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...
In Act I, the weak and poetic Octavius observes, "Well, Ann has a most exquisite nature; but she is so accustomed to be in the thick of that sort of thing that she thinks a man's character incomplete if he is not ambitious. She knows that if she married me she would have to reason herself out of being ashamed of me for not being a big success of some kind." (I.1.20-23) In short, Ann, and rightly so in Shaw's ethical terms, perceives her success to by synonymous with her husband's accomplishments. But this is given a supposedly revolutionary interpretation by Shaw, namely that great women exist to motivate the Superman Tanner to greatness and to produce great children with the Superman. Yet note in this view that women are not great in and of their own merit. In fact, Ann demands the social constraints of guardianship upon her, to bind her more securely to Tanner's fate, to harness her physical essence and life force with masculine creativity.
Women and male…
