Doctors of Philosophy Read Free

must be right.
    CATHERINE. Charlie is convinced that it happened. He thinks you must be suffering from a nervous disorder. It was embarrassing for Charlie.
    L EONORA. It’s embarrassing for me.
MRS. S. puts her head round the door.
    MRS. S . Daphne’s boy friend on the ’phone. Coming this afternoon.
    CATHERINE. Did he want to speak to me?
    MRS. S . No, he wanted not to speak to you.
(Withdraws.)
    CATHERINE. Daphne’s boy friend is rather shy. He’s called Charlie and we call him young Charlie to distinguish him from Charlie.
    LEONORA. What does he do?
    CATHERINE. Nuclear physics. He’s just finished his postgraduate course and got a job, it’s very hush-hush.
    L EONORA. Is it a serious affair?
    CATHERINE. I incline to think so. There have been several. But of course she must wait till she’s got her degree.
    L EONORA. That would be a pity. She ought to get married soon.
    CATHERINE. You spoke very differently when I got married to Charlie. You opposed it.
    L EONORA. You were a first-rate scholar. Daphne is no scholar at all. If she’s in love with the man, she’ll have a settled married life. She might take a job in a grammar school. There will be no conflict, as there is in your case.
    CATHERINE. I have a satisfactory married life as married lives go. You know nothing of married life.
    L EONORA. What about your intellectual life?
    CATHERINE. It’s satisfied by teaching at the Grammar School.
    L EONORA. I don’t believe it.
    CATHERINE. Why not?
    L EONORA. When you come up to visit me in college you have a hankering look. I feel sorry for you at those times. I think perhaps it stabs you — the knowledge that you had it in you to become a distinguished scholar — and have become merely the mother of an average student and the wife of a second-class scholar.
    CATHERINE. You needn’t feel sorry for me. Charlie’s one of the best economists in the country.
    L EONORA. That doesn’t prove him to be a first-class one.
    CATHERINE. Your standards were always too high, Leonora. Reality forces one to lower one’s standards. In your remote life you know nothing of reality.
    L EONORA. I think you hanker after my remote life. I think you desire a form of reality where your standards can be high without discomfort.
    CATHERINE. I might return to scholarship one day.
    L EONORA. After all these years? A scholar needs continuity, Catherine.
    CATHERINE. I haven’t been entirely idle for all these years. I could pick up the threads if I should wish.
    L EONORA. You need more than the wish, you need the capacity.
    CATHERINE. What makes you think I haven’t got the capacity?
    L EONORA. Your manner and expression.
    CATHERINE. If I sat down to study a subject, Leonora, I would have a studious look. Naturally I don’t look the scholar when I’m running the house and running Charlie and correcting the fourth-form homework.
    L EONORA. A woman of intellectual capacity has a certain manner and expression all the time. They are the manner and expression of detachment, and you can’t pick them up overnight.
    CATHERINE. I wouldn’t want to pick them up at all. I like to please men. Do you think it pleases a man when he looks into a woman’s eyes and sees a reflection of the British Museum Reading Room? I don’t envy your expression and your manner.
    LEONORA. I think you do. Sometimes you look at me like a jealous woman.
    CATHERINE. That’s a curious observation, considering you are so detached. In fact, I only want to know what makes you tick when I look at you.
    L EONORA. What conclusion have you reached?
    CATHERINE. That you’re in love with something without needing it to love you back. That’s how you look and act. Sometimes it’s terrifying.
    L EONORA. And sometimes fascinating.
    CATHERINE. Yes … of course I’m attached to you. Don’t you get tired of practising detachment?
    L EONORA. I admit sometimes I get tired of being treated as a scholar and a gentleman.
    CATHERINE. You ought to have got married, Leonora, if only for