Mrs. Warren is engaged in a profession which has existed through all the
ages. It was at home in Egypt, played an important rôle in Greece and
Rome, formed one of the influential guilds in the Middle Ages, and has
been one of the main sources of income for the Christian Church.
But it was left to modern times to make of Mrs. Warren's profession a
tremendous social factor, ministering to the needs of man in every
station of life, from the brownstone mansion to the hovel, from the
highest official to the poorest drag.
Time was when the Mrs. Warrens were looked upon as possessed by the
devil,--lewd, depraved creatures who would not, even if they had the
choice, engage in any other profession, because they are vicious at
heart, and should therefore be held up to condemnation and obloquy. And
while we continue to drive them from pillar to post, while we still
punish them as criminals and deny them the simplest humanities one gives
even to the dumb beast, the light turned on this subject by men like
George Bernard Shaw has helped to expose the lie of inherent evil
tendencies and natural depravity. Instead we learn:
_Mrs. Warren._ Do you think I did what I did because I liked it, or
thought it right, or wouldn't rather have gone to college and been a
lady if I'd had the chance?... Oh, it's easy to talk, very easy,
isn't it? Here!--Would you like to know what my circumstances were?
D'you know what your gran'mother was? No, you don't. I do. She
called herself a widow and had a fried-fish shop down by the Mint,
and kept herself and four daughters out of it. Two of us were
sisters: that was me and Liz; and we were both good looking and well
made. I suppose our father was a well fed man: mother pretended he
was a gentleman; but I don't know. The other two were only half
sisters--undersized, ugly, starved, hard working, honest poor
creatures: Liz and I would have half murdered them if mother hadn't
half murdered us to keep our hands off them. They were the
respectable ones. Well, what did they get by their respectability?
I'll tell you. 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 was always held up to us as a model because
she married a Government laborer in the Deptford victualling yard,
and kept his room and the three children neat and tidy on eighteen
shillings a week--until he took to drink. That was worth being
respectable for, wasn't it?
_Vivie._ Did you and your sister think so?
_Mrs. Warren._ Liz didn't, I can tell you; she had more spirit. We
both went to a Church School--that was part of the lady-like airs we
gave ourselves to be superior to the children that knew nothing and
went nowhere--and we stayed there until Liz went out one night and
never came back. I knew the schoolmistress thought I'd soon follow
her example; for the clergyman was always warning me that Lizzie 'd
end by jumping off Waterloo Bridge. Poor fool: that was all that he
knew about it! But I was more afraid of the whitelead factory than
I was of the river; and so would you have been in my place. That
clergyman got me a situation as a scullery maid in a temperance
restaurant where they sent out for anything you liked. Then I was
waitress; and then I went to the bar at Waterloo Station--fourteen
hours a day serving drinks and washing glasses for four shillings a
week and my board. That was considered a great promotion for me.
Well, one cold, wretched night, when I was so tired I could hardly
keep myself awake, who should come up for a half of Scotch but
Lizzie, in a long fur cloak, elegant and comfortable, with a lot of
sovereigns in her purse.
_Vivie._ My aunt Lizzie?
_Mrs. Warren._ Yes.... She's living down at Winchester, now, close
to the cathedral, one of the most respectable ladies
there--chaperones girls at the country ball, if you please. No river
for Liz, thank you! You remind me of Liz a little: she was a
first-rate business woman--saved money from the beginning--never let
herself look too like what she was--never lost her head or threw
away a chance. When she saw I'd grown up good-looking she said to me
across the bar: "What are you doing there, you little fool? Wearing
out your health and your appearance for other people's profit!" Liz
was saving money then to take a house for herself in Brussels: and
she thought we two could save faster than one. So she lent me some
money and gave me a start; and I saved steadily and first paid her
back, and then went into business with her as her partner. Why
shouldn't I have done it? The house in Brussels was real high
class--a much better place for a woman to be in than the factory
where Anne Jane got poisoned. None of our girls were ever treated as
I was treated in the scullery of that temperance place, or at the
Waterloo bar, or at home. Would you have had me stay in them and
become a worn-out old drudge before I was forty?... Yes, saving
money. But where can a woman get the money to save in any other
business? Could you save out of four shillings a week and keep
yourself dressed as well? Not you. Of course, if you're a plain
woman and can't earn anything more: or if you have a turn for music,
or the stage, or newspaper writing: that's different. But neither
Liz nor I had any turn for such things: all we had was our
appearance and our turn for pleasing men. Do you think we were such
fools as to let other people trade in our good looks by employing us
as shop-girls, or barmaids, or waitresses, when we could trade in
them ourselves and get all the profits instead of starvation wages?
Not likely.... Everybody dislikes having to work and make money; but
they have to do it all the same. I'm sure I've often pitied a poor
girl, tired out and in low spirits, having to try to please some man
that she doesn't care two straws for--some half-drunken fool that
thinks he's making himself agreeable when he's teasing and worrying
and disgusting a woman so that hardly any money could pay her for
putting up with it. But she has to bear with disagreeables and take
the rough with the smooth, just like a nurse in a hospital or anyone
else. It's not work that any woman would do for pleasure, goodness
knows; though to hear the pious people talk you would suppose it was
a bed of roses. Of course it's worth while to a poor girl, if she
can resist temptation and is good looking and well-conducted and
sensible. It's far better than any other employment open to her. I
always thought that oughtn't to be. It can't be right, Vivie, that
there shouldn't be better opportunities for women. I stick to that:
It's wrong. But it's so, right or wrong; and a girl must make the
best of it. But, of course, it's not worth while for a lady. If you
took to it you'd be a fool; but I should have been a fool if I'd
taken to anything else.... Why am I independent and able to give my
daughter a first-rate education, when other women that had just as
good opportunities are in the gutter? Because I always knew how to
respect myself and control myself. Why is Liz looked up to in a
cathedral town? The same reason. Where would we be now if we'd
minded the clergyman's foolishness? Scrubbing floors for one and
sixpence a day and nothing to look forward to but the workhouse
infirmary. Don't you be led astray by people who don't know the
world, my girl. The only way for a woman to provide for herself
decently is for her to be good to some man that can afford to be
good to her. If she's in his own station of life, let her make him
marry her; but if she's far beneath him, she can't expect it--why
should she? It wouldn't be for her own happiness. Ask any lady in
London society that has daughters; and she'll tell you the same,
except that I tell you straight and she'll tell you crooked. That's
all the difference.... It's only good manners to be ashamed of it;
it's expected from a woman. Women have to pretend a great deal that
they don't feel. Liz used to be angry with me for plumping out the
truth about it. She used to say that when every woman would learn
enough from what was going on in the world before her eyes, there
was no need to talk about it to her. But then Liz was such a perfect
lady! She had the true instinct of it; while I was always a bit of a
vulgarian. I used to be so pleased when you sent me your photographs
to see that you were growing up like Liz; you've just her lady-like
determined way. But I can't stand saying one thing when everyone
knows I mean another. What's the use in such hypocrisy? If people
arrange the world that way for women, there's no use pretending that
it's arranged the other way. I never was a bit ashamed really. I
consider that I had a right to be proud that we managed everything
so respectably, and never had a word against us, and that the girls
were so well taken care of. Some of them did very well: one of them
married an ambassador. But of course now I daren't talk about such
things: whatever would they think of us.
No, it is not respectable to talk about these things, because
respectability cannot face the truth. Yet everybody knows that the
majority of women, "if they wish to provide for themselves decently must
be good to some man that can afford to be good to them." The only
difference then between _Sister Liz_, the respectable girl, and _Mrs.
Warren_, is hypocrisy and legal sanction. _Sister Liz_ uses her money to
buy back her reputation from the Church and Society. The respectable
girl uses the sanction of the Church to buy a decent income
legitimately, and _Mrs. Warren_ plays her game without the sanction of
either. Hence she is the greatest criminal in the eyes of the world. Yet
_Mrs. Warren_ is no less human than most other women. In fact, as far as
her love for her daughter _Vivian_ is concerned, she is a superior sort
of mother. That her daughter may not have to face the same alternative
as she,--slave in a scullery for four shillings a week--_Mrs. Warren_
surrounds the girl with comfort and ease, gives her an education, and
thereby establishes between her child and herself an abyss which nothing
can bridge. Few respectable mothers would do as much for their
daughters. However, _Mrs. Warren_ remains the outcast, while all those
who benefit by her profession, including even her daughter _Vivian_,
move in the best circles.
_Sir John Crofts_, _Mrs. Warren's_ business partner, who has invested
40,000 pounds in _Mrs. Warren's_ house, drawing an income of 35 per
cent. out of it in the worst years, is a recognized pillar of society
and an honored member of his class. Why not!
_Crofts._ The fact is, it's not what would be considered exactly a
high-class business in my set--the county set, you know.... Not that
there is any mystery about it: don't think that. Of course you know
by your mother's being in it that it's perfectly straight and
honest. I've known her for many years; and I can say of her that
she'd cut off her hands sooner than touch anything that was not what
it ought to be.... But you see you can't mention such things in
society. Once let out the word hotel and everybody says you keep a
public-house. You wouldn't like people to say that of your mother,
would you? That's why we're so reserved about it.... Don't turn up
your nose at business, Miss Vivie: where would your Newnhams and
Girtons be without it?... You wouldn't refuse the acquaintance of my
mother's cousin, the Duke of Belgravia, because some of the rents he
gets are earned in queer ways. You wouldn't cut the Archbishop of
Canterbury, I suppose, because the Ecclesiastical Commissioners have
a few publicans and sinners among their tenants? Do you remember
your Crofts scholarship at Newnham? Well, that was founded by my
brother the M.P. He gets his 22 per cent. out of a factory with 600
girls in it, and not one of them getting wages enough to live on.
How d' ye suppose most of them manage? Ask your mother. And do you
expect me to turn my back on 35 per cent. when all the rest are
pocketing what they can, like sensible men? No such fool! If you're
going to pick and choose your acquaintances on moral principles,
you'd better clear out of this country, unless you want to cut
yourself out of all decent society.... The world isn't such a bad
place as the croakers make out. So long as you don't fly openly in
the face of society, society doesn't ask any inconvenient questions;
and it makes precious short work of the cads who do. There are no
secrets better kept than the secrets that everybody guesses. In the
society I can introduce you to, no lady or gentleman would so far
forget themselves as to discuss my business affairs or your
mother's.
Indeed, no lady or gentleman would discuss the profession of _Mrs.
Warren_ and her confrères. But they partake of the dividends. When the
evil becomes too crying, they engage in vice crusades, and call down the
wrath of the Lord and the brutality of the police upon the Mrs. Warrens
and her victims. While the victimizers, the Crofts, the Canterburys,
Rev. Gardner--_Vivian's_ own father and pious mouthpiece of the
Church--and the other patrons of _Mrs. Warren's_ houses parade as the
protectors of woman, the home and the family.
To-day no one of the least intelligence denies the cruelty, the
injustice, the outrage of such a state of affairs, any more than it is
being denied that the training of woman as a sex commodity has left her
any other source of income except to sell herself to one man within
marriage or to many men outside of marriage. Only bigots and
inexperienced girls like _Vivian_ can say that "everybody has some
choice. The poorest girl alive may not be able to choose between being
Queen of England or Principal of Newnham; but she can choose between
rag-picking and flower-selling, according to her taste."
It is astonishing how little education and college degrees teach people.
Had _Vivian_ been compelled to shift for herself, she would have
discovered that neither rag-picking nor flower-selling brings enough to
satisfy one's "taste." It is not a question of choice, but of necessity,
which is the determining factor in most people's lives.
When Shaw flung _Mrs. Warren_ into the smug midst of society, even the
educated Vivians knew little of the compelling force which whips
thousands of women into prostitution. As to the ignorant, their minds
are a mental and spiritual desert. Naturally the play caused
consternation. It still continues to serve as the red rag to the social
bull. "Mrs. Warren's Profession" infuriates because it goes to the
bottom of our evils; because it places the accusing finger upon the
sorest and most damnable spot in our social fabric--sex as woman's only
commodity in the competitive market of life. "An immoral and heretical
play," indeed, of very deep social significance.