Ideas represented by Vivie and Mrs Warren in Shaw's drama

¶ … G.B. Shaw writes "dramas of ideas." What ideas do Vivie and Mrs. Warren represent. In short, what do you think Shaw wanted his audience to get out of the play?

The messages that come across in this work are loud and clear to contemporary observers, but the author points out that many of these points were missed by the critics and journalists of the day. In Shaw's play, "Mrs. Warren's Profession," the playwright clearly sought to evoke some powerful responses from his audiences, but his reasons for doing so may be less mysterious than some observers and critics have suggested. In his preface to the play, Shaw writes that his major source of joy in life was to have his audiences recognize the reality of his dramatic ideas as they applied to their own existence (while simultaneously offending his critics if possible). After witnessing Mrs. Warren's defense of herself, Shaw says of his typical audience: "[E]very man and woman present will know that as long as poverty makes virtue hideous and the spare pocket-money of rich bachelordom makes vice dazzling, their daily hand-to-hand fight against prostitution with prayer and persuasion, shelters and scanty alms, will be a losing one" ("The Author's Apology, 1902).

The author also makes it clear to his audiences that he is not afraid to rock the social boat and portray women's lives as women themselves would like them to be - even if this level of enlightenment was not yet a federal mandate. In one of her responses to Praed's initial line of questioning, Vivie advises (and shocks) him by saying: "Oh yes I do. I like working and getting paid for it. When I'm tired of working, I like a comfortable chair, a cigar, a little whisky, and a novel with a good detective story in it." In this regard, Shaw was suggesting that not only did women have many of the same types of wants and needs and their male counterparts (gasp!), they were also capable of accomplishing great things when they were presented with the opportunity. In the final analysis, Shaw was not only trying to make a buck, he was doing so at the expense of his critics while providing his audiences with the very real human message that people are just people and will tend to try to get away with whatever they can, no matter what their gender or social standing.