Man and Anti-Superwoman: The dramatic art of Shaw's "Man and Superman"
Although George Bernard Shaw paints himself as a revolutionary iconoclast in the concluding afterward to his play, "Man and Superman," ultimately his philosophy is anti-feminist. It is reactionary rather than revolutionary in its nature, portraying extraordinary women fulfilling their ultimate philosophical function as the helpers of extraordinary men, rather than achieving astounding mental prowess in their own right.
In Shaw, and his hero Jack Tanner's estimation in "Man and Superman," women are essentially physical creatures. Men are essentially intellectual creatures. Through the mouthpiece of Jack Tanner, Shaw notes, in Chapter 5 of what he titles 'The Revolutionist's Handbook,' "Even a joint stock human stud farm (piously disguised as a reformed Foundling Hospital or something of that sort) might well, under proper inspection and regulation, produce better results than our present reliance on promiscuous marriage." Tanner is loud-mouthed and shocking to conventional societal norms in his attitudes, but Shaw always focuses on procreation as the essence of womankind, even while he condemns conventional marriage. Marriage...
51). Ramsden reacts predictably, by becoming defensive, but Tanner shows that he knows Ann, "Ann will do just exactly what he likes. And what's more, she'll force us to advise her to do it; and she'll put the blame on us if it turns out badly" (p. 52). It is fitting that Ramsden's role in the dream is the statue. During a discussion in Act III between Don Juan, the
Jean Reynolds, "A New Speech," from Pygmalion's Wordplay It is difficult to fully appreciate the radical use of dialect and language for a modern American, when reading Shaw's play "Pygmalion." However, Sally Reynolds' essay upon "A New Speech," from her longer text on Shaw entitled Pygmalion's Wordplay provides a window of insight into what she calls not simply a play, but a creation myth for British English, for the author in
Victorian New Woman: Shaw's Views Victiorian New Woman In their analysis of the 'sexualized visions of change and exchange' which mark the end of the nineteenth century (Smith, Marshall University) 1 and the uncertain formation of the twentieth, Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar read the leitmotif of the late-Victorian New Woman as one fantasy among many, part of a sequence of imaginative literary extremes that reflects the changing stakes in an escalating
Anarchy in the 19th Century An Analysis of Merriman's Dynamite Club and Anarchy in the 19th Century John Merriman makes the point early in the Dynamite Club that there exists "a gossamer thread connecting…Islamist fundamentalists and Emile Henry's circle." Merriman goes on to define that connection as being one of "social inequalities." But more to the heart of the matter, however, is the difference in ideologies -- ideologies that transcended the economic, political,
The preamble of the United States' constitution is the perfect example of democratic government: We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America." (the United States' Constitution) What other
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