WOMEN AND SOCIAL EQUALITY IN THE PLAYS OF GEORGE BERNARD SHAW

Yıl 2018, Cilt: 3 Sayı: 1, 21 - 36, 01.01.2018

- Ahmad Makassar Indonesıa

Öz

George Bernard Shaw, according to Charles Benyamin Purdom 1963 , has a large place for women as ‘he honoured women, showing in his plays that they were not only to be loved, but respected, even feared.’ Therefore, this study examines the voices of New Women as portrayed in the female characters of his plays: Widowers’ Houses, Mrs Warren’s Profession, Major Barbara, and Pygmalion. Shaw, as a Victorian writer for whom social distinction, especially the position between the rich and the poor, was the greatest problem in society, was well placed to draw such an issue into his plays. He created female characters with various economic and social backgrounds, from the lower and the middle, to the upper-classes. Interestingly, these characters have the distinctive manner of occupying a particular rank in which some of them ‘ascribe’ their status from their family, whilst others ‘achieve’ their status after going through the process of social change. Although Shaw’s plays were written around a hundred year ago, the female characters of his plays are important for examination as its topic of discussion are still relevant for women nowadays. Firstly, in terms of gender equality, even though women today have their own rights in education and the workplace, some of them are still treated unfairly. Secondly, Shaw’s female characters who have strength and independent minds are always necessary because it will be helpful for women as they pursue their careers and make contributions to public life, such as in politics. Lastly, discussing the opinion of these characters about marriage may give today’s women an understanding that marriage is also important for them. Nonetheless, Shaw, who stands for the feminism movement, has advocated equal rights/social equality for women by presenting women issues and inserting a doctrine of women’s liberation into his plays

Anahtar Kelimeler

George Bernard Shaw, Social Equality, New Women, Victorian, Literature, Play

Kaynakça

• Shaw, George Bernard, 1907, Major Barbara, reprinted in George Bernard Shaw’s Plays, ed. by Sandie Byrne, 2nd edn (New York and London: W.W. Norton & Company, 2002), pp. 203-284
• —— 1898, Mrs. Warren’s Profession, reprinted in George Bernard Shaw’s Plays, ed. by Sandie Byrne, 2nd edn (London: W.W. Norton & Company, 2002), pp. 3-66
• —— 1913, Pygmalion, reprinted in George Bernard Shaw’s Plays, ed. by Sandie Byrne, 2nd edn (New York and London: W.W. Norton & Company, 2002), pp. 286-360
• —— 1893, Widowers’ Houses, in Plays Unpleasant (London: Penguin Books, 1946), pp. 31-94 Secondary Texts
• Baker, Stuart E., Bernard Shaw’s Remarkable Religion: A Faith that Fits the Facts (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2002)
• Berst, Charles A., Bernard Shaw and the Art of Drama (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1973)
• Brown, G. E., George Bernard Shaw (London: Evans Brothers Limited, 1970)
• Collins, Tracy J. R., ‘Shaw’s Athletic-Minded Women’, in Shaw and Feminism: On Stage and Off ed. by D. A. Hadfield and Jean Reynolds (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2013), pp. 514-526
• Crompton, Louis, Shaw the Dramatis (Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press, 1969; repr.1970)
• Davis, Tracy C., ‘Apprenticeship as a Playwright’, in George Bernard Shaw’s Plays, ed. by Sandie Byrne, 2nd edn (New York and London: W.W. Norton & Company, 2002), pp. 445-449
• Gainor, J. Ellen, ‘The daughter in Her Place’, in George Bernard Shaw’s Plays, ed. by Sandie Byrne, 2nd edn (New York and London: W.W. Norton & Company, 2002), pp. 514-526
• Gardiner, Juliet, The New Woman: Women’s Voices, 1880-1918 (London: Collins & Brown, 1993)
• Gibbs, A. M., The Art and Mind of Shaw: Essays in Criticism (Ireland: Gill and Macmilan Ltd, 1983)
• Gleadle, Kathryn, British Women in the Nineteenth Century (New York: Palgrave, 2001)
• Hadfield, D. A., ‘Writing Women: Shaw and Feminism Behind the Scenes’, in Shaw and Feminism, ed. by D. A. Hadfield and Jean Reynolds (Florida: University Press of Florida, 2010), pp. 112-132
• Herstein, Sheila R., A mid-Victorian feminist, Barbara Leigh Smith (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985)
• Holroyd, Michael, Bernard Shaw Vol 1. 1856-1898 The Search for Love, 3 vols (London: Chatto & Windus, 1988)
• —— ‘Women and the Body Politic’, in The Genius of Shaw, ed. by Michael Holroyd (London: George Rainbird Limited, 1979), pp. 167-184
• Mack, Raymond W & Kimball Young, Sociology and Social Life (New York: Northwestern University, 1968
• McDonald, Ian, ‘New Women in the New Drama’, New Theatre Quarterly, 6 (1990), 31-42
• Mcinerney, John M., ‘Shaw’s Women in the World’, in Shaw and Feminism, ed. by D. A. Hadfield and Jean Reynolds (Florida: University Press of Florida, 2010), pp. 177-188
• Morgan, Margery, ‘Shaw’s Blakean Farce’, in George Bernard Shaw’s Plays, ed. by Sandie Byrne, 2nd edn (New York and London: W.W. Norton & Company, 2002), pp. 478-502
• Peters, Sally, ‘Shaw’s life: A Feminist in Spite of Himself’, in George Bernard Shaw’s Plays, ed. by Sandie Byrne, 2nd edn (New York and London: W.W. Norton & Company, 2002), pp. 400-420
• Powell, Kerry, ‘New Women, new plays, and Shaw in the 1890s’ in The Cambridge Companion to George Bernard Shaw, ed. by Christopher Innes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp. 76-100
• Purdom, Charles Benjamin, A Guide to the Plays of Bernard Shaw (London: Mathuen & Co Ltd, 1963)
• Shaw, George Bernard, A Manifesto, Fabian Tract No.2, (London: Fabian Society, 1884)
• —— Immaturity (London: Constable & Company, 1931)
• —— Major Critical Essays: The Quintessence of Ibsenism, The Perfect Wagnerite, The Sanity of Art (London: Constable and Company Ltd., 1922; rep. 1947)
• —— The Fabian Society: Its Early History, Fabian Tract No.41/493, (London: Fabian Society, 1892)
• —— The Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Socialism and Capitalism (London: Constable and Company Ltd, 1928)
• —— Women as Councillors-Fabian Tract, No.93, (London: Fabian Society, 1900)
• Valency, Maurice, The Cart and The Trumpet: The Plays of George Bernard Shaw (New York: Oxford University Press, 1973)
• Watson, Barbara Bellow, A Shavian Guide to The Intelligent Woman (London: Chatto & Windus, 1964)
• Woodbury, Major David, ‘The Significant Contribution of Women’, in Others: Connecting Salvos in Mission: The Salvation Army [accessed 25 July 2017]
• Wright, Hellen R., ‘Book review of ‘The Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Socialism and Capitalism’’, Social Service Review Vol. 4, No. 1 (Mar.1930), 120-122