Editor's Choice
How does Vivie in "Mrs. Warren's Profession" embody the New Woman in appearance and ideas?
Quick answer:
Vivie embodies the New Woman through her practical appearance and progressive ideas. She is confident, self-possessed, and dresses in a business-like manner, rejecting impractical clothing. Vivie dismisses traditional feminine sentiments and roles, such as chivalry and romantic attachments, focusing instead on her career. She studied math at Cambridge and plans a professional life in law and actuarial work, choosing independence over marriage. Her lifestyle reflects the New Woman's ideals of self-sufficiency and gender role reversal.
When Vivie first appears in the play, she is described as "an attractive specimen of the sensible, able, highly-educated young middle-class English woman. Age 22. Prompt, strong, confident, self-possessed." She shakes hands as a man might, and she wears "business-like" dress with a chatelaine, or belt with useful objects suspended from it. She does not wear impractical clothes but wears clothes conducive to doing business and getting work done. Like the New Woman of Shaw's time, she is practical and able to take care of herself. She comports herself with the confidence that people formerly might have only associated with men.
In addition, Vivie is not at all sentimental and has rid herself of most of the traditional feminine ideas, such as the importance of acting falsely modest with men. In Act I, she refers to chivalry as "a frightful waste of time." She decides to dump her beau, Frank, without...
Unlock This Answer Now
Start your 48-hour free trial and get ahead in class. Boost your grades with access to expert answers and top-tier study guides. Thousands of students are already mastering their assignments—don't miss out. Cancel anytime.
Already a member? Log in here.
much regret, and she tells her mother, "Poor Frank! I shall have to get rid of him; but I shall feel sorry for him, though he’s not worth it." This is clearly a reversal of traditional gender roles, as she feels sorry for Frank but not at all sad or sentimental about ending her relationship with him. She has little time for romance in her busy, practical life.
Like the New Woman, Vivie is fiercely independent. She studied math at Cambridge and plans to work in an actuarial office while reading law. She detests leisure and says, " 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." These are traditional male pursuits, and Vivie embraces them. She likes spending her time working rather than getting married and having children, as women were traditionally expected to do. In the end, she decides not to get married, to sever her ties to her mother (as her mother continues to own brothels), and to work for a living without taking a vacation. She lives the type of independent life that was new for women at the time and that was more typical of a man.