Streszczenie książki Mrs. Warren's Profession

The story in 9 parts

1. Key idea 1 · free to read

   A modern daughter waits in a cottage garden

   The play opens at a cottage in Surrey on a summer afternoon. Vivie Warren, aged twenty-two, lies in a hammock with a pile of serious books beside her. She has tied for third wrangler at Cambridge, though she calls it poorly paid work rather than a triumph.

   A gentleman called Praed arrives. He is an architect who calls himself an artist and an anarchist, and he expects a delicate young lady. Vivie shakes his hand so firmly that he flexes his fingers afterward. She says she did her mathematics for money. She plans an office in the City, doing actuarial work and some legal work too. She likes a cigar, a little whisky and a detective story.

   But Vivie has a gap in her knowledge. She hardly knows her mother, who has lived abroad while Vivie lived at schools. Praed grows uneasy and nearly speaks, then stops himself. She trusts facts, work and plain dealing, and she has never asked where her comfortable life came from.

   Vivie believes she knows how the world works, and the play is about to show her otherwise.

2. 2

   Mrs Warren and her friends come down from London

   Mrs Warren arrives with a companion, Sir George Crofts.

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3. 3

   At night the cottage fills with schemes

   Act Two takes place in the cottage after dark.

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4. 4

   A daughter demands the truth from her mother

   Left alone, Mrs Warren tries to take charge.

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5. 5

   Mrs Warren tells how she began

   Mrs Warren's story is the heart of the second act.

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6. 6

   Shame is only good manners

   Fascinated and touched, Vivie praises her mother as more powerful than England itself.

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7. 7

   Hypocrisy runs through every respectable character

   The first of the play's two great themes is hypocrisy.

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8. 8

   Money and class decide who gets a choice

   The second theme is money, and how it shapes the choices people think they make freely.

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9. 9

   A problem play that refuses the usual stage logic

   Shaw calls this kind of work a problem play.

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