The degrees in infamy are as numerous and as scrupulously observed as
the degrees in the peerage: the moralist's notion that there are depths
at which the moral atmosphere ceases is as delusive as the rich man's
notion that there are no social jealousies or snobberies among the very
poor. No: had I drawn Mrs Warren as a fiend in human form, the very
people who now rebuke me for flattering her would probably be the
first to deride me for deducing her character logically from occupation
instead of observing it accurately in society.

One critic is so enslaved by this sort of logic that he calls my
portraiture of the Reverend Samuel Gardner an attack on religion.

According to this view Subaltern Iago is an attack on the army, Sir
John Falstaff an attack on knighthood, and King Claudius an attack on
royalty. Here again the clamor for naturalness and human feeling, raised
by so many critics when they are confronted by the real thing on the
stage, is really a clamor for the most mechanical and superficial sort
of logic. The dramatic reason for making the clergyman what Mrs Warren
calls "an old stick-in-the-mud," whose son, in spite of much capacity
and charm, is a cynically worthless member of society, is to set up a
mordant contrast between him and the woman of infamous profession, with
her well brought-up, straightforward, hardworking daughter. The critics
who have missed the contrast have doubtless observed often enough that
many clergymen are in the Church through no genuine calling, but simply
because, in circles which can command preferment, it is the refuge
of "the fool of the family"; and that clergymen's sons are often
conspicuous reactionists against the restraints imposed on them in
childhood by their father's profession. These critics must know, too,
from history if not from experience, that women as unscrupulous as Mrs
Warren have distinguished themselves as administrators and rulers, both