George Bernard Shaw, Apuntes de Filología Inglesa

¡Descarga George Bernard Shaw y más Apuntes en PDF de Filología Inglesa solo en Docsity! GEORGE BERNARD SHAW (1856 – 1950) BUSCAR MÁS INFORMACIÓN DE ÉL (Video in YouTube) He deals in his plays with education, marriage, religion, government, health care and class privilege. Shaw tried to make his teaching more palatable proceeding to ironize, including comicalness into the serious stuff he wanted to deal with it. He make comedy out of those hideous themes mentioned. He was angered by the exploitation of the working class. He was a socialist. He belonged to The Fabian Society which was advocated for the expansion of socialism, they would be in the present social-democrats. This society played a very important role in British history. He was a pioneer in the fight for equal rights in men and women. He was Irish but protestant, not catholic. His wife was the one with the money. PROBLEM PLAY Scenes from a 1918 production of Mrs Warren’s Profession by Bernard Shaw, an archetypal ‘problem play’ The problem play is a form of drama that emerged during the 19th century as part of the wider movement of realism in the arts, especially following the innovations of Henrik Ibsen. It deals with contentious social issues through debates between the characters on stage, who http://www.academia.edu/27845922/Bernard_Shaw_drama_of_ideas.docx George Bernard Shaw was born Protestant in a predominantly Catholic Dublin in 1856. When Shaw was sixteen, his mother, an accomplished singer, left Ireland to escape her husband's alcoholism and follow her singing teacher to London. Shaw remained to complete his education but, finding his schooling largely inadequate, soon began to pursue his studies independently. During this time, his father's alcoholism came to affect him deeply, making him a dedicated teetotaler for most of his adult life. At age twenty he followed his mother to London to pursue his writing and political career. A staunch progressive, Shaw joined in 1884 the Fabian Society, an organization of middle-class socialists dedicated to mass education and the legislative reform of England. The Fabians would later become instrumental in the founding of the London School of Economics and Labour Party. As a member of their executive committee, Shaw established himself as an orator, social critic, and public intellectual. Throughout his career as a playwright, he would thus remain active with the Fabians and work on behalf of a number of causes, including the abolishment of the public censors and the establishment of a National Theater. With the outbreak of World War I, which for him tolled the death knell of the capitalist system, Shaw would publish a series of anti-war newspaper articles entitled "Common Sense about the War." The series would temporarily ruin his public reputation and lead him to abandon the limelight, until 1923, when his Saint Joan would bring him back to the spotlight. Other notable political writings from his long career include "How to Settle the Irish Question" (1917) and "The Intellectual Woman's Guide to Socialism and Capitalism". Shaw lived until the age of 94, dying in 1950 after falling from a ladder while gardening. He famously left a portion of his estate to his last reform campaign, an ill-fated project to simplify the English language alphabet. Shaw's writing career began almost simultaneously with his political one. His first literary endeavors consisted a series of rather unsuccessful novels crafted in the 1870s and 1880s. During this time, Shaw also worked as an art, music, and theater critic for the Saturday Review and published a number of pamphlets on the arts, most famously "The Perfect Wagnerite," a commentary on Wagner's Ring Cycle, and "The Quintessance of Ibsenism," an homage to one of his primary muses. Shaw produced his first play, Widower's Houses, a strident attack on London's slumlords, in 1892 with a private progressive theater company. He did so as the play could have never hoped to pass public censors at the time. A collection of further anti-capitalist works appeared in the 1898 anthology, Plays Pleasant and Unpleasant. Indeed, Shaw found himself forced to publish a number of his more famous works in reading editions before they ever saw the theater. Though critics generally received them well, they almost unanimously agreed that they were better suited to novels than to the stage. Lengthy stage directions and character descriptions, dizzying intellectual discussions, and the absence of conventional dramatic action made their production seem unlikely at best. Shavian drama ultimately came to the stage, however, introducing what has come to be known as the "discussion play"—that is, works primarily driven by ideas, argument, and debate—to modern Anglophone theater. Shaw wrote these plays in a variety of genres, ranging from the comedy to the chronicle. Examples include Caesar and Cleopatra (1901); the philosophically imposing Man and Superman (1903); Major Barbara, a tale of a broken family some biographers relate to Shaw's own; The Doctor's Dilemma (1906); the beloved Pygmalion, a tale on gender, class, and phonetics later adapted as the musical My Fair Lady; and Androcles and the Lion (1912), the only text to appear in Shaw's reformed alphabet. After the interruption of his dramatic output caused by World War I, Shaw returned to the stage with last major works, including his ambitious Back to Methuselah (1921), a meta-biologist five-play cycle on what he called "creative evolution", and Saint Joan (1923), the play that would win him back his popular appeal. Later in life. Shaw was recognized for his talents. In 1925 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature. Over a decade later in 1938 he earned an Academy Award for the film adaptation of Pygmalion. Twelve years after his death in 1950, The Shaw Festival was founded to present and celebrate George Bernard Shaw’s plays. Today he is Mrs. Gardner: Frank's mother and the Rev. Samuel's wife, who leaves the house before Mrs. Warren arrives. Aunt Lizzie: Mrs. Warren's sister, who established herself as a respected lady in Winchester. A clergyman: A clergyman got Mrs. Warren a position as a scullery maid before she worked as a prostitute. Anne Jane: Mrs. Warren's half-sister, who worked in a whitelead factory and eventually died of lead poisoning. Mrs. Warren's half-sister: An unnamed woman who, like Anne Jane, was one of Mrs. Warren's half-sisters. She married a government laborer and bore three children. Bessie: One of Frank Gardner's sisters. ACT I Act I takes place in the countryside town of Haslemere, where Vivie Warren is staying after having graduated from Cambridge University with honors. She is soon joined at the cottage where she is staying by Praed, an architect and artist friend of her mother's; her mother, Mrs. Warren, whom she has not seen in a long time; Sir George Crofts, her mother's friend and business partner; Frank, her friend who is interested in her romantically; and the Reverend Samuel Gardner, Frank's father, with whom he is staying since he has no money to support himself. ACT II In Act II, the group returns from an afternoon spent out in the countryside and has dinner. Before Vivie returns with Praed, though, Frank reveals to the rest of the group that he wishes to marry her. They all shut this idea down, mainly because he doesn't have enough money. After dinner, Crofts suggests to Mrs. Warren that he, too, wants to marry Vivie, but she disapproves. After the men have gone to the Gardner home for the night, Vivie confronts her mother about the mysteries of her profession and Vivie's father. The latter, Mrs. Warren admits she is not sure of. But she explains to Vivie that she became a prostitute out of desperation, having no other options if she wanted to be independent. Vivie understands and the two make up. ACT III Act III takes place at the Gardner home, which is the church rectory. The Reverend Samuel Gardner had drunkenly told Crofts to invite Mrs. Warren and Vivie over the night before, and the two women arrive soon after he wakes up with a hangover. Frank and Vivie are left alone to flirt while the others take a tour of the church. Crofts returns and interrupts them, then sends Frank away so he can propose to Vivie. She firmly rejects his proposal, which is purely economic in nature, and he inadvertently reveals to her that he and her mother still own brothels; Mrs. Warren's work in the prostitution industry is ongoing. When she gets up to leave, he moves threateningly to block her exit. Frank enters and chases Crofts off with a rifle. Before leaving, Crofts tells them that they are half-siblings. Vivie leaves soon after, telling Frank that she is returning to her office on Chancery Lane. ACT IV As Act IV begins, Frank is waiting for Vivie in her office two days later. He tells her that he doesn't believe they are siblings and that he loves her romantically. She says that even if they aren't related, she only loves him as a brother. Praed arrives to bid Vivie farewell before he leaves for Italy. Vivie is overcome with emotion and reveals to Frank and Praed what her mother does for a living by writing it down on a piece of paper. She leaves the room to compose herself and Frank tells Praed he no longer wants to marry Vivie, though he still wants to be in touch; he writes her a note telling her as much. Mrs. Warren arrives, and when Vivie returns the men leave the two women together. Vivie tells her mother she wants nothing to do with her. Mrs. Warren begs her daughter to change her mind, but never suggests changing her profession. Finally, she leaves. Vivie reads Frank's note, chuckles, and returns to work. Mrs Warren is a problem play offering social commentary to illustrate Shaw’s belief that the act of prostitution was not caused by moral failure but by economic necessity. SENTIMENTALITY VS PRACTICALITY Vivie Warren refusing two marriage proposals demonstrates herself to be asexual and practical. Frank, too, is quick to make judgements based not on his emotions, but on what is practical for his finances and his future. Although Mrs Warren is shrewd and manipulative in the eyes of most of the other characters, when faced with Vivie’s practicality and coldness, she is weakened. Objectification (Alienation) of women: convention and the “new woman” against “male privilege” Male privilege and the objectification of women Shaw took issue with the objectification of women, which he saw as permeating all levels of Victorian society. Mrs Warren has chosen one of the only professions available to women who wanted to remain independent from men at that time Vivie respects this in her mother, but demands her own independence as well – she goes about achieving it by focusing on her education and career. Convention and the "New Woman" Many of the characters invoke the idea of being “conventional” or “unconventional” as a personality trait either in themselves or other characters. Vivie clearly rejects conventions in relation to what it mean to be a woman and what is expected of her gender: she refuses to marry of take care of her mother Mrs Warren. In these ways she exemplifies the “new woman” the idea had been around for decades, and Shaw was a proponent of it: the new woman was independent, educated and practical. Mrs Warren, too, is unconventional in that she became a prostitute and continues to manage brothels. LOVE AS COMMODITY Shaw challenges the audience member’s conception of what constitutes commerce and consequently work. Prostitution is often looked down upon as shameful because it has a commodification of sex, but the characters point out in various ways that marriage too, is a commodification (a contract that turns the woman into a commodity or product) of women, albeit a more conventional one. As Mrs Warren points out prostitution is work; like marriage, it is not enjoyable for most women but it is a way to survive THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN MOTHER AND DAUGHTER Vivie accepts her mother’s decision to become a prostitute but changes her mind upon discovering she still owns and operates brothels