Major Barbara Wealth/Poverty Quotes

How we cite our quotes: (Act.Line)

Quote #1

My dear Stephen: where is the money to come from? It is easy enough for you and the other children to live on my income as long as we are in the same house; but I can't keep four families in four separate houses. You know how poor my father is: he has barely seven thousand a year now; and really, if he were not the Earl of Stevenage, he would have to give up society. He can do nothing for us. He says, naturally enough, that it is absurd that he should be asked to provide for the children of a man who is rolling in money. You see, Stephen, your father must be fabulously wealthy, because there is always a war going on somewhere. (1.39)

The play starts out with Lady Brit bringing Stephen into the know about her/their financial problems. You see, because her daughters are getting ready to be married to men who aren't likely to provide well for them (at least at first), she's scrambling to figure out how they will make ends meet. Which means that after years of not seeing her husband, she's inviting him to the house to ask him for some extra cash.

Quote #2

LADY BRITOMART: I must get the money somehow.
STEPHEN: We cannot take money from him. I had rather go and live in some cheap place like Bedford Square or even Hampstead than take a farthing of his money. (1.71-72)

Despite the fact that Lady Brit has resigned herself to having to ask her "immoral" husband for his blood money to help support the girls and their husbands, Stephen has real problems with it, especially with all the extra information he's gotten from his mother about his father's history and "immorality."

Quote #3

STEPHEN [bitterly]: We are utterly dependent on him and his cannons, then?
LADY BRITOMART: Certainly not: the money is settled. But he provided it. So you see it is not a question of taking money from him or not: it is simply a question of how much. I don't want any more for myself. (1.76-77)

Stephen is trying really hard to take a stand on accepting his father's money, but Lady B is really making it hard for him. Here, she has just informed him that their current lifestyle has been entirely supported by a flat sum of money that Undershaft had already provided, so now the question is not whether his money will help them out, but how much.