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Read Ebook: Woman on Her Own False Gods and The Red Robe Three Plays By Brieux by Brieux Eug Ne Fagan James Bernard Translator Miall Bernard Translator Shaw Charlotte Frances Translator
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Ebook has 2487 lines and 55953 words, and 50 pages
GIRARD. Well, that's true. We want to have the mending back.
TH?R?SE. And we don't mean to give it up.
GIRARD. Well, we expected that. Now, to show you that we're not such a bad lot as you think, we'll share it with you on two conditions. The first is that you're paid the same wages as we are.
DESCHAUME. Look here, that won't suit me at all, that won't. If my old woman gets as much as me, how am I to keep her under? Blimey, she'll think she's my bloomin' equal!
GIRARD Oh, bung her into some other berth. Let me go on. The second condition is that you aren't to have a separate workshop. We'll all work together as we used to.
TH?R?SE. Why?
DESCHAUME. You women do a damned sight too much for your ha'pence.
GIRARD. Yes, it's all in the interests of the masters. It's against solidarity.
TH?R?SE. Will you allow me to express my astonishment that you should make conditions with us when you wish to take something from us?
CHARPIN. We're ony tellin' you our terms for sharing the work with you.
TH?R?SE. I quite understand; but we have no desire to share it with you. We mean to keep it. And I'm greatly surprised to hear you suggest that we should all work together.
CONSTANCE. Indeed we won't.
DESCHAUME. Why not, Mademoiselle? When we worked together--
CONSTANCE When we worked with you before, you played all sorts of dirty tricks on us to make us leave.
DESCHAUME. What tricks? Did you hear anything about that, Charpin?
CHARPIN. I dunnow what she's talkin' about. D'you Vincent?
VINCENT. Look here, I only want to get to an understandin'.
CONSTANCE. You never stopped sayin' beastly things.
DESCHAUME AND CHARPIN Oh! O-ho!
DESCHAUME. Well, if we can't have a bit of chippin' in a friendly way like!
BERTHE. Beastly things like that ain't jokes. I didn't know where to look meself; and I've sat for a sculptor, so I ain't too particular.
CHARPIN. He! He! I thought she was talkin' about that old joke of the rats.
TH?R?SE. Yes, you're laughing about it still! About shutting up live rats in our desks before we came to work.
GIRARD. He! He! We didn't mean any harm.
TH?R?SE. You didn't mean any harm! The little apprentice was ill for a week, and Madame Dumont had a bad fall. You thought of dozens of things of that kind, like the typists who mixed up all the letters on the women's desks. When we went away to get our lunch, you came and spoilt our work and made the women lose a great part of their day's pay or work hours of overtime. We don't want any more of that. You agreed we should have a separate workshop. We'll keep it.
GIRARD. If Monsieur F?liat sticks to you, we'll have to come out on strike.
TH?R?SE. We don't want Monsieur F?liat to get into trouble because of us.
GIRARD. Well, what are you going to do about it?
TH?R?SE. We'll take your places.
CHARPIN Well, I'm damned!
DESCHAUME If you do, we'll have to put you through it!
CONSTANCE. We'll do it!
GIRARD D'you understand now, Mademoiselle, why we socialists don't want women in the factory or in the workshop? The woman's the devil because of the low salary she has to take. She's a victim, and she likes to be a victim, and so she's the best card the employer has to play against a strike. The women are too weak, and if I might say so, too slavish--
DESCHAUME. Yes, that's the word, mate, slavish.
BERTHE Look at that man there, my husband, and hear what he's saying before me, his wife, that he makes obey him like a dog. He beats me, he does. You don't trouble about my being what you call slavish when it's you that profits by it! I'd like to know who taught women to be slavish but husbands like you.
TH?R?SE. You've so impressed it upon women that they're inferior to men, that they've ended by believing it.
GIRARD. Well, maybe there's exceptions, but it's true in the main.
DESCHAUME. Let 'em stay at home, I says, and cook the bloomin' dinner.
BERTHE. And what'll they cook the days when you spend all your wages in booze.
GIRARD. It's the people that started you working that you ought to curse.
BERTHE. I like that! It was my husband himself that brought me to the workshop.
TH?R?SE. She's not the only one, eh, Vincent?
VINCENT. But I ain't sayin' nothin', I ain't. What are you turnin' on me for? I ain't sayin' nothin'.
BERTHE. We'd like nothing better than to stay at home. Why don't you support us there?
CONSTANCE. It's because you don't support us there that you've got to let us work.
DESCHAUME. We ain't going to.
BERTHE. We won't give in to you.
GIRARD. If you don't, we'll turn the job in.
TH?R?SE. And I tell you that we shall take your places.
DESCHAUME. Rats! You can't do it.
TH?R?SE. We couldn't at one time, that's true. But now we've got the machines. The machines drove the women from their homes. Up to lately one had to have a man's strength for the work; now, by just pulling a lever, a woman can do as much and more than the strongest man. The machines revenge us.
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