THE IMAGE OF A WOMAN IN CANDIDAshodhganga.inflibnet.ac.in/bitstream/10603/47017/10/11_chapter...
Transcript of THE IMAGE OF A WOMAN IN CANDIDAshodhganga.inflibnet.ac.in/bitstream/10603/47017/10/11_chapter...
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Chapter – 5
THE IMAGE OF A WOMAN IN CANDIDA
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Anais Nin once remarked: “I, with a deeper instinct, choose a
man who compels my strength, who makes enormous demands on
me, who does not doubt my courage, or my toughness, who does not
believe me naïve or innocent, who has the courage to treat me like a
woman.”94 Woman is an epitome of flesh and trade since the
emergence of human civilization. Woman is seen as a commodity and
an instrument to derive pleasure and satisfy the needs of man and a
natural trained domestic care-taker of complex responsibilities at
home and work. During Neolithic Era, woman was treated as an equal
to man. She gathered food like grains, nuts, roots and lentils and men
went for hunting, barely supporting women in the agricultural fields.
She made pottery and grinding the corn as some of the daily activities
apart from raising her children. In Bronze Age, woman was seen as a
centre figure and made her husband realize her importance either in
domesticity, financial or political matters other than her daily chores
at home. During Iron Age, she was skilled and talented in making
earthenware vessels, taking care of food, milking the cows, making
bread and cheese and drying up meat and fish under the sun. Taking
care of livestock was more important task for woman during this era.
In medieval age, woman had to go through a difficult phase of life. She
has no freedom because of high and powerful domination of man in
the society. She becomes the property of her husband after marriage
and is confined to giving birth to children and a male child was
regarded important and demanding; so many young wives tried and
spent most of their years in delivering a male heir. But medical
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facilities were very poor and many women died at a very young age in
childbirths. She was just like an instrument being used by man since
the evolution of human kind.
In modern times, woman changed the society and established
her position as a strong and independent magnitude of today’s world.
According to Chrissy Iley, “For a modern woman it is important to be
supported and that there is equality in every aspect, and that it’s not
two halves that make a whole, it’s two wholes that make a whole.”95
Woman occupies a prominent role to reform society in her own realm.
She is a pacifist and accepts a thoughtful twilight for a better dawn.
Her astute in balancing domestic as well as work proved her as the
supreme over all the species of the world.
Candida: A Mystery is considered as the ‘Mother Play’ by Shaw
in many ways. He opines that this play induces audience to its
deepest level of fraternity; embodiment of romance with an infatuated
boy and a questioning marital relationship with her husband. Candida
is portrayed as the ‘Holy Mother’ where she treats both as her children
and discusses freedom, individualism and relationships, and Daniel
Dervin has rightly said that “Candida… is the Virgin Mother and
nobody else.”96 Shaw in his letters to the Abbess of Stanbrook: a
contemplative house for Benedictine nuns, gives an insight why Shaw
intended to make Candida a ‘Mother Play’. “Shaw believes in a
catholic religion as he believes in a universal Madonna, whom he calls
Our Lady of Everywhere…always saying Hail Mary! … as he
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encounters Her in many forms…the ideal wet nurse, healthy, comely
and completely brainless… her instinctive, direct, self-sufficient
nature, her combination of the Philistine-realist temperament, and her
embodiment of the Life Force.”97
Candida written in 1894 was first performed in The Royal Court
Theatre, London in 1897 and was published in 1898. This play echoes
with ‘Madonna and Child’ concept as Mary with her child Jesus takes
care in every detail, likewise Candida with her two children: Morell
and Marchbanks, shows motherly concern towards them, even though
Morell is thirty five and Marchbanks eighteen. The title Candida is
taken from the Voltaire’s novel Candide published in 1759, who is the
male protagonist of Voltaire’s novel. The title means ‘optimist, clean as
white, pure, frank and truthful’. Candida in Shaw’s play is an optimist
who cares for both of them equally, clean in her actions; decides to
choose her husband who is the weakest of the two and above all pure
in her thoughts and frank about her notions on liberty of woman in
Victorian England. Candida, the protagonist of Voltaire’s novel is an
optimist as well, who at the end of the play resorts to a simple living
with farming and hard work and sees life in a positive and assuring
way after many tumultuous experiences in his life as Candida restores
back to her husband as a normal duty-minded wife with affection and
care.
Candida is a domestic play that focuses essentially on the
home. It refers mainly to the decent conduct and standards of
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everyday life in the Victorian England. The theme of marriage and
openness especially in reverence of love, romance and human
relationship and the theme of freedom of a domestic woman in
Victorian period rejuvenate the plot and take the discussion to a
higher note. This play speaks about the freedom of woman: at home or
in society.
The narrative technique of this play is discussion and authorial.
The discussion in the play evokes an insignia of a woman towards
salvation and liberation from narrow and skeptical society. This play
preaches the gospel of Shaw: woman is regarded as the quintessence
of endurance. The three characters Candida, Morell and Marchbanks
discuss freedom of woman and leave a message of tolerance over the
constricted animosity in the society.
Shashi Deshpande’s That Long Silence published in 1988 is a
comparative study on feminism: though woman being the toy for
many centuries, she did not forget her admiration towards her
husband and society in India. This play narrates the ideals of woman
being tormented and torn apart and considering her as a useless
commodity in the society. This play has won Sahitya Akademi Award
in 1991 for the outstanding work by Shashi Deshpande on New
Woman, who breaks her silence and gets on to create her new world
with her own courage. The Indian society has the stench of ailing
pragmatics on woman: she is confined to kitchen, cannot dare to come
before her in-laws and incapable to make or take a decision. After
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marriage she lands herself into the middle of nowhere and delusions
haunt within her heart for the rest of her life. Jaya is the protagonist
who is in search of her true identity as a woman in the light of male
dominated society. Her husband Mohan was once a good man he
changes his attitude towards his wife Jaya and starts hating her for
writing an article about their life in a cynical way. Jaya is a writer of
short stories, magazines and newspaper. She is educated and smart
with all prerequisites to be a perfect woman. She once writes that a
man cannot reach his wife completely except through her body,
shatters his mind to an extent that he shuns her from his life. Mohan
always irritates her by disrespecting her work either in her domesticity
or in her career as a writer. He sees the guilt in her as if she has done
‘a thousand sins’ in her life. This ridiculous atrocity and illogical
supremacy over women by men has to be emptied and wiped off by
efficient women like Jaya and Candida.
Candida is the new woman like Jaya, who admonishes the
cruelty of male dominance and sustains her stature with her
cleverness and astute nature in realizing Morell his weakness and
making him strong to recognize his ideologies over her as Jaya took
her world in her own hands to change her husband’s gloomy ideals
and absurd society. Jaya can be related to Candida, who makes a
mistake unconsciously by writing about their marital life, may be for
good, as she comes to know about her strength and passion to
establish her own identity in the society. Candida on the other hand,
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makes the mistake in welcoming Marchbanks to lure her for good
reason and may be, Candida is fed up with the behaviour and life
style of her husband Morell, and she wants to envy Morell through
Marchbanks, to realize Morell about the love and affection she has for
him. Mohan’s attitude is uncommon with that of Jaya’s. He wants a
traditional wife who understands him and takes care of house hold
chores. He even changes her name to Suhasini, which means soft and
motherly woman and Jaya signifies victory and triumph. Marriage is a
door that transforms woman with different shades of marital life.
Shaw views that “… if marriage cannot be made to produce something
better than we are, marriage will have to go, or else the nation will
have to go. It is no use talking of honor, virtue, purity…”98
Jaya reconciles herself and realizes what she has done by
writing the piece of her own inner self, builds to regain her identity
without her husband for sometime but feels lonely and alienated. She
revolts in her silence against her husband and the society to establish
a new horizon for a better tomorrow and convinces her heart to live up
the life in sorrow as the phoenix rises from its ashes for a new
beginning. Candida too builds up a new life even after their twenty
years of marriage in a new twist and of course making the bond even
stronger than before. The Victorian woman has also set up an
example in regaining the happiness of her family in a different angle:
where Candida is happy without any regrets, but Jaya, being an
Indian psyche adores the old tradition with old ethics to brighten up
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her family with old lantern: perhaps the consumption of paraffin oil is
less. Indian psychology is different from western globe where the
Indian woman, though is ill-treated by her husband and society,
wishes to return to her abode with much aspirations and new life.
Jaya, even though she was tortured mentally by her husband, comes
back to her husband when he writes to her about his visit. She does
not want to shatter her life just because of her blunders, as she
thinks, and suffer complete life. The twentieth century woman
brushes away the conventional and orthodox way of living, making her
own destination without much zeal in her personal and marital life,
ends her domain of relationships with emptiness.
Shaw says, “The central note of the play is that with the true
woman, weakness which appeals to the maternal instinct is more
powerful than strength which offers protection.”99 Woman sees the
heart that twines emotions with responsibilities and the tears from
eyes with passion and anxiety to embody the incessant shower of love,
kindness and affection on her. To Shaw, “Candida is quite un-poetic
… have small delight in poetry, but are the stuff of which poems and
dreams are made … husband glorying in his strength but convicted of
his weakness, the poet pitiful in his physical impotence but strong in
his perception of truth … which the drama of any language may be
challenged to rival.”100
The character of Candida Morell is the most alluring and
intoxicating pill every reader takes while reading the play. She belongs
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to a Victorian Era with a dictum in her behaviour and conscience in
her life. She has a single thought of her home and displays all the
qualities of a lady who transcends a boy into a man with subtle
instincts of her nature. She stands as an achiever of independence to
expose the basic womanhood for her husband, children and society.
She makes Marchbanks realize about true love in taking up the
responsibilities of the household, respect the husband and not with
mere poems and infatuation, where the words and rhythms of poetry
glitter, but not life. She shows the virtual world behind the dreams
Marchbanks illustrates her compels him to have salvation in his life
through her inspiration and self-righteousness. She even further goes
to a point with her charm in her wit and makes Morell realize that he
is weak and desolate without her. She gives a strong image as a
woman and an exceptional paradigm of emancipation.
Morell, husband to the enticing and captivating Candida, is a
happy man. He is, after all, a handsome, sought after public speaker
and a successful minister. The fact that his readers are mainly
women must certainly indicate that he has a certain understanding of
their needs. It is perfectly plausible that the Church secretary, the
lady typewriter Miss Proserpine Garnett, is in love with Morell, and
that most of his female parishioners share Prossy’s complaint. Morell
is, at bottom, every bit romantic as a poet, but Morell’s passion takes
the form of Christian Socialism. The pastor’s shining righteousness
would also be a bit too much, were he not restrained by the humbling
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example of the Social Gospel, and the pomposity and the pricking
frankness of his down-to-earth wife. Candida says:
…Why does Prossy condescend to wash up the things,
and to peel potatoes and abase herself in all manner of
ways for six shillings a week less than she used to get in a
city office? She’s in love with you, James: that’s the
reason. 101 (Act I, P.563)
There is a precious little public discussion of the emotional and
psychological dynamics in male-female romantic relationships. Why
specific people become couples, and how self-effacing strength
supports hidden weakness is a topic rarely explored in the play.
Candida spontaneously expresses her fondness for Marchbanks who
appears to her, sincere in showering love and affection on her. She
says:
….I have grown fonder and fonder of him all the time I
was away…though he has not the least suspicion of it
himself, he is ready to fall madly in love with me?
(Act I, P.564)
Without getting Oedipal, the play suggests a part of a female’s
attraction for a male involves her ability to maternally nurture him. If
Shaw dealt only with that, Candida would be noteworthy, but he does
further into territory few males eagerly examine. Candida is the
shining exception, and Shaw’s admiration for women often led him to
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place them on pedestals, and that is certainly the case with Candida,
known more for Shaw’s political oratory than his religious rhetoric.
Candida provokes Morell, by telling that Marchbanks is right in
understanding her:
He is always right. He understands you; he understands
me; he understands Prossy; and you, you understand
nothing. (Act II, P.565)
It is the extreme disaster in the life of Morell to ask his wife to
choose between him and Marchbanks. Woman, as a wife is the
greatest treasure to her husband on the earth who cares for
everything for the sake of her beloved husband. But Candida here sets
an example in showing her virulent side of her attitude and throws
herself for auction and asks them to offer their bidding. She says:
…. And pray, my lords and masters, what have you to
offer for my choice? I am up for auction, it seems. What
do you bid, James? (Act III, P.590)
Both men want her and Shaw here sets up the moment when
Candida must choose between them. Candida as a woman is a
masterpiece of many sovereigns who despise the ruthless commotion
in the family and cleverly gives her decision in an intoxicating
agreement. She says:
I give myself to the weaker of the two. (Act III, P.591)
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Candida is the image, description, and ingenious centre of the
play. She is mesmeric and captivating in stature and movement. The
ending is the confrontation of the three where the self composed
Candida cuts through the male scrapping with icy clarity. The two
men force Candida to choose between them. She keenly filters
through the play’s arguments about material strength and weakness
until finally the husband realizes that she is the stronger of the two.
She is Queen of the house. Both the men forget that she belongs to
her own identity as a Shavian woman, a nightingale. Clark rightly
observes “… Shaw attempts to shatter the ideals of the ‘Sanctity of the
family’, and shows a weak man and a strong man, each at first
appearing to be the reverse with a woman between them. The woman
finally clings to the weaker, as he needs her most, not, Shaw implies,
because she happens to be his wife”.102
Sensing the sense of her observation, Marchbanks understands
that he is lost. On the other hand, Morell droops down with sorrow at
the outset, later when Candida says Morell is weaker of the two, he
recovers from the shock and feels happy. Here Candida justifies
herself as a true wife to her husband. She pretty well knows that it is
Morell who is longing her from his heart, but he could not express it
due to his futile approach and weak mind-set. She makes him the
man of the house because there will be no prudence and liberty to a
husband until he is ordained by a pious and intelligent wife who
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cajoles goodness and misfortunes of the family with a daring heart. In
an attempt to justify Morell’s weakness, Candida says:
….We go once a fortnight to see his parents … Ask me
what it costs to be James’s mother and three sisters and
wife and mother to his children all in one….When there is
money to give, he gives it: when there is money to refuse,
I refuse it. I build a castle of comfort and indulgence and
love for him …. I make him master here, though he does
not know it and could not tell you a moment ago how it
came to be so. (Act III, P.592)
Eugene Marchbanks is an intricate character who displays
multifarious attitudes and temperament on Candida. He is a novice in
taking care of a woman. He conjures up the heart of Candida with his
witty poetry and magnetic flamboyance attitude. He goes an extra mile
to expose the tiresome chores of household and a snivelling life with
Morell. He is selective in his conduct with Candida and Morell; makes
Candida to realize him as her best suitor than Morell. He gives a
snobbish pretense and intensifies the gravity of the situation and
makes Morell to outburst and resort to prejudiced statements.
Candida, indeed does not like this as her conscience pricks and
restores the situation under her control. Even though Marchbanks
acquires ‘gift of the gab’, a skill obtained to flatter others, he could not
reconcile Candida to embrace him. Marchbanks, as if discerning
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unhappiness in Candida’s marital relationship, argues with Morell by
expressing his displeasure over it. He says:
Happy: Your marriage, you think that: you believe that:
Marchbanks is the epitome of a love-intoxicated romantic
young man consumed by his passion and hungry for the
grand gesture. Our amusement comes from how
completely he fulfills the stereotype of immature starry-
eyed obsession. Marchbanks wants Morell to come to a
settlement regarding his undisclosed love for Candida.
He says:
I must speak to you. There is something that must be
settled between us. (Act I, P.540)
Marchbanks, the absurdly romantic poet who is in love with
Candida, is an odd figure. He understands everything Candida says,
and yet he has the social grace of a badly–trained puppy. It’s
amusing, and it is the tiniest bit too much which is just right. His
behaviour is a kind of first draft of a poet’s love affair and gets the raw
impulse out now, cleans up the style, and regularizes the meter later.
Marchbanks comes out with the truth that he has fallen in love with
Candida:
I love your wife. (Act I, P.540)
Until the appearance of a certain young poet, whom both
husband and wife have taken under wing, begins the romantic
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triangle that reveals, sometimes painfully, a great deal about what
men think they know about the women in their lives, or about
themselves, for that matter. Morell has not taken care of any
house-hold work. Marchbanks, who is present there, incoherently
expresses the horror that has haunted his heart, bursts out poetically
before Candida:
No, not a scrubbing brush, but boat: a tiny shallop to sail
away in, far from the world, where the marble floors are
washed by the rain and dried by the sun….a Chariot: to
carry us up into the sky, where the lamps are stars, and
don’t need to be filled with paraffin oil every day.
(Act I, P.558)
Morell symbolizes a good husband, but let not Candida go off
his hands as she is the true gesture of womanhood in Morell’s life.
Marchbanks should understand quickly that infatuation doesn’t stand
for a longer time as it sweeps away the notions of responsibility in
scruples of time. Ultimately, each must learn something important
about mature love, duty, and more importantly, passion. Marchbanks
being induced by over powering love for Candida musically sings:
Candida, Candida, Candida, Candida, Candida. I must
say that now, because you have put me on my honour
and truth; and I never think or feel Mrs. Morell: it is
always Candida. (Act III, P.575)
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Marchbanks is experiencing love for the first time, and he’s
being very imaginative about it. It stimulated him to write a lot of
poems and it has awakened him because he’s been much neglected in
his life. Responding to Morell’s utterance in calling Marchbanks a
beggar, seeking her favour, Marchbanks poetically says:
She offered me all I chose to ask for; her shawl, her wings,
the wreath of stars on her head, the lilies in her hand, the
crescent moon beneath her feet. (Act III, P.579)
Marchbanks brings the confusion into the life of Morell and
Candida. The situation demands the respect for marriage that it has
to be dealt with stimulation of thoughtful insight on mature
relationship. Marchbanks investitures his love for Candida and is mad
about her. But he is in love with a woman who is older to him and has
more know-how in matured love. The young man assumes the
attitude of the lovesick poet, and declares that Morell doesn’t deserve
his wife’s attention and affection, says:
…I am the happiest of men. I desire nothing now but her
happiness…let us both give her up. Why should she have
to choose between a wretched little nervous disease like
me, and pig-headed parson like you? Let us go on a
pilgrimage, you to the east and I to the west, in search of
a worthy lover for her: some beautiful archangel with
purple wings. (Act III, P.580)
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Marchbanks redeems his love for a more matured man who can
manage Candida well and asks her lover’s husband to search a better
bridegroom to Candida along with him. Desmond Mac Carthy opines
that “Candida is a direct response to A Doll’s House, claiming that, in
the real typical doll’s house it is the man who is the doll, and, indeed,
like Ibsen’s Nora, it is Morell who is steadily disillusioned during the
course of the three acts.”103 However, at the end, since everything
goes out of Marchbanks’s hands, to express his innate love for
Candida, Marchbanks tells Morell that he has filled her heart with his
happiness. He says:
I no longer desire happiness: Life is nobler than that.
Parson James: I give you my happiness with both hands:
I love you because you have filled the heart of the woman
I loved. Good bye. (Act III, P.594)
Marchbanks and Morell completely differ in their ways of
thinking about love. Marchbanks is romantically rhythmical and
Morell is romantically conservative. Candida does her best to teach
Morell to become outwardly discerning. Maurice Charney rightly
remarks: “Candida is constantly aware of how obtuse her husband
really is, and that it is her role to point out to him that marriage
depends on love and not on a handful of high-minded principles.”104
Marchbanks enigmatically rushes out by expressing that he has a
better secret in his heart. He says:
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… But I have a better secret than that in my heart. Let
me go now. The night outside grows impatient.
(Act III, P.594)
The Reverend James Mavor Morell symbolizes an ideal husband
to Candida. He has tact in his attitude that represents his identity as
a clergyman in the society with a little conscience on household
chores and responsibilities due to the façade of time in his marital life.
The author too puts his thoughts through this character to evaluate
the motives of Marchbanks, and what Morell and Marchbanks have to
offer a woman like Candida in true sense.
Proserpine Garnett the typist, Alexander Lexy the assistant to
Morell and Mr. Burgess, the father of Candida are minor characters
who take the situation of complexities to a more frantic one. These
three characters build an atmosphere of sensibility with a rare
combination of attitudes and motifs. Petrified by Marchbanks’s love
for Candida, Morell tells him that it has become a common feature for
everyone to love Candida. Morell says:
…Everybody loves her: they cant help it. I like it.
(Act I, P.541)
Like Shaw, the Rev. James Morell is a democratic socialist
dedicated to promoting an egalitarian society. There was nothing to
suggest a crisis in the marriage between Pastor Morell and Candida
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until Marchbanks, a fervid and callow poet, met the clergyman’s wife.
Morell says:
…You little snivelling cowardly whelp. Go, before you
frighten yourself into a fit. (Act I, P.544)
Morell is enthusiastic and watchful to the outside world, but
without any clues about the sensitive situation within his own
marriage. Marchbanks breaches into the good life of Morell and
withers the pure relationship between Morell and Candida, making
Candida realize the vicissitudes of household work and commands
Morell to ask her to choose between them. He says:
Oh, you fool, you fool, you triple fool: I am the man,
Morell: I am the man. You don’t understand what a
woman is send for her, Morell: send for her and let her
choose between. (Act III, P.580)
This play gives us a powerful insight to know better about male
and female relationships that deepens our comprehension of human
necessities. Morell confesses his innocence when Candida opines that
a poet sees everything. As it becomes inevitable to hide the secret any
longer, Morell tells Candida to choose between them. He says:
… I will not go about tortured with doubts and
suspicions. I will not live with you and keep a secret from
you …we have agreed - he and I that you shall choose
between us now. I await your decision. (Act III, P.590)
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As Leigh Hunt puts it, “Candida stands between two men
declaring their undying love and tell them both that they are acting
like little boys.”105 Shaw sets the heroine a real challenge in his
description of Candida as “a woman who has found that she can
always manage people by engaging their affection, and who does so
frankly and instinctively…but Candida’s serene brow, courageous eyes
... signify largeness of mind and dignity of character to ennoble her
cunning in the affections.”106 Marchbanks has certainly ruined the
serenity of the relationship between Morell and Candida. He is a crib
who tries to demoralize the temperament of Candida and Morell with
much proud humility says:
I have nothing to offer you but my strength for your
defense, my honesty for your surety, my ability and
industry for your livelihood, my authority and position for
your dignity. That is all it becomes a man to offer to a
woman. (Act III, P.591)
Morell tries to confess his innocence and carelessness about the
chores of household but has shrunk himself in glorifying his office
work as a Pastor. He forgot that the glorification of wife is the
elevation of husband to a happy ending. But the situation now has
gone up to a level where Candida has been pestered by the poet
Marchbanks and Candida asks Marchbanks to offer what he has. He
offers:
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My weakness. My desolation. My heart’s need.
(Act III, P.591)
It’s hard to imagine why Shaw said that marriage “is an alliance
entered into by a man who can’t sleep with the window shut, and a
woman who can’t sleep with the window open,”107 as Singh marks it,
would be so fascinated with writing about the domestic union, but
fascinated with it, Shaw was, and the crackling energy of much of his
dramatic work comes from the tension between husband and wife.
The ending is never in doubt: As a true Shavian heroine, Candida will
settle where she is required, fostering the earthbound body and
psyche of the brawny but uninspired parson who is her husband,
while freeing the soul of her poet-admirer to create stunning and
fanatical art.
The secret of Candida is Shaw’s closing admission that, though
“the poet has no business with the small beer of domestic comfort and
cuddling and petting at the apron-string of some dear nice woman,”
Eugene probably eventually discovered that “he had to keep his feet
on the ground as much as Morell, and that some enterprising woman
married him and made him dress himself properly and take regular
meals.”108 “An additional interpretation of the ‘secret in the poet’s
heart,’ one not acknowledged by Shaw in any of his numerous letters
on the subject, is the secret alluded to by Thomas Carlyle in The Hero
as Poet in Heroes and Hero-Worship.”109 Mac Carthy says that “the
poet and prophet are fundamentally alike and in some ages
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synonymous because both are ‘Hero-souls’ sent by nature to penetrate
into the sacred mystery of the Universe.”110
There were two stalwarts who brought a new hope for women
across the world to free up from the clutches of superstitious society.
Mary Wollstonecraft and John Stuart Mill are the two crusaders who
reformed women in the society. Mary Wollstonecraft born in 1759 was
an eighteenth century British writer and an ardent promoter of
women’s rights. Her work A Vindication of the Rights of Woman written
in 1792 is a treatise on the backdrop of French Revolution (1789 to
1799), especially the rise of women for their basic rights. She wrote
this wonderful exposition to alleviate the cries of women during
eighteenth century. Equality is one of the main concepts and the
pre-requisite of the women era. She authored that every woman
should acquire her right; equality to men, right to educate: not until
the age of eight, but till she desires, stance in politics where women
were considered as passive citizens and in marriage she should given
an equal status with husband not as a commodity where Mary rightly
puts it “… marriage will never be held sacred till women, by being
brought up with men, are prepared to be their companions rather
than their mistress…”111 John Stuart Mill born in 1806 was a
nineteenth century British philosopher, political economist and a civil
servant. His work The Subjection of Women written in 1861 but
published in 1869 was an essay on the equality between the sexes.
“… women are brought up as they are, a man and a woman will but
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rarely find in one another real agreement of tastes and wishes as to
daily life… dullness and want of spirit are not always a guarantee of
the submission which is so confidently expected from them… in this
case does the man obtain it, except an upper servant, a nurse, or a
mistress?”112 He too fought for the same cause as Mary Wollstonecraft
struggled and culminated his efforts to wipe out the blasphemies on
the existence of a woman as a mere property to trade and a toy to
satisfy the lustful needs of men. He captivated the minds of the
contemporary readers of Mill by discussing society and gender
construction, education and marriage in his work. This fracas
changed the mind sets of domineering men and gradually these men
started to realize women as humans. As Gail Finney remarks, “The
term feminism came into being in 1895 and GB Shaw was an
upcoming dramatist and a social worker.”113 The New Woman has
certain characteristic features that distinguish from the conventional
woman according to Kate Stein, as “bounded on the north by
servants, on the south by children, on the east by ailments and on the
west by clothes.”114
The Indian feminists were much there to fight for the women’s
rights in India. The emergence of feminism in India has three phases:
the first phase starts from 1850 to 1915, second phase from 1915 to
1947 and third phase from post 1947 onwards. The first phase
advocates uproot of sati: widow immolation. This has been the main
context of this period and Raja Ram Mohan Roy during eighteenth
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century took a big leap to ban sati sahagamana in India. He also
fought for the property inheritance to women and against social evils
in the society such as inequality, economy and caste system. He
enriched a good source of confidence into the minds of women by
brushing away the treacherous tradition of sati, which was considered
as the dreadful inhuman act of the world. Kamini Roy born in 1864
was the leading Bengali feminist and poet, social worker and the first
woman to acquire graduation during British India; Sarala Devi
Chaudhurani born in 1872 was the founder of the first women’s
organization in India during the British Raj. Both women fought for
female education all over India. Education was the right of men;
schools and colleges were meant only to the male dominated society
and were treated as the supreme over female society. Women were
confined to kitchens and other household works.
The second phase was a watershed for women. This phase gave
a scope to intensify the claims and agony for the rights. Under the
ubiquitous shadow of Mahatma Gandhi, women flourished and took
part in numerous National Movements alongside with Gandhi.
Sarojini Naidu born in 1879 in Hyderabad actively took part in Salt
Satyagraha and set a role model to all kinds of women such as
peasants, class women and aristocratic women. Durgabai Deshmukh
born in 1909 in Kakinada, Andhra Pradesh felt the need for female
education in the country. She too participated sincerely in many
National Movements with Gandhi and uplifted women in every
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possible way. The third phase fought on unequal wages for women,
ignoring women as a cheap, weak and unskilled and of course
education. The then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi born in 1917
focused on equal pay for both women and men as per the Indian
Constitution. She even cared for the education system and catered the
needs of the women. Brinda Karat, Lalithambika Antharjanam,
Jasodhara Bagchi, Prem Chowdary and many more had put their
souls in upbringing the girl child and women’s rights for spearheading
the country in a good way.
As Pauline Reage has rightly said that “Woman ... is the divine
object, violated, endlessly sacrificed yet always reborn, whose only joy,
achieved through a subtle interplay of images, lies in contemplation of
herself.”115 Women of this century are voluptuous and intensified with
all the brimming sensualities of purposeful lives. Man epitomizes
modern woman as the fortitude for the oppressed and dejected
women, encourages taking up profession and living up the fascinating
façade of a true life with household chores.
Candida is a true and versatile woman who is the Life Force
with power on her side for a better tomorrow. She makes the readers
think about the freedom and individuality given by parents, husband
and children to liberalise the culture of a good sovereignty over her
family. She is a filial endogamy who prostrates to Christian Beliefs
and endows herself in a perfect decision-making resolute for
sustainable and productive results.