Men in Petticoats: Women Characters in Bernard Shaw's Late Victorian and Edwardian Plays (1895-1910)

Description

The central concern of Bernard Shaw's approach to the Woman Question in the late nineteenth and early twentieth Century is the assumption that any human being needs to fulfill itself in order to lead a self-satisfied and happy life. Shaw was acutely aware of the fact that women were denied that very basic right upon the presumptions that women had a totally different "nature'' than men and that they were created to stay at home and mind domestic affairs. Shaw creates a counter-hegemonic discourse against the patriarchal and misogynist discourse of the late Victorian and Edwardian England. At the heart of Shaw's objection to the dominant discourse of his ena is the generally held belief that women and men are in their "natıJne" totally different creatures. Shaw defies this artificial and most arbitrary distinction and declares that he sees women as "men in petticoats" and men as "women without petticoats." He does not assume that thene is any "mystery about woman" instead, he just "observes the world around him." Yet, as a dramatist, Shaw gives voice to various discourses in his plays. Hence, he has been quoted against himself on many different and opposing points.