CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY, NORTHRIDGE

A DRAMATURGICAL APPROACH

TO BERNARD SHAW'S

MRS. WARREN'S PROFESSION

A thesis submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in

Theatre

by

Laurie Jayne Wolf

May 1986 of Laurie Jayne Wolf is approved:

California State University, Northridge

ii To all of Shaw's women, both on his stage and in his life, who taught me how to handle a difficult but fascinating man.

iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The completion of my master's thesis has been both

a challenge and a reward. It is a difficult task to

research a well-known figure, such as Bernard Shaw, and write a paper that appears to have some originality and

freshness, without appearing to have tried to re-invent

the wheel. The challenge that comes with performing this undertaking is immense; if Shaw himself did not write about any particular section of my topic, I could rest

assured that at least seven other people did. The rewards, however, far outweigh the frustrations. The knowledge to be gained from this project was tremendous, and the most exciting part is knowing that this research has opened up _many new avenues to explore.

I would like to express particular thanks to the members of my thesis committee, who gave me untold sup­ port. I have been honored to have Dr. Gale Larson on my committee. His expertise and insight on Shaw served to provide me with invaluable inspiration. Dr. William

Zucchero has my sincerest thanks and appreciation for re­ introducing me to Shaw (a much more pleasant introduction than my first) . I would like to offer a very special thanks to my committee chair, Dr. Noreen Barnes, who has been more help to me than she will ever know; she piqued

iv my interest in women in theatre and bolstered my self-confidence when thesis hysteria threatened to over­ take me.

I would like to acknowledge the debt of gratitude owed to countless friends and family, who did not disown me, no matter how much they may have warited to, and to my parents, who taught me that hard work has its rewards, and who still like me, no matter what. I would like to extend my deepest appreciation and thanks to Mara Houdyshell, who allowed my computer, my countless books and me to live in her living room far beyond our welcome. Her patience is a rare gift.

Finally, I would like to thank Peter Yarrow, Mary

Travers, Noel Paul Stookey, Joan Baez, and Wolfgang

Amadeus Mozart for keeping me entertained throughout the writing of this thesis.

v TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

DEDICATION . . . . iii

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS . . • . iv

ABSTRACT . . . • . . . vii

INTRODUCTION . 1 Chapter

1. An Historical Overview of Victorian

England:Social Conditions •... 6

2. Production History of Mrs. Warren's

Profession 23

3. Character Analysis of Kitty and Vivie

Warren 36

4. The Life Force of Shaw's Women 58

CONCLUSION . 70

ENDNOTES

INTRODUCTION 73

Chapter 1 74

Chapter 2 76

Chapter 3 . 77

Chapter 4 ...... 80

CONCLUSION . • • . 81

WORKS CITED 82

vi ABSTRACT

A DRAMATURGICAL APPROACH

TO BERNARD SHAW'S

MRS. WARREN'S PROFESSION

by

Laurie Jayne Wolf

Master of Arts in Theatre

In the art of theatrical production, there is a need for reliable historical research, guaranteeing the accu­ racy of all elements of the dramatic piece. The individ­ ual performing this role is known as the dramaturg, and is responsible for researching all aspects of the produc­ tion- performances, criticisms, author's notes, histori­ cal settings, and translations (if applicable). It is this role that will be performed when examining Mrs.

Warren's Profession, by Bernard Shaw.

Immediately upon its completion in 1894, this play became the subject of an enormous amount of controversy, due to the subject matter addressed, that of organized prostitution. Among the elements included in this

vii research is an examination of the social conditions of nineteenth-century England that obligated Shaw to criti­ cize the circumstances leading to Kitty Warren's career choice.

Important to this study is the production history of the piece. It was banned by the examiner for the Lord

Chamberlain for its objectionable subject matter; surpris­ ingly, not for its handling of prostitution, but because of its incidental hint of incest. The effort required in having this play produced, even in private performance, was a monumental one, and reflective of the time in which the play had been written.

The characters of Vivie and Kitty Warren will be closely scrutinized, both individually and in relationship to each other, illustrating them as the pioneers of the

Shavian women to come, the so-called "independent" or

"unwomanly" women.

The examination of these aspects of Mrs. Warren's

Profession will result in a work of research that could not only conceivably be transferred to the stage, but will further highlight a play that was an important forerunner to the many other works that constituted the career of

Bernard Shaw.

viii Introduction

In nineteenth-century England the audience shaped both the theatre and the drama placed within it; for patronage, the only card with which a manager may sometimes outbid public taste, was at its lowest ebb at Victoria's accession. Polite society, when it patronized the theatre at all, favoured the opera; a large section of that society, however, shunned the theatre altogether and sought entertainment from the circulating library • . . The play­ wright's place in the Victorian theatre was, at the outset, that of handyman to the company. He existed to make their performance possible, rather than they to interpret his work to an audience.l

The role of the playwrights expanded until not only were

they generating works that were comparable to the fare

available at the "circulating libraries," but were far

surpassing anything that had been written during the reign of Victoria. A form of drama that became increas-

ingly popular during this period of time addressed a num- ber of social questions and conditions. These productions were known as "problem plays," a term which led to anum- ber of. varied definitions. As Eric Bentley notes, "the modern age, we are told, has abandoned the classic norms of tragedy and comedy to put in their place the Problem

Play which is wholly devoted to ephemeral social questions

like votes for women and prison conditions. Some writers assume that the Problem Play has a thesis, a solution to

its problem. Others find the justification of the word

1 2

Problem in the fact that the play ends on a question­ mark."2 The concensus, however, is that the problem play brings a particular issue to the forefront of the public consciousness~ it does not necessarily offer a concrete solution, but it does serve to emphasize a problem that had been previously ignored.

One of the most prolific practitioners of this genre of drama was George Bernard Shaw, a playwright whose career as an audience agitator spanned over seven decades.

In commenting upon the problem play, Shaw wrote

The material of the dramatist is always some conflict of human feeling with circumstances~ so that, since institutions are circumstances, every social que&tion furnishes material for drama .. But every drama does not involve a social question, because human feeling may be in conflict with circumstances which are not institutions, which raise no questions at all, which are part of human destiny ••. A Doll's House will be as flat as ditchwater when A Midsummer Night's Dream will still be as fresh as paint~ but it will have done more.work in the world~ and that is enough for the highest genius.3

Shaw often expressed his admiration and indebtedness to other writers, especially Moliere, Charles Dickens and

Mark Twain. A contemporary playwright to whom he often denied any inspiration, but whose influence is evident throughout many of Shaw's earlier works was Henrik Ibsen.

Candida was almost a mirror reflection of A Doll's House, with the doll being characterized by Morell, the husband.

It was considered to be a "revolutionary statement on the relations of man and wife." 4 His Quintessence of Ibsenism 3

could just as easily have been t1tled the Quintessence of

Shavianism; the opinion that he held of Ibsen was equal

to that he held of himself. Mrs. Warren's Profession

shows the unmistakable influence of Ibsen. In this play,

Shaw employed Ibsen's "retrospective method" 5 as well as

utilizing situations reminiscent of Ghosts.

In writing Mrs. Warren's Profession, Shaw borrowed

from a number of sources to give rise to one of the great­ est problem plays of his career, "a work whose strong characters and provocative themes have sent three genera­ tions of scholars searching for its literary antecedents."

The literary origins given credit for his inspiration included: Arthur Wing Pinero's The Second Mrs. Tanqueray,

Guy de Maupassant's Yvette, Dumas' La Dame Aux Camelias, and Janet Achurch's Mrs. Daintree's Daughter.

The subject of the courtesan was a popular one in nineteenth-century English theatre, and Shaw probably would not have had any trouble finding a model for his work had one been needed. He was approached by the actress, Janet Achurch, about writing a play based on de Maupassant's short story, Yvette. Shaw encouraged

Miss Achurch to attempt a dramatization on her own, which resulted in Mrs. Daintree's Daughter, which was granted license by the Lord Chamberlain's examiner under the name of Mrs. Dartrey's Daughter. There is no explanation offered for this particular title change. There is an 4

interesting sidelight connected with the use of the name

Mrs. Dartrey, as well as with the name Mrs. Jarman.

Shaw's working title for Mrs. Warren's Profession was

Mrs. Jarman's Profession (although Shaw denied in a letter

dated November 19, 1894 to R. Golding Bright that he had

ever seriously considered using the name Mrs. Jarman as

the title of his play). Both of these names illustrate

the influence of Pinero's The Second Mrs. Tanqueray. As

a former courtesan, Paula Tanqueray was known by a number

of psuedonyms as seen in this example:

Drummle: I met her at Hamberg, two - three

seasons ago.

Aubrey: Not as Mrs. Jarman?

Drummle: No

Aubrey: She was then - ?

Drummle: Mrs. Dartry. 7

Shaw wrote his play at the same time Miss Achurch was creating her version, surpassing the "standard, senti­ mental treatment of the prostitute theme" 8 that most of

the courtesan plays were receiving at the time. Shaw used

his literary models in conjunction with a controversial

social problem, and produced Mrs. Warren's Profession, a

clear-cut departure from the romanticized stories of

"fallen women" that were currently in vogue.

His treatment of his subject matter will be

investigated and discussed in the following chapters, with 5

consideration given to the aspects that would benefit a production of this play. The point of view that will be used will be that of a dramaturg. By analyzing all aspects of Mrs. Warren's Profession, it will become possi­ ble to bring to light elements of a play that is sometimes lost in the recognition enjoyed by so many of Shaw's later works. Chapter 1

An Historical Overview of Victorian England:

Social Conditions

As he stated in the preface to Mrs. Warren's

Profession, Shaw wrote his play "to draw attention to the truth that prostitution is caused, not by female depravity and male licentiousness, but simply by underpaying, under- valuing, and overworking women so shamefully that the poorest of them are forced to resort to prostitution to keep body and soul together." 1 Working conditions in nineteenth-century England were so corrupt, so disgraceful that many women and men were forced to turn to careers that were less than savory in order to make a living for themselves and their dependents. There are various accounts of the lives of factory workers, stories that run the gamut from the ideal working conditions, complete with church, educational and social facilities, to the most sordid of situations.

The most pleasant of the factory stories are reminiscent of the munitions factory founded by Andrew

Undershaft in Shaw's Major Barbara. The paternalism that was exhibited by industrial moguls was very similar to that shown by the nobility over medieval fiefdoms. The factory and mill owners were usually large family

6 7

corporations who provided organized religion, political

life, and education for the members of their factory 'fam- ilies'. This seems to be a pleasant picture until one remembers that the workers were bound to follow the relig- ious beliefs, the political leanings, and the educational choices of their employers. It is interesting to note that the education was not primarily intended for the children of factory workers, but the children who were factory workers themselves. It was not unusual to see as many as three generations working in a single workshop.

The working conditions were probably better in these fac- tories than in any others that will be under discussion, but this does not change the fact that the workers were really nothing more than slave labor in a whitewashed sweatshop.

The most prevalent working conditions to be found in nineteenth century England are demonstrated by the find- ings of an investigation conducted by Henry Mayhew for the Morning Chronicle. Mayhew, while examining the rea- sons for the excessive occurrence of prostitution, con- ducted interviews with numerous factory workers. The most common response to his queries can be seen in the following testimony: I work at slop trowsers, moleskin and cord - no cloth. We make about 4s. a week, but we must work till nine or ten o'clock every night for that. We never make more than 4s., and very often less. If you go of an errand, or want a bit of bread, you lose time; and 8

sometimes the work comes out harder - it's more stubborn, and takes more time. I've known it like a bit of board~ I make, I should say, taking one week with another, about 3s.4d. a week. The sweater finds us our lodging; but we has to buy our candles out of what we make, and they cost us about ld. each evening, or, I should say, Sd. a week. I earn clear just upon 3s.; that's about it. I find it very hard indeed to live upon that. If we fall ill we're turned off. The sweater won't keep us with her not the second day. I have been married. My husband has been dead seven year. I wish he wasn't. I have nq children alive. I have buried three. I had two children alive when my husband died. The youngest was five and the other was seven. My husband was a soap-maker. He got nl a week. I worked at the slop trade while he was alive. Our weekly earnings - his and mine together - was about 26s. The slop trade was better paid then than now, and what's more, I had the work on my own account . . . When my eldest boy died - and that was two year after his father - I couldn't afford to bury him. My second boy has only been dead five months. He died of the hooping-cough . . . He could but have been brought up in the worst kind of poverty by me, and God only knows what might have become of him if he had lived.2

These conditions did not prevail only in the towns. The

'Report on the Employment of Women and Children in Agri- culture' gave details regarding poor living and working conditions in the country. The insufficient housing accornrn9dations in the manufacturing sections of the rural districts was almost universal. An excerpt from the

General Sanitary Report, published in 1842, gives us the following information:

"In Hull" (says Mr. R. Wood) "I have met with a mother fifty years of age, and her son anove twenty-one, sleeping in the same bed, and a lodger in the same room . . • In a cellar in Liverpool, I found a mother and her grown-up daughter sleeping on a bed in one corner of 9

the cellar, and in the other corner three sailors had their bed .•. " (Another account tells us) "I have one highly respectable fore­ man, who has one daughter aged twenty, and another aged twenty-two, sleeping on each side of the bed in which himself and his wife sleep. The next bed-room is filled with the younger children of both sexes boys and girls up to sixteen years of age." 3

William (General) Booth, founder of the Salvation Army had the plight of those involved with the work situation thrust upon his attention in 1887 "when Trafalgar Square became the camping ground of the Homeless Outcasts of

London." 4 He came across

two poor women . making their home in a shop door-way in Liverpool Street. Thus they manage in the summer; what it's like in winter time is terrible to think of. In many cases it means the pauper's grave, as in the case of a young woman who was wont to sleep in a van in Bedfordbury. Some men who were aware of her practice surprised her by dashing a bucket of water on her. The blow to her weak system caused illness, and the inevitable sequel - a coroner's jury came to the conclusion that the water only hastened her death, which was due, in plain English, to starvation.5

The preceding information serves as substantial documentation, clearly illustrating the circumstances forcing women into prostitution. Contrary to the popular belief of many individuals during the middle and late nineteenth century, women did not turn to this 'trade' out of promiscuity, but rather out of necessity. Obviously, there were a number of women who had chosen prostitution as a profession of their own volition, but the overwhelm- ing majority were driven to this choice by the factors just demonstrated. 10

In 1857, the medical journal 'The Lancet' had estimated that one house in every si~ty in the capital was a brothel and that one woman in every sixteen was a whore - which if true meant that there were roughly 6,000 brothels and 80,000 prostitutes in London, which conforms roughly with other sources. It is almost cer­ tain that, by twenty years later, the situation had not changed much. 'I should think that prostitution in England', asserted Scotland Yard's Howard Vincent in 1881, 'is considerably in excess of the prostitution in other coun-

tries. . . w •6

The system of prostitution operated on three levels. At the top end of the trade were the 'introducing houses' which dealt in specially selected girls who traveled to the brothels to meet their clients. The procuress handled all money matters, and often acted as ~ntrepreneur, send- ing notices to clients to announce the latest acquisition.

The "introducing houses" suppl~edonly a small portion of

London's sexual market. At the next level were the girls who came from 'dress houses', where they paid an exhorbi- tant rent for food, clothing and lodgings. Although the girls were perpetually in debt to their landlords, they themselves received the cash for their services, allowing them a small measure of independence.

The most prevalent form of prostitution were the free-lance prostitutes, who took their pick-ups to

'accommodation houses' in London's West End. These

'houses' were usually shops or coffee houses "which openly 7 displayed notices worded 'beds to be had within'." The 11

client paid for the rental of the room as well as for the girl.

It is interesting to note that the majority of clients desired very young girls. When viewed against the strict backdrop of Victorian society, this is not as strange as it might first appear. "By definition, prosti- tutes were the exact opposite of the 'pure' women who were so honoured. Under these circumstances, it was inevitable that virginity - with its unique first time element of possession - should acquire an enormous market premium

.•. the pure, or the nearly pure, were often preferred 8 to the expert." This demand for very young girls created a whole new enterprise. Poor families would put their daughters on the·street on a regular basis, or would sell them to a procurer for one night, allowing them to return to a more respectable employment.

It was during this period of time that traffic in white slavery became increasingly lucrative. The streets became unsafe for young girls; employment agencies and some employers became recruiting houses for some brothels.

Procurers met trains, and the boats from Ireland and the

European Continent in the hope of securing a prospect for their houses. Because the laws against procurement were stricter on the Continent, many of the girls in brothels there had been sent from England. With white slavery running rampant at this time, it was inevitable that there 12

- would be a public outcry against it. A group of people, known as 'sex reformers' began in 1885 to take steps to put a halt on this trade that was existing unchecked. The primary leaders in this battle were William Stead,

Josephine Butler, Alfred Dyer, and William and Catherine

Booth. The work of these people was important, not only for their pursuit of the sex racketeers, but for their assault on society as a whole. They attacked the society that enforced a double standard, and that fed on the oppression of women. These revolutionaries, obsessed with their cause, were surprisingly successful in their quest, but in achieving their success, they had a tendency to distort facts, dramatizing actual events to capitalize on the shock value. An example of this can be seen in Dyer's account of a young woman being held in a Brussels brothel against her will. Hers is the typical Victorian concep- tion of white slavery.

She was courted in London by a man of gentlemanly exterior who promised her marriage if she would accompany him for that purpose to Brussels. At Calais Station, on the way to Belgium, he had told her that he had mislaid all his money and would have to return to England to obtain some more. However, they had just met a friend of his on the platform and he suggested that she should go on with him to Brussels, where he would join her later. When Ellen objected, because she did not like the look of the stranger, he pushed her into the carriage, slammed the door behind her and the train started moving.

Ellen had been taken to the brothel in the Rue St. Laurent and horrified, had watched her escort being paid in cash for her delivery. 13

She had been interrogated at the police station in French - which she did not understand - registered and examined by police doctors for VD. Her clothes had been taken from her and she had been given a seductive negligee-type dress worn by all the girls in the Belgian brothels.

Although the door of the brothel could be opened easily from the outside, it had no handle on the inside. The only way of opening it was with a key retained by members of the maison staff .•. In theory, any girl was free to leave a maison toleree when she chose - and notices on the walls of each brothel proclaimed this fact in four languages - but in practice, since the owner had paid for their merchandise, they r~gorously discouraged any intentions to 9 leave. Ellen Newland, in short, was a prisoner.

Josephine Butler was one of the first to grasp the importance of the cause of women's liberation. She was married to George Butler, a don at Oxford, where the fac- ulty was entirely male, and mostly unmarried. Her hus- band's colleagues were a group of intolerant and bigoted men, especially on the subject of women. Mrs. Butler's dedication to this very early version of the women's movement became fully formed upon reading the best selling novel, Ruth, a story which shocked Victorian England because it dealt with a woman who had been seduced and left to raise a child alone. The majority of the Oxford faculty felt that it was immoral to portray "a woman of that sort as a sympathet1c. . character. .. 10 It was at t h at point in time that she became an ardent feminist, and set her sights toward removing the double standard so that both women and men share the consequences of the sex act, 14

establishing a common morality for both male and female.

The question that she posed was this: "Why should it be

the woman who always paid the price - a price that was

appallingly high? If women were expected to be chaste,

why should not this requirement be demanded of men as

well? Why should a girl be re~arded as 'fallen' while

her sexual partner - often older and more experienced and

wealthier - was barely criticised and, in some circles,

even admired for his actions?"ll

Mrs. Butler's crusade reached fever pitch in 1869,

when she returned from a vacation to find that the third

of the Contagious Diseases Acts had been passed by the

Queen (the first two Acts had been passed in 1864 and

.1866). The nature of these Acts was intended to "diminish

the alarming incidence of venereal disease amongst the 12 armed forces," beginning with certain garrison and naval

towns, with the hopes of the control spreading to the

entire country. "The main features of the Acts were the

registration and supervision (by a special police force)

of prostitutes; and, if found to be diseased, the com­

pulsory detention of such women in special hospitals until

they were cured. Women resisting examination were

imprisoned with hard labour."13 The ratification of these

Acts enraged Josephine Butler on two counts. The first

was the way in which the Acts had been titled and worded.

It was rumored that Queen Victoria had signed the first 15

of the Acts, believing "that it was concerned with ca ttl e - wh 1c. h , 1n . a manner o f speak. 1ng, 1t. was. "14 Her second objection to the Acts was the fact that they con- tinued to strenuously enforce the double standard. On the surface, the argument was logical. If the women in the brothels were examined on a regular basis, disease could be curbed, and this would lead to an international control on the spread of disease. What Mrs. Butler disapproved of was the fact that the cause and consequences of the dis- ease lay with the women, while the gentlemen in society escaped without repercussions. During the early part of 187Q, Josephine Butler instigated the formation of the Ladies National Association for the Repeal of the CD

Acts, publishing a protest called for the end of laws that punished one sex for a crime that was motivated by the other sex.

A sex reformer with whom Mrs. Butler worked in tandem was William Stead, editor of the Pall Mall Gazette, and a man whose opinions Bernard Shaw would support and later emulate in Mrs. Warren's Profession. Stead conducted his campaign against sexual exploitation with a compassion and insight that was lacking in many of his contemporaries.

"He did not attack the Victorians for having sexual rela- tions with prostitute women, but for supporting a system that enslaved them. He was not concerned with the moral- ity of acts between consenting adults. He was fighting a (l ' 16

trade that systematically tricked young teenage girls

into a life that they did not seek and, in many cases at 15 least, would later regret." Stead determined that he would not rely upon hearsay for his investigation, but would go directly to the brothel owners, police, and pros- titutes themselves for his information.

One of the major phases of his inquiry took Stead to the police stations and prisons, where he encountered an appalling amount of apathy, indifference and insensitivity.

"A prison chaplain told him that, in a home near Newport, there were fifty children under ten, all of whom had been victims of sexual assault. In an establishment in Farnham, in Surrey, just south of London, were forty girls under twelve who had been violated."16

He was surprised by the disinterest shown by the president of the Society for the Protection of Women and

Children, a group that he had been led to believe would provide a large measure of support. He was told that the

Society was only concerned with protecting 'fortunate' women; the prevailing belief was that no woman "ever 17 became a harlot except of her own free choice." Angered,

Stead told him about a girl that

had been tied up naked in a house in Trevor Square, near Hyde Park, and flogged by a pervert until the blood flowed. 'What would your society do if I placed the case in your hands?' he demanded. 17

'Nothing•, answered the other, 'The girl consented to be tied up to receive a birching. If she got more than she bargained for that is not our affair' .18

Equally shocking were the stories told by the brothel madames. Stead spoke with two women, ages twenty and

twenty-two, who specialized in providing virgins for their

clients. They spoke quite callously of their charges:

Sometimes, they admitted, they had trouble with the 'little fools' when they were con­ fronted with a man. 'The right way to deal with these silly girls', said Miss X, as Stead called her, 'is to convince them that, now that they have come, they have got to be seduced, willing or unwilling . . Do you remember Janie?' she asked her friend.

'Don't I just!' answered MissY.

•we had fearful trouble with that girl'; Miss X explained. 'She wrapped herself up in the bed curtains and screamed and fought and made such a rumpus that I and my friend had to hold her down by main force in bed while she was being seduced'.

• ••. it gave me such a sickening•, MissY commented 'that I was almost going to chuck up the business, but I got into it again•.l9

He interviewed Rebecca Jarrett, a former madame who had recently taken up residence in a home that Josephine

Butler maintained in Winchester for fallen women. Her story was not atypical of other women that he had spoken to. She was

the daughter of a tradesman who drank . . . (she) had gone into domestic service as a young teenager. One of the guests in the house had seduced her, taken her to live with him for a couple of years and then, presumably when 18

he tired of her, introduced her into a brothel.

She had progressed from being a prostitue employed by others to running her own brothel, assisted by her mother and her brother. Her sisters were co-opted into the family business which supplied young virgins to clients when required. Altogether, she had run three 'gay' houses (brothels) - in Bristol,Liverpool and Manchester.20

Due to the influences of Josephine Butler and the Booths

(founders of the Salvation Army), she was 'saved' and worked to redeem the souls of other 'fallen' women. After much persuasion by Mrs. Butler, she agreed to help Stead in his investigation by procuring a virgin, "not for ruin, 21 but for rescue."

Stead developed a whole scenario in which Rebecca procured a young girl, Eliza Armstrong, under the guise of securing employment as a domestic. The story of her will- ing 'abducti~n', including the permission of her parents, was featured in Stead's newspaper, the Pall Mall Gazette, as a four-part story entitled 'The Maiden Tribute of

Modern Bablyon'. The article served Stead's purpose admirably; he shocked most of the people in England who were among the uninformed, and created an aura of thank~ fulness that the subject had finally been brought to light. His article resulted in the Criminal Law Amendment

Bill, also known as Stead's Act, in 1885. The basic tenets of the bill "raised the age of consent from thir- teen to sixteen, it admitted the evidence of children even 19

if they were not able to satisfy the judge and jury that they understood the nature of an oath, and it increased the pains and penalties inflicted upon all those who ruined girls, whether by abducting them abroad or cor- . 22 rupting them at home." The fact that the whole story had been manipulated and staged by Stead bothered no one

(with the exception of Shaw), and the benefits that were gained from his expose far outweighed its exaggeration.

Bernard Shaw's concern over social conditions developed following his inclusion in a debating society known as the Zetetical in the fall of 1879. After his first experience in public speaking (in his eyes, a com- plete disgrace) , he vowed to attend every public speaking event possible in order to redeem himself. In keeping with that promise, he heard an American by the name of

Henry George speak on his book, Progress and Poverty.

Shaw read this book, and followed it with Karl Marx's Das

Kapital, finally finding the niche that he had been searching for in his readings of "Mill on Liberty, on

Representative Government, on the Irish Land Question and was familiar with the evolutionary ideas and theories of

Darwin, Tyndall, Huxley, Spencer, George Eliot, and their school." 23 In Shaw's analysis of Marx's views of Eng- land's prosperity under capitalism, we are able to see the seeds from which Mrs. Warren's Profession began to grow.

"Karl Marx . . . convicted private property of wholesale 20

spoilation, murder and compulsory prostitution; of plague, pestilence, and famine; battle, murder, and sudden death

no one ventured to pretend that the charges were not true. The facts were not only admitted; they had been 24 legislated upon." It is this idea, "compulsory prosti­ tution" as a result of capitalism that became the theme of this play.

Forty-three years after William Stead printed his findings in the Pall Mall Gazette, Shaw completed The

Intelligent Woman's Guide to Socialism and Capitalism.

In this book, he was able to accurately pinpoint the prob­ lems facing the sex reformers in the late nineteenth­ century, and, with the precision born of hindsight, was able to outline in detail the changes that must be brought about. The argument that he addressed in his work was this: "Socialism is an opinion as to how the income of the country should be distributed. Its distribution is not a natural phenomenon: it is a matter for arrangement, subject to change like any other arrangement. It has been changed within living memory to an extent that would have seemed incredible and scandalous to Queen Victoria, and is still being changed from year to year. Therefore what we have to consider is not whether our distribution shall be altered or not but what further changes are desirable to attain a prosperous stability." 25 21

When discussing the question of poverty, Shaw felt

that the worst mistake that society could make would be

to think of that poverty as a punishment of a wrong-doing.

"It is easy to say of a lazy man 'Oh, let him be poor: it

serves him right for being lazy: it will teach him a les­

son."26 In calling the toleration of poverty a "national

crime," Shaw was advocating a law that had been in effect

since the reign of Elizabeth I; that no one in the country

was to be left to destitution. This, of course, brought

him to the next question: "how much is enough?" He felt

that people do, indeed, suffer from too much wealth as too much poverty; the 'pain' is just much subtler among the

rich. In regard to the opinion that the poor were lazy,

this is proven to be false by the sheer numbers of people

employed, usually at less than slave wages. The system of

low wages affected women far more than it did men.

Although a man may have been paid at 'starvation wages',

it was still the starvation wage of a family, as opposed

to a woman in similar circumstances, who was paid the wage

of a single person, regardless of her responsibilities.

Therefore, it became the practice among employers that women should be paid less than men, "and when any female

rebel claimed to be paid as much as a man for the same work ("Equal wages. for equal work"), the employer shut

her up with two arguments: first, 'If you dont take the 22

lower wage there are plenty of others who will', and, second, 'If I have to pay a man's wages I will get a man 27 to do the work'."

As a further argument against capitalism, Shaw presents the idea that

if you {were to) offer a pretty girl twopence half-penny an hour in a match factory, with a chance of contracting necrosis of the jawbone from phosphorus poisoning on the one hand, and on the other a jolly and pampered time under the protection of a wealthy bachelor, which was what the Victorian employers did and what employers still do all over the world when they are not stopped by resolutely socialistic laws, you are loading the dice in favor of the devil "so monstrously as not only to make it certain that he will win .... 28

When faced with choices such as.these, it is easy.to understand how Kitty Warren came to the decision that she did. Hers was not the pleasant choice, but it was the most practical one when considering the options with which she was faced. Shaw believed that the answers to the problems of society lay with socialism. This may have alleviated Kitty's problems, but it was not a viable option open to her. Chapter 2

Production History of Mrs. Warren's

Profession

The production history of Mrs. Warren's Profession was as traumatic to its author as the subject matter of the play was to the audience of Victorian England. The play was not banned because of its theme of prostitution, or because it attacked the social standards of England, but because it contained an allusion to incest. The rules of British censorship were rooted in the early eighteenth- century, and were established by the corrupt Prime Mini- ster, Robert Walpole, who outlined the topics which were forbidden mention in any dramatic piece. A summary of the restrictions is as follows:

Sacred figures, such as God and Jesus, must not be exhibited, although their exhibition was com­ mon in the Medieval Morality Plays. God might be heard, as he is in Everyman, but must not be seen . . . actors and actresses (were forbidden) to portray living people on the stage. They might be cartooned and caricatured in the press, but not in the theatre. Members of the Royal Family, even if they had been dead for a century, were not to be dramatised, though their biogra- · phies, favourable or unfavourable, might be written, ... Among the matters which were not to be mentioned in plays was incest.l

The main point of Walpole's rules was so that he himself would not be caricatured on stage, especially by the dramatist, Henry Fielding. The fact that the rules

23 24

applied only to the stage, and had no effect upon art in any other medium was ludricrous; a play like Mrs. Warren's

Profession, could be published in book form, available to anyone who could read, but with its incidental reference to the controversial topic of incest, the play was not to be licensed for public performance until 1925, thirty-two years after its completion.

The first mention of a planned performance for Mrs.

Warren's Profession came on March 4, 1898, when Shaw was preparing for a copyright performance of his play, sched- uled for March 30, 1898 at the Victoria Hall in Bayswater.

On March 11, he was informed that G. A. Redford, the Lord

Chamberlain's examiner of plays had not been able to recommend the play for performance, primarily because of the implication of the sibling connection between Frank and Vivie, as well as the possible father/daughter rela- tionship with Sir George Crofts. In response to this edict, Shaw wrote this rejoinder:

. . • I have just learned that you find yourself unable to recommend for license a play of mine entitled "Mrs. Warren's Profession." This I of course anticipated, as I quite recognized the impossibility of anyone dividing with me the responsibility for such a play; and I took care that your attention should be specially called to the character of the piece by making a note on the copy sent you. But cannot the case be dealt with by the blue pencil? If the Lord Chamberlain licenses the first act, with the exception of the duologue between Praed and Crofts; the third act down to the beginning of the scene between Crofts and Vivie; and the last act from the entry of Praed onward, wholly omitting the 2nd act & leaving Mrs. W's 25

profession unspecified [,] the public will be as effectually protected against a performance of the whole play as if it had been entirely prohibited, whilst I shall be equally pro­ tected against the forfeiture of my stage rights, which may possibly prove valuable in America or elsewhere • . . The emergency in which I have sent in the play has arisen, not through any project for producing the piece in the ordinary course, but because it will be published next month in a collected edition of my plays. In the present state of the law, performance prior to publication is necessary to secure dramatic copyright.2

On March 14, Redford sent the following reply:

I beg to point out that as Examiner of Plays I have already issued 'an uncompromising Veto' to the representation of the Drama in 4 acts entitl~d Mrs. Warren's Profe~sion. You admit that you anticipated, and delib­ erately courted, this result, 'recognising the impossibility of anyone dividing with you the responsibility for such a play.' Most cer­ tainly it is not for me to attempt any 'dra­ matic expurgation' with the blue pencil, as you appear to suggest. It is for you to submit, or cause to be submitted, a licens­ able play, and if you do this I will endeavor to forget that I ever read the original.3

The play received a provisional license on March 19, with

one of its four acts excised. Shaw wrote in reply to the

license: "This refers to the mutilated copy, with the 2nd

Act omitted and Mrs. Warren converted into a female

Fagin. 114 Shaw made a reference to the play being licensed

in a letter to Sidney Webb on April 11, 1898: "'Mrs. 5 Warren', as expurgated by me, was duly licensed." This

licensing of the play, however, did not alter the uproar

that its ban had created. "Frivolous and immoral farces

of no literary worth had been licensed, it was 26

complained, but works of art and importance by eminent men of letters had, in the interests of public morality, come under the ban of the Censor." 6 The play was once again submitted for license in 1907 by the manager of the

Midland Theatre in Manchester. This man sent a copy of

Mrs. Warren's Profession, the requisite two guinea read- ing fee, and a letter, indicating his desire to produce the play. "Three days later the play, the cheque, and the letter were all returned with the following censorial inscription added to the returned letter: 'Surely you are aware that I have already refused to license this 7 play. - G.A.R. '. " . That same year (1907), seventy-one writers, including

Shaw, Hardy, Swinburne, Hardy, Meredith, Galsworth, Wells, and Conrad, developed a joint protest letter, which was sent to the Prime Minister, Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman.

The major point of the letter was that they objected to the fact that all of the power of censorship lay in the hands of one individual, who was able to judge their work, regardless of his knowledge of the subject matter. They felt that the role of the censor was to promote morality, but has lowered moral tone by relieving the public of the burden of making their own moral judgement.

A Joint Select Committee of the Lords and Commons was appointed in July, 1908

To inquire into the censorship of stage plays as constituted by the Theatres Act of 1843 and 27

into the operations of the Acts of Parliament relating to the licensing and regulation of theatres and places of public entertainment and to report any alterations of the law or practice which may appear desirable.8

The Committee met twelve times, beginning in July, 1909,

and heard testimony from forty-nine witnesses. "Offi-

cials, authors, playwrights of all kinds, actors, man-

agers, critics and acknowledge wits, gave evidence ...

It was notable that while all the authors and playwrights

were in favour of the abolition of the censorship

all the managers, London and provincial, spoke in its

favour." 9

The decision of the Committee wa_s published in

November, 1~09. It was decided that theatrical perform-

ances should continue to be regulated by the Lord Chamber-

lain, although it became optional to submit a play for

license, and legal to perform a play whether it had been

licensed or not. This was in contrast to laws that had

previously decreed that any play that had not been sub- mitted for license was not to be performed publicly.

Although these results were mostly unsatisfactory to

those who had agitated for change, the laws rapidly became more lenient, and most of the plays that were

still under the ban received their license.

The obvious exception to this was Mrs. Warren's

Profession, which was not to be licensed for public

performance for another sixteen years. The play was, however, performed privately to widely diverse reactions. 28

Shaw had written his play for performance by the

Independent Theatre Society, under the direction of J. T.

Grein. The Independent Theatre was known for producing controversial works, plays that would not ordinarily have received licensing for public performance (such as Ibsen's

Ghosts). Shaw had arranged for Mrs. Theodore Wright to play the role of Kitty Warren, and Janet Achurch to play

Vivie; however, J. T. Grein was strongly opposed to pro- ducing the play, based on its subject matter. In his review on January 12, 1902 of the Stage Society's produc- tion, he explained his reasons for not producing the play himself:

It was an exceedingly uncomfortable afternoon. For there was a majority of women to listen to that which could only be understood by a minority of men. Nor was the play fit for women's ears. By all means let us initiate our daughters before they cross the threshold of womanhood into those duties and functions of life which are vital in matrimony and matern­ ity. But ·there is a boundary line, and its transgression means peril - the peril of destroy­ ing ideals. I go further. Even men need not know all the ugliness that lies below the sur­ face of everyday life. To some male minds too much knowledge of th~ seamy side is poisonous, for it leads to pessimism, that pioneer of insanity and suicide. And, sure as I feel that most of the women, and a good many of the men, who were present at the production of "Mrs. Warren's Profession" by the Stage Society, did not at first know, and finally merely guessed, what was the woman's trade? I cannot withhold the opinion that the representation was unneces­ sary and painful. It is mainly for these rea­ sons that, in spite of my great admiration for Bernard Shaw, the play was not brought out by the late Independent Theatre. As a "straight talk to men only" it is not sufficiently true to life to be productive of an educational 29 p •

effect. As a drama it is unsatisfactory, because the characters have no inner life, but merely echo certain views of the author. As literature, however, the merits of "Mrs. Warren's Profession" are considerable, and its true place is in the study.lO

The London Stage Society scheduled two productions of the

play for December 8 and 9, 1901. The cast consisted of well-known and skilled performers, all of whom were risk-

ing their professional careers by acting in a highly con- troversial and unlicensed play. Fanny Brugh, a comic actress of the time, was cast in the role of Mrs. Warren;

Harley Granville-Barker, a noted Shavian actor, took the role of Frank. The other parts were taken by Madge

Mcintosh (Vivie), Julius Knight (Praed), Charles Goodhart

(Sir George Crofts), and Cosmo Stuart (Reverend Samuel

Gardner). The production was temporarily cancelled because they wereunable to secure a theatre. "Twelve theatres (in addition to those previously approached without success), two music halls, three hotels and two picture galleries, were approached in succession without 11 success." In his Preface to the illustrated edition of

Mrs. Warren's Profession, published in 1902 Shaw recounted his version of the trials faced in trying to have his play produced:

The terror of the Censor's power gave us trouble enough to break up any ordinary commercial enter­ prise. Managers promised and even engaged their theatre to us after the most explicit warnings that the play was unlicensed, and at the last moment suddenly realized that Mr. Redford had their livelihoods in the hollow of his hand, 30 Q '

and backed out. Over and over again the date and place were fixed and the tickets printed, only to be cancelled, until at last the desper­ ate over-worked manager of the Stage Society could only laugh, as criminals broken on the wheel used to laugh at the second stroke. We rehearsed under great difficulties. Christmas pieces and plays for the New Year were being prepared in all directions; and my six actor colleagues were busy people, with engagements in these pieces in addition to their current professional work every night. On several raw winter days stages for rehearsal were unattain­ able even by the most distinguished applicants; and we shared corridors and saloons with them whilst the stage was given over to children in training for Boxing night. At last we had to rehearse at an hour at which no actor or actress had been out of bed within the memory of man, and we sardonically congratulated one another every morning on our rosy matutinal looks and the improvement wrought by early rising in our healths and characters.l2 • The play was finally produced on the stage of the New

Lyric Club, on Sunday, January 5 and Monday, January 6, 13 1902. The play was "a dramatic triumph," and a criti-

cal failure. The most encouraging criticism came from

Arthur Symonds who pointed out that there was "no essen-

tial difference between the problem. of Mrs. Warren's Pro-

fession and the problem that is at the root of that play

so beloved of English hearts, The Second Mrs. 14 Tanqueray."

Arnold Daly produced Mrs. Warr~n's Profession in the

United States in October, 1905, which led to an uproar

and legal suit that lasted until the following July.

Despite a contract between Shaw and Daly, dated July 20,

1904, that contained a special clause "requiring that 31

'the Manager shall endeavour as far as may be practicable

to apprise the public of the fact that the Play is suit-

able for representation before serious adult audiences

only •••• •nl5 Daly opened the play in New Haven, Con-

necticut on October 27, 1905 to an unruly crowd. ..The Morning Journal and Courier gave the play an extremely

favorable review, stating that although the reviewer (and

audience) had expected to view an exceedingly shocking

play, they were pleasantly surprised at the thoughtful-

ness of the piece, and there was nothing objectional

about it.

On the day following this performance, the show was

cancelled by the mayor, chief of police, and police com- missioner of New Haven. Their excuse for closing the

show was that it was in the interest of public decency, but it is believed that the real reason was that Mayor

Studley wanted to curb the 'obscene' advertising by the

theatre, an issue that the town's Women's Civil League had been protesting for some time.

The play was set to open on October 30, 1905 at the

Garrick Theatre. An overabundance of excitement had been created by Anthony Comstock, secretary of the New York

Society for the Suppression of Vice, who had demanded that the play be cancelled as soon as he heard that it dealt with prostitution. Comstock banned the play, although he admitted that he had never read it; although 32

Daly invited him to a rehearsal, he refused to go. The play was allowed to go on that night, provided that the cuts made by New York City Police Commissioner, William

McAdoo, were strictly adhered to.

Because of the advance adverse publicity, the play was sold out, with balcony seats selling for $60.00.

There was a riot at the theatre prior to the performance, with hundreds of people being turned away. "The audience had heard that the play was indecent, and a good many people had come to observe indecency. Naturally, they 16 were disappointed."

The critics were divided into two factions over the performance. The majority felt that the plot, true though it may have been, was not fit to be shown upon a public stage in mixed company. One of the favorable reviews was published in Colliers, one week after the play had been closed:

There is something innately timid in an official censor, such as the English boast or blush for, but a private individual who devotes a life to putting trousers on works of art is in no superior position . . . Hun­ dreds of vulgar shows flourish on Broadway, with never a peep from any moralist, but if anything with an intellectual interest ven­ tures upon territory forbidden by Comstockian opinion the howl begins . . . Nobody is going to be any different because he has seen that play, except that his brain may show the results of a little exercise.l7

The more common opinion was expressed by the New York

Times: 33

We must exclude Mrs. Warren from our theatre - reject her as a moral derelict. She is of no use to use as a lesson or a study.

When she becomes a subject of laughter and amusement, as occurred last night, she is something more than useless - she is vicious. She may serve a purpose when we are free to ponder over her under our own vine and fig tree, without the uncomfortable conviction that others, not, perhaps, so earnest as we, are gaining a certain amount of unholy enjoy- 18 ment from the utter profundity of her horror.

The play was closed after the first night, and the

cast was arrested for disorderly conduct. Daly substi-

tuted Candida until his contract with the theatre fell

through at the end of the week. Daly was acquitted on

July 6, 1906 of the charge of immorality that had been brought against him. Shaw, when asked his opinion of the handling of the case, replied that he felt that the Arner- ican system of justice to be superior of the British in relation to morality in the theatre.

My case has been heard and my play restored to the stage with its motives. My character and that of Mr. Daly and his company has been publicly vindicated.

Here I have no such remedy - the King's reader of plays takes the view of the New York news­ paper men whose minds resemble his in most respects, and he keeps my plays form the stage without any possibility of my calling him to account. I have no redress. He is above all the courts.l9

At some point during the years between 1912 and 1916, there was a private performance of Mrs. Warren's Profes- sion, produced by Edith Craig (daughter of Ellen Terry) and her Pioneer Players. The Pioneer Players was an 34

acting troupe who specialized in plays by and about the women's movement in England. It is logical that Mrs.

Warren's Profession would have been performed by this group; Shaw's statement about the treatment of women in the workplace, and their options would have been prime material for this group. Unfortunately, most historians have chosen to almost completely ignore this very. impor­ tant experimental troupe; and almost nothing has been recorded about this production.

In 1925, the Lord Chamberlain lifted the ban from

Mrs. Warren's Profession, after it had been performed publicly throughout Europe for almost a quarter of a cen­ tury. The play was very popular in Germany, as it was in

France, being produced there as early as 1912. Several of Shaw's plays had been produced in Russia prior to the fall of the Czar, but with the exception of Mrs. Warren's

Profession, none of them achieved any real popularity.

Indeed, even this play was not over-whelmingly accepted, being described as "a characteristic English middle-class 20 play, full of 'false sentiment and melodrama' ."

The play was first publicly performed in England by

"the Macdona Players at the Prince of Wales Theatre, (in) 21 Birmingham {on) July 27, 1925." The play was first publicly produced in London on September 28, 1925 at the

Regent Theatre, and again on March 3, 1926 at the Strand

Theatre, featuring Edyth Goodall in the role of Kitty 35

Warren and Agatha Kentish as Vivie. The major criticism of this production was about the crudity of the characters

as written by Shaw, a problem that most critics attributed

to the fact that this was one of his earliest plays. It was felt that, although the subject matter was still not drawing room discussion material, the play was definitely not immoral. As a matter of fact, "it seemed to be dated and remarkably mild. The crowd had not only caught up 22 with the pioneer, but had passed him." Chapter 3

Character Analysis of Kitty and Vivie Warren

If we have come to think that the nursery and the kitchen are the natural sphere of a woman, we have done so exactly as English children come to think that a cage is the natural sphere of a parrot: because they have never seen one anywhere else ... Still, the only parrot a free-souled person can sympathize with is the one that insists on being let out as the first condition of making itself agreeable. A selfish bird, you may say • . . All the same, you respect that parrot in spite of your conclusive reasoning . . • The sum of the matter is that unless Woman repudiates her womanliness, her duty to her husband, to her children, to society, to the law, and to everyone but her­ self, she cannot emancipate herself.l

There has been a vast amount of material written about the mother characters in Shavian plays. The general con- sensus has been that Shaw, in seeking to find the mother he never had, tried to discover her through his plays.

It is true that his own mother was less than desirable.

Lucinda Gurly had married George Carr Shaw, unaware of the fact that his more than adequate income had been squan- dered, and that he was an alcoholic. With this develop- ment, Mrs. Shaw, hard and unable to give affection easily, withdrew all remaining love and warmth from her family.

With this knowledge in mind, it is not difficult to com- prebend Shaw's search for a woman who could give him the compassion and understanding that was lacking in his formative years.

36 37 {l •

Subject to equal scrutiny given the mother figure was Shaw's 11 new woman. 11 Throughout the years this char- acter type (also known as the independent woman, the unpleasant woman, and the unwomanly woman) has undergone extensive debate, from the early critics who felt that the stereotyped image of the Victorian woman was the norm:

11 physical fragility, delicate, sensibility, chastity, the 2 sacredness of motherhood and the home, 11 to the supporters of the feminist movement of today. What the critics of

Shaw could not accept was not the image of his independent woman, but the image of what this woman represented. It was not possible for women to conform to the characteris- tic idea of a Victorian woman when she was spending ten hours a day 11 dragging carts through the coal-mines or with family life in a one-room dwelling." 3 Kitty Warren had the choice of dying slowly and probably painfully in a whitelead factory,.or she could put aside her morals, go into prostitution, and be able to live in comfort and prosperity. Of course she chose prostitution. Shaw's critics could not accept the fact that Shaw idealized these realistic women, who could not be content with their lot in life and starving genteelly.

The beginning of the modern movement in the theatre towards expressing the rights of women can be credited to

Henrik Ibsen. 11 Nora, in A Doll's House, 'new' woman that she was, strong minded and determined once she comes to 38

know the truth .•. resents being considered a doll, for she feels herself a human being, a personality; she wants to be treated as a full-grown woman, with her woman's needs for understanding, love and passion." 4 Shaw was a great believer in and disciple of Ibsen. One of his ear- liest works in the Fabian Society was to write The

Quintessence of Ibsenism. Critic Frank Harris, a good friend of Shaw's did not feel, however, that the Shavian women resembled Ibsen's in the least. The following pas- sage describes not only Harris' feelings toward Shaw's women, but also expresses the general consensus of opin- ion during the last decade of the nineteenth-century and the first half of the twentieth-century:

Shaw's women, from Blanche, his heroine in Widower's Houses, to Vivian Warren in Mrs. Warren's Profession, are distinctly unpleasant, practically unsexed women. Their bodies are as dry and hard as their minds and even where they run after their men, as in the case of Ann in Man and Superman, the pursuit has about as much sex appeal as a timetable.S

One of Shaw's unwomanly women appears in The Millionairess as one of the most radical and revoluntion- ary women of any that had appeared .in his plays previ- ously. Epifania Ognisanti di Parerga was a walking cata- logue of the traits that the radical women's movement believes in.

She is Boss incarnate and was created to be just that, as the Preface argues. Her methods are blunt and brutal and by no means exclude physical violence. She has no scrap of modesty, guilt, or dependence. She is in full possession of her own sexuality. Her first husband, whom 39

she dumps without ceremony, is a handsome athlete without interest of mind or character, chosen primarily as a sex object.6

The invalid, Mops, in Too True To Be Good is similar . I to Epifania. She is seen in the first act as an invalid, a young woman who has been all but dosed to death by her well-meaning mother. When her person and personal prop- erty are threatened by the burglar, Popsy, she responds with an unexpected strength and physicality. She leaves her home for the life of freedom offered to her by Popsy and Sweetie, his accomplice, and is the character least affected by the ensuing events. She is reunited at the end of the play with her mother, comfortable in the knowl- edge that she is free to leave if the situation again becomes unbearable.

In his play, Candida, Shaw's unwomanly woman is a multi-faceted character; like Vivie Warren, she is a highly intelligent woman who uses her intelligence to control her domain at home rather than attempt to make her influence felt in the outside world. She is the pivotal point at which the relationships within the play meet and resolve. Candida's awareness of the fact that Morell is spoiled with love and worship brings her to the main con- flict of the play. She does not encourage Marchbanks' infatuation of her, nor does she rebuff his "advances."

Her involvement in the situation is to make Morell aware of just how much he needs her. 40

It is her streak of cruelty in her handling of the matter that foreshadows the character of Cleopatra. She is well aware of her appearance, intelligence, and power, and wields all three to attain the results that she expects. She is not above humiliating those who have made themselves vulnerable by professing their love for her. It is this same characteristic in Cleopatra that would make her so powerful in Caesar and Cleopatra; if she were infatuated with anyone other than Caesar, she would rapidly bring him to his downfall. Caesar was aware of this, and knew, were he to seriously· love her instead of merely toying with her, she could rapidly make his life a living hell. Marchbanks finally comes to this same realization about Candida at the end of the play. He realized the truth of the adage, "be careful what you wish for because you may get it." He, like Caesar, realized how much more miserable he would be with Candida than without her.

Candida, both the play and the character, received mixed reviews from both the critics and the audience. The difficulty one has in trying to identify her as a type is aided by the following excerpt of a letter from Shaw to

William Archer:

You like Candida. But everybody likes Candida. Wyndham drops a tear over Candida; Alexander wants the poet made blind so that he can play him with a guarantee of "sympathy;" Mrs. Pat wants to play Candida; Ellen Terry knows she is Candida; Candida is everybody's play except 41

the utter groundlings. Candida vindicates every wife and mother and every suburban home to her and itself. To me it does nothing of the kind: it shews how important the woman's part of the arrangement is; but it does not justify the arrangement itself. . 7

He further clarified his point in this excerpt from a

letter to James Huneker:

Dont ask me conundrums about that very immoral female Candida ~ • . Candida is as unscrupulous as Siegfried: Morell himself at last sees that "no law will bind her." She seduces Eugene just exactly as far as it is worth her while to seduce him. She is a woman without "character" in the conventional sense. Without brains and strength of mind she would be a wretched slat­ tern and voluptuary. She is straight for natural reasons, not for conventional ethical ones. Nothing can be more coldbloodedly rea­ sonable than her farewell to Eugene.8

To say a word in Candida's defense, she commits her cruelties as a means to an end; she truly wants to keep her husband and home happy and content. Keeping this goal in mind, it is not difficult to see an early anticipation of Ann Whitefield and Shaw's concept of the Life Force, a theory that will be discussed in detail in the next chap- ter. Like Ann, Candida does what she has to do in order to maintain what is important to her, the continuation of the family. The independence that she displays to achieve her goals sets her apart from falling completely into the category of Shaw's mothers; she possesses the traits that will also classify her among the independent women.

Kitty Warren was one of Shaw's most pragmatic characters. Like Andrew Undershaft in the later Major 42

Barbara, her motto was "unashamed." She was a complete

departure from the (then) popular conception of a courte-

san. "The conventional stage courtesan was a careless

improvident who wasted her money and her life with sad

recklessness, and died without the riches or the lover

for which she had originally bartered everything else." 9

As Shaw asserted in his apology to the play, there was an

unstated 'regulation'

that members of Mrs. Warren's profession shall be tolerated on the stage only when they are beautiful, exquisitely dressed, and sumptuously lodged and fed; also that they shall, at the end of the play, die of consumption to the sympathetic tears of the whole audience, or step into the next room to commit suicide, or • at least be turned out by their protectors, and passed on to be 'redeemed' by old and faithful lovers who have adored them in spite of all their levities.lO

To counter this perception, Shaw introduced, in the

personage of Kitty Warren, an individual who was the polar

opposite of her literary sisters. Instead of appearing as

"beautiful, exquisitely dressed" and doomed, she is a

coarse, vulgar, good-natured businesswoman, who not only

is successful in her profession, but enjoys it as well.

Rather than apologizing for her actions, she gives justi-

fications for her choice; she does not show any symptoms

of impending disease as retribution for her 'sins', but

instead gives every indication that she will be plying

her trade for many years to come. With Mrs. Warren, pros-

titution is shown as an example of economics and good 43 ,, .

business sense. "'Mrs. Warren', Shaw wrote, 'is much

worse than a prostitute. She is an organism of prostitu-

tion - a woman who owns and manages brothels in every big

city in Europe and is proud of it'. She neither lan-

guishes nor tempts. And she became a prostitute to live, 11 not to die."

The standard courtesan in nineteenth-century

literature was usually a woman who was trying to "get

back." She warited to get back into "respectable" society,

to get back her lost innocence, get back the integrity

that she felt was lost along the road to "sin and degrada-

tion." The obstacle that prevented these women from

"getting back" was the imposed regulation alluded to ear-

lier. What these women (or society) do not understand,

and what Shaw is attempting to explain in his work, is

that the necessary factor vital to their acceptance into

society is their own personal approval of their actions. In Mrs. Warren's Profession, Kitty's sister, Liz, not only

returned to the virtuous life, but she became a pillar of

society in Winchester, "close to the cathedral, one of the most respectable ladies there. Chaperones girls at the county ball, if you please." 12 Along the same strain,

Sir George, in pleading his case to Vivie, tells her that

"as long as you dont (sic) fly openly in the face of society, society doesn't ask any incon­ venient questions~ and it makes precious short work of the cads who do. There are no secrets 13 better kept than the secrets everybody guesses. (1 ' 44

In this play, the subject of prostitution as a profession is presented so matter of factly, that it would seem a crime had any other course been chosen. The only regret that Kitty Warren displays is that prostitution was the only means to self-respect that society left open to her.

An aspect of her life that the conventional literary courtesan was continually trying to return to was her lost innocence, usually symbolized as her childhood, and always referred to with bitterness and nostalgia. In

Alexander Dumas fils' Camille, Marguerite tells Armand,

"For a moment I built a whole future on your love. I longed for the country. I remembered my childhood - one has always a childhood to remember whatever one may have 14 become since; but it was nothing but a dream." In

Pinero's The Second Mrs. Tanqueray, Paula Tanqueray, after being reminded of her youth, "suddenly drops upon the ottoman in a paroxysm of weeping." 15

Shaw found this convention to be particularly offensive, believing that a woman who would turn to pros­ titution in order to live, would have had this quality of survival as a young child. He felt that there was no rea­ son for a woman to regret her recent life, and long for the innocence of childhood, because this woman was not innocent as a child. In Mrs •. Warren's Profession) Kitty tells Vivie that she bullied her half-sisters: "Liz and

I would have half-murdered them if mother hadnt half- 45

murdered us to keep our hands off them. They were the 16 respectable ones." What Shaw was saying was that if a· woman has discovered

by experience that her nature is in conflict with the ideals of differently constituted peo­ ple, she remains perfectly valid to herself, and despises herself, if she sincerely does so at all, for the hypocrisy that the world forces on her instead of for being what she is . . . Mrs. Warren looks back to an innocent youth which made prostitution the least of many evils. She and her sister had two half sisters . . . "One of them worked in a whitelead factory twelve hours a day for nine shillings a week until she died of lead poisoning. She only expected to get her hands a little paralyzed; but she died." The other respectable sister of this paradigmatic family married a laborer and kept house on his eighteen shillings, until he turned to drink. Mrs. Warren herself was working fourteen hours a day for a pittance, washing glasses and serving drinks, when she was "rescued." Mrs. Warren doesn't feel she has betrayed her youthful self.l7

In conjunction with the idea that Kitty held the same values as an adult that she held as a child is the view that she was unashamed of any actions that she took throughout her life. As explained previously, nineteenth- century stage courtesans were allowed existance as long as they repented, in some permanent way, their lives of sin. In Shaw's play, because society is made the guilty party, it is not necessary for Kitty to atone for her actions, although, as she says to Vivie, " ... it's only good manners to be ashamed of it: it's expected from a woman. Women have to pretend to feel a great deal that they dont feel." 18 Shaw felt that people should not have· 46

to apologize for their decisions, that they should hold

an existential viewpoint and regret nothing. He believed that

to feel guilt for human nature was unhealthy, but to feel social guilt was salutary, for social and economic institutions could be much more readily changed; and to tolerate the worse when the better was within reach was sin. Therefore ... the courtesan is the least guilty member of society, for it is she who has been forced to choose prostitution as the least damaging of the alternatives offered her by the social and economic state of affairs.l9

Shaw first defined his conception of mothers when a young man of twenty-one in a letter to an imaginary little girl entitled, My Dear Dorothea:· A Practical System of Moral

Education For Females Embodied in a Letter to a Young Per-

son of That Sex. In the letter, he characterized three types of mothers: "those who are always kind, those who

'having long since exhausted the novelty of having a child

... think of [it] only as a troublesome and inquisitive

little creature', and those 'wicked women who beat their 20 children'." He revised and sharpened his opinion in

1922, when reviewing G. K. Chesterton's Eugenics and

Other Evils. He said that "we are confronted with the children of three mothers: the first a model of maternal wisdom and kindness, the second helpless by herself but quite effective if she is told what to do occasionally, and the third an immposible creature who will bring up 47

her sons to be thieves and her daughters to be

prostJ.tutes.. .,21

Kitty was personified in more than just one of these

categories. Most significantly, Kitty appears to be sym-

bolized by the second category. "Helpless by herself,

but quite effective if told what to do," she has the qual-

ities to be a very adequate mother. She has conventional

aspects to her personality, wanting Vivie to be educated

by the very best. She worked hard to do well by Vivie,

but her hard-headedness only served her in business; in

her personal life, her money became a wedge between her

.and her daughter. She did not understand that children

are not commodities to be bought and sold, and thought

that once enough money had been distributed, she would be

free to impose her will as she pleased. As part of

Vivie's discovery of self, she realized that she was no

different from her mother; the very fact that she demanded

~50 for doing well in the mathematical tripos is demon-

stration of that.

In Act IV of the play, Kitty becomes an example of

Shaw's category three mother, "an impossible creature who

will bring up her sons to be thieves and her daughters to

be prostitutes." After Vivie has deserted to go to

Honoria Fraser's chambers, Kitty confronts her and cries

"Do you know what I would do with you if you were a baby

again? aye, as sure as theres a Heaven above us . . I'd 48

bring you up to be a real daughter to me ... 22 This, of course, is the ultimate irony. The most respectable Vic- torian mother might have spoken so to a pregnant, unrnar- ried daughter. Shaw gives the line to a prostitute whose daughter is eminently respectable ... 23

Although it has been generally accepted that society is the true villain of Mrs. Warren's Profession, there is an element of Kitty that has, with the exception of

Germaine Greer's essay, "A l"lhore in Every Home, 11 been almost universally ignored. It is ignored by Shaw in light of the greater social evil of prostitution; it is ignored by Vivie, who is instead appalled that her mother is a part of the society that was responsible for her lifelong career decision. This aspect is the fact that she is still involved with prostitution and white slavery.

Kitty Warren is a brothel madame, a woman accountable for ruining the lives of hundreds of young girls. As Sir

George tells Vivie, he and Kitty control "two (houses) in

Brussels, one in Ostend, one in Vienna, and two in Budapest... 24 It was discussed in Chapter One that the rules governing white slavery were much stricter on the

Continent than they were in England. Kitty, in order to avoid the law, would, in all likelihood, 11 import" girls from all over E·urope for her houses. She would have been responsible for procuring girls for her houses, as well 49

as making certain that her favored clients were informed of her latest acquisitions.

In relation to this perspective of Kitty, there is the matter of the trade in virgins. As William Stead dis- covered in his investigation, brothel madames were often faced with the problem of convincing a young girl that she should allow a client to seduce her. They would often resort to either holding the girl down upon the bed, or by drugging her with chloroform, while the client would rape the child.

Shaw never refers to this in the text of Mrs.

Warren's Profession, nor does he ever make reference to this side of prostitution. Likewise, the critical essays about this play dwell on the hypocrisy of a capitalistic society; why is the hypocrisy of Kitty Warren never dis- cussed? Why is it, when Kitty offers "a new dress every day theatres and balls every night . . . having the pick of all the gentlemen in Europe at your feet . . . a lovely house and plenty of servants . . . , ,.25 v·1v1e . does not confront her with what she is, and what she stands for? Kitty is admired (and rightfully so) for what she has made of herself, against all of the obstacles established by society, but the sordidness of what she is and what she has done must be looked at in the same per- spective that her more lovable traits are viewed. 50 @ •

While Vivie Warren has been considered to be quite

proper by Victorian standards, she has also been described

as Shaw's first unwomanly woman. She has been described

as hard, masculine, devoid of emotion, incapable of com­ passion. Credited as her models are Beatrice Webb and

Arabella Susan Lawrence, fellow Fabians who apparently

shared a love of cigars and whiskey with their literary imitation. It is difficult to accurately place Vivie into a character or personality type. Taken at surface appear­ ance, she seems to be a fairly one-dimensional character, thinking in terms of black and white and right and wrong, but, in delving beneath her exterior, one sees a multi­ dimensional personality, one of the more complex charac­ ters ever created by Shaw.

It is believed that at the time he was writing Mrs.

Warren's Profession, Shaw did not possess any knowledge of Sigmund Freud or psychoanalysis. He was, however, 26 11 aware of the motivating influences of human nature."

Early on in his play, Shaw outlines the details of Viviets upbringing, spent in boarding schools and with foster par­ ents. The time spent with her mother was minimal. This fact had great significance to Vivie since she explained it at length to Praed, whom she had only met minutes before. In the 1943 publication, War and Children, Anna

Freud and Dorothy Burlingham observed that 5.1

the ability to love •.. has to be learned and practiced. Wherever, through the absence of or the interruption of personal ties, this opportunity is missing in childhood, all later relationships will develop weakly, will remain shallow. The opposite of this ability to love is not hate, but egoism.27

This egosim is apparent in Vivie's relationship with her mother. Kitty Warren is a product of her environment.

After she made the decision of which course her life was going to take, she followed that route; everything and everybody that did not relate directly to her profession was immediately relegated to. second place in her life, although the mantle of her motherhood cropped up more fre- quently than any other aspect of her personality. This element of Kitty, which Shaw used to comic advantage, only came to.the fore when it was convenient. This was prob- ably a point of contention between Vivie and Kitty, although it is never mentioned overtly in the play, with the exception of Vivie's lines to Praed:

Dont [sic] suppose anything, Mr. Praed. I hardly know my mother. Since I was a child I have lived in England, at school or college, or with people paid to take charge of me. I have been boarded out all my life. My mother has lived in Brussels or Vienna and never let me go to her. I only see her when she visits England for a few days. I dont complain: it's been very pleasant; for people have been very good to me; and there has always been plenty of money to make things smooth. But dont imagine I know anything about my mother. I know far less than you do.28

Or her lines to her mother, in response to Kitty's line:

Kitty: Do you know who youre speaking to, Miss? 29 Vivie: No. Who are you? What are you? 52

Because her mother was not present for her childhood or

adolescence, Vivie could not share Kitty's belief that the

rights of motherhood were bestowed with the completion of

the act of birth, and therefore resented her mother's

assertions of maternal concern.

A very important feature of Vivie's personality is

her pride in her educational achievements. This can be

looked at from two points of view. The first is the fact

that Vivie is a scholar of merit. She devoted her years

at Cambridge, "not to acquire a dilettante's appreciation

of art and literature, but to prepare herself to earn her 30 living as an actuary." As she told Praed in the first

act, she had to "grind, grind, grind for six to eight 31 hours a day at mathematics, and nothing bu::t--mathematics. "

The mathematical tripos that Vivie wrote in, say, 1891 consisted of three parts, each of which took three days, although she undoubtedly did not take part three, which was given later, and taken only by future academic mathematicians ... Part one was to be written without the use of calculus or analytic geometry, and covered Euclid, arithmetic, algebra, trigonometry, conic sections, statics, dynamics, Newton's Principia, sec. I-III, hydrostatics, optics, and astronomy. Part two covered, in addition to, differential and integral calculus, differential equations, potential theory, and plane and solid analytic geometry. 32

It is obvious from this description that Vivie had attended college with a purpose, and had prepared herself admirably for her forthcoming career. It is noteworthy to mention her very presence at the school. Newnham College was founded in 1870, and women were admitted to the full 53

range of examinations in 1881. Even at that, they were not allowed official entrance, hence Shaw's wording of

Vivie's accomplishment, "tieing with the third wran­ gler."33

The second aspect of Vivie's education, and perhaps the most important, is the idea that her education did not end upon her graduation from Newnham College, but instead began immediately after her holiday with Honoria Fraser, the time in which Mrs. Warren's Profession takes place.

Vivie is the pivotal character in the play; all action occurs around and because of her. Praed has come to meet her, by her request, and he is the first to plant the seed in her mind about her background and her mother's career.

Frank exists as a constant reminder of her childlike, innocent nature, a part of her personality that she con­ siders to be weak and vulnerable, and suppresses as often as possible. When she learns that her mother has not given up her career, and is continuing to profit by it, her relationship with Frank is the first portion of her old life that she puts away from herself. The bearer of the crucial information, the information that motivates the main action of the play is Sir George Crofts, Kitty

Warren's partner in business~ Vivie rejects her mother, not because she had to resort to prostitution in order to survive, but because she is still conducting business as usual, and reaping a profit from it. To carry Vivie's 54

disgust to its limits, she learns about the continuation

of the business from Sir George. His sin is far worse

than Kitty's. She went into prostitution because her

alternative was far worse; Sir George is her partner because the business is showing a profit. His character

is the viper in capitalistic society that forced Kitty

Warren to become what she was.

The Reverend Sam Gardner is part of the cast to illustrate the fact that whatever reaction Vivie (and the audience) has toward Mrs. Warren's profession, it is not as a result of religious belief. Shaw is telling us that religion, embodied in Sam Gardner and Liz, both of whom had dealings with Kitty as a result of her lifestyle, is as hypocritical as society itself. This is the argument that Vivie has against her mother. She readily accepted

Kitty's reasons for entering the life of prostitution.

Indeed, she even expressed her admiration for the fact that not only was she able to make the decision, but she was able to live unashamedly with her decision, even tak­ ing pride in her work. It was only when she finally understood the ramifications of Kitty's maintenance of her business that Vivie realized that her mother had become part of the society that she had originally been forced to battle; "the staunchness and vision required for the struggle up through the slime have not led to fresh air, 34 but rather to a diving back into the filth." Worse 55

still, she saw-too many parallels between her actions and her mother's, not the least of which was her support and her university education. "Were she now to accept sup- port, knowing its source, she herself would be tainted

she must be an unnatural daughter in order to escape both the clinging Victorian bonds of duty to one's parent and the whole pollution of a society in which money can float brainless young creatures on a smooth river of van­ ity and luxury." 35

Charles Berst proposes the concept of Mrs. Warren's

Profession as a moral allegory, and suggests that the play

"might well have been entitled The Battle for the Soul of . . w .. 36 V~v~e arren. He relates the play to a morality piece, with Vivie being confronted with a series of temptations, emerging at the end relatively unscathed, virtuous in her belief. In conjunction with this idea, Louis Crompton presents us with the idea that Vivie is faced with an inferno, similar to that of Dante, but instead of depict- ing "the seven deadly sins of tradition, (Shaw explores) economic and social crimes: idleness, parasitism, exploi- tation, and cultivated sentimentalism that keeps people from dealing with these." 37 The temptations that face

Vivie can be correlated with the lessons that she

"learned" from the other characters in the play, as out- lined previously. The salvation of religion is presented, very briefly, in the guise of Samuel Gardner. Vivie 56

discards this idea much as she discards Reverend Sam; she simply pays not attention to it, and it disappears' from view. Sir George tempts Vivie with something more sub- stantial than religion, something that she has professed a weakness for in the beginning of the play: money, and its accompanying social position. "As Gardner represents the emptiness, pompousness, and hypocrisy of a Church incapacitated by its worldly representatives, Crofts rep- resents the immorality, avariciousness, and hypocrisy of a society which gilds its licentiousness, greed, and cor­ ruption with money and social prestige." 38

Harder for Vivie to resist is the temptation Praed 39 offers - "romance, beauty, art." The saving grace for

Vivie is that these attributes are not naturally part of her make up.

Love's young dream, conventionally the greatest temptation to an unmarried woman of twenty-two, is offered Vivie in the person of Frank Gardner. An affair has apparently been going on for some time ... Frank, however, has not the Gospel of Getting On. He is a drifter, consciously immersed in the waywardness of society, too lazy to come to terms with it in any positive way. Vivie recognizes early in the play that she will eventually have to get rid of him. Without a disposition to work, he is poten­ tially a Crofts.40

Kitty tempts Vivie with the carrot of a life of luxury.

Even more important than this, and what Vivie has to actively fight against, is that Kitty tries to capture her with the idea of motherhood. Vivie holds forth, and emerges at the end of the play, to her way of thinking, Q ' 57

triumphant. She has resisted "parasitism" (Frank,

Reverend Sam), "exploitation" (Kitty, Sir George), and

"cultivated sentimentalism" (Praed) • As a final not to

Vivie, there are many parallels between her character and Shaw himself:

Vivie pursues independent habits in her cigars and whiskey, as did Shaw in his teetotalism and vegetarianism; Vivie hates holidays and wasters precisely as did Shaw; Vivie has Shaw's bound­ less energy, vehemence, and almost ascetic dedi­ cation to work. Though it is not explicit in the play, Vivie is much like a young Fabian socialist being tested by the vanities and vicissitudes of the wayward world.41 Chapter 4

The Life Force of Shaw's Women

Bernard Shaw has often been applauded as an early advocate of the women's rights movement. He adopted the then revolutionary idea that women were fundamentally the same as men, and further proved his opinion by treating women sympathetically in his plays.

Shaw depicts woman on three levels. The first, a practical, temporal and social view of her, shows her distinctly handicapped by her bio­ logical function or by restrictions society has imposed on her because of this function . . . On the second level, woman is equal to ~an and their roles are, in fact, interchangeable . The third level is the mystical one which idealizes woman beyond man for her devotion to Life . . • These three levels, all of which exist simultaneously in Shaw, are not incom­ patible or contradictory; they represent the range of views from the immediate and practical to the ideal and mystical which are to be found in Shaw 1 s work.l

In 1903, Shaw completed Man and Superman, the play that served to launch him into greatness, and that artie- ulated a concept that he had been considering for some years, that of the Life Force. This theory was a mystical approach to religion, the closest that Shaw would allow himself to come to an organized belief in the Almighty.

He felt that faith must be "an everpresent universally accessible force," 2 that it must maintain an almost tangible quality about it:

58 59

There is always religion if you can reach it, the religion of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, the religion which discovers God in man and the Virgin Mother in every carpenter's wife, which sweeps away miracle and reveals the old dogmas as the depths of which everyday facts are only the surface, which sanctifies all life and substitutes a profound dignity and self-respect for the old-materialist self.3

It is believed that Shaw possessed no direct knowledge of Arthur Schopenhauer, the German philosopher who postulated the theory of the formulation of being in terms of Will and Idea, but that he had come across his teachings within the works of Bunyan, Biake, Butler, and

Bradley. The logic behind Schopenhauer's ideas was that

reason could do no more than to arrange and classify the data of sensual perception. • Science dealt only with phenomena; but behind the material world apprehended by the senses, it was possible to intuit the existence of an urge which neither rational nor intelligible and which defied explanation. This was life itself, the vital principle. Schopenhauer called this urge the will to live. The result­ ing metaphysics seemed - in contrast to the 4 idealism of his contemporaries - realistic.

This point of view fit in well with the popular belief in

England of the 1880's, a casting off of the belief in materialism, and the unwilling acceptance of Darwinism.

There was a need to assert and believe in the free will of man, and for "humanity to perfect itself through its own efforts." 5 .When this need was added to the belief of the English idealists of the 1870's, that mankind pos- sesses an aspiring element at the core of its being, and this element, when given direction and motivation, became the supreme force behind all human thought and action. 60

Shaw formulated his Life Force theory from the writings of the scientists and philosophers of the nineteenth-century, the writers mentioned previously and from Hegel and Bergson.

Shaw wrote that what he has called "the Life Force and the Evolutionary Appetite" Bergson called the Elan Vital, Kant the Categorical Imperative, Shakespeare the "divinity that shapes our ends, rough-hew them how we will." They all come to the same thing: a mysterious drive towards greater power over our circum­ stances and deeper understanding of Nature, in pursuit of which men and women will risk death as explorers or martyrs, and sacrifice their personal comfort and safety against all prudence, all probability, all common sense.6

According to Shaw, the Life Force was a force that would continue to thrive, despite all odds. In order to reach this classification, the being would have to partie- ipate in a series of trial and error situations, suffering setbacks, but perservering against all adversities until it reached the mental development and power over circum- stances that would distinguish it among a higher order.

The ultimate goal of the Life Force is to achieve perfect efficiency. Shaw explained the evil in the world as the presence of inefficiency, as opposed to the presence of a malign force. A failed experiment is not a failure, but merely a falling short of perfection. Because the primary basis for the existence of a

Life Force is the furthering the future of human life,

Shaw chose to make the purveyor of this force Woman. His reasoning behind this decision was that since the Life 61

Force was an instinctive drive, it was closely aligned

with the fundamental biological urge of all beings, that

of reproducing themselves. "Femaleness, in the creative

evolutionary philosophy, is represented as being more

primitive, in the sense of being more fundamental, than

maleness . 'Sexually, Woman is Nature's contrivance

for perpetuating Nature's highest achievement. Sexually,

Man is Woman's contrivance for fulfilling Nature's behest

in the most economical way. She knows by instinct that

far back in the evolutional process she invented him,

differentiated him, created him, in order to produce some­ 7 thing better than the single-sexed process can produce'."

William Irvine further explained this view by stating

that

life began when the Life Force entered into matter and guided the molecules into organic form. The Life Force is mind plus upward­ striving will. In plants and animals it is relatively unconscious, manifesting itself presumable through tropism and instinct; in man it is highly self-conscious, manifesting itself through reason as well as instinct and through an inward mystical sense to be culti­ vated by contemplation. Man is its contriv­ ance for building up intelligence, and woman, its contrivance for passing on such intelli­ gence to the next generation . . . Shaw believes in the inheritance of acquired characteristics.8

Shaw brought this single-mindedness in its full maturity to the stage in Man and Superman in the character

of Ann Whitefield. Ann has been called an enigma by many

critics. A probable reason for her complexity is the role 62

that she is creating and must play, not only within the

context of the play, but as the first fully developed

model of the Life Force. When she is viewed in the con-

text of role model, it is easier to understand her per- sonal characteristics.

The first of these characteristics is her

unscrupulousness, mentioned by Shaw in his preface. John

Tanner, who has not trusted Ann since they were children,

warns that Ann will "commit every crime a respectable

woman can.," 9 She is an "incorrigable liar," according to

Tanner; Roebuck Ramsden calls her a "wonderfully dutiful 10 g1r• 1 , II a 1 ways y1e• ld 1ng• to t h e w1s• h es o f h er parents or

elders, little realizing that she does this to get her

own way while placing herself in the best possible light.

She is virtuous, usin~ her virtue to "bully the

other girls,"11 when she was in school. Shaw admired the

vitality that he bestowed upon her, a vitality without

being "oversexed," although John Tanner still referred to

her as a "boa constrictor."

Like Andrew Undershaft and Kitty Warren, Ann is

unashamed at anything she does, whether it be to ride in

Jack's car instead of her sister, to almost forcing Jack

to propose to her. The reason for this is because she is

acting for a higher purpose than her own self pleasure or

needs. Her purpose is to create, to maintain the race.

As she cries to the universe (in her alter-character of 63

Dona Ana) at the end of the Don Juan in Hell dream sequence, "A father- a father for the Superman!" 12

Although Man and Superman initiates the Life Force theory, we see aspects of the concept as early as Mrs.

Warren's Profession. "Since the Life Force is essentially dynamic and progressive, the superior individual is always at odds with a society that tends to perpetuate each stage of its career as if it were ultimate and eternal."13 We can see elements of this idea in the character of Kitty

Warren, and it is even more fully developed in Vivie.

We see evidence of the Life Force motivation in Kitty

Warren by the very fact of her existence in the form in which Shaw presents her to us. Society had dictated that

Kitty would work herself into becoming a drudge, living on a pittance, perhaps marrying a man that may or may not treat her well, or pull her out of her bleak surroundings, and likely as not, die at a very early age; however, through it all, she would maintain her respectability.

Because Kitty was a dynamic individual, she could not envision this as the ultimate she could hope for, and when her sister, Liz, offered her another option, she denied whatever scruples she may have had, and entered a life that had the potential of allowing her to live in comfort. She varies from the Life Force ideal, however, in that she could never hope to create the Superman. She, unlike Ann Whitefield, does not set her sights upon a 64

prototypical male; instead, due to the demands of her profession, she is bound to service all men.

In contrast, and also similar to her mother, Vivie also has characteristics that hint at a primitive Life

Force, yet she will never become the "Everywoman" that

Ann Whitefield does. Vivie is a character who, although she likes to think that she lives by her intellect, in reality is a mostly instinctual woman. "For Vivie, the need to be herself is paramount," 14 and herein lies her similarity to a lower organism, waiting for the Life Force to enter it, and guide it to its higher form. When the play begins, Vivie, for all intents and purposes, is a tabula rasa, a blank slate, a simple organism, waiting for a direction in life to come to her. She can, as we see in the play, go in any direction. She has virtually no opinion of her mother in the beginning of the play; she tells us, along with Praed that she knows nothing of her mother. When Kitty tells the story of how she entered the life of a courtesan, there is a spark of the Life

Force entering Vivie, allowing her to accept and believe in her mother; in approving of her mother's actions, she is approving her own possible future actions. It will be all right if her actions take her against the will of society, because she will be acting as a dynamic individ­ ual, working towards the furthering of herself as a higher organism. 65

In the third act, Sir George Crofts reveals to Vivie that not only is her mother still in the business of main­ taining brothels, but she is realizing a profit, "thats

[sic] paying 35 per cent in the worst years!"15 Vivie's disgust and disillusion, now so clearly visible, can be seen to have their origins in Act II, when the Life Force first began to be evident in her. She realizes that her mother could not be furthering the race, but is merely working for her own self interests. Vivie, however, loses her own grasp on the Life Force when she rejects Frank

{who would not have been the ideal father of the Superman anyway), and rushes to London to devote her life to actuarial mathematics.

At this point in the play, Vivie is as far removed from the Life Force as Kitty is. Vivie, in committing herself to a sexless life, removes herself from becoming a proponent of the Life Force as effectively as Kitty did when she made her decision to devote her life to a variety of men. The Superman can no more be produced by over­ reproduction (such as Kitty was offering), than it can by lack of reproduction.

Shaw wrote many other women's roles that hinted at the Life Force, but never carried it to its conclusion as well as Ann Whitefield. In Man and Superman, John Tanner was impressed by Violet's courage in presenting herself as an unwed mother; we think that she may be competition for

Ann, as demonstrated by the following passage: 66

Ann: Violet's as hard as nails. Octavius: Oh no. I am sure Violet is thoroughly womanly at heart.

Ann: Why do you say that? Is it unwomanly to be thoughtful and businesslike and sensible? Do you want Violet to be an idiot - or something worse, like me?

Octavius: Something worse - like you! What do you mean, Ann?

Ann: Oh well, I don't mean that, of course. But I have a great respect for Violet. She gets her own way always.

Octavius: So do you.

Ann: Yes; but somehow she gets it ·Without coaxing - without having to make people sentimental about her.l6

There is a certain amount of disappointment present when we discover that Eliza Doolittle (of the play,

Pygmalion) is not to be the paragon of the Life Force that we thought she was destined to be. From the beginning,

she appeared to have all of the requisite qualifications.

She pulled herself out of her environment, not as Kitty

Warren by prostituting herself to men, but by offering to enter into a business deal with Higgins, one that would do the double duty of allowing her to improve herself without compromising her virtue. She succeeds in her quest; she improves her speech and manners, enabling

Higgins to pass her off as a lady of stature, and even resists all efforts to remantically link her with Higgins.

She falls from Life Force consideration, however, when she proclaims that she is going to marry Freddy Eynsford-Hill. 67

As we have seen, Freddy is an extremely weak character; he does not have a profession~ and is content to spend his life mooning after Eliza. As Shaw tells us in his

Epilogue, Liza ends up supporting the two of them, after having to turn to Colonel Pickering for help. Freddy is a character that Shaw himself did not appear to care for; he could never be considered as a viable choice to help to prolong life as the father of a Superman.

Saint Joan is considered by some critics to be the culmination of the Life Force. Whereas Ann Whitefield sacrificed others in her drive as the Life Force, Shaw brought it to a logical conclusion in an individual who sacrified herself so that the Life Force could survive.

Ann was providing for the perfect child who would be the

Superman; Joan, by unconsciously championing the cause for nationalism and Protestantism against feudalism and the established church, was providing for a country, France, to be the children of God.

Joan has the quality of all of Shaw's strong-minded, independent women; a quality based on the assurance that they are in the right against all opposition. ''This qual­ 17 ity is the unbending quality of saints and martyrs."

He continues this though in his Preface, describing her as a genius who has the ability of "seeing farther and probing deeper than other people, has a different set of ethical valuations from theirs, and has energy enough to 68

give effect to this extra vision and its valuations in whatever manner best suits his or her specific talents."18

One of the most moving scenes in the play, as well as the culmination of Joan's stances for personal inde- pendence comes after she recants her heresy and is told that she is to spend the rest of her life in prison. She tears up her recantation and reaffirms her faith in the following speech. In this speech she stresses the need for her independence to be allowed to do what she has to do:

You promised me my life; but you lied. You think that life is nothing but not being stone dead. it is not the bread and water I fear: I can.live on bread: when have I asked for more? it is no hardsh.ip to drink water if the water be clean. Bread has no sorrow for me, and water no affliction. But to shut me out from the light of the sky and the sight of the fields and flowers . . . and keep me from every­ thing that brings me back to the love of God when your wickedness and foolishness tempt me to hate him: all this is worse than the furnace in the Bible that was heated seven times . without these things I cannot live; and by your wanting to take them away from me, or from any human creature, I know that your counsel is of the devil, and that mine is of God.l9

Shaw worked with the idea of the Life Force, molding and shaping it until he came upon the character of Saint

Joan. Just as fourteenth-century France was unable to deal with a prophet from God and destroyed her, so Shaw had to abandon the Life Force. "The force that moves is beyond himself; but its originating impulse comes from within himself .•. if he is not thus inspired, man's 69

own will can drive life down rather than raise it up; for the Life Force shares the limitations of the creatures 20 who incarnate it." In writing Saint Joan, Shaw reached to the pinnacle of his own religion of mysticism; were he to continue his search for the Life Force, his quest would have brought him to the organized religion that he spurned in the first place. In order to remain true to his goal, he ended his search at its most logical conclusion.

It is important to unders.tand the full cycle of the

Life Force in order to effectively apply it to Shaw's female characters. By representing the theory in this thesis, and relating it to the characters of Kitty and . Vivie, it will hopefully lend further insight to the portrayal of these women in a production. Q •

CONCLUSION

A theatrical dramaturg, as explained in the beginning of this paper, has the responsibility of gathering information about various aspects of a partic­ ular production. This individual collects information regarding performances, criticisms, author's notes, his­ torical settings, etc. When researching Bernard Shaw's

Mrs. Warren's Profession, one h~s to take into considera­ tion any and all viewpoints expressed in relation to the play.

The motivation behind the writing of this piece was

Shaw's distress over the capitalistic society that forced women like Kitty Warren into prostitution. In discussing this situation, it is necessary to understand the actual circumstances of the working conditions in Victorian

England, as well as ~he frequency of organized prostitu­ tion. Were this information to be used for a theatrical production, it would be necessary to understand the work performed by the "sex reformers," such as W. T. Stead and

Josephine Butler in order that Shaw's play could be related to the actual conditions of the time.

Theatrical audiences of today may be hard pressed to understand the reasoning behind the thirty-two year ban placed on Mrs. Warren's Profession by the examiner for the

70 71 (l •

Lord Chamberlain. The urgency of the situation is not as extreme as it was during the late nineteenth and early twentieth-centuries, but there are correlations that can and should be made by a modern production company. It is sometimes difficult to comprehend the rioting that went on over the first public performance in America, if one is not familiar with the moral judgement of a prior century.

The impassioned response generated by the few performances of Mrs. Warren's Profession bore a close relationship to the emotion that surrounded the birth of the women's movement, a fight that is now "remembered principally for the struggle for the vote, but it was

[also] concerned with many issues ... equal pay, equal 1 job opportunities, equality before the law. . This cause was championed through rallies, marches, and the theatre. The period of time between 1900 and 1920 saw the establishment of the Actresses' Franchise League (AFL) in 1908, as well as the significant work of over 400 woman playwrights. One of the most important theatre groups of this era was the Pioneer Players, under the direction of Edith Craig. It was stated in Chapter 2 of this thesis that theatrical history has sadly neglected the work of this most influential company, and so it has.

A play like Mrs. Warren's Profession had direct bearing on the women's movement; it dealt with the same issues 72

(working conditions, equal pay, etc.) as well as presenting a woman who was well educated, and not at all

receptive to the idea of becoming a wife, mother and housekeeper. It has been noted that the Pioneer Players did perform this play sometime between 1912 and 1916, but

further details are, unfortunately, not available. This area of history is one that deserves continued, thorough research, resulting in a study of its own.

When analyzing the previous elements as they relate to Mrs. Warren's Profession, it is apparent that research of this sort is necessary when attempting a re-creation of a topical theatre piece. While some of the areas under . discussion are significant in today's society, there are others that have faded through time. With the access to historical documents available to a modern researcher, information that could easily have faded from reach, can be utilized in bringing to the modern stage, the classic of George Bernard Shaw, Mrs. Warren's Profession. ENDNOTES - INTRODUCTION

1George Rowell, The Victorian Theatre: A Survey

(Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1956) 1.

2 Eric Bentley, Bernard Shaw (New York: Limelight

Editions, 1985) 64.

3Bentley, 65. 4 Maur1ce. Va 1 ency, T h e Car t and t h e Trumpet: The

Plays of Bernard.Shaw (New York: Schocken Books, 1983)

120.

5Archibald Henderson, George Bernard Shaw: Man of the Century (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, Inc.,

1956) 13.

6Betty Freeman Johnson, "Shelley's 'Cenci' and 'Mrs.

Warren's Profession'," The Shaw Review XV (1972): 26.

7Arthur Wing Pinero, The Second Mrs. Tanqueray

(Boston: Walter H. Baker & Co., 1894) Act I.

8Raymond S. Nelson, "Mrs. Warren's Profession and

English Prostitution," Journal of Modern Literature 2

(1971-72) 357.

73 74

ENDNOTES - CHAPTER 1

1Bernard Shaw, Mrs. Warren's Profession (New York:

The New American Library of World Literature, 1960)

Preface.

2Prostitution in the Victorian Age: Debates on the

Issue from 19th Century Critical Journals (1802-1807;

Westmead, England: Gregg International Publishers Limited,

1973) 463-464.

3Prostitution, 468-469.

4william Booth, In Darkest England and The Way Out

(1890; New York: Garrett Press, Inc., 1970) 25.

5 Booth, 27.

6Michael Pearson, The Age of Consent: Victorian

Prostitution and Its Enemies (Great Britain: David &

Charles Limited, 1972) 25.

7 Pearson, 26.

8 Pearson, 30-31.

9 Pearson, 39-40.

10 Pearson, 59.

11 Pearson, 60. 75

12 F ranees F'1nnegan, Poverty and Prost1tut1on: . . A

Study of Victorian Prostitutes in York (Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 1979) 9.

13 Flnnegan,. 9 .

14 Pearson, 61. 15 Pearson, 119.

16 Pearson, 134.

17 Pearson, 134.

18 Pearson, 134.

19 Pearson, 140.

20 Pearson, 128.

21 Pearson, 132.

22 Fred er1c ' W h yte, T h e Ll'f e o f · W. T. S tea d (N ew Yor k :

Houghton Mifflin, 1925) 163.

23Paul A. Hummert, Bernard Shaw's Marxian Romance

(Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1973) 5.

24 Hummert, 36. 25 Barbara Bellow Watson, A Shavian Guide to the

Intelligent Woman (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.,

1964) xiii.

26 Watson, 43.

27 Watson, 196. 76

28 Watson, 199.

ENDNOTES - CHAPTER 2

1st. John Ervine, Bernard Shaw: His Life, Work,

and Friends (London: Constable & Company Limited, 1956)

252.

2 Dan H. Laurence, ed., Bernard Shaw: Collected

Letters, 1898-1910 {London: Max Reinhardt, 1972) 13-14.

3 Laurence, 14.

4 Henderson, 460.

5 Laurence, 30.

6A.E. Wilson, Edwardian Theatre (London: Morrison and Gibb Limited, 1951) 194.

7 Frank Fowell and Frank Palmer, Censorship in

England (London: Frank Palmer, 1913) 193.

8 W1.'1 son, 195. 9 wilson, 196.

10 J . T . G re1.n, . "Mrs. warren I s p ro f ess1.on, . II D ramat. 1.c

Criticism 1900-1901 3 (London: Greening & Co., Ltd., 1902)

293-294.

11 Henderson, 461.

12 Henderson, 461-462. 77 Q '

13Henderson, 460.

14 Henderson, 462.

15Henderson, 573.

16George E. Wellworth, "Mrs. Warren Comes to America, or the Blue-Noses, the Politicians and the Procurers,"

The Shaw Review II (1959): 11.

17wellworth, 7.

18wellworth, 11.

19 Henderson, 633.

20E rv1.ne,. 519.

21 Raymond Mander and Joe Mitchenson, "Mrs. Warren's

Profession," Theatrical Companion to Shaw (London:

Rackliff Publishing Corporation, 1954) 29.

22Ervine, 256.

ENDNOTES - CHAPTER 3

1Bernard Shaw, "The Quintessence of Ibsenism," The

Collected Works of Bernard Shaw XIX (New York: Wm. H. Wise

& Company, 1931) 43-44.

2 Watson, 39.

3 Watson, 39. 78

4 Frank Harris, Bernard Shaw (New York: Simon and

Schuster, 1931) 189.

5H arr1s,. 187.

6 Watson, New Woman, 10.

7 John Lucas, "Dickens and Shaw: Women and Marriages in David Copperfield and Candida," The Shaw Review XXII

(1974): 17.

8 Lucas, 17.

9 Martin Meisel, Shaw and the Nineteenth-Century

Theater (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1963) 146.

10 shaw, Mrs. Warren's Profession, Preface.

11Me1se . 1 , 148.

12 Shaw, Mrs. Warren's Profession, Act II.

13 Shaw, Mrs. Warren's Profession, Act III.

14 Alexandre Dumas fils, Camille, Lady of the

Camellias, trans .. Henriette Metcalf (New York: Samuel

French, 1931) Act I.

15 Meisel, 153.

16 Shaw, Mrs. ~.Varren's Profession,·Act II.

17 Me1se. 1 , 154.

18 shaw, Mrs. Warrenrs Profession, Act II

19 Meisel, 158. 79

20 Andrina Gilmartin, "Mr. Shaw's Many Mothers,"

The Shaw Review VIII (1965): 93.

21 G'l1. mar t'1.n, 93.

22 Shaw, Mrs. Warren's Profession, Act IV.

23 G'l1. mar t'1.n, 95.

24 Shaw, Mrs. Warren's Profession, Act III.

25 . Shaw, Mrs. Warren's Profession, Act IV.

26 Mar 1'1.e Wasserman, 11 V1.v1.e• • Warren: A Psychological

Study," The Shaw Review XV {1972): 71.

27 Wasserman, 72.

28 Shaw, Mrs. Warren's Profession, Act I.

29 Shaw, Mrs. Warren's Profession, Act III.

30 Louis Crompton, Shaw the Dramatist (Lincoln:

University of Nebraska Press, 1969) 8.

31 Shaw, Mrs. Warren's Profession, Act I.

32 william A. Dolid, "Vivie Warren and the Tripes,"

The Shaw Review XXIII (1980): 54. 33 . Shaw, Mrs. Warren's Profession, Act I.

34 charles A. Berst, Bernard Shaw and the Art of

Drama (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1973) 10.

35 Berst, 10.

36 Berst, 6. 80

37 Crompton, 10.

38 Berst, 8.

39 Berst, 9.

40 Berst, 9-10.

41 Berst, 6-7.

ENDNOTES - CHAPTER 4

1 Rodelle Weintraub, ed., Fabian Feminist: Bernard

Shaw and Woman (University Park: The Pennsylvania State

University Press, 1977) 141.

2 Alan P. Barr, Victorian Stage Pulpiteer: Bernard

Shaw's Crusade (Athens: The University of Georgia Press,

1973) 88.

3 Barr, 88-89.

4Valency, 204.

5valency, 206.

6 Barr, 89.

7 L ou1s . Kronen b erger, e d ., George Bernar d Shaw: A

Critical Survey (Cleveland: The World Publishing Company,

1953) 193-194.

8 william Irvine, The Universe of G.B.S. (New York:

Whittlesey House, 1949) 242. 81

9 Shaw, Man and Superman, Act I.

10 Shaw, Man and su:eerman, Act I.

11 shaw, Man and Superma.n, Act I.

12 shaw, Man and Superman, Act III.

13 Valency, 210.

14 Valency, 99. 15 . Shaw, Mrs. Warren's Profession, Act III. 16 Shaw, Man and Superman, Act I.

17 Watson, 169.

18weintraub, 133.

19shaw, Saint Joan, Sc. 4.

20 Alfred Turco, Jr., Shaw's Moral Vision:: The Self and Salvation (Ithaca, Mass.: Cornell University Press,

1976) 163.

ENDNOTES - CONCLUSION

1Ju1ie Holledge, Innocent Flowers: Women in the

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