Incest and the Trafficking of Women in Mrs.

Warrens Profession: It Runs in the Family

Petra Dierkesthrun
California state university, northridge Mrs. Warrens Profession (1893), the third play in George Bernard shaws Plays Unpleasant trilogy, provoked Victorians by putting not one, but two taboo topics on the public stage: prostitution and incest. instead of unequivocally condemning the individual figure of the prostitute as a scapegoat for moral hypocrisy and sexual promiscuity, the play critiqued the ideological and economic system that produced her, attacking the problematic double standard of male privilege and the deeply entrenched objectification of women, which shaw saw pervading all levels of Victorian society down to its most basic nuclear element, the family. While the controversial representation of prostitution as a dramatic topic in Mrs. Warrens Profession is clearly the major reason the play remained banned from the British public stage until 1925 (even though shaw never actually used the words prostitution or prostitute in it), its incest theme contributed strongly to the brewing controversy concerning shaws Fabian socialist and feminist literary stance. the reviewer for the new York Herald, for instance, wrote that the play was morally rotten, defend[ed] immorality and glorifie[d] debauchery, and stressed that worst of all, it countenance[d] the most revolting form of degeneracy, by flippantly discussing the marriage of brother and sister, father and daughter.1 according to the social reformer shaw, it was one of the most important tasks of the modern dramatist to put such uncomfortable subjects in the public pillory. in a 1907 letter to The nation, in which he protested the dramatic censorship of such taboo material as nonconformist sexuality, crime, and disease, shaw argued that it is futile to plead that the stage is not the proper place for the representa-

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tion and discussion of illegal operations, incest and venereal disease. if the stage is the proper place for the exhibition and discussion of seduction, adultery, promiscuity and prostitution, it must be thrown open to all the consequences of these things, or it will demoralize the nation.2 to shaw, incest and prostitution both exemplified the victimization of young women and girls, not just in brothels but also in private lives, to which society conveniently turned a blind eye. While shaws stance on prostitution in Mrs. Warrens Profession has been extensively discussed by scholars, the plays incest theme has received surprisingly little critical attention, despite its clear role in earlier manuscript versions (toned down for the 1898 publication).3 its comparative dismissal as a major dramatic element in its own right is exemplified by a brief comment Dan h. Laurence makes in a recent article, where he argues that the presence of incest, as shaw slips it in, is just sufficient to remind the audience that incest is a natural consequence of an iniquitous system tolerated by a profit-minded society. Promiscuous sexual intercourse must inevitably result in the raising of insoluble questions of consanguinity.4 Laurence is of course correct in suggesting that in Mrs. Warrens Profession incest and prostitution are inextricably intertwined. But the incest theme is more than a mere supporting tool for shaws criticism of nineteenth-century prostitution: just as the selling of womens bodies has directly or indirectly touched the lives of all the characters in the play and makes them appear interconnected in deeply ambiguous and problematic ways, suggestions of incest and forbidden erotic entanglements extend far into the complicated social and erotic network of relations that touches and preys on Vivie and Mrs. Warren. the incest theme in Mrs. Warrens Profession exists on two levels: biological incest (such as the suggested blood relation between Frank and Vivie, and possibly between Vivie and the lecherous sir George Crofts), and impure desire that cuts across multiple relationships between the two women and two generations of male lovers and suitors. shaws play casts a deliberately wide net around several possible fathers and lovers for Vivie who are, incidentally, all erotically or romantically connected to Mrs. Warren as well, so that the differences between the two individual women, prostitute and new Woman, mother and daughter, are virtually erased under the calculating gaze of the male characters, an erasure and substitution of the one woman for the other that feels incestuous in its all-too-smooth transfer of erotic interest. For the purposes of this analysis, i thus want to widen the definition of incest from

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actual consanguinity to incestuous social relations. the etymological root of the wordfrom Latin incestus, impure, unchasteadmits a wide range of contaminated and contaminating erotic desires, some of which may be social as well as sexual. the phenomenon of intergenerational, doubly incestuous, simultaneous desire for mother and daughter manifests itself tangibly in the various erotic triangles into which all the male characters have entered (or wish to enter) with both Mrs. Warren and Vivie. these complex trianglesamong Mrs. Warren and the reverend samuel Gardner, sir George, the enigmatic Praed, and Frank on the one hand; and Vivie and Frank, sir George, and Praed (who might as well be hiding his erotic interest in the two women behind the mask of platonic friendship, beauty, and romance) on the otherare entwined to a point that presents the mother and the daughter as almost indistinguishable and interchangeable objects of desire. the two women get passed around, fought over, and redistributed among past and former lovers, suggesting their ruthless objectification in a male-dominated social and cultural machinery. While the play shines a glaring spotlight on the material and social conditions behind prostitution that drove desperate women and girls into selling their bodies and souls for money, and often prompted former victims to become perpetrators in turn, it is also a drama of lost, hidden, or suspected family connections, which are perversely suffused and hypercharged with erotic interests, forbidden desires, uncertainty, and emotional ambivalence. as we know, the fundamental irony of Mrs. Warrens Profession is Vivies realization that her own professionalization and gentrification through a Cambridge education (the basis of her new Womanhood) has been funded by the oldest profession in the world, as embodied by her mother, the former Miss Vavasour, who has worked her way up from practically minded lower-class prostitute to international, capitalist brothel entrepreneur, managing her profitable empire of sex for the benefit of her daughters social prospects. But as the play progresses, Vivie also unexpectedly finds herself enmeshed in a web of problematic family connections, inappropriate sexual desires, and unwelcome suitors, one of whom just might be her biological father. in act ii, for example, sir George, Mrs. Warrens longtime partner both in bed and the brothel business, proposes marriage to Vivie, even though he suspects she might be his daughter; and in act iii, Vivie is confronted with the shocking revelation that her good-fornothing beau Frank Gardner might possibly be her halfbrother (the son of one of Mrs. Warrens former lovers, the pompous neighborhood

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hypocrite reverend samuel, who is another candidate for fatherhood). interestingly though, the biological incest plot is never truly unfolded or resolved, since none of the characters knows for sure who Vivies father is, including Gardner, Crofts, and even Mrs. Warren herself. the old rou sir George is plagued by a continual doubt as to whether the heroine may not be his daughter, and the reverend samuel, an outrageous clergyman, is in the same perplexity, he also being an old flame of the mothers, as shaw wrote in a letter to Janet achurch (the actress he wanted to play Vivie in the first production).5 although Mrs. Warren swears to Vivie in act iV that sir George is not her parent, and neither are any of the rest that you have ever met,6 shaw himself imagined Mrs. Warren herself to be quite ignorant of Vivies parentage. according to shaws letter to achurch, Mrs. Warren is uncertain who the girls father is, but conveniently keeps all the old men at bay by telling each one that he is the parent, turning ignorance into a powerful tool for her manipulation of the male characters.7 Far from being grounds for dismissal, the lack of resolution of the biological incest plot in Mrs. Warrens Profession turns our attention to the larger functions of incestuous desire in the play. the nonchalant way in which shaw suspends any final knowledge about the alleged or suspected consanguinity between Vivie and Frank, or Vivie and sir George, highlights the incest themes central importance for shaws wide-ranging critique of the sexual as well as social trafficking of women which affects both Mrs. Warren and her daughter, and sharpens the plays focus on social and sexual justice. Modern social and sexual relations in the immediate and extended patriarchal family in Mrs. Warrens Profession are not only coextensive with the practice of prostitution, as scholars have suggested, but the resultant social economy is necessarily also an incestuous one. since women are freely exchanged and interchanged without regard to their individuality or ties to one another, they are always potentially related to each other, or to the male subjects of desire. Feminist critic Gayle rubin (following Claude Lvi-strauss) has called the phenomenon of the commodification of women in patriarchal society the traffic in women (a term first introduced by the nineteenth-century feminist and antiprostitution activist emma Goldman), a metaphor that seems particularly apt in the context of discussing shaws theme of the physical circulation of women in Mrs. Warrens Profession. in her landmark 1975 essay, which contains a still unsurpassed conceptualization of Lvi-strausss incest taboo in the context of

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social and feminist theory, rubin has analyzed the pattern of economic and erotic exchange of women for money, sex, and each other, in a cultural and political kinship system based on male superiority and dominance. extending Lvi-strausss concept of the exchange of women as a basis for a society operating through kinship relations deriving from the concepts of gifts and the incest taboo, rubin argues that the social relations of a kinship system specify that men have certain rights in their female kin, and that women do not have the same rights either to themselves or to their male kin, meaning that in such a system women do not have full rights to themselves.8 not surprisingly, in shaws play the male characters often discuss Mrs. Warren and Vivie behind their backs, as if it does not really matter what they feel or think; their discursive circulation largely takes place without the womens say. When we apply the suggested wider definition of incest as impure, unchaste, and contaminating desire across the network of sexual and social relationships past and present (both among actual family members, and their physically unrelated friends and lovers), the incest theme in Mrs. Warrens Profession raises three important questions for which rubins feminist theory as well as eve kosofsky sedgwicks analysis of social and erotic exchange in Between Men will provide useful grounds for inquiry. these are, first, what role the interchangeability of male desire for women (mother and daughter) plays in Mrs. Warrens Profession; second, how the relations of the male characters to one another can be understood as taking place in a sociosexual male economy based on the exchange of women, a phenomenon with important homoerotic components for which sedgwick has coined the term homosociality; and third, how Mrs. Warrens and Lizs outrageous complicity with the system that commodifies women as objects of exchange sets up an important reading foil for a new and different type of family suggested at the end of the play, one based on voluntary intellectual affiliation rather than physical filiation and family romance. each of these aspects will be discussed before returning to the question of the incest themes larger function in shaws endorsement of the independent new Woman, Vivie Warren.

the interchangeability of mother and daughter, their treatment as freely tradable commodities by the principal male characters, and the conceptual slippage between their male suitors past and present desires, provides an important undercurrent in Mrs. Warrens Profession.

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the triple gaze at Vivie (directed at her by the playful young Frank and the old playboy sir George, as well as by the artist figure Praed) mirrors and repeats the hyperbolic erotic embroilment that exists between Mrs. Warren and these very same admirers. switching their affection back and forth between the daughter and the mother, the male protagonists turn the women into variable female placeholders or inhuman ciphers, devoid of individual traits other than their femininity and imagined sexual availability. in act ii, this interchangeability of the two women as objects of male desire is highlighted as Frank, entering the cottage with Mrs. Warren after their evening walk and finding himself alone with her, unabashedly starts wooing and seducing her, gallantly giving her shoulders a very perceptible squeeze as he takes her shawl:
Mrs Warren: im beginning to think youre a chip off the old block. Frank: Like the govnor [Franks father, the reverend samuel], eh? Mrs Warren: i know you through and through by your likeness to your father, better than you know yourself. Dont you go taking any silly ideas into your head about me. Do you hear? Frank [gallantly wooing her with his voice]: Cant help it, my dear Mrs Warren: it runs in the family. she pretends to box his ears; then looks at the pretty laughing upturned face for a moment, tempted. at last she kisses him and immediately turns away, out of patience with herself. Mrs Warren: there! i shouldnt have done that. i am wicked. never mind, my dear: its only a motherly kiss. Go and make love to Vivie. Frank: so i have. Mrs Warren [turning on him with a sharp tone of alarm in her voice]: What!9

this dialogue between Frank and Mrs. Warren is suffused with suggestions of taboo desiresan older woman desiring a younger man who reminds her of his father, a young man seducing the mother of his girlfriend. history threatens to repeat itself across generations and with exchangeable partners: like father, like son; like mother falling for a good-for-nothing chap, like daughter. Mrs. Warren seems not only attracted to Frank because of his youth, beauty, and love of life (his pretty laughing upturned face), but because she is reliving her long forgotten affair with Franks father, sam Gardner. Multiple erotic desires and generations, the past and the present, are superimposed on one another in this scene: we imagine a youthful sam and a young Miss Vavasour as we watch the young Frank and the now older Mrs. 298

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Warren; we are aware of the babes in the wood Vivie and Frank as we see the mother of Vivie give the son of sam Gardner an erotic kiss, which she quickly tries to downplay as only a motherly kiss. the present is tainted because the past is impure; former, present, and future lovers vying for attention are enmeshed in an endless array of erotic and sexual possibilities, memories, and courtship rituals revolving around Mrs. Warren on the one hand, and Vivie on the other. Frank is the character who most embodies the versatility and impersonality of this erotic economy, as he moves easily back and forth between mother and daughter, without a clear preference other than the money which he hopes Vivie will bring into a marriage with him. although Mrs. Warren refrains from her flirtation with Frank after she has learned that Frank and Vivie are already romantically involved evidently not wanting to injure her daughterFrank does not seem to care either way: he continues his erotic preying on daughter and mother simultaneously, moving back and forth between them like a mischievous imp. as he prepares to leave in act iii and is denied kissums by Vivie, Frank immediately turns to Mrs. Warren; while Vivie busies herself with her books and papers, he proceeds to resume his flirtation with the mother: he kisses her hand. she snatches it away, her lips tightening, and looks more than half disposed to box his ears. he laughs mischievously and runs off, clapping-to the door behind him.10 Despite his rejection by both women in this scene, Frank continues trying to play them both, engaging them in a titillating erotic triangle against their wills. another such triangular relationship is attempted by sir George in the immediately preceding scene, in which he urges his business partner and presumably longtime lover, Mrs. Warren, to sell her daughter to him in marriage: no other man in my position would put up with you as a mother-in-law. Why shouldnt she marry me? Look here, kitty: youre a sensible woman: you neednt put on any moral airs. ill ask no more questions; and you need answer none. ill settle the whole property on her; and if you want a cheque for yourself on the wedding day, you can name any figure you likein reason.11 similar to Frank, sir George transfers his erotic interest from one woman to the other quite easily, evidently not seeing anything wrong with his outrageous (and possibly incestuous) business proposal. When Mrs. Warren angrily declines to prostitute Vivie, the one girl she has always tried to protect from such a life, sir George immediately proceeds to proposition Vivie, who rejects him equally firmly.12

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the second aspect of the incestuous economy of male desire in Mrs. Warrens Profession is the paradoxical homosocial bond that the objectification of both Vivie and Mrs. Warren creates. the three principal men in the playsir George, Frank, and Praedall need to arrange themselves with one another and with Mrs. Warren, as each works out his individual relation and attraction to Vivie. What eve kosofsky sedgwick calls the homosocial bonds among men in a heteronormative, male-dominated society exists not despite but precisely because of mens shared interest in the object of their desires, and its arrangement and distribution among themselves.13 according to sedgwick, the erotic triangle emerges as a privileged literary figure by which the commonsense of our intellectual tradition schematizes erotic relations, especially patriarchal relations.14 not surprisingly, in shaws play the trope of the erotic triangle is the dominant metaphor of the homosocial relationship between sir George and Praed. the homosociality theme in Mrs. Warrens Profession surfaces early, in a conversation between sir George and Mrs. Warrens more gentlemanly friend Mr. Praed in act i; Crofts wonders aloud whether Vivie might in fact be his, or perhaps Praeds, daughter. the ensuing dialogue establishes and acknowledges the two mens common interest in Vivie, illustrated by Croftss genial use of the pronoun we in addressing Praed: Look here: did kitty ever tell you who that girls father is? its very awkward to be uncertain about it now that we shall be meeting the girl every day. We wont exactly know how we ought to feel towards her. if you do know, you might at least set my mind at rest about her. the fact is, i feel attracted its quite an innocent feeling. thats what puzzles me about it. Why, for all i know i might be her father. i suppose shes not your daughter, is she?15 Praed denies this possibility, but also insists on his own interest in Vivie, in a parental way.16 at least publicly, Praed does not acknowledge any sexual relations with Mrs. Warren (he seems to be genuinely surprised at being told about Mrs. Warrens true occupation in act iV), but he does seem to have had some knowledge of Mrs. Warrens questionable past. Being quizzed by Crofts about his possible fatherhood, Praed insists, i have nothing to do with that side of Mrs. Warrens life, and never had. she has never spoken to me about it; and of course i have never spoken to her about it. Your delicacy will tell you that a handsome woman needs some friends who are notwell, not on that footing with her.17 still, it is unclear whether Praed might not be lying about his past involvement with Mrs. Warren, as well as his secret romantic interest in Vivie:

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he does seem to woo her subtly in acts ii and iV (taking a one-on-one walk with her that prompts Franks jealousy), and eventually invites her to travel to europe with him to saturate [herself] with beauty and romance, perhaps a clever attempt at winning Vivie for himself while away from all the others.18 the present, past, and future homosocial relationship between sir George and Praed is a tangible undercurrent of their negotiation in act i. sir George tries to establish a friendly basis with Praed by insisting that he means no offence to Praed; that, in fact, such a frank conversation about a common object of interest is [q]uite allowable as between two men of the world. the potentially contentious situation is resolved when Praed concludes the conversation good-naturedly, Well, as you are, at all events, old enough to be her father, i dont mind agreeing that we both regard Miss Vivie in a parental way, as a young girl whom we are bound to protect and help. What do you say?19 What this scene illustrates is the active and successful negotiation of male rivalry for Vivies affections: the two men work out their mutual attraction to and fatherly feelings for Vivie by establishing a common claim to her and agreeing to stay on peaceful terms with each other. this transaction leaves Vivie herself entirely out of the picture: she appears here as an object of interest, not a subject or person with her own thoughts and feelings, a fact that is also illustrated through Vivies absence in this scene. Despite their uncertainty about Vivies parentage and the open question of how she might actually feel about either one of them, sir Georges and Praeds bartering ends with a peaceful establishment of their own triangular relationship with Vivie, and effectively with each other as rivals. the result is a truce, which allows both men independently to remain sexually or romantically interested in their daughterlover: sir George works up his nerve to propose to Vivie, while Praed continues to play the role of the bohemian artist-romantic. the secret status of their fatherhood (and hence their possible violation of the incest taboo) is apparently a topic fit to be discussed between two gentlemen of the world without shame, as long as they have a common interest at heart. another passage at the opening of act iii underscores the importance of men talking about their common erotic interest in a woman behind her back; the woman in question in this case is Mrs. Warren. With Frank listening in, the reverend samuel and sir George have shared raunchy stories about their respective intimate acquaintance with Mrs. Warren, resolving their awkward triangular relation-

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ship and possible past rivalry through a night of heavy drinking and awful anecdotes, presumably at Mrs. Warrens expense.20 in the suggested triangular relationship among the three pragmatic, smart, and hardworking businesswomen Mrs. Warren, her sister Liz, and their daughter and niece Vivie, shaw at first seems to establish an interesting parallel to the homosocial bonds among the male characters, founded on the premises of familial love and a strong sense of family resemblance that would strengthen the alliance. according to Mrs. Warren, Vivie has Lizs practical business sense, her belief in bettering her position in life through her own brains and hard work: You remind me of Liz a little: she was a first-rate business woman.21 Mrs. Warren is proud of this resemblance, as she sees Liz as the ultimate model for attractive femininity and business success: i used to be so pleased when you sent me your photos to see that you were growing up like Liz; youve just her ladylike, determined way.22 the new Woman Vivie paradoxically shares with both Mrs. Warren and Liz the enjoyment of work, the appreciation of financial independence, and the value placed on choice of lifestyle, not to mention a strong predilection for scotch whiskey.23 But interestingly, shaw builds some subtly incestuous overtones into Mrs. Warrens prostitutive alliance with Liz by subtly eroticizing their solidarity, and linking motherly pride in Vivie to the relationship with Liz. not only does Mrs. Warrens obvious admiration for her sister, her wish to be close to her, and her desire for Lizs luxurious lifestylethe furs, the money, the house right next to the cathedral, Lizs paradoxical place in good societyprovide the initial motivation for Mrs. Warrens decision to become a prostitute herself, but they also provide a strange undercurrent to her careful grooming of Vivie. Vivie is supposed to emulate Lizs example and become a true society lady, not by prostituting herself, but via the education that her mothers prostitution has been able to buy for hera motherly-sisterly desire that Vivie will ultimately reject. inviting Vivie into her own family romance with aunt Liz, Mrs. Warrens dream of a female triangle of three successful businesswomen who are incidentally all very much alike in their pragmatism and manners, reinforces shaws focus on the incestuous and prostitutive entanglements of a society in which women become not only instruments but executors of patriarchal power, but tempt one another with the promise of becoming or staying one of the family. When Mrs. Warren finally relates her own history to Vivie in act ii and highlights the intersections of prostitution and class destitution 302

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(working-class poverty) as determining factors in the two sisters family background, Vivie at first admires her mother. in a speech leveled at Vivie in act ii, Mrs. Warren has tried to justify and defend her choices from a rational or business point of view, which indirectly anticipates Foucaults theory of docile bodiesthe desire by subjugated bodies to participate in the very economy that suppresses them, and hence achieve a certain amount of power and autonomy within that system:24 all [Liz and i] 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 shopgirls, or bar maids, or waitresses, when we could trade in them ourselves and get all the profits instead of starvation wages? not likely.25 the new Woman Vivie cannot help but sympathize with her mothers and aunt Lizs former lack of economic and intellectual opportunity, the sense of entrapment, and identify with their decision to take fate into their own hands. But just as the solution to the plays mother-daughter conflict seems possible and Vivie and Mrs. Warren start to reconcile, shaw again subtly invokes the homoerotic incest theme, this time via the language of pathology, to immediately suggest the relationships unstable and inherently offensive nature. in act iii, when things go wrong for Frank and both sir Georges excessive wooing and Vivies newfound intimacy with Mrs. Warren threaten to diminish his own importance, Frank exclaims that the display of such affections physically revolts him, to the point that they make his flesh creep: Dont it make your flesh creep ever so little? that wicked old devil, up to every villainy under the sun, ill swearand Vivieugh! Look: she actually has her arm round the old womans waist. its her right arm: she began it. shes gone sentimental, by God! ugh! ugh! now do you feel the creeps?26 as Frank urges Vivie to give up the thought of living with her mother, now stressing the impossibility of a familial-erotic triangle which he himself had playfully begun in an earlier part of the play (Little family group of mother and daughter wouldnt be a success. spoil our little group Frank and Vivie27), his pathological representation of the blossoming love between mother and daughter in this scene already foreshadows and suggests that the two womens relationship may ultimately prove unhealthy and unnatural as well. shaw thus makes it clear early on that the experimental filiative alliance between mother and daughter will probably not provide a viable alternative to the incestuous social and sexual economy of the play. and indeed, when it turns out that Mrs. Warren has not only continued to prostitute herself beyond the point of

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economic necessity but literally bought into the exploitative business for her own gain, actively encouraging and proliferating the trafficking of other innocent women, Vivies admiration turns to disgust, and she decides to break off the relationship with her mother. Whereas Mrs. Warren never extricates herself from the exploitative traffic in women but instead plays along with it for profit and power, Vivie Warren finally finds it in herself to make a clean breakbut not before the biological incest plot surfaces fully. in act iii, the meanspirited sir George drops the bomb by telling Vivie and his competitor, Frank, that Frank is romancing his halfsister: ill just tell you this before i go. it may interest you, since you are so fond of one another. allow me, Mister Frank, to introduce you to your half-sister, the eldest daughter of the reverend samuel Gardner. Miss Vivie: your half-brother. Good morning.28 as J. L. Wisenthal has pointed out, shaw arranges the incest revelation in a decidedly bathetic manner; the possible ensuing melodrama of innocence and love destroyed is immediately dispersed and done away with through Vivies and Franks reactions. When Frank points his rifle at the retreating Crofts, Vivie seizes the muzzle and pulls it round against her breastnot to suggest a sentimental Liebestod, however, but simply to prevent sir George from getting shot. neither Vivie nor Frank fits the bill of the heroic romantic characters needed for such a melodramatic turn of events; as Frank hastily drops the rifle, he exclaims, stop! take care. Oh, youve given your little boy such a turn. suppose it had gone off! ugh! if nothing else, the incest allegation has thoroughly disillusioned Vivie about romance; dramatically speaking, it is important because it gives her the needed impetus to finally overcome her weakness for Frank. When Frank pleads for her to acknowledge their newfound connection (remember: even if the rifle scared that fellow into telling the truth for the first time in his life, that only makes us the babes in the wood in earnest. [He holds out his arms to her.] Come and be covered up with leaves again), she breaks away from him disgustedly: ah, not that, not that. You make all my flesh creep.29 similar to Laurence, Wisenthal dismisses the plays incest revelation as ultimately insignificant in the development of shaws play. shaw raises the issue of incest in order to tease the audience by dropping it as trivial and irrelevant. Mrs. Warrens Profession, after the final curtains of the second and third acts, proceeds to its main business, Vivies self-liberation in act iV.30 however, the plays incest theme is intricately intertwined with shaws critique of the trafficking of women,

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and hence not at all trivial and irrelevant to the purpose of the play, especially not as a central lead into shaws finalization of Vivies new Woman character in the plays last act. instead, it actually constitutes a strategically placed springboard for Vivies determined jump into independence. in other words, the climactic surfacing of the incest theme in act iii (prepared all along by intricate allusions to incestuous desire across a wide spectrum of relationships among various characters) centrally enables and reinforces shaws development of Vivie into a fully committed, resolute new Woman. as Frank gives her the sentimental babes in the wood number again and offers her his (now incestuous) love against all odds, Vivie determines on the spot that she must leave for honoria Frasers chambers, 67 Chancery Lane where she intends to spend the rest of [her] life.31 For shaw, the only viable solution to Vivies erotic and economic dilemma seems to be this radical break with family and illusion. as Martin Meisel puts it, [s]ince real prostitution is so inextricably involved with the entire social fabric, piecemeal reformism on this favourite ground is invalidated as a solution; only total transformation will serve.32 in cutting herself loose from all the emotional and financial ties that bind her to her mother, her lover/brother, and the mothers ready money supply that flows through the veins of her life just as unwantedly as the blood she shares with Mrs. Warren and possibly with Frank, sir George, Praed, or the reverend samuel, Vivie Warren decides to sever the incestuous social and erotic bonds that fetter her to her mothers loathed brothels, and to the various male suitors in the play. she is not willing to prostitute herself for money or for others, neither her mother (who wants a daughter), nor her halfbrother (who wants a wife): now once for all, mother, you want a daughter and Frank wants a wife. i dont want a mother and i dont want a husband. i have spared neither Frank nor myself in setting him about his business. Do you think i will spare you?33 the brief moments of tenderness Vivie shared earlier with bothkisses, cuddles, and babes in the wood fantasies with Frank, the mother-daughter embrace at the end of act iiare eclipsed by this decisive gesture of rejection at the end. as Vivie matter-of-factly says good-bye to her mother and Mrs. Warren slams the door behind her forever (a scene ironically reminiscent of ibsens a Dolls House, with the significant difference that the young lady in question stays and makes everybody else leave), her relief and happiness are immediately apparent: she has turned a new leaf and cannot wait to settle down to her new life and work. according to the

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stage direction, [t]he strain on Vivies face relaxes; her grave expression breaks up into one of joyous content; her breath goes out in a half sob, half laugh of intense relief. she goes buoyantly to her writing table, and after she has read and torn up Franks note without a second thought, goes at her work with a plunge, and soon becomes absorbed in its figures.34 the relative ease with which the determined Vivie is able to cut herself off completely from her two sources of economic and emotional supportfor family, sex, money, and love are all interlaced in this play, as we have seenindicates that physical blood relationships matter far less to her than the intellectual, freely chosen affiliation with the new symbolic family of Vivie Warren and the appropriately named honoria Fraser. We assume that these two new Women will break new, honorable ground together, living an economically independent and intellectually self-sustained and contented life. Vivies and honorias alternative social arrangement at the end of the play marks a refusal by the new Women to be circulated, to be rendered mere objects of desire: shaw effectively redefines family as a new kind of homosocial bond between professional women, who can support, nourish, and learn from one another without commodifying their bodies. the new economic and professional bond between new Women is based on the production and exchange of female mental labor and knowledge, not bodies that function as mere ciphers of an exchange between men. not surprisingly, Mrs. Warrens Profession places a strong emphasis on the joys of intellectual work and learning, on young women teaching one another: a new love for books, knowledge, and gender solidarity opens up new alternative worlds of happiness and contentment, while it shuts the doors on oppression masked by the smokescreen euphemisms of sexual love and family romance. Vivie thus chooses voluntary mental affiliation with honoria over the physical filiation with her mother and her aunt Liz, the two professional prostitutes whose work paradoxically enabled her to make this choice in the first place. ultimately, identifying and placing herself within this genealogical line or filiative relationship with Liz and Mrs. Warren is not an option for Vivie: outwardly these two women have been socially and morally transgressive, but have not attempted to step out of or leave behind the system of womens sexual and economic exploitation once they earned their independence. instead, they have continued to participate in the capitalist machinery and produced a surplus unnecessary to survival, profiting by the exploitation and deception of

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others, Liz by merging into respectable society (she now owns a house near the cathedral, the moral center of power), and Mrs. Warren by setting up more and more brothels throughout europe. Vivie blames and judges her mother not on traditional moral grounds, as could have been expected, but precisely because she is a conventional woman at heart who could have made a clean break with the life she despised once she had achieved financial independence (but did not do so out of greed and complacency). in Vivies eyes Mrs. Warren has turned into a hypocrite liv[ing] one life and believ[ing] in another; and we already know that this is not Vivies way.35 as Vivie states categorically, everybody has some choice, mother. People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. i dont believe in circumstances. the people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and, if they cant find them, make them.36 acknowledging the influence her mothers genes have had on her, Vivie makes clear her cultural difference: i am my mothers daughter. i am like you: i must have work, and must make more money than i spend. But my work is not your work, and my way is not my way. We must part. it will not make much difference to us: instead of meeting one another for perhaps a few months in twenty years, we shall never meet: thats all.37 the very last image we get of Vivie in Mrs. Warrens Profession is that of a self-assured professional woman in the making, earnestly and happily going about her business, intuitively knowing that she will find in it more happiness than in the empty shells of familial imbroglios, love, romance, or dirty money. the final scene does not mark Vivies spiritual crippling as a character seared and maimed in her horror of love and all that involves feeling38 nor does it indicate that shaw ultimately despises Vivies coldness and calculation, her immersion in the practical side of life, her estrangement from what he would eventually call the Life Force.39 in his chapter on the Womanly Woman in The Quintessence of ibsenism (1891), for example, shaw had forcefully argued that the cause of womens emancipation entailed just such a conscious cutting of cumbersome ties: the new Woman needed to decisively reject her own womanliness, her duty to her husband, to her children, to society, to the law, and to everyone but herself.40 Generally speaking, shaws focus on Vivies isolation at the end of the play is not surprising; the new Woman literature of the 1890s shows a distinct clairvoyance not only regarding the necessity of such a radical practical break, but also its ultimately hopeful and positive impact. Writers such as George Gissing (whose novel The odd Women was published in

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the same year as Mrs. Warrens Profession, 1893) and Olive schreiner (whom shaw knew well as a fellow socialist, feminist, and one of the most celebrated new Woman authors of the time) were equally realistic and forthright about the fact that romance and marriage would get in the way of the progressive cause, and had to be given up by women engaged in it, often in favor of education and intellectual work.41 Like many literary new Women of the time, shaws Vivie freely chooses to disassociate herself from people who can only hold her back. the truly transgressive nature of Mrs. Warrens Profession is not only shaws unsentimental approach to the taboos of prostitution and incest, but the unequivocal commitment to the new Woman, Vivie Warren. Despite her businesslike pragmatism and realisma quality inherited from her mother and from aunt Lizthere is a touch of the idealist about Vivie, as there was to the progressive female characters of Gissing, schreiner, and other new Woman writers of the 1890s. although she has been tempted by familial romanceboth the erotic and the genealogical-filiative kind, symbolized respectively by Frank and Mrs. WarrenVivie knows that in order to escape the social, familial, and economic system that threatens to keep her firmly in its grasp, she must have nothing to do with its promises of love and kinship, nor the rotten smell of money ill gained. in rejecting sir George, the aspiring husband-father, Frank, the halfbrother/lover, and the needy and demanding mother-entrepreneur Mrs. Warren, Vivie manages to evade physical and economic bondage of the most injurious kind and creates a sphere of her own, in which talent and hard work signify the ascendancy of the new Woman to ostensibly authentic social and physical agency. Vivie remains shaws only positively transgressive character in the play, as she decides to step out of the incestuous social and emotional trafficking of women and into a new, self-made future, finally taking charge of her own body and mind.

Notes
i would like to thank Michelle Burnham, John hawley, herbert Lindenberger, and roseanne Quinn for their astute readings of earlier drafts of this essay. 1. unsigned notice, new York Herald, 31 October 1905, 3; reprinted in shaw: The Critical Heritage, t. F. evans, ed. (London: routledge, 1976), 139 f. 2. G. B. shaw, letter to the editor, The nation (16 november 1907), in Bernard shaw: agitations, Letters to the Press, 18751950, Dan h. Laurence and James rambeau, eds. (new York: Frederick ungar, 1985), 100. 3. On shaws revealing changes to the incest theme in the manuscripts of Mrs. Warrens Profession, see Brian F. tyson, shaw among the actors: theatrical additions to Plays Unpleasant, Modern

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Drama 14 (19711972), 16475. tyson points out that whereas the original manuscript took care to force the idea of incest home, any direct references to incestuous desire, such as sir George admitting to taking a fatherly interest in Vivie, were entirely deleted before the 1898 printing (274). as tyson shows, Mrs. Warrens and sir Georges exchange about Vivie in act ii of the original manuscript raises the question of incestuous desire particularly clearly and provocatively: Mrs. W (lowering her voice) how do you know that the girl maynt be your own daughter, eh? CrOFts how do you know that that maynt be one of the fascinations of the thing? What harm if she is? (shaw, Mrs. Warrens Profession: B.M. Ms 50588 a, 86; cited in ibid.). noting further instances of shaw trying to tone down the incest theme for publication, tyson also mentions an omitted later scene in which the reverend samuel discovers he is Vivies father, after he had tried to persuade Mrs. Warren to let her marry Frank (ibid.). 4. Dan h. Laurence, Victorians unveiled: some thoughts on Mrs Warrens Profession, sHaW: The annual of Bernard shaw studies, 24 (2004), 43. 5. G. B. shaw to Janet achurch, 4 september 1893, in Collected Letters 18741897, Dan h. Laurence, ed. (new York: Dodd, Mead and Company, 1965), 404. 6. G. B. shaw, Mrs Warrens Profession, Plays Unpleasant, Dan h. Laurence, ed. (London: Penguin, 2000), 245. 7. shaw, Collected Letters, 404. 8. Gayle rubin, the traffic in Women: notes on the Political economy of sex, The second Wave: a reader in feminist Theory, Linda nicholson, ed. (new York: routledge, 1997), 38 f. 9. Mrs Warrens Profession, 231 f. 10. ibid., 242. 11. ibid., 240. 12. ibid., 262. 13. in the traffic in Women, rubin argues that women in a patriarchal society based on the kinship system are being transacted by men without any active role in the exchange, effectively being denied the benefits of their own circulation. the women hence function as the mere conduit of a relationship between the men themselves: it is the [male] partners upon whom reciprocal exchange confers its quasi-mythical power of social linkage. as long as the relations specify that men exchange women, it is men who are the beneficiaries of the product of such exchangessocial organization (37). Paraphrasing rubin and Lvi-strauss, sedgwick elaborates that patriarchal heterosexuality can best be discussed in terms of one or another form of the traffic in women. it is the use of women as exchangeable, perhaps symbolic, property for the primary purpose of cementing the bonds of men with men. see Between Men: english Literature and Male Homosocial Desire (new York: Columbia university Press, 1985), 26. 14. ibid., 21. 15. Mrs Warrens Profession, 223 f. 16. ibid., 225. 17. ibid., 224, my emphasis. 18. ibid., 272. 19. ibid., 224 f. 20. ibid., 254. 21. ibid., 248. 22. ibid., 251. 23. ellen J. Gainor, shaws Daughters: Dramatic and narrative Constructions of Gender (ann arbor: university of Michigan Press, 1991), 37. 24. Foucault first formulated his theory of docile bodies in Discipline and Punish (originally published, 1975) and later modified it in favor of a broader inquiry into technologies of the self. see, for example, Foucaults essay technologies of the self, The essential World of Michel foucault, vol. 1, ethics: subjectivity and Truth, Paul rabinovitz, ed; robert hurley, trans., et al. (new York: new Press, 1997), 22351. i am not aware of any critical readings that approach the prostitution theme in Mrs. Warrens Profession from a specifically Foucauldian feminist perspective.

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25. Mrs Warrens Profession, 249. 26. ibid., 257. 27. ibid., 259. 28. ibid., 267. 29. ibid.

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30. J. L. Wisenthal, having the Last Word: Plot and Counterplot in Bernard shaw, Critical essays on George Bernard shaw, elsie B. adams, ed. (new York: G.k. hall, 1991), 166. 31. Mrs Warrens Profession, 267. 32. Martin Meisel, shaw and revolution: the Politics of the Plays, shaw: seven Critical essays, norman rosenblood, ed. (toronto: university of toronto Press, 1971), 117. 33. Mrs Warrens Profession, 284 f. 34. ibid., 286. 35. ibid. 36. ibid., 246. 37. ibid., 284. 38. Meisel, 118. 39. kerry Powell, new Women, new Plays, and shaw in the 1890s, The Cambridge Companion to George Bernard shaw, Christopher innes, ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge university Press, 1998), 78. 40. G. B. shaw, The Collected Works of Bernard shaw, ayot st. Laurence edition (new York: William h. Wise, 19301932), XiX: 44. 41. in George Gissings novel, for example, the enterprising new Women rhoda nunn and Mary Barfoot run a successful business school that teaches young women vocational skills in order to enable their financial independence. Mary Barfoots motivational four-oclock address to the school echoes the conviction of shaw and many 1890s progressive intellectuals and feminists that [t]he old types of womanly perfection are no longer helpful to us. there must be a new type of woman, active in every sphere of life: a new worker out in the world, a new ruler of the home. Because we have to set an example to the sleepy of our sex, we must carry on an active warfaremust be invaders (The odd Women, elaine showalter, intro. [London: Penguin, 1993], 153 f.). Olive schreiners stories, too, foreground womens need to actively invade traditionally male spheres by making an active and often difficult choice in favor of independent life experience, work, and travel, instead of marriage or family. see, for example, Lifes Gifts and the Buddhist Priests Wife, in Daughters of Decadence: Women Writers of the fin-de-sicle, elaine showalter, ed. (new Brunswick: rutgers university Press, 1993), 317; 8497.

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