Mrs. Warren's Profession

Mrs. Warren's Profession is a play by George Bernard Shaw. The story centers on the relationship between Mrs. Warren, a prostitute, described by Shaw as "on the whole, a genial and fairly presentable old blackguard of a woman," and her daughter, Vivie http://authorsdirectory.com/c/wrpro10.htm. More than about prostitution, the play explores the conflicts of the new women of the Victorian times - the middle-class girls who wanted greater social independence in work and education.

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Other themes include criticism of the sexual triteness of the times and a want for greater social sexual awareness.

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Shaw was a member of the Fabian Society (founded 1884) which included other leftward thinkers like the Webbs, H.G. Wells and the great women's suffrage campaigner, Emmeline Pankhurst. It is possibly her influence on him which may have sown the seed for "Mrs Warren's Profession" and probably the revolutionary New Zealand decision to grant women the vote - a world first in 1893 - that brtought the idea into full bloom.

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Written in 1894, the play was originally banned by the (Britain's official censor) because of its frank discussion and portrayal of prostitution, but was finally first performed on Sunday January 5th, 1902, at London's New Lyric Club with the distinguished actor-manager, Harley Granville-Barker, among the cast. (Members-only clubs have always been a device to avoid the eye of authority, but actors often also use it to invite their fellow-artists to a private showing of a play, usually on Sundays, when theatres are closed to the public). There was another performance, this time on the public stage, in New York in 1905. The New York police issued warrants for everybody concerned, cast and crew, but it seems that only the house manager of the theatre actually got nicked.

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The story - that of a woman who turns to prostitution to support her child - would not have shocked even a Victorian audience provided that it were couched in euphemisms. What was truly shocking was that it was a whole-hearted attack on the domestic imprisonment of women by the male dominated culture of the period. Perhaps even more shocking was the suggestion that she not only survived, she actually prospered.

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It was only after World War 1, when ordinary women had tasted freedom for the first time, often in the deadly danger of munition factories, that it became possible to mount a public showing (in 1925) of "Mrs Warren's Profession". The play continued to make audiences and critics uncomfortable even then and does so to this day. The reason - incest is an important sub-text.

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Together with "Pygmalion", it remains one of Shaw's most frequently revived works. It deserves to. And anyway, it's a whole lot shorter than most of his plays.

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The playscript is freely available on many web sites. What may interest you in particular is the extensive STUDY GUIDE (even including currency values updated from 1902) available at studyguide/mrs_warrens_profession

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