Mrs. Warren’s Profession: Act 4 Summary & Analysis

Vivie has put her plan into motion to start earning her own living using her education. She has also become very scrupulous about where money comes from after learning how the money she received all her life was earned. She now only wants to spend money that she earns herself, and she refuses to go on a date with Frank when she needs to spend her time earning that money. 

It was considered unladylike to smoke either cigars or cigarettes, so the audience of the time would have found Vivie’s substitution of cigarettes for cigars funny. Vivie and Honoria seem to have easily broken into a male-dominated profession. Contemporary audiences might have found this a bit unrealistic, and it would have emphasized how much Vivie’s expensive education set her apart from most women in terms of opportunities to work.

Vivie is determined to earn her own living through hard work. She was shaken by everything she learned about her mother, and now she is even more determined to earn her own money. In burying herself in her work, she also seems to hope to avoid any future brushes with the sordid economy of sex, in which people are bought and sold either in marriage or prostitution.

Frank turns conventional, sentimental ideas about love between family members on their head. Mrs. Warren believes it is only natural for Vivie to love her even though she did not raise her daughter; Frank, on the other hand, says he knows that brothers and sisters are naturally indifferent to one another.

When Vivie compares herself and Frank to their parents, she means to disparage their parents’ affair. Frank heartily agrees about this. But the other similarity between the romance between Frank and Vivie and the one between their young parents is that both were economic transactions. Whereas Reverend Gardner paid Mrs. Warren for sex, Frank hopes to become rich by marrying (and sleeping with) Vivie. 

Vivie has never been serious about Frank, and she tells him that now. He doesn’t understand that she has never wanted more than a casual flirtation. The unemotional way that Frank processes being told that Vivie is not interested in him romantically indicates that his attachment to her was much more about her money than about her as a person. Frank cannot imagine that a woman would ever really want to give up on romance, as Vivie says she intends to do.

Praed’s love of beauty is a sensual pleasure, even if it may be an aesthetic one without overt sexual overtones. A love of beauty was considered an admirable trait and even a sign of morality to many. But to Vivie’s mind, this attitude is a way of avoiding thinking about the way life really is, another topic for polite conversation among respectable people that allows them to hide from ugly truths about reality. 

Brussels is the headquarters of Mrs. Warren’s chain of brothels. Even though Vivie knows Praed is not talking about visiting brothels, she is disgusted by his mention of the city, and wants to forget that such a city exists. For Vivie, mentions of these things are not merely frivolous, but sinister: Brussels seems to her like a place where people say they are going to experience beauty but are actually going to purchase sex. Similarly, she doesn’t believe that love can be separated from money, and doesn’t want to talk about romance.

Vivie is deeply disturbed by all she has learned about her own complicity in exploitative businesses and she has an emotional reaction to Frank and Praed’s casual banter. Vivie takes the “Gospel of Art” to be a way for members of the upper class like Praed to seek out beauty and ignore ugly truths and the practical facts of life. She understands the “Gospel of Getting On” to be the need to make a living. This is what she believes in, but she also sees how the need or desire to make money can be used to justify acts of exploitation and injustice. Both Crofts and Mrs. Warren see their involvement in the sex trade as justified under this “Gospel.”

The conversation that made Vivie sentimental was when her mother revealed her life story to her and Vivie felt love and understanding towards her mother. Even though Frank doesn’t know the full truth about Mrs. Warren’s work, he knows enough to try to stop Vivie from talking about what she learned about her mother’s experience. He can guess that the things Vivie learned are ones that respectable people would hesitate to discuss.

Whether or not Praed really knows what Mrs. Warren’s true profession is, he claims that what he wanted to hide from Vivie is that her mother and father were not married. Vivie feels shocked that this is all Praed knows after so many years of friendship with Mrs. Warren. And his plea that she say no more shows that, regardless of whether he knows the truth or not, he believes strongly in his class’s taboo against talking about anything unrespectable.

Young, upper-class women like Vivie would never have talked about prostitution (and Shaw’s play might not have run at all had the characters explicitly discussed it). It requires a strong effort on Vivie’s part to bring up this topic, given all the pressures to be silent in her society. Vivie lists the cities where her mother set up businesses, instead of saying the business itself. By mentioning these far away places, she hopes to put space between herself and her exploitative mother’s business.

Vivie is concerned with the fate of poor women who are systematically exploited. She finds it inappropriate that Praed would compliment her courage, since she has had so much less to face than others.

Frank’s interest in Vivie was always based on the idea that by marrying her he could make himself wealthy. He has been rejected by her, but refused to definitively give up hope. But now that he knows the unrespectable source of Mrs. Warren’s money, and knows that Vivie is likely to reject that money and become much less rich, he easily gives up the idea of a romance with her. He plans to treat her like she is his sister, which, of course, he has no way of definitely knowing she isn’t.

Mrs. Warren has changed her usual flamboyant style of dress because she hopes that Vivie will not refuse to be a part of her life anymore. She tries to dress the part of a more conservative, respectable woman. She still firmly believes that she and Vivie can have a relationship, because she thinks it is only natural for a mother and daughter to love one another unconditionally and forgive each other. Frank and Praed, howevcer, are sure that she has no chance of winning Vivie over.

Mrs. Warren pretends that Vivie’s sudden departure from the countryside and decision to immediately go into business with Honoria is nothing out of the ordinary. She acts the part of a completely normal mother, but when she sees Vivie’s reaction she becomes afraid that Vivie will tell her that she wants nothing more to do with her.

Because of her exceptional education and academic achievements, Vivie is in an unusual position for a single woman of her time: she can refuse financial support because she doesn’t want to be complicit in something she finds immoral. Mrs. Warren has probably never encountered a woman with Vivie’s earning power and refusal to bend to the temptation of wealth. She thinks she can bribe her daughter by offering her more money, when Vivie is saying she wants none of Mrs. Warren’s money at all.

Mrs. Warren never told Vivie that she had left her business, but she also never intended to mention her active operations to Vivie. Vivie once again showed naivete when she assumed her mother had quit her work. So, although Mrs. Warren sees that Vivie is angry, she doesn’t understand why Vivie can’t accept that she is only doing her best in a corrupt and exploitative world.

Mrs. Warren believes that a daughter owes her mother love and affection. She also believes that everyone has a price, because she doesn’t understand Vivie’s desire to earn her own money and escape any type of exploitation.

Vivie compares her mother’s attempts to buy her love to her convincing women to work for her as sex workers in her brothel. Vivie is coming to realize that even familial love has an economic basis that she finds corrupt and unjust. Mrs. Warren believes that Vivie is being snobbish; she doesn’t understand that Vivie is not only embarrassed by her unrespectable profession, but also abhors her as a force for exploitation of the weak.

Crofts’ philosophy is that morality is just something people pretend to believe in so they will be considered respectable. But Mrs. Warren doesn’t understand Vivie’s point. Instead, she believes Vivie is bringing up Crofts because she fears Mrs. Warren will try to force her to marry him. Many mothers would try to force their daughters into unwanted marriages, so Mrs. Warren feels Vivie should appreciate that she wouldn’t.

Even though Vivie sees Crofts’ beliefs as deplorable, she respects the fact that he admitted to her what he really thinks and that he lives a life that is consistent with his beliefs.

Mrs. Warren believes that an ideal life is spent in leisure, spending money and being fashionable. She looks up to her sister Liz, who was able to fit into upper class society once she had earned enough money. But Vivie disagrees, thinking that idleness ruins a person’s character. And even though Mrs. Warren accepts society’s ideal of a rich, idle aristocracy, her life shows that she shares Vivie’s feelings deep down. Even though she is now rich, Mrs. Warren needs to work to give her life structure and purpose. She justifies continuing to work as a brothel owner who exploits poor women for her own profit by saying that the injustice is systematic, and her participation in it has no effect either way.

Vivie sees her mother’s demand that they spend time together as a conventional, sentimental notion. Vivie dislikes any unthinking acceptance of sentimental, conventional ideas; she sees herself as a New Woman who will make a life for herself using her own skills, outside of society’s ideas for what a woman should be. She also feels that since her mother spent so little time with her when she was growing up, they have little in common and no deep attachment to one another.

In her anger, Mrs. Warren takes a position that will be even less persuasive to Vivie. She acts as if she owns Vivie, and as if she has given up other girls she could have owned and controlled because she assumed she would be able to do that to Vivie. The independent-minded Vivie finds her mother’s belief that she can control other women abhorrent. She thinks Mrs. Warren was deluding herself with a belief in the sentimental notion that a daughter owes her mother love; since Mrs. Warren never took care of her, she does not feel bonded to her mother.

Mrs. Warren believes that Vivie looks down on her because her profession is not respectable. She doesn’t understand Vivie’s rejection of conventional ideas: Vivie objects to her mother’s belief that some people can control and exploit others, whether they are sex workers in a brothel, or their daughter. Mrs. Warren is angry that she invested so much money in Vivie’s education and is receiving nothing in return. This is also similar to the way a brothel owner would invest in the clothes and makeup of a sex worker, in expectation of profits and loyalty. At the same time, if Mrs. Warren had been more involved in Vivie’s upbringing, her daughter might “be a good daughter to her,” because she might feel a genuine connection to her mother. Either way there is something disturbingly transactional about the relationship.

The angrier Mrs. Warren gets at being kept from controlling Vivie, the more repulsed Vivie is. Their ideas are completely mismatched. Mrs. Warren believes that even though she worked in an exploitative business, she would be redeemed by bringing her daughter up to a different life and would reap the reward of her daughter’s gratitude and love. But Vivie believes in her own independence more than she believes she owes her mother gratitude, and she can tell that Mrs. Warren wants to control her.

Vivie is not against sex work because it is unrespectable; she is against what her mother does now: exploit other women for her own profit. She thinks that if Mrs. Warren really believes that there should be better opportunities for women, she should not be a part of the system by which sex work is the best work a poor woman can find. Mrs. Warren cannot understand that her daughter is not rejecting her out of conventional ideas about morality and class; she believes Vivie wants nothing to do with her because she is an ungrateful snob.

Vivie hopes to escape complicity in a corrupt world by focusing on her work, supporting herself financially and avoiding the complications that come with romantic and family relationships. Of course, this is impossible in her society, and she only has the independence she has because of her education paid for by sex work and exploitation. Furthermore, in rejecting anyone associated with exploitation, Vivie has turned away from all the family and close relationships she had. The play then ends on this ambiguous note, as it’s unclear whether or not Vivie will find any long-lasting happiness in her single-minded devotion to her work.