught wrong on purpose!  What do you mean?

MRS WARREN.  I mean that youre throwing away all your chances for nothing.  You think that people are what they pretend to be:  that the way you were taught at school and college to think right and proper is the way things really are.  But it’s not:  it’s all only a pretence, to keep the cowardly slavish common run of people quiet.  Do you want to find that out, like other women, at forty, when you’ve thrown yourself away and lost your chances; or won’t you take it in good time now from your own mother, that loves you and swears to you that it’s truth:  gospel truth? [Urgently] Vivie:  the big people, the clever people, the managing people, all know it.  They do as I do, and think what I think.  I know plenty of them.  I know them to speak to, to introduce you to, to make friends of for you.  I don’t mean anything wrong:  thats what you don’t understand:  your head is full of ignorant ideas about me.  What do the people that taught you know about life or about people like me?  When did they ever meet me, or speak to me, or let anyone tell them about me? the fools!  Would they ever have done anything for you if I hadn’t paid them?  Havn’t I told you that I want you to be respectable?  Havn’t I brought you up to be respectable?  And how can you keep it up without my money and my influence and Lizzie’s friends?  Can’t you see that youre cutting your own throat as well as breaking my heart in turning your back on me?

VIVIE.  I recognize the Crofts philosophy of life, mother.  I heard it all from him that day at the Gardners’.

MRS WARREN.  You think I want to force that played-out old sot on you!  I don’t, Vivie:  on my oath I don’t.

VIVIE.  It would not matter if you did:  you would not succeed. [Mrs Warren winces, deeply hurt by the implied indifference towards her affectionate intention.  Vivie, neither understanding this nor concerning herself about it, goes on calmly] Mother:  you don’t at all know the sort of person I am.  I don’t object to Crofts more than to any other coarsely built man of his class.  To tell you the truth, I rather admire him for being strongminded enough to enjoy himself in his own way and make plenty of money instead of living the usual shooting, hunting, dining-out, tailoring, loafing life of his set merely because all the rest do it.  And I’m perfectly aware that if I’d been in the same circumstances as my aunt Liz, I’d have done exactly what she did.