Christina Canalita
George Bernard Shaw’s, Mrs. Warren’s Profession, triggered harsh criticisms by its 20th-century audience, shaming Shaw’s theory to publicize the “problem play”, a genre that exposes social ills and conventions that allow spectators to reflect on the controversial systems and societal immoralities that oppress the characters. Shaw’s taboos reveal themes of prostitution, capitalism, and normalized gender expectations and inequalities. The problem play is also recognized for its indefinite ending that leaves the audience unsatisfied by its lack of finality. While this genre is disfavored by 19th-century critics as it goes against the typical denouement that usually ends in marriage or death for female characters, the uncertainty in Vivie’s resolution stimulates Shaw’s urge for a moral reflection, hinting that there is no answer for women of the 19th-century as they will continue to be oppressed by society’s lack of opportunity for female independence. The variance between Vivie and Mrs. Warren’s upbringing, in terms of the possibilities for female choice and opportunity, showcase two different perspectives on escaping the problematic double-bind between marriage and labor. Expressing a “new woman” attitude, a late-Victorian feminist ideal that pushes against gendered socioeconomic limitations, both woman’s choices of escape still do not fundamentally change the Victorian assumptions about women. Mrs. Warren’s escape through prostitution not only damages the Warren name, but questions the morality of collecting a profit from the trafficking of women. Additionally, Vivie’s hope to escape the bind through her success at Cambridge are correspondingly at the mercy of oppression; allowing women access to an education, while still keeping them as the lesser and under control of the patriarch.
Scholarship on George Bernard Shaw’s Mrs. Warren’s Profession is mostly focused around the play’s controversy in regards to prostitution, social purity, and how the taboo was received by Victorians of the time. In order to analyze the 19th-century debate on Mrs. Warren’s Profession, most scholars use a new historicism lens to provide contextual background to its controversy, mentioning Shaw’s influence from the prostitute narrative, his activism for social reform, and the Lord Chamberlain’s refusal to license the play for public performance until 1924. Brad Kent’s “Eighteenth Century Literary Precursors of ‘Mrs. Warren’s Profession’”, shows the originality of Mrs. Warren’s Profession, where Shaw goes beyond the stereotypical prostitute narrative of a damaged reputation, and instead exposes the truths to why women choose prostitution as an alternative to marriage. Raymond Nelson’s “‘Mrs. Warren’s Profession’ and English Prostitution” emphasizes the implicit, societal blame for the perpetuation and need for prostitution as the mechanism for female survival. While John Allett’s “‘Mrs. Warren’s Profession and the Politics on Prostitution” uses liberal, social, and feminist theories to address Victorian English legislations and reforms against prostitution and how they propagate the trafficking of women and the exploitation of the working class. Lastly, scholars like Dierkes-Thrun, Bai, Connolly, and Liggins provide specific analyses on the women in the play, noting them as either “fallen” or “new” women, and discussing how these tropes differ, yet suffer similar consequences. This paper will discuss the opportunities for women: labor, marriage, prostitution, and education, and how each oppress women while favoring the patriarchal, capitalist system. In relation to the existing scholarship, I will dissect the dysfunctionality of escaping the double-bind as a new woman, suggesting the Warren women’s differing, yet equally transgressive attempts to achieve independence as equally shortcoming.
In Act II, Mrs. Warren explains to Vivie the dangers of working-class women, noting that prostitution was “a much better place for a woman to be in than a factory,” as the jobs available for women in poverty often consisted of “twelve hours a day for nine shillings a week” in white-lead factories (Shaw, 37-8). Additionally, factory work also came with the “[expectations] to get...a little paralyzed,” or “lead poisoning,” both of which were often followed by death (Shaw, 38). Even in the choice of non-factory work, “shopgirls,” “barmaids,” and “waitresses” were surviving off “fourteen hours a day” for only “four shillings a week;” whereas the employment opportunities for men provided as much as “eighteen shillings a week,” nearly five times the earnings for women in the service industry, and doubling the income of factory women (Shaw, 38-9). Moreover, working-class women and girls were held to different standards than middle-class women and girls due to their economic contributions of “[entering] work life early on,” suggesting that the exploitation of young women and girls in labor deem them not only “economically productive and more mature,” but also less pure, or socially tainted (Lammasniemi, 1).
Laura Lammasniemi’s law and history review of ‘Precocious Girls: Age of Consent, Class, and Family in Late Nineteenth-Century England ” touches on the “laws based on erroneous middle-class assumptions of working-class life” and how they “impacted...their trustworthiness” when it came to cases of rape, seduction, and grooming, leaving working-class girls as both the victim and the blame (Lammasneimi, 6). Because the age of consent did not apply to “any girl or woman...known of immoral character,” working-class were commonly preyed upon as they were “unable to resist the sexual advances because of moral failings and gullibility” (Lammasneimi, 3-5). Forced into labor by “linking...sexual danger to poverty and structural inequalities,” working-class women and girls “[disliked] having to work and make money; but they have to do it all the same,” fulfilling the capitalistic exploitation and trafficking of women into labor (Lammasneimi, 5; Shaw, 39). Likewise, the conditions and reputations associated with working-class women consequently ruin the chances for the latter choice – marriage. “Wearing out [one’s] health and…appearance” by illness, paralysis, or a tainted name destroys a woman’s chance at marriage and subjects her to a life of labor (Shaw, 39).
Similarly, women who chose marriage were also trapped by socioeconomic expectations as marriage “commodifies women as objects of exchange,” thus, furthering the moral question of the double-bind (Dierkes-Thrun, 297). Following the notion that the “ideal Victorian couple must value social connections and responsibilities,” 19th-century marriage plots were often mercenary, for status, or a “rescuing project” for fallen women “who [were] saved” by a proposal “after being socially damaged” (England, 120, 110). These premises for marriage are all demonstrated in Mrs. Warren’s Profession through the proposals of Frank and Crofts. Frank seeks Vivie’s wealth and status “by marrying somebody with both,” and Crofts marital pursuit consists of all three, implying an incestuous proposal to both Warren women where “all three could live together quite comfortably,” alleviating Mrs. Warren’s fallen reputation and securing the ancestry “with plenty of money” (Shaw, 24, 33). “Family, sex, money, and ‘love’ are all interlaced in this play,” indicating marriage as an “economic and erotic” transaction “since women are freely exchanged and interchanged without regard to their individuality” or genetic affiliation with one another (Dierkes-Thrun, 306, 296-7).
Derived by either the “traditional desire based on status, which includes money and family name,” or the eroticization of “a woman’s imperfect reputation,” marriage was more often an escape from poverty or a flawed social identity (England, 111). Moreover, marriage for women and girls was usually decided by their fathers or suitors, proving the dominion of the patriarch. Exposing another hypocrisy in 19th-century law, Lammasneimi uncovers the legal age of marriage was “set at 12 for girls”, though the age of consent in 1885 was 16 (Lammasneimi, 4). Regardless of class, the patriarch continued to control the female choice in marriage, where the morally low, legal age allowed “parents control over the choice of husbands for girls of wealth,” suggesting that both girls of working and middle class were usually sold into marriage (Lammasneimi, 3). Disfavored by both Mrs. Warren and Vivie, marriage was representative of women “having to try and please some man that she doesn’t care two straws for” (Shaw, 40). Disguised as true love and designed for social capital, the Warren women “wager that a damaged reputation may be worth more [than] the marriage market” (England, 109).
Repulsed by the unprofitable transaction of marriage, Mrs. Warren felt the choice between the double-bind of marriage of labor would make her a “[fool] to let other people trade in [her] good looks by employing [her],” and decided that prostitution guaranteed the most success and allowed the most independence “when [she] could trade in [herself] and get all the profits instead of starvation wages” (Shaw, 39). Though prostitution meant suffering the consequence of damaging her own social purity, it was the only way for a woman to have her own income and make her own choices instead of having “to be good for some man that can afford” “to provide for [her] decently,” though “it wouldn’t be for her own happiness,” but for her own survival (Shaw, 40). Trying to figure out “what’s a woman worth,” Mrs. Warren comes to a conclusion that “all she had was her appearance,” and instead of surrendering to death by labor, or the marital exchanging of independence and happiness, she figured out that “if a girl [had] enough money she doesn’t need to turn to prostitution,” proving that “the problem at heart is economic” (Shaw, 39-40; Nelson, 362).
Additionally, the moral question and controversy that Shaw hints to his Victorian audience brings forth the societal hypocrisy between marriage and prostitution. In Act II, Mrs. Warren clarifies that the choice between the two is based on economic necessity, emphasizing that women in both prostitution and marriage is “not work that any woman would do for pleasure” as both trades require women to “bear with disagreeables” (Shaw, 40). The only upside to prostitution is that “it’s worth while to a poor girl,” “it pays,” and unlike marriage, prostitution promises a better income than labor, and an income that belongs solely to the woman (Shaw, 40). Similarly, Mrs. Warren parallels the veiled truths of marriage and the unspoken unhappiness of married women who “pretend to feel a great deal that they don’t feel” with the implicitly understood shame of discussing prostitution publicly as “there was little freedom to talk about sexual license” (Shaw, 41; Nelson, 364). Unable to discuss the fallacies of marriage and the economic trafficking of women into labor and prostitution, Mrs. Warren reflects on the hypocrisy of a system that “[arranges] the world that way for women” and simultaneously shames them for it, stating that “there’s no good in pretending” that marriage is moral and prostitution is immoral (Shaw, 41).
While prostitution was Mrs. Warren’s escape to the 19th-century double-bind, Vivie’s generation of emerging young adults in the late Victorian Era, prompts her with a new liberation – an education, “a thing unheard in [Mrs. Warren’s] day” (Shaw, 16). However, driven by the same economic force, education was only allowed for women who could pay for it, excluding another opportunity for working-class girls. Because Mrs. Warren exchanged her reputation for independence and stability, she was “able to give [her] daughter a first-rate education” at Cambridge University (Shaw, 40). Though, despite the transgressive reform to include women, the inequalities of providing a co-gendered education still intrinsically oppressed women as they were “excluded from...lectures...considered too delicate for mixed company” and “were not awarded degrees on completion of their studies” (Conolly, 91). Other inequalities at Cambridge included strict rules against “[entertaining] male friends in their rooms” with the exception of “fathers and brothers,” the forbidding of “smoking by women,” and the implementation of a “strict dress code” for women in sports (Conolly, 93). The gender inequalities at Cambridge, though seemingly transgressive, still show proof of an entire “world dominated...by men” (Conolly, 94). Therefore, Vivie’s implied leap towards female liberation through academia has not necessarily freed her from the double bind, but instead allowed her access to a restricted education. Founded upon by patriarchal inequalities, coexisting in a society ruled by it, and without a degree, Vivie’s educational experience will only force her back into the bind as she will enter the world uncertified, unmarried, and without wealth.
Conclusively, the lack of opportunity for 19th-century women “can’t be right,” as working-class women are forced into the capitalistic exploitation of labor, marriage, and prostitution in order to survive, whilst suffering the consequences of laboring dangers, the lack of agency in a transactional marriage, and the reputation of being “degraded,” “shameless,” and “corrupted by…sexual knowledge” (Shaw, 16; Liggins, 43). Though the late 19th-century pledged for the inclusion of women at university as an escape to the bind, the gender disparities that existed in Cambridge further the societal hindrance of independent women who upon graduation, will enter society without the certification to prove themselves as an equal, confirming that even an independent woman’s “income and career offer little protection” against the “male drive to domination” (Allett, 37). In short, Vivie’s Cambridge experience is “all only a pretence” where she will ultimately be forced back into the double-bind of finding stability through marriage or labor (Shaw, 63).
The problem play’s ending in confliction expose the Warren women’s differing perspectives on how to escape the double-bind; revealing Mrs. Warren’s beliefs that Vivie’s education has “taught [her] wrong on purpose,” suggesting that Cambridge has manipulated her into thinking “people are always blaming their circumstances for what they are” instead of empathizing with her mother’s choice in prostitution as she did not have the same “chance” to “have gone to college” (Shaw, 63, 37). Mrs. Warren’s lack of choice entitle her to defend herself as a mother who “gave [Vivie] the chance,” shaming her daughter’s resentment as a decision that’s “easy to talk” morally of when privileged (Shaw, 37). Acknowledging that her daughter’s opportunity would not have been possible “if [she] hadn’t paid them,” Mrs. Warren’s argument relies heavily on the notion that Vivie’s academic independence will suffer economic failure as she will struggle “to keep it up without [Mrs. Warren’s] money” (Shaw, 63). Knowing the “truth” that by giving her wealth, Vivie will have nothing to compete with in an economically driven patriarchal society, Mrs. Warren fears that her daughter’s education will not be enough to free her from the bind (Shaw, 63). Vivie will have to come to terms with trying to define herself as an unmarried woman in Victorian society, slowly to figure out that even with an education “the patriarchal discourse” still, and will “control women,” whether in educational restriction or the false pretense of providing women with an educational experience without any sort of certification or guarantee of social mobility (Bai, 244).
Furthermore, Vivie’s perspective reveal her own frustrations with her mother’s choice of escape. John Allett’s radical feminist response to the politics of prostitution in Mrs. Warren’s Profession suggests Vivie’s choice to emancipate as her realization that all of society is controlled and dominated by men; understanding that her mother’s wealth relieves male desires and is sourced by the trafficking of women, Vivie questions her mother’s perpetuation of capitalism and the exploitation of working-class women as she continues her career in prostitution instead of collecting the necessary income and moving forward in a morally different direction. Though Mrs. Warren will “never mention it,” her inability to give up her profession resides in her anxiety for Vivie’s future, as without any inheritable insurance, Vivie will “be quit of [Mrs. Warren] altogether when [she] [dies]” (Shaw, 64). Mrs. Warren’s fears of Vivie not marrying, or following her path into prostitution, enable her to continue her prostitution profit as a matter of security for her daughter. Though perpetuating capitalism and the trafficking of women, Mrs. Warren’s concerns prove the double-bind that Vivie will be forced back into without her mother’s wealth. However the dysfunctionality of their relationship coupled with Vivie’s educational experience rid her of “pity,” “ her mother,” and “[gets] rid of all the entanglement” in empathizing with ways Mrs. Warren would “have been a fool…[to take] anything else” (Bai, 246; Shaw, 40).
The Warren women’s disagreement on how to successfully escape the socioeconomic double-bind of the Victorian Era is founded upon not only their generational gap in terms of female opportunity, but also the dysfunctionality of the Warren family; a single-parent household with an absent mother and a lost daughter angered by her mother’s distant rule of authority and in question of her mother’s neglected truths. The dissociation between their relationship is important as it establishes a lack of empathy between mother-daughter, and allows the women to form an unbiased opinion of how each chooses to reject their gendered limitations and succeed amongst an economically driven and patriarchal society. Moreover, their differing perspectives expose the faults and failures of each, and overall prove that ultimately, there is no escape from the double-bind between marriage and labor, as both choices still suffer socially, morally, or economically. Though both women possess a new woman attitude of exercising their own socioeconomic control, both women still suffer at the mercy of oppression. Mrs. Warren’s escape through prostitution fails her both socially and morally, while Vivie’s escape through academia will fail her economically. The Warren women “struggle for independence of the new female’s rebellious attitude towards patriarchy,” emphasize the drama as a “problem play” by allowing the audience to reflect on the societal hypocrisies that perpetuate the oppression of women (Bai, 248). The conflicting lack of finality in Mrs. Warren’s Profession conjoined with Shaw’s explicitly implicit taboos to expose the social ills of Victorian society reflect on the morality of “what the world is really like” for 19th-century women (Shaw, 63).
Works Referenced
Allett, John. “‘Mrs. Warren’s Profession’ and the Politics of Prostitution.” Shaw, vol. 19, 1999, pp. 23–39. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/40681591.
Bai, Lin. "An Analysis of Vivie in Mrs. Warren's Profession Using Narrative Theory." Theory and Practice in Language Studies 8.2 (2018): pp. 244-250. Web.
Conolly, L. W. “Who was Phillippa Summers? Reflections of Vivie Warren’s Cambridge.” Shaw, vol. 25, 2005, pp. 89–95. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/40681710.
England, Catherine. “Slipping into Marriage: How Heroines Create Desire by Risking Their Reputations.” Victorian Review, vol. 40, no. 2, 2014, pp. 109–124., www.jstor.org/stable/24877718.
George Bernard Shaw’s Plays, edited by Sandie Byrne. Norton Critical Edition. pp. 13-66.
Howell, Philip. "A Private Contagious Diseases Act: Prostitution and Public Space in Victorian Cambridge." Journal of Historical Geography 26.3 (2000): 376-402. Web.
Kent, Brad. “Eighteenth-Century Literary Precursors of ‘Mrs Warren’s Profession.’” University of Toronto Quarterly, vol. 81, no. 2, Spring 2012, pp. 187–207. EBSCOhost, doi:10.3138/UTQ.81.2.187.
Lammasniemi, Laura. "“Precocious Girls”: Age of Consent, Class and Family in Late Nineteenth-Century England." Law and History Review 38.1 (2020): 241-66. Web.
Liggins, Emma. “Prostitution and Social Purity in the 1880s and 1890s.” Critical Survey, vol. 15, no. 3, Sept. 2003, pp. 39–55. EBSCOhost, doi:10.3167/001115703782153510.
Nelson, Raymond S. “Mrs. Warren's Profession and English Prostitution.” Journal of Modern Literature, vol. 2, no. 3, 1971, pp. 357–366. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/30053190.
Biography
Originally from San Francisco, Christina Canalita is a graduate student of California State University of Fullerton's MA program.
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