Mrs Warren’s Profession was written in 1893 and published by Grant Richards in 1898 as part of Plays Unpleasant, but it was not publicly performed in England until 1925 — the Lord Chamberlain’s office having refused to license it for over thirty years. The play’s subject — prostitution — was scandalous enough, but Shaw’s treatment was more shocking still: he refused to condemn Mrs. Warren as a sinner and instead presented her career as a rational response to the economic conditions facing working-class women in Victorian England.
Kitty Warren grew up in poverty, watched her sisters die of lead poisoning in a factory, and chose prostitution as the only available path to economic independence. She prospered, invested her earnings, and now manages a chain of brothels across Europe. Her daughter Vivie, educated at Cambridge on the proceeds, discovers the source of her mother’s wealth and must decide what to do with the knowledge.
Shaw’s argument is deliberately uncomfortable. Mrs. Warren is not a victim — she made a free choice in constrained circumstances, and she is unashamed of it. The play challenges the audience to explain what alternative she had: the factory that killed her sisters? Domestic service at starvation wages? Marriage to a man who would control her earnings? Shaw forces the recognition that prostitution is not a moral failure but an economic institution, sustained by the same system that produces poverty, inequality, and the exploitation of women’s labor.
Vivie’s decision to reject her mother — to break free of both the money and the relationship — is the play’s most controversial element. Shaw presents it as a principled choice (Vivie refuses to be supported by tainted wealth), but the emotional cost is enormous: Vivie loses her mother, and her mother loses the only person she loves. The play ends not with reconciliation but with separation, and Shaw denies the audience the comfortable resolution they expect.
Collecting Mrs Warren’s Profession
First edition (Grant Richards, London, 1898): Published in Plays Unpleasant. Green cloth.
Market values:
- First edition of Plays Unpleasant: $100–$300
- First separate American edition: $30–$80
- Later editions: $5–$15