3 h 58 minAudiobook9 minSummaryRead it, hear it, the 15-minute summary, and print and large print at costPaperback · 6 × 9 in · 97 pagesHardcover · 6 × 9 in · 97 pagesAbout this book
What if the money that gives you independence comes from choices you cannot accept?
Vivie Warren wants useful work, honest dealings, and a living she earns herself. Then she discovers that her mother, Mrs. Warren, builds her comfortable life on the business of prostitution. In Bernard Shaw’s play, a family confrontation becomes a struggle over what a daughter owes her mother—and herself.
Mrs. Warren defends her choices by describing the exhausting labour and miserable pay available to poor women. But understanding those pressures does not settle Vivie’s questions. Around them, wealthy business partner Sir George Crofts and charming, dependent Frank Gardner bring money, marriage, and respectability into a debate where affection offers no easy answers.
What you’ll discover
- An independent young woman Meet Vivie, whose commitment to work tests the claims of family, comfort, and romance.
- A mother's forceful defence Hear Mrs. Warren explain the narrow choices that make survival a question of money.
- The cost of respectability See how Sir George Crofts connects a respectable social position with profits from prostitution.
- Conversation with sharp edges Follow confrontations where offers of affection and security become tests of what Vivie will tolerate.
- Understanding without easy acceptance Explore the uneasy distance between recognising another person’s hardship and accepting the choices they make.
Who will love it
Readers who like sharp dialogue, plays about money and class, and heroines who think for themselves. It suits anyone curious about how a banned drama of 1902 still speaks about work, women and the price of respectability.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- A daughter who wants no romance
- The mother arrives with her friends
- Frank courts, and the elders object
- Mrs Warren tells her own story
- Crofts makes his offer in the rectory garden
- Vivie takes the measure of her own position
- What the play is really about
- How the play is built and spoken
Who’s who
- Vivie WarrenA brilliant young mathematician who values work and independence, and wants to know the truth about her mother and her father.
- Mrs WarrenVivie's vulgar, vigorous mother, who rose from poverty by her own energy and wants her daughter's affection and respect.
- Sir George CroftsA wealthy baronet and old friend of Mrs Warren, who thinks well of himself and wants to marry Vivie.
- PraedA gentle, sentimental architect, devoted to art and to Mrs Warren, who hates to speak of unpleasant facts.
- Frank GardnerA charming, idle young man without money who loves Vivie and treats everything as a joke.
- Reverend Samuel GardnerFrank's pompous father, a weak clergyman who is afraid of his own past.
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- Audiobook
- 3 h 58 min, complete, read by Lucas Linden.
- 15-minute summary
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- Paperback
- 6 × 9 in, 97 pages: 6,95 USD when you start free, 13,95 USD on its own.
- Hardcover
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- Large print paperback
- 8.5 × 11 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
- Large print hardcover
- 8.5 × 11 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
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Mrs. Warren's Profession
by Bernard Shaw · 1898
A young mathematician meets a mother whose money paid for everything, and no one will say where it comes from.
Medium level2–5 hours to read25 languages
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In short
Mrs Warren's Profession is a four-act play by Bernard Shaw, written in the 1890s and first performed by a private society in London in January 1902. The Lord Chamberlain's office had refused it a licence, so for years it could not be staged in public.
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
A daughter who wants no romance
The play opens in a cottage garden near Haslemere in Surrey. Vivie Warren, aged twenty-two, lies in a hammock with law books and notes. She tied for third place in the mathematical tripos at Cambridge, and she tells a visitor that she did it for a fee of fifty pounds, and would not do it again for that sum.
The visitor is Mr Praed, an amiable architect and old friend of her mother. He calls himself an anarchist and an artist, and he is delighted to find that Vivie has not been made conventional. She soon disappoints him. She cares nothing for art, music or romance. She likes work, a cigar, a little whisky and a good detective story.
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What is Mrs Warren's Profession about?
It follows Vivie Warren, a young mathematician, as she discovers how her mother earned the money that paid for her education. The play weighs poverty, class and hypocrisy through conversations between mother and daughter and the people around them.
What is Mrs Warren's profession?
The play treats it as a business that Mrs Warren runs with Sir George Crofts, and Vivie learns the truth in stages. Shaw's preface says the real subject is the society that leaves poor women with so few choices.
Why was Mrs Warren's Profession banned?
The Lord Chamberlain's office refused to license it, so it could not be staged publicly in England. A private society gave the first performances in London in January 1902, and Shaw defends the play in his preface.
The author
Bernard Shaw
1856–1950 · Irish playwright and critic
George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) was an Irish playwright and critic. Born in Dublin, he moved to London in 1876 and later lived in Ayot St Lawrence, Hertfordshire, where he died. His plays include Arms and the Man (1894), Man and Superman (1903), Major Barbara (1905), and Pygmalion (1912).
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