Mrs. Warren’s Profession

Vivie Warren, a sharp Cambridge graduate with a head for figures, has always been kept comfortably at a distance from her mother. When the two finally spend real time together, Vivie learns where the family money comes from: Mrs. Warren rose out of poverty by running brothels, and she runs them still. Shaw wrote the play in 1893 to make an unfashionable argument, that women were driven into prostitution by wages too low to live on, and that respectable society profited quietly from the arrangement. Censors banned public performance for decades. What lingers is not the scandal but the cold clarity of Vivie’s final choice, and the way mother and daughter refuse each other. A free PDF and EPUB edition is available here.