Download Feminism and realism in George Bernard Shaw : an analysis of the

Chapter 1
Introduction
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) is considered as one of the greatest
playwrights of British theatre for his remarkable literary works both in the field of
social criticism and in his theatrical reformation that is regarded by later critics and
readers as a milestone of modern drama. He had lived through a crucial period of
radical changes in social, economical and political circumstances in European
societies from the late nineteenth century to early twentieth century, including two
devastating World Wars that put humanity in great desperation. At the turn of the
century, the major social movements of Realism and Feminism became prominent
ideologies in part as a result of the intellectual and scientific developments provided
by the work of Charles Darwin and Sigmund Freud’s psychological theory about the
mechanism of human consciousness. Darwin's and Freud’s ideas, based on the
importance of heredity and environment considered as essential factors that determine
humans’ thoughts and actions, stirred people to criticize Victorian values, norms,
beliefs, morality and conventions that had once been believed as solid bases for
conduct.
However, Shaw did not totally agree with Darwin’s theory of Natural
Selection and Freud’s psychoanalysis, both of which implied that men were unable to
determine or control their own wills in the face of outer factors. On the contrary, he
had a strong belief in human potential driven by revolutionary passion to bring
humanity towards progress through social reformations for a better society. In The
Quintessence of Ibsenism (1891), the playwright affirmed his idea about humanity’s
need of social reformation because “social progress takes effect through the
replacement of old institutions by new ones; and since every institution involves the
recognition of the duty of conforming to it, progress must involve the repudiation of
an established duty at every step” (Shaw, 1913, p. 28). To accomplish the goal of a
utopian society based on human equality, the powerful social establishments and
institutions that had suppressed powerless people in the society – mostly women,
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middle-class and working-class people, who had potential for leading progress, must
be criticized and replaced with new ones.
Shaw was one of leading members of the Fabian Society, a British socialist
association whose objectives concerned the equality of men. The principles of
Socialism were parallel to the First-Wave Feminist movements which primarily aimed
for women's suffrage. These social and political movements shared the same interest
in human equality that offered concerns further on the subjects of education, suitable
professions, financial independence, social status etc. for women. Shaw, who was an
active Socialist and Feminist, attempted to educate women about the fundamentals of
socialism in his The Intelligent Women’s Guide to Socialism and Capitalism (1928).
The movements of Feminism also evoked people’s concern about the conventional
roles of woman based on Victorian values. Feminist thinkers considered these values
and conventions as a limitation or even a suppression of women that prevented them
from freedom and equality in the patriarchal Victorian society.
Moreover, there were many women in Shaw’s life whose unconventional
thoughts and actions had an influence on his advocacy of Socialism and Feminism,
especially his mother, Lucinda Elizabeth (Bessie) Shaw. According to Shaw’s
biographers, Lucinda left her young son and her husband, George Carr Shaw, once
she found out that he was alcoholic and totally incapable of supporting the family. She
moved to London with Shaw’s sister and George Lee, a “Professor of Music”, and
they lived on income from her job as a singing teacher (Holroyd, 1997, pp. 6-12).
Lucinda became Shaw’s model of an independent Feminist woman who did not
conform to conventional women's roles as a mother and a wife; Shaw said about his
mother that “[s]he was simply not a wife or mother at all”(Holroyd, 1997, p. 8). Her
liberated sexuality, self-efficiency and career fulfillment agreed with the Feminist
concept of “The New Woman”, a figure of modern women who refused to succumb to
the Victorian ideal of womanliness.
Due to the rise of Realism and Feminism in the late nineteenth century,
people started to question the social and moral values of the nineteenth-century
Victorian society that used to be accepted as the pillars of society. The Victorian
conventions were examined through a realistic perspective which revealed a morbid,
decadent and infected side of the society. On the issue of gender, the female role
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became a focal point to investigate the conventional “womanly” womanliness,
comparing to the feminist concept of “New Women”. Modern women turned their
interest towards this new womanhood by pondering on rational dress, education,
profession, social status, financial independence and personal fulfillment as men did.
The topics of marriage and motherhood, traditionally regarded as woman's nature and
ultimate goal, came in for criticism by feminist thinkers. The feminist movements had
been controversial subjects for debate in the real, everyday world but they were also
prominent questions in the literary world.
Female characters in nineteenth-century literature were mostly portrayed as
a helpless weaker sex dominated by male characters and featured old clichés about
female roles and conventional sexual morality of Victorian ideals. By the last decade
of the century, the figure of the “New Woman” became a powerful source of themes
and characterization in Modern literature. Many novelists and playwrights, such as
Hardy, Ibsen, Strindberg etc., challenged the sentimental Victorian novels and plays
with their realistic literary works. Their creations of female characters associated with
feminist ideas were introduced, and the “[h]eroines who refused to conform to the
traditional feminine role, challenged accepted ideals of marriage and maternity, chose
to work for a living, or who in any way argued the feminist cause, became
commonplace in the works of both major and minor writers and were firmly
indentified by readers and reviewers as New Women” (Cunningham, 1978, p. 3).
In dramatic arts, the heroines with a feminist aspect of “New Woman”
were dramatized remarkably in Henrik Ibsen’s plays, Hedda Gabler (1980) and A
Doll’s House (1879). The female protagonists in both plays, Hedda and Nora, became
famous fictional characters that questioned the conventional female role imposed on
women only as a passive wife and mother. Ibsen’s feminist characters and theatrical
form of realistic drama challenged the melodrama and remakes of Shakespearean
plays that dominated the theatre during the eighteenth and the first half of the
nineteenth centuries. The popularity of melodrama came from theatre goers who were
mostly middle-class and working class people which became the majority of the
population as the result of the Industrial Revolution in Europe. In British theatre,
melodrama appealed to the audience with its characteristics of typical adventurous
plot, virtuous protagonists who undergo a series of incidents and difficulties to defeat
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villains with poetic justice, picturesque settings and musical elements that were
mostly provided for entertainment purposes (Brockett, 2004, p. 142). The advent of
realistic theatre rejected the pattern of melodrama which always presented the triumph
of good over evil in happy-ending stories mostly dealing with stereotypical characters,
and depicting the trivial social norms and morality that covered up the unsavory social
and moral problems of the decadent capitalist society.
Therefore, Shaw saw that the new dramatic form of realistic theatre could
be used as a potential channel to communicate with this contemporary audience about
Socialist and Feminist ideas because the nineteenth-century British theatre under the
shadow of Shakespeare and Eugene Scribe’s sentimental plays presented not realistic
life of people in the society “but daydream, not thoughts but sentiment, not experience
but conventional surrogates” (Bentley, 1967, p. 109). For Shaw, the theatre was not
merely a matter of pleasure only but it could represent unpleasant things happening in
reality. Shaw affirmed the use of theatre as a venue for debating over social and
political ideas in his The Author’s Apology to Mrs. Warren’s Profession that he was
“convinced that fine art is the subtlest, the most seductive, the most effective
instrument of moral propaganda in the world” (Shaw, 1960, p. 33). He determined to
dramatize the circumstances from a realistic point of view by creating his own
dramatic genre of “Drama of Discussion” as “a new technical factor in the art of
stage-play making” in the chapter of The Technical Novelty in Ibsen’s Plays in his The
Quintessence.
“Formerly you had in what was called a well made play an
exposition in the first act, a situation in the second, and unraveling in
the third. Now you have exposition, situation, and discussion; and the
discussion is the test of the playwright. The critics protest in vain.
They declare that discussions are not dramatic, and that art should not
be didactic. Neither the playwrights nor the public take the smallest
notice of them. The discussion conquered Europe in Ibsen’s A Doll’s
House; and now the serious playwright recognizes in the discussion
not only the main test of his highest powers, but also the real centre of
his play’s interest.”
(Shaw, 1913, p. 171)
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The dialogues are between characters that represent different ideologies to
“discuss” the “the unbearable faces of truth” (Holroyd, 1997, p. 114). The
“discussion” part in Shaw’s “problem plays” allows him to create polemics through
his Shavio-Socratic styled dialogues that draw his audience’s attention to see them as
“models of a dialectic mode of rational deliberation where common and uncommon
understandings meet and fuse promoting new awareness, new visions and new
questions, thus acting as agents of moral-self discovery and collective agency”
(Griffith, 1995, p. 6). Shaw proposes dramatic situations in which his characters have
to confront a conflict between their wills and the circumstances. Shavian characters,
which represent different sides of thought – mostly between the idealist and the realist
are put in problematic situations that enable them to express their views on the
subjects and their argument will finally bring them to a “spiritual revelation” (Innes,
1998, p. 58).
Unlike other modern playwrights who presented serious issues by using
dramatic elements of tragedy, Shaw chose the genre of comedy to make a parody of
human’s behaviors and thoughts. Traditionally, comedy is regarded as inferior to the
dramatic form of tragedy as it has been commonly used in presenting trivial and
unimportant matters for entertainment purposes rather than in dramatizing serious
subjects. However, comedy allows the audience to view the situations objectively,
unlike tragedy in which the audience is emotionally attached to the stories of
characters. Comedy can arouse the audience’s emotions and ponder their thoughts on
the subjects they are watching. Not emotionally involved, the audience would be able
to think about the situations performed on the stage in a more critical way (Brockett,
2004, pp. 47-49). Another reason that makes comedy an effective choice of dramatic
genre used by Shaw is because of the popularity of domestic farces, burlesques and
romance in the first half of the nineteenth century. Shaw presents controversial social
issues to stimulate his audience’s views on conventional values and morality in his
“discussion” plays in a dramatic form of high-comedy filled with paradox, irony and
allegory.
Another theatrical invention of Shaw is his exceptionally talkative
characters as “Shavian persona”, especially his leading ladies, created to be
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impressively used in the play’s “discussion” scenes. These Shavian characters have
what Eric Bentley called “emotional substance” used to present different convictions
about the circumstances (Kaufmann, 1965, p. 66). Particularly on the subject of
gender, the characterization of female characters in Shaw’s plays obviously related
with his aspects on Feminism. Shaw devoted a chapter in The Quintessence titled
“The Womanly Woman” to criticize Victorian values on ideals of womanliness. As he
mentioned that woman would not be able to achieve equality “unless [she] repudiates
her womanliness, her duty to her husband, to her children, to society, to the law, and
to everyone but herself, she cannot emancipate herself” (Shaw, 1913, p. 56).
Therefore, Shaw created his “unwomanly” female characters that put a priority on
their fulfillment before their conventional gender roles dictated by society. His
remarkable creation of leading ladies in the plays exposes determinations to
emancipate themselves from their suppressions in marriage, domesticity and
limitations and “discuss” their conflicts with society’s expectations.
For my Individual Research, I study outstanding heroines in George
Bernard Shaw’s plays; Mrs. Warren’s Profession, Candida and Saint Joan. In the
selected plays, the characterization of the leading ladies embodies the playwright’s
views on Feminism and they are vividly dramatized in his creative realistic theatre of
“Drama of Discussion”. The themes of the plays mostly concern on the subjects of
women's equality, conventional female roles, marriage and revolutionary female icons
in history that symbolize progress for humanity, conveyed through the heroines and
their unconventional characteristics which lead the audience to criticize norms, values
and morality conducted by the society.
In chapter two, the portrayal of Vivie Warren, the protagonist of Mrs.
Warren’s Profession illustrates the feminist concept of “New Woman” as a concrete
figure. Vivie’s appearance and her initiative towards independence, and the
controversial issue of prostitution are presented in this problematic play to emphasize
the hypocrisy and the weakness of a capitalist society. The playwright dramatizes the
female protagonist’s conflict of will against the other characters who speak for
conventional Victorian ideals.
Chapter three explores the conventional ideals about women defined by
patriarchy, the juxtaposition between the traditional female image of “angel in the
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house” and the cult of beauty of Romanticism, presented in Candida and the
discussion between Candida, the heroine, and other male characters, to explain how
the conventional Victorian and Romantic ideals of womanliness are undermined by
Candida’s awareness of the conventional women roles and her liberated thoughts to
consider the roles as a choice that she can make upon her free wills. She establishes a
different and unconventional concept of womanliness that implies female sexuality
and gender roles as a choice for woman, not a confinement.
Chapter four concerns the representation of a female icon in history, Joan of
Arc, as a social reformist. Shaw’s Saint Joan brings a real historical woman from the
medieval period who is unaware of her revolutionary insights that put her in a
dilemma and finally meets a tragic end. The modern playwright presents Joan of Arc’s
chronicles from a realistic standpoint including her attempts driven by conscience to
challenge the power of The Church and the authoritative Feudalism in which Joan’s
protest made her a surrogate victim. Looking back into the past through Joan of Arc’s
execution, rehabilitation and canonization as a saint reveals the anachronism of a
superior being with avant-garde Socialist and Feminist ideas, implying Shaw’s
philosophy of “the Life Force” and “Creative Evolution” that suggest a promising
progress of humanity.
Chapter five summarizes how the dramatization of the heroines in the
selected plays of Shaw exposes his views on Feminism. Each of Shavian heroines
represents the feminist ideals of “New Woman”, modern definition of womanliness,
and the iconic woman in the history as a pioneering feminist and social reformist. The
playwright’s theatrical invention of “discussion play”, which primarily concerns with
problematic social issues about woman, allows these female characters to debate their
conflicts with other characters’ conventional ideals through witty dialogues that
introduce a new direction of his creative dramaturgy for Modern drama.
The heroines of these selected plays, Vivie Warren, Candida and Joan of
Arc, are significantly dramatized as the most dominant characters of each play that
conveys the modern themes that concerned with problematic social issues of British
society at the turn of century. Distinctly influenced by Feminism ideals, these Shavian
heroines draw the reader’s attention to consider the playwright’s views on women and
the reformation of dramatic convention of his day. As an enthusiastic devotee for
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social reformation, Shaw uses his “unconventional” leading ladies dramatized in his
creative dramatic form of “Discussion Plays” to question the traditional female roles
imposed on women that related to the major social circumstances occurred during the
period of radical changes. Even though, Vivie, Candida and Joan have often been seen
as domineering leading ladies because of their radical moral rectitude and defiant
perspectives that oppose to what the other characters believe in the plays; however,
they are vivid samples of Feminist women who try to be free from restrictions and, in
the end, be true to their own values to follow their conscience instead of what
considered “natural” for women or fulfill the society’s expectations. The heroines’
feminist convictions are brought to discuss with other characters for finding a
resolution for women to recognize their limitations and suppressions confined by the
patriarchal Victorian society.