Mrs. Warren's Profession

Mrs Warren's Profession is a play written by George Bernard Shaw in 1893. The story centers on the relationship between Mrs Kitty Warren, a brothel owner, described by the author as "on the whole, a genial and fairly presentable old blackguard of a woman" and her daughter, Vivie.^[1] Mrs Warren is a middle-aged woman whose Cambridge-educated daughter, Vivie, is horrified to discover that her mother's fortune was made managing high-class brothels. The two women make a brief reconciliation when Mrs Warren explains her impoverished youth, which originally led her into prostitution. The reconciliation ends when Vivie learns that the highly profitable business remains in operation. Vivie walks out of her mother's life, apparently for good.

Shaw said he wrote the play "to draw attention to the truth that prostitution is caused, not by female depravity and male licentiousness, but simply by underpaying, undervaluing, and overworking women so shamefully that the poorest of them are forced to resort to prostitution to keep body and soul together."^[2]

Shaw explained the source of the play in a letter to The Daily Chronicle on 28 April 1898:

Miss Janet Achurch [an actress and friend of Shaw’s] mentioned to me a novel by some French writer [Yvette by Guy de Maupassant] as having a dramatisable story in it. It being hopeless to get me to read anything, she told me the story... In the following autumn I was the guest of a lady [Beatrice Webb] of very distinguished ability — one whose knowledge of English social types is as remarkable as her command of industrial and political questions. She suggested that I should put on the stage a real modern lady of the governing class — not the sort of thing that theatrical and critical authorities imagine such a lady to be. I did so; and the result was Miss Vivie Warren ... Mrs. Warren herself was my version of the heroine of the romance narrated by Miss Achurch. The tremendously effective scene — which a baby could write if its sight were normal — in which she justifies herself, is only a paraphrase of a scene in a novel of my own, Cashel Byron's Profession (hence the title, Mrs Warren's Profession), in which a prize-fighter shows how he was driven into the ring exactly as Mrs. Warren was driven on the streets.^[3]

The play was originally banned by the Lord Chamberlain (Britain's official theatre censor) because of its frank discussion and portrayal of prostitution, but was finally first performed on Sunday, January 5, 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.) The first public performance in London took place in 1925.

A performance in New York, this time on a public stage in 1905, was interrupted by the police who arrested the cast and crew, although it appears only the house manager of the theatre was actually charged.^{[citation needed]} The play has been revived on Broadway five times since, most recently in 2010.

Adaptations and Sequels

Sir Harry Johnston wrote a sequel, a novel entitled Mrs. Warren's Daughter, circa 1922.^{[citation needed]}

BBC Television staged a production under their Play of the Month banner in 1972. Produced by Cedric Messina and Directed by Herbert Wise, it starred Coral Browne in the title role, with Penelope Wilton as Vivie. Also in the cast were James Grout, Robert Powell, Richard Pearson and Derek Godfrey. The production was released on DVD in 2006.

A 1960 German film adaption Mrs. Warren's Profession starring Lilli Palmer.

A radio adaptation was broadcast on the BBC in 2002 and re-broadcast in January 2009 on BBC Radio 7 starring Maggie Steed in the title role.

The play was revived in 2010 in three separate venues:

• London's West End, at the Comedy Theatre with Felicity Kendal in the title role
• Washington, D.C., by the Shakespeare Theatre Company at Sidney Harman Hall, with Elizabeth Ashley in the title role
• Broadway at the American Airlines Theatre under the auspices of the Roundabout Theatre Company, with Cherry Jones as Kitty Warren and Sally Hawkins as Vivie

The Role of Women in Victorian Marriage and Shaw's Representation of Vivie's Sexuality

Men who could afford to get married in the Victorian era could make use of “laws that gave him total control of his wife's person — and her fortune”.^[4] Victorian women were expected to maintain a poised and dignified manner, and to be obedient to their husbands' requests. The character Vivie defies the Victorian expectations of an obedient woman. She is educated and entirely self-sufficient. During the play she resists two marriage proposals, reflecting her reliance on her work ethic and hard-headed approach to life. Shaw represents Vivie as being the product of a type of gender reformation. This reformation results in a character who is asexual and "permanently unromantic".^[5]

Throughout the play, the boundary between sexual desires and proposed marriages is blurred; for example, Frank flirts with Mrs. Warren as well as Vivie. Mrs. Warren's companion Sir George Crofts also proposes marriage to Vivie despite his relationship with her mother. Critic Petra Dierkes-Thrun has argued that these examples illustrate the way in which Shaw

"critiqued the ideological and economic system that produced her [Mrs. Warren], attacking the problematic double standard of male privilege and the deeply entrenched objectification of women, which Shaw saw pervading all levels of Victorian society down to its most basic nuclear element, the family."^[6]

External links

• Mrs. Warren's Profession at Project Gutenberg
• Mrs. Warren's Profession on Open Library at the Internet Archive
• Mrs. Warren's Profession at the Internet Broadway Database

References

1. ^ Shaw, George Bernard (1902). "Mrs. Warren's Profession". http://www2.hn.psu.edu/faculty/jmanis/gbshaw/Warren-Profession.pdf. Retrieved 2011-02-07 
2. ^ Powell, Kerry (2004). The Cambridge companion to Victorian and Edwardian theatre. Cambridge University Press. p. 229. ISBN 9780521795364. http://books.google.com/books?id=ICi7QY_VSA8C&pg=PA229. 
3. ^ "Mrs. Warren's Profession Study Guide". Guthrie Theater. 2003. pp. 25–26. http://www.guthrietheater.org/sites/default/files/mrswarren.pdf. Retrieved 2008-08-14. 
4. ^ Lawrence, Dan H. “Victorians Unveiled: Some Thoughts on Mrs. Warren’s Profession.” Shaw: The Annual of Bernard Shaw Studies 24 (2004): 40. Retrieved 2010-03-21.
5. ^ "Mrs. Warren's Profession", The Broadview Anthology of British Literature: The Twentieth Century and Beyond (eds. Joseph Black, et al.) Canada: Broadview, 2008
6. ^ Dierkes-Thrun, Petra. English Literature in Transition, 1880-1920, Volume 49, Number 3, 2006, pp. 293-310 (Article)