Chapter 1 Introduction

Transcription

1 Chapter 1 Introduction George Bernard Shaw ( ) 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, 1

2 2 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

3 3 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

4 4 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)

5 5 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 ). 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

6 6 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

7 7 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

8 8 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.