Volume II, Issue IX, January 2015 - ISSN 2321-7065

Social Criticism: An Analysis of Social Reformation in The Plays of George Barnard Shaw Dr. Neena Sharma Assistant Professor Applied Science and Humanities Raj Kumar Institute of Technology Ghaziabad Uttar Pradesh India Abstract Shaw’s fundamental aim in his plays is the bettering of the lot of humanity by subjecting accepted conventions and institutions to the cold, searching light of his penetrating intellect. All his plays are about some important aspect of contemporary social life or some important social evil or social institution which he considers an evil, and which is scrutinized with courage and determination. Shaw writes plays in order to propagate his view, in order to convert and convince, he uses all the tools of argument and weapons to assertion which can produce conviction. Shaw looked upon the drama merely as an instrument, he did not attempt to make the play self sufficing. He is not concerned with telling a story or the creation of character. His play is an account of many mental reactions to a given problem. This discussion is summed up in a lengthy Preface which he has attached to each play and which is necessary for the proper understanding of that play. This paper focuses on the aspect of social reformation in the plays George Bernand Shaw. KEYWORDS:Criticism, drama of ideas, propagate, philosophy, conflict of speech.

http://www.ijellh.com 222 Volume II, Issue IX, January 2015 - ISSN 2321-7065

INTRODUCTION Shaw was a social activist in his day. He was a proud Socialist and a founding member of one of England's major Socialist groups, the Fabians, who are credited with helping to form the Labor Party, which is one of the UK's two major parties today. Shaw hated the exploitation of the working class, and he saw that rampant in Western society. He used his plays as a vehicle to challenge this and what he perceived as other social ills. In fact, the published versions of his plays would often include prefaces, some longer than the plays themselves, spelling out the philosophical background that led Shaw to write that particular work. Other hard-held beliefs that Shaw was known for include vegetarianism and the idea that property should be owned publicly and not privately. Whatever Shaw is he is not primarily a dramatist” says T.H Dickinson in his books The contemporary drama of England. His interest was primarily in morals, politics, philosophy and social reform. The impression that he was not primarily interested in his dramas as dramas is further strengthened by his numerous pronouncement from time to time . Thus once he wrote,” I write play with the deliberate object of converting the nation to my opinions... I have no other incentive to write plays”. At another place he wrote,” all the highest literature is journalism... and so let others cultivate literature; journalism to me”. His business is social reform; he has certain ideas to propagate and uses the drama as an instrument for the spread of his convictions. Once he remarked that for art’s sake, for his own sake. He was in search of a suitable medium for the expression of his ideas and as Dickinson puts it “With no affection for drama as such, Shaw seized upon it as the means of putting over his ideas”. A MEDIUM OF SOCIAL REFORM Shaw sells his wares. Shaw’s fundamental aim in his plays is the bettering of the lot of humanity by subjecting accepted conventions and institutions to the cold, searching light of his penetrating intellect. All his plays are about some important aspect of contemporary social life or some important social evil or social institution which he considers an evil, and which is scrutinized with courage and determination. Mrs. Warren’s Profession is designed to draw the attention of the public to its own responsibility for prostitution; Widower’s Houses is directed towards slum landlordism. He calls arms and the Man an anti romantic comedy and uses it to expose the

http://www.ijellh.com 223 Volume II, Issue IX, January 2015 - ISSN 2321-7065 hollowness of romantic love and the glorification of war and soldiering. Candida, the heroine of his play Candida, is an answer to the pessimist as well as to the majorful man. In such plays The Man of Destiny and Caesar and Cleopatra, he subjects our heroes to the test of commonsense and shows that they are enjoying a place in history disproportionate to the value of their contribution. Getting married embodies his criticism of marriage system, and Major Barbara his criticism of the capitalist economic and social system. Man and Superman is devoted to a consideration of his philosophy of creative evolution and the working of the Life Force. Thus the most important element in a Shavian drama is its discussion of some important social problem. “His dramas are “dramas of ideas; the material of his plays is the mental substance in which modern life is lived”. Instead of conflicts of wills, as in the romantic drama, we have the conflict of ideas and conflict of speech. Ideas are more important than feelings, and it is generally acknowledged that when he deals with emotion he leaves much to be desired. He fails to devise satisfactory emotional situations. He does not understand the depth and seriousness of human passions. From the emotional point of view, the last scene of Candida and Arms and the Man came as an anticlimax. However much he may scoff at romantic love, in real life Sergius do marry Rainas and not Loukas, and romantic love does enter into marriages even of Anns and Tanners. Philosophy cannot account for all man- woman relationships. The play of emotions cannot be entirely ruled out. It is only in St. Joan that he has correctly portrayed how religious faith transcends all logic and rationality. Albert says in this connection, “Shaw rarely touches the depths of true tragedy, even in St. Joan, and in his work as a whole, the emotional passages are brief” Even St. Joan as a tragedy is rather cold. The inner anguish which must have torn the soul of the Maid has not even been touched upon. It is the conflict of ideas and not, the conflict of emotions, that is Shaw’s business. He is interested in ideas and not in human passions and this is so much the case that his language is barren of emotive suggestion. As Raymond Williams points out, emotional overtones have to be indicated in Shaw’s “drama of ideas” through the use of parenthetical suggestions. Such bracketed guidance is necessary both the reader and the audience. Innumerable such examples would readily come to the mind of the readers such as in the Arms and the Man-

http://www.ijellh.com 224 Volume II, Issue IX, January 2015 - ISSN 2321-7065

Bluntschli: (Rising) It is all right, Major, I am the chocolate cream soldier (Petcoff and Serius are equally astonished). Petcoff: You! (he gasps) Sergius, do you remember how these two women went on when we mentioned it? ( Sergius smiles cynically). The social problem discussed in the play Candida is that of the employer- employee relationship: should be employers over work their workers and play them low wages, or they should be treated more humanely and justly, and given higher wages. This problem is the object of discussion between Morell and Burgess. Morell dislikes Burgess for his unjust and cruel treatment of his workers and calls him “an old scoundrel’’ and we are inclined to agree with him. But Burgess presents the other side of the problem. Payment of higher wages to the workers is not an unmixed blessing. With higher wages they drink more and so become victims of the various evils consequent upon excessive drinking. Shaw’s aim was to provoke thought, and thus to make the readers work out their own solutions to the different social problems. Shaw preoccupation with ideas and social criticism has considerably influence his art and the forms of his plays. In the earlier well a made play. The first act was devoted to exposition, the situation was developed in the following Acts, and there was unraveling in the last act. But in Shaw’s play there is exposition, situation and discussion; and the discussion is the real test of the success of the dramatist. It is in the discussion that the real centre of interest of the play lies. The action waits as the pros and cons of a particular issue are weighed and balanced. The plot is static and intermitted so to say; and the characters tend to grow personified abstractions. Since Shaw writes plays in order to propagate his view, in order to convert and convince, he uses all the tools of argument and weapons to assertion which can produce conviction. His directness, his resourcefulness in illustration, his command over metaphor and simile, his power of marshalling facts and ordering argument, his exaggeration, his paradox, his shocks and surprises, his aphorism, his sarcasm and irony, etc. Are all intended to drive his point home. His wit is partly for the purpose of selling his wares. It is partly a preservative of his thought. Waggaery is his instrument by which he amuses and captures attention. It is with a roughish humor that he shows the other side of the picture. Indeed, all the devices of rhetoric are utilizes to convert and convince.

http://www.ijellh.com 225 Volume II, Issue IX, January 2015 - ISSN 2321-7065

Since Shaw looked upon the drama merely as an instrument, he did not attempt to make the play self sufficing. He is not concerned with telling a story or the creation of character. His play is an account of many mental reactions to a given problem. This discussion is summed up in a lengthy Preface which he has attached to each play and which is necessary for the proper understanding of that play. Elaborate stage directions, and directions within brackets intended to explain emotional overtones, all indicate that a Shavian play is not self sufficient. In this way, as Raymond Williams puts it, he has made a pseudo- novel out of the dram, because such descriptions of character and scenery, as are provided through the stage directions, belong properly to the domain of the novel. Even the best of Shaw’s character are,’ personified mental points of view’. They are types rather than individuals. They are all talking characters; there never has been such a gallery of freely expressive individuals. They give their mental reaction to the world in long speeches. This accounts for the conflict of speech and the conflict of ideas instead of conflict of wills in a Shavian drama. The fact is that Shaw is interested in character only as vehicle for ideas. They are realized only through their ideas; they rarely live outside the idea they symbolize. They are the spokesmen of the dramatist himself. As C E M Joad puts it, ‘They are records for the playing of Shavian themes, spouts through which pours the steams of Shavian doctrine’. Since his characters are merely personified points of view, they strike one as extremely inhuman. They are not rounded, three dimensional figures, like the characters of Shakespeare. At least in his later plays, his characters remain thin and shadowy. Despite all this we very much agree with E. Albert when he says that, “he has contributed many memorable characters to the national heritage”, but they are all talking characters. A typical Shavian play is a dramatic dialogue, and as such it lacks in action. Moreover, when Shaw does introduce action, even violent action, it does not spring naturally from character and plot, rather it is arbitrarily introduced to keep the play moving. This arbitrariness of action results from the fact that Shaw is not primarily interested in action, and so he does not trouble to devise suitable action. He is interested in discussion, and the flow of ideas. His intellectual swordsmanship is so dazzling, his wit so very amusing that he can sustain the interest of his

http://www.ijellh.com 226 Volume II, Issue IX, January 2015 - ISSN 2321-7065 audience even through such a lengthy talky scene as the “Hell scene” in Man and Superman. Shaw is a master in the handling of dramatic dialogue. “He had the art of making the long discourse as interesting as dramatic action, and this was something new to the stage. His brilliance in this has never been surpassed.’ Shaw is primarily a philosopher, a thinker, but he is a philosopher like Plato with a strong dramatic gift. That is why his plays abound in scenes of pure magic. Tanner’s surrender to the Life force in Man and Superman. March banks’ victory in Candida, the death scene of the artist in The Doctor’s Dilemma, the marvelous scene IV in St. Joan, etc, are second to none in dramatic effectiveness. Despite the emphasis which he placed on ideas, Shaw rarely neglected the art of the theatre. His best plays have been excellent successes on the stage.

http://www.ijellh.com 227 Volume II, Issue IX, January 2015 - ISSN 2321-7065

References Dickinson, Thomas Herbert, “The contemporary drama of England”, (Boston, Little, Brown, 1922) Raymond William, “English Drama from Ibsen to Eliot” (London, 1952) CEM Joad, “George Bernand Shaw (London, 1949) C.D.Purdom, “A guide to the plays of Bernard Shaw”, London, Methuen, 1966. Goodman, W. R., A History of English Literature, vol-2, Delhi, Doaba House Booksellers and Publishers, 1994.

http://www.ijellh.com 228