Mrs. Warren's Profession

Vivie Warren, a brilliant, independent young woman who has just finished studying mathematics at Cambridge, has hardly ever seen her mother, who has paid for her expensive education from abroad. When at last they spend time together, Vivie learns where the money comes from: her mother rose from poverty through prostitution and now manages a chain of brothels across Europe. Mrs Warren defends herself as a woman who had no other way out of poverty, but Vivie must decide what she owes her.

Bernard Shaw wrote the play in 1893, but it was banned by the censor in Britain for years, and its first New York production in 1905 was raided by the police. It is a sharp attack on the economic forces that drove women into prostitution. Read Pygmalion and Candida.