Miss Proserpine is a woman of about thirty with a sharp tongue and ready wit. She is the true representative of the middle class who inspires pity as well as admiration.

She is MorelTs typist and we later learn that she is in love with him. Like all women of lower, middle class she is efficient, industrious and very sensitive to self-respect.

Proserpine is romantic and ambitious. Like any other woman who is easily attracted by handsome men, she gets attracted by handsome Morell. Her love for Morell is derisively described as “Prossv’s complaint”. It is form Candida that we learn how much she is sacrificing to be near to her object of love. She is serving Morell on a much lower salary than what she was getting elsewhere. She even does menial work in his home. Morell himself is unaware of her love for him. Even Marchbanks fails to recognize her love as he believes that no woman can love a ‘windbag’ like Morell.

She is full of jealousy, too. She does not like MorelTs praising his wife. She tells Lexy Mill that Morell should not always talk of Candida. She is of the opinion that a man should be able to love his wife without making a fool of himself about her. She angrily remarks :

Candida here, and Candida there, and Candida everywhere. It’s enough to drive anyone of their senses to hear a woman raved about in that absurd manner merely because she’s got good hair and a tolerable figure.

She is intelligent and quick-witted. She is fully aware that Lexy Mill has no mind of his own. She points out to him that he is only imitative. She says that he tries to imitate Morell in whatever he says and does. In her encounters with Burgess she proves to be quick-witted. She does not tolerate the insulting behaviour of Burgess and calls him “a silly old fathead”.

There is no doubt that she works hard and does her best to satisfy Morell. She works without any complaint. As she belongs to the lower middle class, it is seldom that she gets a chance to enjoy good things of life. So, at the supper hosted by Burgess, she takes champagne forgetting her oath never to touch wine. It is so because a person of her class cannot afford to drink champagne. As ‘ she drinks too much, she is intoxicated and makes a fool of herself by talking incoherendy, stumbling and striking the door.

In short, Proserpine is a minor character and yet she plays crucial role in exposing some characters. She is primarily used by Shaw to air his views on the prevalent, defective system of education.