Mrs. Warren's profession

Mrs. Warren's Profession is a play by George Bernard Shaw, written in 1893, first published in 1898, and first performed in 1902. It is an argument about economic coercion shaped as a family confrontation.

Vivie Warren, newly educated at Cambridge and determined to support herself, returns to the country and meets the circle surrounding her mother. Her practical intelligence and resistance to romance establish Vivie's hard-won independence before she learns how Mrs. Warren acquired her wealth.

Mrs. Warren explains that poverty, low wages, and dangerous factory work pushed her toward prostitution and then into managing brothels with Sir George Crofts. Shaw sets respectability built on exploitation against the judgments made by men who benefit from the same economy.

The play does not reduce its conflict to revelation alone: Vivie's response changes when she discovers that necessity has become a profitable continuing business. Their debate holds moral judgment against material fact, asking what independence costs when respectable society offers women so few choices.

"[Summer afternoon in a cottage garden on the eastern slope of a hill a little south of Haslemere in Surrey. Looking up the hill, the cottage is seen in the left hand corner of the garden, with its thatched roof and porch, and a large latticed window to the left of the porch. A paling completely shuts in the garden, except for a gate on the right.]"