Shaw's Victoria Essay.

Aaron Lim Si Ru
Michelle Chiang
HL 103: Survey of Literature II
07 April 2010

Lifting the Veil of Victorian Pretensions

In Bernard Shaw’s play, Mrs. Warren’s Profession bitingly satirizes Victorian treatment of women and the supercilious nature of Victorian society as a whole. Similar to the Victorian predilection for saying things by not saying it, Shaw himself invokes satire upon Victorian society by hinting at the social evils without blatantly saying it often creating a comedy of manners. If the Victorian mask of manners can be seen as the first superficial level of society, then the social ills which the mask of manners hide and that Shaw easily exposes can be seen as the second level of society. However Shaw’s caricatured portrayal of characters are clearly aware of the veiled second level of society and their blasé reaction to such social ills hints at a deeper individual moral disintegration. The Victorian predilection for the repression of expression leads to the suffocation of desire as the tight lid of Victorian behavior is sealed over the basic human need for freedom.

Shaw wrote Mrs. Warren’s Profession in 1893, during the Late Victorian Period at the time of the era’s decline. London was considered to be the “centre of civilization, the queen city of the world without peer” vaulted to its apex of the world through rapid industrialization (988). The attention of the Empire was focused on commerce, technological advancement and military conquest. This has in turn led to the widening of the income gap, the gradual disappearance of the middle class and the various failed military engagements at the fringes of the English Empire. As neighboring powers started to challenge English military dominance, the Empire’s influence slipped into decline. However, the English superior impression of themselves did not diminish, they saw it as their moral obligation to colonize and civilize the natives. The “Irish Question” is thus an example of English double standards in exploiting the Irish under the pretense of taking the moral high ground of extending civilization to the Irish. Looking back to domestic issues in England, it appears that this double standard is also practiced with respect to the lower classes. The struggles of the lower classes are attributed to their general immorality rather than the invisible exploitative hand of the aristocracy. With this in mind, Shaw exposes the true nature of prostitution; thus, subverting the expectations we have of religion, education and marriage.

At the beginning of the play, Shaw mercilessly strips away the Victorian mask of manners, using satire and epigrams to clinical effect, blatantly exposing the duplicity of Victorian society. Mrs. Warren is described as “a genial and fairly presentable old blackguard” and Vivie is described as “an attractive specimen of the… middle class Englishwoman” both of which are clearly oxymoronic and conflicting descriptions (1747, 1751). Praed is described as “daunted and conciliatory” while Vivie is described as “strong, confident and self possessed” a clear inversion of Victorian societal expectations for men and women (1746,1747). Shaw shatters the veil of appearances by providing us with a contradictory presentation of the characters, as if their appearances are inherently at odds with their intentions, which is exactly what Shaw intends to expose.

Shaw pokes fun at the hypocrisy of religious authority, complicit with immoral behavior hiding behind the pretense of moral superiority. Reverend Samuel being the only religious figure in the play is ironically portrayed as an ineffectual figure of authority, unable to command respect and one that indulges in the vices of alcohol and prostitution. To add on to his miserable description, his moral character is utterly destroyed by Frank’s recounting of his past deeds where he tried to bribe Mrs. Warren for his letters and Mrs. Warren’s open declaration of their relationship. Religious authority is clearly being abused in Victorian England, “publish and be damned” is telling of the double standards practiced by religious individuals saying that they will not be damned by their sins by virtue of the higher power of God behind them. The so-called moral paragon that is the Church is nothing but a means to manipulate authority for personal gain.

Vivie is a product of education in an industrialized society, though she is described to be “highly educated”; the scope of her education seems painfully limited (1747). Vivie herself says that she knows “next to nothing”, it seems that the core of her education is constituted only of mathematics and basic living functions no more than an “ignorant barbarian” devoid of any moral education (1749). This can be clearly seen in the mechanized and practical manner in which she behaves. In Act 2 at the supper scene, she is fixated on the “supper difficulty” focusing on “counting” and the logistics of the matter instead of the people inconvenienced (1760). Vivie’s obsession with numbers and work is Shaw’s subtle jab at education simply as a means of churning out people as tools to fuel the industrial society.

The sanctity of marriage is cheapened; marriage becomes a form of subjugation for women. Marriage becomes a bargaining chip that that women used as an exchange for social status like Mrs. Warren’s half sister being “held up to us as a model because she married” (1766). Women become commodities expected to perform as domestic or sex workers, marriage thus becomes an exchange of services, a transaction “kept his room and the three children neat and tidy on eighteen shillings a week” (1767). The institution of marriage then becomes a darker form of transaction and exchange of goods in comparison to prostitution because it is legally binding, ironically one sanctioned by the Church.
Shaw states, “that prostitution is caused… by underpaying, undervaluing, and overworking women so shamefully that the poorest of them are forced to resort to prostitution to keep body and soul together” (1745). This is due to English belief in the laissez-faire economy, leading to a lack of labor laws in place to protect women from exploitation at the workplace. Overwork, long hours and harsh working conditions can hardly be construed as honest work, it is no different from exploitation. Between the “whitelead factory” and “the river”, it was basically a choice between dying from exploitation at work or to become a prostitute. Survival for women has ceased to become a choice of morality but rather of two sorts of immorality as noted by Shaw (1746). When prostitution becomes a matter of circumstance rather than choice, it becomes a harsh reflection of Victorian double standards on the commodification of women.

Evidently, Shaw in his blatant portrayal revelation of such hypocritical social practices and his vindication of prostitution seems to hint at something more insidious beneath the mask of satirical humor. While the supercilious civility of Victorian manners does much to accentuate the satire of Victorian society, to me it seems as if there is more to that than meets the eye. In my opinion, what precipitates Shaw’s attack on religion, education and marriage is that the immorality behind these institutions is merely a façade to mask something more detestable and repugnant. It has become a Victorian habit where people “[say] no when [they] meant yes”, certain things are said while a lot are actually left unsaid in the subtext, a dichotomy between appearance and intention (1748).
In the straitlaced Victorian society where many things were taboo, desires were often repressed by societal expectations. The play’s loud redress of biting social issues pummeled at the tightly bound ideals of Victorian society, shattering public opinion of education, religion and marriage, shedding new light into the concept of prostitution as the great evil. Shaw mocks and strips away at the pretensions of these social institutions by revealing their duplicitous natures. People were forced to confront that which they have always closed one eye to, their very primal desires which they have kept so closely guarded, the seething moral rot beneath the Victorian mask of manners. The comedic elements only serve as a temporary escape for the audience unwillingly to confront their desires.
Shaw uses comedy to chilling effect; he tempts the audience to uncomfortable laughter with his mockery of the results of Vivie’s education, Reverend Samuel’s ineffectual religious authority and of the bondage of marriage which Mrs. Warren escaped from. As the typical Victorian audience attempts to come to terms with Shaw stripping away at their pretences, they are slowly being ushered to confront an even darker truth. In Act 1, the characters are flirting in good humor and well established relationships are laid out, Mrs. Warren and Vivie are introduced as mother and daughter, Samuel and Frank are introduced as father and son. However, familial conventions are slowly put into question at the end of Act 1 when Reverend Samuel is hinted to have had a relationship with Mrs. Warren “[appearing] on the threshold, and is immediately transfixed recognizing the clergyman” (1756). Relationships between the characters are plunged into even murkier waters in Act 2 when Samuel “couldn’t tell anyone the reasons” for Vivie and Frank marrying; “Praddy” and “Kitty” using pet names on each other and “[shaking] hands affectionately”; Mrs. Warren refusing to divulge Vivie’s parentage when Vivie asks, “who was my father” (1759, 1763, 1765). Familial conventions are shattered, Crofts or Samuel could be Vivie’s father; Frank and Vivie could be siblings; Praed could be Mrs. Warren’s new customer. Moreover, most of the evidence presented are not overtly revealed in speech but conveyed via intricate stage directions and unspoken hints. However, due to the nature of Mrs. Warren’s profession, we will never know for sure. This scenario that has been presented to the audience is probably one that is true albeit one that has yet to be fully acknowledged because everything else is considered “blessed… but the truth” (1772).

In Act 3 we are finally confronted with the ugly truth, one that has become so repugnant to our senses after Victorian sensibilities has mutated it beyond recognition, veiling it beneath the mask of manners. From uncomfortable laughter in Act 1 to the shattering of conventions in Act 2 to the resounding crescendo that is the rifle scene at the end of Act 3. The audience is rudely confronted with the notion of incest at Crofts’ declaration, “Allow me, Mister Frank, to introduce you to your half-sister, the eldest daughter of the Reverend Samuel Gardner. Miss Vivie: your half-brother” ironically, the ‘truth’ here is hardly a blessed thing (1779). Shaw’s naturalist theatre takes an incisive slice into a typical Victorian household exposes an exact and honest rendering of Victorian life without the intrusion of society’s expectations, inviting the audience to lower their guard to the issues being explored as Shaw systematically strips away the masks of manners then at the social ills which served as a mere façade to hide the disintegration of morals within Victorian society. Frank offers the temptation to “[cover] up in leaves” a biblical allusion to shame, representative of the Victorian knee-jerk reaction to hide once again beneath the mask of pretence like how Frank is pretending that their incestuous relationship is of no consequence at all (1779). Despite hard evidence of such moral disintegration, what’s worse is probably the Victorian penchant here for denial, “the way fashionable morality is all a pretence” which raises the possibility of an amoral Victorian society, and the inability to see for itself the rot that their society has devolved into (1788).

In the closing act, the setting shifts out of the domestic home to the public sphere of Honoria Fraser’s chambers. The characters resume the stilted masks they wear, Vivie immerses herself in work, becoming a purely mechanical being; Frank’s facetiousness comes to the fore as he ignores the fact of their fraternal relations; Praed is still the ever-vacuous Victorian concerned only with his superfluous aesthetic pursuits and nothing else. In the bid to unearth the repressed persona beneath the pretensions of Victorian society, we have unearthed nothing but hollow shells of the characters. Perhaps even the basic desire for freedom has been smothered by strict Victorian conventions, and that the only escape is to conform and lead a lie, a lie which in time has slowly evolved into a twisted kind of truth; that the only means for survival is the seal away the want for freedom.
2023 Words.




Work Cited
Shaw, Bernard. “Mrs. Warren’s Profession.” The Norton Anthology of English Literature. Ed. Stephen Greenblatt. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2006. 988, 1743-1790. Print.