Summary
Summary of Mrs. Warren's Profession
Key ideas
Key idea 1
Comfort rests on troubling choices
A young woman discovers that her mother's comfortable life rests on the business of prostitution. In Mrs. Warren's Profession, that discovery opens a dispute about much more than sexual morality. Poverty, profit, and respectable society all become part of the argument between mother and daughter. The question is not simply whether the daughter can understand what her mother has done. It is whether understanding those choices means she must also accept them.
Key idea 2
Vivie wants a life of independence
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Key idea 3
Other people bring competing expectations
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Key idea 4
Her mother explains the narrow choices
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Key idea 5
Past pressures do not settle everything
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Key idea 6
Love becomes a test of independence
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The rest of the summary, written and spoken, and the whole book: free to start.
Read the rest freeWho it’s for
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 this book is
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. Shaw added a long preface in which he defends the play and attacks the censorship that kept it off the stage.
The play follows a young Englishwoman, Vivie Warren, who meets her mother as if for the first time. Vivie is a brilliant mathematician with no use for romance. Her mother is a loud, warm woman who has paid for her daughter's education and has kept her own life secret. Around them stand a gentle artist, a smooth baronet, a charming idler and a pompous clergyman. You get a drama of money, class and choice, in which each person wants something different from the others, and in which the polite words of society hide what it really lives on. Let us begin in a cottage garden in Surrey.
In this summary
- 1A daughter who wants no romanceFree
- 2The mother arrives with her friends
- 3Frank courts, and the elders object
- 4Mrs Warren tells her own story
- 5Crofts makes his offer in the rectory garden
- 6Vivie takes the measure of her own position
- 7What the play is really about
- 8How the play is built and spoken
Key point 1 of 8
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.
Vivie has plans. She means to set up in the City with actuarial work and legal business, and she has already spent six weeks in London helping her friend Honoria Fraser in her chambers in Chancery Lane. She expects a battle with her mother over this.
She also reveals how little she knows her mother. Vivie has been boarded out at schools and colleges all her life while her mother lives in Brussels or Vienna. She sees her only for a few days at a time. Praed grows uneasy and keeps changing the subject, and Vivie notices that there is something he will not say.
That’s 1 of 8 key points.
The rest of the summary, written and spoken, and the whole book: free to start.
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Check yourself
What kind of life does Vivie want?
Right. “Vivie Warren has finished her studies at Cambridge and wants a practical, independent life.”Not quite. “Vivie Warren has finished her studies at Cambridge and wants a practical, independent life.”
How does Mrs. Warren defend entering prostitution?
Right. “She argues that entering prostitution offered an escape from conditions that society accepts without much protest.”Not quite. “She argues that entering prostitution offered an escape from conditions that society accepts without much protest.”
What distinction must Vivie make when judging her mother?
Right. “Vivie must distinguish between the pressures that shape a young woman's choices and the decisions a prosperous business owner makes afterward.”Not quite. “Vivie must distinguish between the pressures that shape a young woman's choices and the decisions a prosperous business owner makes afterward.”
Who’s who
- Vivie Warren
- Vivie is a Cambridge educated young woman whose desire for independence challenges her mother's expectations.
- Mrs. Warren
- Mrs. Warren is Vivie's mother, whose profitable prostitution business has financed her daughter's education and comfortable upbringing.
- Sir George Crofts
- Sir George Crofts is Mrs. Warren's wealthy business partner, who considers Vivie a possible wife.
- Frank Gardner
- Frank is a charming, financially dependent young man who pursues Vivie without sharing her dedication to work.
- Praed
- Praed is an architect and acquaintance of Mrs. Warren who encourages Vivie to appreciate beauty and pleasure.
About this edition
Every format is free to start, and print and large print are at cost.
- LengthAbout 36,000 words
- Reading timeAbout 2 h 25 min
- Listening time4 h
- FormatseBook, large-print eBook, audiobook, 15-minute summary; paperback, hardcover and large print at cost
- LanguagesEnglish and 14 other languages
Questions about Mrs. Warren's Profession
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.
Is Mrs Warren's Profession easy to read?
Yes, in the sense that matters: the play is mostly lively conversation between six people, with vivid stage directions. Each act sits in one place, so the story is simple to follow and the characters are quickly distinct.
What is the main message of the play?
Shaw argues that the blame for prostitution lies less with the woman who earns her living by it than with a society that pays poor women starvation wages and then condemns them, while honouring those who profit.
