Chapter 2

The Portrait of “New Woman” in Mrs. Warren’s Profession

―Mrs. Warren’s Profession is a play for women; that it was written

for women; that it has been performed and produced mainly through
the determination of women that it should be performed and
produced; that the enthusiasm of women made its first performance
excitingly successful; and that not one of these women had any
inducement to support it except their belief in the timeliness and the
power of the lesson the play teaches.‖
(George Bernard Shaw, ―The Author’s Apology‖ in Mrs. Warren’s
Profession)

George Bernard Shaw completed Mrs. Warren’s Profession, one of his

―Unpleasant Plays‖ sequels in 1893, but the play had been censored and forbidden to
perform on a public stage by the Lord Chamberlain, the official censor of theatrical
performance for eight years. Shaw’s Mrs. Warren’s Profession was finally
performed for public theatres in 1925, and it had been harshly criticized by Victorian
audience and drama critics as immoral because the play is concerned with
controversial themes of prostitution and incest, even though Shaw never mentioned
the word ―prostitution‖, or clarified the incestuous relationship between the
characters in the play. A review for New York Herald stated that the play was
―morally rotten‖ and it ―countenance[d] the most revolting form of degeneracy, by
flippantly discussing the marriage of brother and sister, father and daughter‖(Evan,
1976, p. 139). However, the play had been regarded later as an exposition of the
hypocrisy of Victorian morality, and it put the blame on the corrupted capitalist
society in the nineteenth century that pushed women into prostitution and sexual
inequality. Frederick J. Marker explains Shaw’s belief in the task of a playwright that
it is used to dramatize uncomfortable subjects in the public theatre by writing in his
article, ―Shaw’s early plays‖, that this ―problem‖ play ―concerned with social
corruption (in this case prostitution), and [was] determined to fasten the blame for

9
 10

such vice not on the individual (the brothel madam) but on a (male, capitalistic)
social system that foster[ed] it‖ (Innes, 1998, p. 115).
The feminist movements at the turn of the twentieth century that aimed for
women’s equality and questioned the conventional femininity became an
argumentative subject in the society. The shift in feminist movement went beyond
the questioning of the limitations and the conventional female roles imposed on
women as mothers and housewives. Many social and political campaigns for women
emancipation mostly concerned with women’s need to have ―more choice and more
control‖ over their own lives (Calder, 1976, p. 162). The demand of equality for
women came with the rise of educational and occupational opportunities for women.
Modern women had begun to consider themselves as human being with capabilities,
and the society should treat them equally as same as men had. Therefore, a feminist
ideal of ―New Woman‖ was introduced in Winnifred Harper Cooley’s The New
Womanhood.

[…]The finest achievement of the new woman has been personal

liberty. This is the foundation of civilization; and as long as any one
class is watched suspiciously, even fondly guarded, and protected, so
long will that class not only be weak, and treacherous, individually,
but parasitic, and a collective danger to the community. Who has not
heard wives commended for wheedling their husbands out of money,
or joked because they are hopelessly extravagant? As long as caprice
and scheming are considered feminine virtues, as long as man is the
only wage-earner, doling out sums of money, or scattering lavishly, so
long will women be degraded, even if they are perfectly contented,
and men are willing to labor to keep them in idleness! … The new
woman, in the sense of the best woman, the flower of all the
womanhood of past ages, has come to stay — if civilization is to
endure. The sufferings of the past have but strengthened her,
maternity has deepened her, education is broadening her — and
she now knows that she must perfect herself if she would perfect
 11

the race, and leave her imprint upon immortality, through her
offspring or her works.

(Emphasis added,Cooley, 1904, p. 31)

The feminist concept of ―New Woman‖, which its title suggested young
generation women who carved out professional career for themselves, received a
practical education, un-chaperoned, took outdoor exercise like walking or cycling
that necessarily involved the idea about rational dress for women. These New
Woman’s personalities referred to what Cooley called ―personal liberty‖, an
independence for women against ―the traditional over-protection by parents until
marriage, followed by over-protection by husband‖ (Calder, 1976, p. 163). Cooley
suggests a new image of ―New Woman‖ as unconventional femininity against the
psychological aspect of patriarchy towards woman nature. The image of New
Woman made a great impact not only in social and political issues, but it also did in
the field of literary works. The ―New Woman‖ ideal became a treatment used by
many playwrights’ characterization of unconventional female characters that defined
the plays written by both male and female authors as ―New Woman Drama‖ that
received its popularity in mid 1890s (Innes, 1998, p. 48). Many modern dramatists
interacted with Feminism by conveying its themes and their notions towards
women’s issues to audience, notably, Henrik Ibsen’s plays; A Doll’s House (1879)
and Hedda Gabler (1890) that became a canonical work of modern feminist drama.
This new theatrical genre vividly depicts the ―New Woman‖ figures with feminist
characteristics. The plays mostly explained the female characters’ difficulties of
being ―New Woman‖ in the rigid Victorian society and how they managed their
relationships with other characters, particularly male ones that represent the society’s
social and moral conventions.
Cooley’s feminist concept and the image of independent ―New Woman‖
agrees with Shaw’s socialist ideals in the chapter ―The Unwomanly Woman‖ of The
Quintessence of Ibsenism concerned with emancipated women’s rejection to the
conventional female roles of a sacrificed homemaker and caring mother. He
concretized the discourse of New Woman into a fictional character of unwomanly
 12

woman, put her into a situation, and discussed the argumentative topics related to the
characters’ assertive feminist aspects in his creative theatrical invention of ―play of
ideas‖ (Smith-Rosenberg, p. 247). Shaw’s Mrs. Warren’s Profession refers to
marriage and prostitution as a degradation of women by which a woman has to sell
herself to superior men for social and economical reasons. J. L. Styan points out that
the play is Shaw’s ―moral study of economics of prostitution‖ that reveals the
hypocrisy of capitalist Victorian society and how women had been victimized by
patriarchy (Styan, 1981, p. 58). Shaw explained his notion about women’s problems
caused by the economics of prostitution in ―Women in the Labor Market‖, an excerpt
from his The Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Socialism, Capitalism, Sovietism and
Fascism (1928), that women were treated as an inferior both in the houses and
workplaces. Women never been paid for bearing children, keeping the house for men
as well as gaining a fair wage from employers like men. With their lacks of an
opportunity to gain equal income, proper education and careers, women were forced
to use their bodies in exchange for economical purposes, both through prostitution or
marriage, with financial support from men as wage earners of the family to survive in
capitalist society.
Shaw’s Mrs. Warren’s Profession, which concerns the issues of marriage
and prostitution, dramatizes the struggle of New Women figures striving over their
limitations. The play focuses on the relationship between young Vivie Warren and
her mother, Mrs. Warren, who is a single mother and a successful businesswoman.
Mrs. Warren’s oversea career life and her liberated sexuality separate them apart and
also make their mother-daughter relationship bitter. Vivie is a modern young lady
who has received a good upbringing and education that allows her an opportunity to
get a job of actuarial calculation for her business partner and live an independent life
she wanted. Vivie discovers a shocking truth about her mother that she is an owner
of a successful continental brothel business that has paid for Vivie’s comfortable
living and elite education at Cambridge. Vivie briefly reconciles with her mother
after Mrs. Warren had explained about her past to her daughter that that she was
driven by poverty to commit prostitution for surviving. However, Vivie decides to
leave her mother to rely on her career life in isolation after having a heated argument
 13

with Mrs. Warren, who reveals her true desire to claim over the right of a mother to
make Vivie her keeper and the successor of her brothel business.
Shaw used his characterization of Vivie Warren to make her a vivid
sample of ―New Woman‖. From the opening scene, the depiction of Vivie is
described as an ―attractive specimen of the sensible, able, highly educated young
middle-class English woman‖ who wears a ―plain, business-like dress‖ with a
―prompt, strong, confident, self-possessed‖ personality (Shaw, 1960, p. 55). Vivie’s
exceptional physical strength can be observed from her acts of lifting chairs and
powerful handshaking with men. She expresses her interests in ―mathematics, lawn-
tennis, eating, sleeping cycling and walking‖ to Mr. Prade, her mother’s friend when
they first met (Shaw, 1960, p. 58). With Cambridge-graduated in mathematics major,
Vivie works as an actuarial internship for a firm owned by her female partner in
London, where she can make a living in a mannish lifestyle as she liked; ―I like
working and getting paid for it. When I’m tired of working, I like a comfortable
chair, a cigar, a little whiskey, and a novel with a good detective story in it‖(Shaw,
1960, p. 58). In contrast, Mrs. Warren’s appearance is described differently from
Vivie’s as she looks like a typical Victorian woman wearing beautiful dresses with
sweet motherly manners even though her ―New Woman‖ ideals can be perceived
from her liberated sexuality and preferable career of an entrepreneur. The lack of
details about Vivie’s father implies that Mrs. Warren is a single mother and a
working woman who made a living for her family.
Vivie and Mrs. Warren share a female bonding through their feminist
values of New Woman on the subject of occupation and marriage. Vivie and Mrs.
Warren are devoted career women who spend most of their times for the jobs instead
of domesticity like conventional women. The successful career lives of Mrs. Warren
and Vivie provides financial independence and preferable ways of living for them
without any supports from men. With their priority on profession instead of
marriage, they both decline to get married with their suitors. Vivie sees that her
mannish lifestyle and bachelorhood are not improper for women like Mrs. Warren
who does not consider her career immoral based on economical necessaries, not on
the conventional ones. Mrs. Warren’s remark about the analogy between marriage
 14

and prostitution; ―What is any respectable girl brought up to do but to catch some
rich man’s fancy and get the benefit of his money by marrying him? – as if a
marriage ceremony could make any difference in the right or wrong of the thing!‖,
reveals the hypocrisy of the society that covered up by conventional morality (Shaw,
1960, p. 84). In ―The Author’s Apology‖ preface of Mrs. Warren’s Profession, the
playwright agrees with his character’s justification from a realistic point of view by
pointing that ―Mrs. Warren’s defence of herself and indictment of society is the thing
that most needs saying‖ (Shaw, 1960, p. 32). This radical attitude towards
conventional marriage and morality of New Woman is a central topic brought to
discuss in this controversial play of Shaw.
Shaw illustrates the unconventional thoughts and behaviors of Vivie and
Mrs. Warren that put them in difficult relationships with other male characters in the
play. The male characters are portrayed as antagonists that represent social
conventions against the leading female characters’ New Woman ideals. Sir Georg
Croft and Reverend Samuel Gardner represent the image of typical masculine men.
Croft has a ―gentlemanly combination of the most brutal types of city man, sporting
man, and man about town‖ (Shaw, 1960, p. 61). Rev. Gardner, Mrs. Warren’s ex-
lover, is a ―pretentious, booming, noisy person, hopelessly asserting himself as a
father and a clergyman without being able to command respect in either capacity‖
(Shaw, 1960, p. 66). Mrs. Warren’s denial to reveal the secret about the identity of
Vivie’s father underlines Crofts and Rev. Gardner’s powerless male authority. They
cannot assume the duty of a father or a husband as a provider of a secured life that
conventionally enables them a power over women. On the contrary, Mrs. Warren’s
financial independence and liberated sexuality give her an advantage to have power
over them. As a New Woman, she takes the conventional male role as a provider of
the family and becomes an authoritative person who makes Croft and Rev. Gardner
follow her orders and demands.
Besides the corrupted male figures as foils, Shaw characterizes weak,
feminine and passive male characters: Mr. Praed and Frank Gardner, in contrast with
the bold, masculine and domineering New Woman personalities of Vivie. Praed and
Frank represent limited aesthetic values and sentimental Romantic romance in which
 15

they are trying to impose them as typical characteristics of Victorian women on

Vivie. Praed regards himself as ―an artist‖ and tries to persuade Vivie to see the
beauty of ―the wonderful world art‖ from art and opera in which it is believed as
what ―makes womanhood beautiful‖ (Shaw, 1960, pp. 58-59). As New Woman,
Vivie sees no interest in Praed’s world of art, and puts her desire for a mannish
lifestyle and profession. Shaw aims to expose Praed’s limited aesthetic preferences to
consider art as a mere pleasure for ―civility’s sake‖, and conventional women who
had free time because they do not have to work for a living (Shaw, 1960, p. 59). The
modern young ladies, like Vivie and her business partner Honoria Fraser, prefer a
practical and independent way of life for woman earned by making income from a
proper career to live in the capitalist society. Vivie becomes the prototypical figure
of New Woman who receives education and occupational opportunity that enable
them to make a choice to live independently instead of devoting themselves to the
conventional domestic life.
Vivie’s unladylike personality is differentiated from the character of Frank
Gardner, who is depicted vividly with characteristics of conventional femininity. The
playwright describes Frank, Vivie’s suitor, as a ―pleasant, pretty, smartly dressed,
and entirely good-for-nothing fellow‖ (Shaw, 1960, p. 65). On the contrary to his
gender role, Frank uses his good-looking appearance and charms to seduce women
and get benefits from them. Shaw allows the audience to see how Frank assumes a
conventional female value about convenient marriage, by showing his strong
determination to marry Vivie for her money and social status to secure his
fashionable life. Frank gives a reason to his father; ―What you actually said was that
since I had neither brains nor money, I’d better turn my good looks to account by
marrying somebody with both‖ (Shaw, 1960, p. 67). Frank adopts conventional
woman’s concerns about financial and social insecurity that can be solved only by
marriage.
The playwright’s intention to divide the characters into opposing groups of
conventional/unconventional and masculine/feminine was made for dramatic purpose
and criticism on morality: ―[t]he dramatic reason for making the clergyman what
Mrs. Warren calls ―an old stick-in-the-mud,‖ whose son, in spite of much capacity
 16

and charm, is a cynically worthless member of the society, is to set up a mordant

contrast between him and the woman of infamous profession, with her well brought-
up, straightforward hardworking daughter‖ (Shaw, 1960, p. 49). Whilst the male
characters stand for the social and moral conventions, New Womanish characters
undermine the male characters from their unconventional womanly standpoints. The
New Woman ideals agree with the reversed gender role of female characters. Shaw’s
motive of gender role reversal in the play is used to create dramatic effects to the
audience as much as to emphasize on the instability of gender role defined by the
social conventions. The problems of conventionality/unconventionality,
morality/immorality and masculinity/femininity, presented with the conflicts
between the characters in ―discussion‖ scenes that allow the audience to think about
the subjects critically.
The unconventional female characters also points out how the
conventional morality uses a ―double standard‖ judgment on the subject of morality
and immorality. The characters have never spoken the word ―prostitution‖ directly
because they share an assumption that it is improper and immoral. Mrs. Warren sees
it as a profession that women can make money from it and make them survive in the
capitalist society based on her business point of view: Mrs. Warren makes a
judgment on her choice of career, prostitution, to Vivie from a realistic standpoint by
comparing it with the conventional marriage.
VIVIE [more and more deeply moved]. Mother: suppose we were
both as poor as you were in those wretched old days, are you quite
sure that you wouldn’t advice me to try the Waterlo bar, or marry a
labourer, or even go into the factory?
MRS. WARREN [indignantly]. Of course not. What sort of
mother do you take me for! How could you keep your self-respect in
such starvation and slavery? And what’s a woman worth? what’s life
worth? without self-respect! Why am I independent and able to give
my daughter a first-rate education, when other women that had just as
good opportunities are in the gutter? Because I always knew how to
respect myself and control myself. Why is Liz hooked up to in a
 17

cathedral town? The same reason. Where would we be now if we’d

minded the clergyman’s foolishness? Scrubbing floor for one and
sixpence a day and nothing to look forward to but the workhouse
infirmary. Don’t you be led astray by people who don’t know the
world, my girl. The only way for a woman to provide for herself
decently is for her to be good to some man that can afford to be
good to her. If she’s in his own station of life, let her make him
marry her; but if she’s far beneath him she can’t expect it—why
should she? It wouldn’t be for her own happiness. Ask any lady in
London society that has daughters; and she’ll tell you the same, expect
that I tell you straight and she’ll tell you crooked. That’s all the
difference.
VIVIE [fascinated, gazing at her]. My dear mother: you are a
wonderful woman—you are stronger than all England. And are you
really and truly not on wee bit doubtful—or—or—ashamed?
MRS. WARREN. Well, of course, dearie, it’s only good manners
to be ashamed of it, it’s expected from a woman. Women have to
pretend to feel a great deal that they don’t feel. Liz used to be angry
with me for plumping out the truth about it. She used to say that when
every woman could learn enough from what was going on in the
world before her eyes, there was no need to talk about it to her. But
then Liz was such a perfect lady! She had the true instinct of it; while
I was always a bit of a vulgarian. I used to be so pleased when you
sent me your photographs to see that you were growing up like Liz:
you’ve just her ladylike, determined way. But I can’t stand saying one
thing when everyone knows I mean another. What’s the use in such
hypocrisy? If people arrange the world that way for women,
there’s no good pretending that it’s arranged the other way. I
never was a bit ashamed really. I consider that I had a right to be
proud that we managed everything so respectably, and never had a
word against us, and that the girls were so well taken care of…‖
 18

(Emphasis added,Shaw, 1960, pp. 85-86)

The passage displays Shaw’s outlook on the issue of prostitution and

allows his audience face unpleasant reality from Mrs. Warren’s convincing
explanation about the similarity between prostitution and marriage. Mrs. Warren
reveals the hypocrisy of conventional morality which distorted the truth about how
women are treated unjustly by Victorian ideals through marriage and prostitution
based on the same principle of trading women’s bodies for benefits from men. Whilst
marriage is legally and socially accepted for women, prostitution is considered by the
society as immoral and unacceptable. Mrs. Warren implies that prostitution is an
economic alternative for poor women who have to struggle from poverty and
starvation caused by the social system. For privileged middle-class women, they are
confined to the traditional role of an ideal wife by conventional marriage that
provides protection and material supports from one’s husband for living. From a
feminist standpoint at the time, these women have no choice but conform to the self-
sacrificed and suppressed female role as a wife, or a sexual object for men because
they have not many opportunities in education, occupation, and social status like
men. As a socialist, Shaw affirms Mrs. Warren’s straightforward conviction about
the problem, saying that ―Mrs. Warren’s defence of herself and indictment of society
is the thing that most needs saying‖ (Shaw, 1960, p. 32). Mrs. Warren’s utterance is
not Shaw’s defense of feminist notion about prostitution but a defense of woman as a
human being struggling with the morally rotten capitalist society.
The New Womanish characters share the same notion about being
professional, liberated and independent women against the conventional ones.
Therefore, female solidarity between Vivie and her mother can be observed from
their brief reconciliation at the end of Act II and the understanding of their New
Woman virtue in Act IV.
VIVIE. ―…Mother: you don’t at all know the sort of person I am. I
don’t object to Crofts more than to any other coarsely built man of his
class. To tell you the truth, I rather admire him for being strong-
minded enough to enjoy himself in his own way and make plenty of
 19

money instead of living the usual shooting, hunting dining-out,

tailoring, loafing life of him set merely because all the rest do it. And
I’m perfectly aware that if I’d been in the same circumstances as my
aunt Liz, I’d have done exactly what she did. I don’t think I’m more
prejudiced or straitlaced than you: I think I’m less. I’m certain I’m
less sentimental. I know very well that fashionable morality is all a
pretence: and that if I took your money and devote the rest of my
life to spending it fashionably, I might be as worthless and vicious
as the silliest woman could possibly want to be without having a
word said to me about it. But I don’t want to be worthless. I
shouldn’t enjoy trotting about the park to advertise my dressmaker and
carriage builder, or being bored at the opera to show off a shop
windowful of diamonds.
MRS. WARREN [bewildered]. But---
VIVIE. Wait a moment: I’ve not done. Tell me why you continue
your business now that you are independent of it. Your sister, you told
me, has left all that behind her. Why don’t you do the same?
MRS. WARREN. Oh, it’s all very easy for Liz: she likes good
society, and has the air of being a lady. Imagine me in a cathedral
town! Why, the very rooks in the trees would find me out even if I
could stand the dullness of it. I must have work and excitement, or
I should go melancholy mad. And what else is there for me to do?
The life suits me: I’m fit for it and not for anything else. If I didn’t
do it somebody else would; so I don’t do any real harm by it. And
then it brings in money; and I like making money. No: it’s no use: I
can’t give it up—not for anybody. But what need you know about it?
I’ll never mention it. I’ll keep Crofts away. I’ll not trouble you much:
you see I have to be constantly running about from one place to
another. You’ll be quite of me altogether when I die.
VIVIE. No. I am my mother’s daughter. I am like you: I must
have work, and must make more money than I spend. But my
 20

work is not your work, and my way is not your way. We must part.
It will not make much difference to us: instead of meeting one another
for perhaps a few months in twenty years, we shall never meet: that’s
all.
(Emphasis added,Shaw, 1960, pp. 112-113)

The scene points out about the New Womanish characters’ attitude
towards conventional middle-class Victorian women. They see that traditional
female roles established by the society keep them in ―dullness‖ and ―worthless‖
lives. Taking the unconventional role of a wage-earner becomes a new opportunity
for women to have freedom in making preferable choices of living. However, the
bonding between New Woman figures can be problematic, especially the blood-
related ones. Shaw dramatizes the conflict between the ―New Woman‖ characters to
introduce their different notions about traditional mother-daughter relationship in the
final ―discussion‖ scene. Vivie’s anti-social New Woman ideals and yearning for
independence is opposed to Mrs. Warren’s claim over the right of a mother. Mrs.
Warren, the provider of the family, presumes patriarchal authority of the father over
her daughter because she has provided good education and suitable upbringings for
Vivie.
Therefore, Mrs. Warren expects Vivie to carry out the conventional role of
a good daughter, following her orders, taking care of her when she gets older, and
succeeding her business in return. Mrs. Warren’s attachment on the mother-daughter
relationship puts her on the side of conventional morality and she has become an
antagonist to Vivie. As a New Woman, Vivie wants to break free from the
conventional female roles as a wife and a daughter. She rejects proposal from her
suitors, Frank and Crofts, and her own mother for independence:
VIVIE. … If I had been you, mother, I might have done as you
did; but I should not have lived one life and believe in another. You
are a conventional woman at heart. That is why I am biding you good-
bye now. I am right, am I not?
(Shaw, 1960, p. 115)
 21

In resisting the conventionality, Shaw’s ―New Woman‖ heroine sets

herself against the traditional woman’s duty of a good daughter to her mother, Mrs.
Warren. The audience will be bewildered and offended by Vivie’s unusual
standpoint. With strength and intelligence, Vivie detaches herself from her family,
just like her mother who has always been away to do her oversea business, to live in
isolation as a resolution for New Woman suggested at the end of the play. Vivie’s
departure from conventional responsibility to her family, or to her candidates for
marriage imply the playwright’s idea about feminist ideal of ―New Woman‖ that
might cannot enough for modern women like Vivie to achieve equality and
independence if it means that they have to reject their family duties or abandon other
underprivileged women for their own benefits. The inadequacy of feminist image of
―New Woman‖ reappears in the characterization of the protagonist in a contemporary
drama of Caryle Churchill’s Top Girls, Marlene, who has abandoned her family to
pursue a life of successful career woman in the competitive business world. Shaw’s
play investigates extreme notions of feminism through his characterization of Vivie
Warren in the same way that Churchill’s play questions Marlene’s ideal success
based on Thatcherism. Shaw suggests that feminism ideals about woman
emancipation is compatible with socialism in his The Intelligent Woman’s Guide to
Socialism and Capitalism as effective method used by modern women to gain
equality and independent for woman in general.