Revisiting G. B. Shaw's Mrs Warren's Profession : differences in cultural reception and translation in England, the United States, and Poland

Abstract

The article is a contrastive analysis of the reception and translation of G. B. Shaw’s Mrs Warren’s Profession in Britain, the United States, and Poland. It examines the significance of the “woman question” in different cultures and drama translation as a means of disseminating new ideas. The author perceives the play as a means of propagating the thenrevolutionary views on the role of women in society. Mrs Warren’s Profession was censored to stifle social debate in Britain and the USA. Different modes of reception in Britain and on the Continent are juxtaposed against the historical and cultural backdrop of the first decades of the twentieth century. In Poland, though the drama was not censored, nonetheless its performance was abandoned due to political and ideological causes. Additionally, indirectly the article is concerned with the debate over marriage and women’s legal rights that swept through Europe at that time.