Liminal Figures in Shaw and Hemingway Anonymous College

Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea and Bernard Shaw’s Mrs. Warren’s Profession both follow characters who are portrayed as existing on the limits of their respective societies. Santiago and Mrs. Warren both maintain their fringe positions throughout the works; however, their status as outsiders differ in the degree to which they find themselves removed from society as well as the direct causes for this removal.

Santiago and Mrs. Warren are both formed as byproducts of their respective societal systems. More specifically, they become outsiders as a direct result of their economic status. When Mrs. Warren details what lead to her involvement with prostitution, she cites low socio-economic status and a corresponding lack of available options for improvement as her motivators. Mrs. Warren’s gives the definitive argument that “It’s far better than any other employment open to [a poor girl]” (Shaw 78). Critics such as Dan H. Laurence have demonstrated the existence of a real-life basis for Mrs. Warren’s representation of prostitution, stating that it has been “...encouraged, fostered, demanded by a profit-motivated economic system” (Laurence 38). In this way, societal systems concerning economic class divisions – marked by a...