George Bernard Shaw is perhaps one of the most significant writers of the modern era.
Though he is more known as a playwright, Shaw was. At the same time, a respected critic, novelist, journalist, and essayist. As noted social reformer, Shaw wrote plays that dramatized social commentaries, and almost in 1925 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature for his great achievements. Shaw as a man and as an artist is considered as one of the most significant figure of English literature as Harold Bloom declares that ‘He [G. B. Shaw] continues to hold the stage and might appear to have earned his reputation of being the principal writer of English comic drama since Shakespeare'(2011:1). Today, his works are studied worldwide in literature classes and are considered classics of modern drama.
Born in July, 26, 1856 in Ireland, Shaw was given some Protestant upbringings by his own father who was a simple civil servant, and his mother was a music teacher and a vocalist. Through his mother, Shaw has gained an appreciation for classical music as he later credited as the most dominant interest which led to Shaw’s eventual successes.
At the age of twenty, Shaw made a trip to London to begin his professional career in literary aspects. He made a career name for himself as a music critic, and soon later he was writing criticisms of literature, art, and drama. By 1890, Shaw has been published in almost every major London publication like The Pall Mall Gazette and the Saturday Review. During that time, he wrote five novels that were published mainly in the socialist papers, which were not much as successful as his plays and essays.
During that time, Shaw had become an active member of socialist movement. He had also read Marx’s Das Kapital, and by the 1884 he had finally joined the Fabian Society which was an influential group dedicated to establishing a socialist democracy particularly in England and generally in Britain. As a Fabian member, Shaw learned to 31
articulate and bring out his philosophies and ideas. He quickly became the spokesman for the Fabians and their principles. Christopher Innes through explaining the Shavian beliefs and his autobiography has believed that ‘Shaw collaborated with staunch Fabian friends’ to forge a better society’ (1998:8). This gave Shaw his first opportunity to express, in a better way, his beliefs through a public forum, and brought his name to publicity as his writing never had.
For Shaw’s brilliant and creative mind and imagination towards the interconnecting his ideas to his audiences, it can be said that he is good enough for choosing his special tools for expressing. In this concern, Gareth Griffith in his Socialism and Superior Brains states that:
Shaw was like a machine, producing ideas and opinions at a constant rate over seventy years, stretching and pulling the mindof his audience, tugging at its conscience, trying its nerve and tweaking its prejudices. He was one of the master intellectuals of his age, a prince in the universe of progressive thought. (Griffith, 1992: 1-2)
It is his closeness to the audience that confirms the absolute understanding of a purpose in which Shaw is aware of and intends to make his ideas to be read in minds with a double glimpse.
Shaw was greatly impressed by the playwright Henrik Ibsen. Ibsen’s drama represents and conveys a social realism that Shaw hadn’t realized that it was possible.
That was for the first time in which Shaw saw that the stage could become his best place for the communication of ideas. He despised such sentimental melodrama being produced in London theatres and so he began writing and producing plays of his own.
By comparing Shaw and Ibsen in a sort of similar level, it can be seen that they share some familiar ideas in the same aspects. Burton believes that “both are critics of society, realists in method, individualists in attitude and teaching, and technicians who boldly adapt the stage traditions to their particular kind of endeavor”(Burton, 2010: 275).
In 1898, Shaw has published his first volume consisting of six plays that are titled as Plays Pleasant and Unpleasant, which included You Never Can Tell. The plays were later produced to great critical acclaims by experimental and independent theatres in London. Several plays produced, including such classics works as Man and
Superman, Major Barbara, and Pygmalion and Arms and The Man. Soon later Shaw’s plays were found published and produced in almost everywhere in Britain.
Whether the reason was ending poverty, reorganizing society, or removing limitations and sexual stigmas, Shaw had sought to confront audiences with issues of social importance.
It is not that everyone took Shaw’s work as great theatre. There are however, many critics who argued that art was a means of communicating the human experience, and not a forum to preach or teach. They contended that Shaw’s plays were, to a great extent, flawed because of their satire, their excessive arguments, and the lack of interesting story.
In a keen observation on Shaw’s beliefs, ideas and dramatic skills on stage, it can be said that he has a great reliability towards what is called modern drama. In another detailed observation on Shaw’s modernity, in his Shaw among the Modernists, Lawrence Switzky believes declares this as such:
One does not of course need to be a modernist or a member of the avant-garde to be a good artist. But since Shaw wrote plays, prefaces, broadsides, radio addresses, television plays, and film scripts alongside various ‘contemporaries’ who are often thought of as modernist or avant-garde, and who negotiated similar relationships between high culture and mass culture, as well as tradition and rupture, it seems worthwhile to begin to consider how Shaw might fit into the jigsaw of British and Continental modernism. (Switzky, 2011: 134)
After he won the Nobel Prize, Shaw continued to write plays even until his death in 1950. His later works not much enjoyed wide success as his earlier. Still Shaw stands as one of the great and most dominant playwrights of modern era. For better or worse view, he changed the ways the world looked at and viewed the drama and theatre. With the plays like Chicago, Rent, and Angels in America, Shaw’s great influence and impact on modern theatre continues to be felt and studied.
3.2. Shaw’s Style of Writing
In most of his plays, G. B. Shaw uses comedy as satire and rhetorical speech in his style of writing. Shaw uses satirical comedy in his plays as a new dramatic Shavian technique to criticize the idealist, Victorian idealists. It is his most significant technique to convey his message to the reader and audience through these dramatic skills. In comedy, Shaw puts a sense of satirical intent to the purpose and he is aware of it at the same time.
Christopher Innes (1998) concerning the purpose and beyond the surface of Shavian comedy, states that “The Shavian comedies’ do not so much slide away from satire’
they use satire to ridicule an entrenched but outworn moral position and then, reactively, spring forward to a new moral position more vigorous and heroic.”(133)
In the other side, Shavian dramatic style in the rhetorical perspective is a message of conveying the ideas rather than only words. Shaw’s choice of rhetoric words and speech by characters is used in many times to present a further meaning by the word itself. It conveys moral and a social value for what the playwright himself is intending to present. On Shaw’s theory and language in style, Paul Lewton in an article titled as G. B.
Shaw. Theory, Language and Drama in Nineties, states that “Shaw’s dramatic writing was continuous with his Fabian and theatrical journalism in its criticism of rhetoric as an instrument of idealism. As in his theatre reviews, Shaw focused on ‘genteel idealism’; Mrs. Warren’s Profession, The Philanderer, Candida, and Arms and the Man all associate rhetoric with idealism of this kind” (1979:160).
3.3. Transitional Traits in Shaw’s Arms and the Man
3.3.1. Shaw’s Gaze on The ‘New Woman’
Woman in the Victorian Era is seen much like a symbol standing for something else, not really standing for her own identity. Woman identity of the late Victorian period can be described as luck of significance. Even in literary works women is found a bit too conceptual of otherness. There has been too much criticism on her if a woman worked in a play as a character or even as a feminist writer. Christopher Innes that the new woman is ‘On the whole the New Woman was treated with contempt or fear because in various incarnations, whether in discourse or in “real” life, she reopened for discussion some deeply held assumptions about what it meant to be a man or woman’ (1998: 77).
Christopher Innes, in his The Cambridge Companion to George Bernard Shaw, goes on declaring on the role of the ‘New Woman’ as such:
On the whole the New Woman was treated with contempt or fear because in various incarnations, whether in discourse or in “real” life, she reopened for discussion some deeply held assumptions about what it meant to be a man or woman. One version of the New Woman defied traditional codes of female beauty, smoking cigarettes and dressing in a simple and “manly” fashion which seemed to complement her discontented mouth and a nose “too large for feminine beauty” but indicative of intelligence. (1998: 77)
From this analysis of New Woman, it can be understood that there are too many boundaries and differences in such an environment. Women have been seeking for a way to adapt with the environment, however it is, either desired or not, and later for the righteous identity.
Shaw’s response to all these obstacles and boundaries about the women has a clear and effective impact and even practical effort on the woman in real life in spite of his literary works as well as many other social and feminist writers and social reformers.
G. B. Shaw as an active social and realist thinker and writer is fully aware and interested in thinking and writing on these social conditions and issues that the woman has been suffering and seeking for its salvation for many decades which is found in many of his works.
Through the identity and the eye of woman G. B. Shaw sees and presents some rebellious and social reformation. In many of Shaw’s works, it can be seen that he cares and so depicts the social obstacles that the woman has been facing during that time.
Shaw’s condemned acknowledged believes on woman rely on what a mentally out casted woman is suffering from, as it is seen in many of his plays. In his play Arms and the Man, for example, Shaw deals with how the Victorian woman and her identity, her limits and her reality in the society. FatemehAzizmohammadi explains this notion concerning the woman in Shaw’s play Arms and the Man as in the following:
Here [in Arms and the Man], George Bernard Shaw depicts this reality about class and gender differentiation in his play. George Bernard Shaw shows how women are treated in society and how class differences limited people to develop. In Arms and the Man, class struggle is shown by introducing of play different characters. As a free thinker, George Bernard Shaw supports women’s right, equality of income, sharing private property, and change in voting system. (Azizmohammadi, 2014: 6)
From this point it is becoming more clear and obvious that Shaw’s one of the main concerns on social reform starts from the woman. Shaw is seen in the Late Victorian era as a reaction of what the society has been seeking for in general and that of the boredom of individuals from the idealistic and restricted social standards of Victorians.
In Shaw’s plays, the conception of the new woman is contributed to the personality of the woman within transitional developments and this transition is seen in the dynamic portrait of the new modern woman as it’s been stated in the following words of Gareth Griffith:
Traditionally, Shaw’s contribution has been cast mainly in a positive light. The strong, dynamic women of the plays were said to have inspired many women to break the bonds of their Victorian upbringing. By the 1890s Shaw’s name was connected intimately with the propaganda on behalf of ‘the new woman’. (1992:157)
With this kind of belief of Shaw’s feminism and its interest many women and young girls in his time has started to be supporting his ideas and applying them in their lives, to an extent that sometimes they were ‘treating him as a mentor from whom they could learn what to think, feel and do'(Griffith. 1992:157). In Shaw’s plays there is almost all the time a hidden rhetorical dramatic language found in characters that are standing as dynamic characters or transitional individuals from the Victorian idealistic world towards the new modern and socially realistic one. This concept is seen usually with female characters for her need of oneness path of finding the identity as seen more identified with the situation of Arms and The Man’s female character and the protagonist Raina.
3.3.2. Shaw as a Pioneer Playwright and Arms and the Man as a Literary
Transitional Work
Shaw, as mentioned before, had lived and grown up in a time of troubles which is the Mid and Late Victorian period. In these two periods some great changes had occurred in England, especially in its literature, in dramatic writing, for example, one of the dominant phenomenon taking literature with new perspectives was Henrick Ibsen’s realistic plays whose been called by many critics as the father of modern drama. In the plays of Ibsen, many social conditions can be seen and studied; he used to depict most of social realistic obstacles that Victorians have been living with. G. B. Shaw was interested in Ibsenism, he followed many of Ibsen’s thoughts and beliefs, and rather developed them in his plays. Like Ibsen, Shaw was interested in social matters, but more active and more creative than Ibsen.
Indeed, as a social realist playwright Shaw is seen as a creative revolutionist dramatist, his plays may be noticed as lacking action, but they are full of rhetorical conversations and full of ideas. In his plays, Shaw prefers to convey his message in words rather than too many ambiguous actions like those of Shakespeare. Shaw’s plays are sort of making sense of social reform. ChutaratBanthakit states that ‘George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) is considered as one of the greatest playwrights of British theatre for his remarkable literary works both in the field of social criticism and in his theatrical reformation that is regarded by later critics and readers as a milestone of modern drama’ (2011: 1).
On the other hand, Shaw’s play Arms and The Man, which is written during the late Victorian period in (1895), presents exact social conditions of England at that time and Shavian characters that are rather contributed as socially realists than standing for the old notions of idealism. Arms and The Man are written in a time where almost all Victorian convictions have been changing towards the practical notions of the modernity roots. Shaw has set this play during the 1885 in which there is Serbo-Bulgarian war. The play goes around some characters, each one stands for a set of ideas to accomplish Shaw’s philosophy in the drama. One of those characters is Raina Petkoff; she is a young woman who engaged to Major SergiusSaranoff, a Bulgarian war unrealistic hero. One night, Captain Bluntschli who is a mercenary soldier who is fighting for the other side bursts through her bedroom window looking for a place to hide. Raina agrees, but thinks he is a coward when he reveals that he is afraid and not willing to die in the war, and he does not even carry the ammunition, but chocolates instead! This does not fit her idea of how the soldier should be behaving. When that battle is going down, Raina and her mother, Catherine, sneak Bluntschli out of the house, who is not properly dressed but only in an old housecoat. Later by four months, when the war ends, Sergius returns.
Raina begins to question her husband-to-be’s heroic behavior and thinks more about her ‘chocolate cream solider’ and his views on love and war.
Indeed Arms and The Man has provided a great success in career to G. B. Shaw as a dramatist. Shaw himself in an occasion declares that ‘[Arms and the Man] has produced reputation, discussion, advertisement; it has brought me enough money to live on for six months, during which I will write two more plays'(Laurence, 1965: 458).
Many critics have commented, analyzing, and studying Shaw’s play’s in many aspects, but in social realism in particular. The notions and significance of his plays have given Shaw critical rewards and many literary awards for his creative imagination and the choice of his dramatic skills and rhetorical style during characters’ conversations. The dramatic skills and the satirical comedy’s intentions in Arms and the Man are explained in Christopher Innes’ Bernard Shaw, The Man and The Mask as such:
‘Arms and the Man’ is a brilliant satirical comedy belonging with the group of ‘pleasant’ plays of his [Shaw’] own description. It is essentially a drama, an amusing story told within the framework of a conventional plot, but novel in character, treatment and lebensanschauung, behind the fun. (Innes, 2010: 59)
Here it can be clear that Shaw’s purpose of such skills has his special own technique towards conveying a message to his readers, a message that should be conveyed with delight and fun and enjoyable scenes instead of too much and complex ones so the reader may get lost or confused.
The chronology of actions in Arms and The Man are dealt with the characters within their inside conflicts, some characters are seen as the refined Victorians who are living by Victorian values, some are seen as Shavian Realists and some others are seen as Victorian Shavians who are dynamic or transitional characters, they make changes from Victorian idealism towards social realism. The characters’ names are Captain Bluntschli, Louka, Nicola, Catherine Petkoff, Major Paul Petkoff, Raina Petkoff and
SergiusSaranoff. His characters indeed, stand as ‘the witness of the outset of a new understanding of romance and realism, the ideal and the real'(Singh and Dubey. 2013:4).
3.3.2.1. Refined Victorians
In Arms and the Man, as it’s mentioned before, Shaw is consciously aware of choosing the characters’ beliefs and their representative characteristics in a chronological order that is regarded with what each character stands for. Here, the focus is concentrated on the characters that are standing for Victorian idealism or who are figured out as extremely refined with Victorian values and beliefs. The refined Victorian characters are those who represent the old values or out-of-date beliefs of the Victorian era.
One of the most refined Victorian characters in this play can be SergiusSaranoff who is represents the heroic beliefs on war and love. Sergius is presented idealistically who is the good looking fiance of Raina Petkoff and a romantic like her. He is attempting to act in the part of a knight in a modern warfare, ‘Sergius sees the world in terms of a conflict between self and the world and would willingly accept death rather than compromise the ideals'(Iqbal & Ali. 2013:231).
Shaw’s intention presenting the Sergius is to cover up the possible traits of romantic upholding beliefs, behind which, the humor and satire is used to Shaw’s criticism towards such idealist Victorian character. The representation of this character, as usual, is one of Shaw’s techniques in an artistic and philosophical scale. In some other word, through presenting Sergius, Bernard Shaw is to be attacking some of false and outdated taboos and social conditions that are idealized within Victorian characters and are no more suitable in a modern environmental society, as Shaw creates. Sergius is not realistic like characters of Bluntschli, he seems to be upholding and living with those ideals and principles, not like Louka or Raina who transformed to be a voice of the new modern individual.
This is worth considering underlining these dramatic techniques and skills Shaw has been used in this play of ideas. Taking attention to what the dramatist puts for Sergius, many critics have been demonstrating and illustrating the notions and perceptions of his personality, social potion and his upholding advocates. Assuming to what makes Sergius be demonstrated as such, it has been believed that he ‘has gained his high military rank in the Bulgarian Army through charm and family position rather than through common sense or training’ (Singh and Dubey, 2013: 6).
What makes Shaw’ Arms and the Man undergo within some problematic events is exactly due to Sergius personality. In the beginning, a reader would feel of great expectations from him because of his highly imaginative and romantic love and glorifying notions towards war. First, he is admired by all members of Petkoff family, but later on as the events flow out, his personality becomes obvious that Sergius is nothing but a man that shows off accordingly by his imagination, not in practice, the 40
Petkoffs and the reader as well would find him unrealistic in dealing with his personal support. During a conversational occasion moved between Petkoff and Catherine, some sarcastic hints are called to Sergius by Petkoff which indicates his realization of Sergius’ true personality:
CATHERINE. He certainly ought to be promoted when he marries Raina.
Besides, the country should insist on having at least one native general.
PETKOFF. Yes, so that he could throw away whole brigades instead of regiments. It’s no use, my dear: he has not the slightest chance of promotion until we are quite sure that the peace will be a lasting one. (AM.31)
With this extract, Shaw has, perhaps, consciously tried to cover up the most probable possibilities that may occur in Sergius’ personality, which is, indeed, his main purpose to achieve. What is certainly mostly covered up in illustrating the ambiguity in Sergius is what can be called as a split character, the reader cannot be sure of what his true personality is because of his unclear personality and exaggerated imagination. His uncertain state of psychology is opposite to the cultural perspective. For presenting Bluntschli as his ‘rival'(AM.39) in most social connections, Shaw aims to indicate to the contradictory social conditions through his creative dramatic techniques in which Sergius is found to be advocating to some false and outdated ideas.
Moreover, Sergius fails terribly when the situation comes to be practically dealing with war and its manners, and instead of giving up his false idealism, he rather excuses his situation by claiming that ‘This hand is more accustomed to the sword than to the pen’ (AM.49), which indicates his hypocritical state of mind. This reaction of Sergius can be demonstrated as falling action to whom Raina changes her way of thinking toward him.
Another leading to failure, concerning his understanding towards war, is that when he accepts to Bluntschli’s challenge with dignity and his blind confident. Also that factor that makes Sergius fail in his lost idealism is the moment of realization of his loss of Raina. After all this happens to him, Sergius claims that “our romance is shattered.
Life’s a farce (AM: 65), with a sense of loss. This dignity and pride is, perhaps, portrayed as men of ironic representation of those false and outdated ideal thoughts and principals among the Victorians. Shaw wants to clarify that any conception of perfection idealism would be found as false if the understanding of social convections is not treated realistically. The moment Louka is hurt by Sergius, after realizing that Raina is going to leave him, he still upholds his dignity and doesn’t apologize in the way Louka asks because she is belonging to a lower class. Sergius’ proposal to Louka, in the end of the play, is multiply illustrated because in one point of view, the reader may call it giving up the false and outdated ideas towards marriage that Sergius is asking a servant’s hand to him and it can be also analyzed as a trap of Louka in her creative seeking for achieving her dream to be promoted with a higher social position.
Another Refined character is Major Paul Petkoff, Raina’s father and Catherine’s husband who represents some social pretension and aristocratic families. Major Petkoff is kind of a genial man of fifty in Bulgarian cavalry. He seems to be an able man of sense, pretentiously comfortable with his own life as a Bulgarian aristocrat. His only daughter and wife love him and trying to run over him when they prefer their own way.
Petkoff is lenient and strict with his ideas about what is right. He tries to be friend with Bluntschli because his own personal intentions. Unlike his wife, Paul Petkoff does not want to change with passing time neither modernizing himself.
Paying attention to his character sketch it can be pointed out that Petkoff believes that in his society class distinction should be existent and it should play its role of separating classes from each other. In a remarkable note of Petkoff and Sergius’ sarcastic words towards the middle class, has noted that ‘Petkoff hates the middle class like Bluntschli, and Sergius calls Bluntschli ‘commercial traveler in uniform’
(Azizmohammadi, 2014:8). Indeed, Petkoff has even another false understanding towards having a good reputation or to be popular in a society. With this pretension, it is considerable that Pitkoff can be ranked as another refined Victorian idealistic character.
Azizmohammadi, for this issue, declares this matter about Petkoff and Catherine by stating that ‘Petkoff thinks that having the library is a sign of showing that he is wealthy.
When he asks Catherine about using bell in the library instead of shouting, she says that civilized and high class people never shout. They did not know what politeness is, they are learning proper habits’ (2014: 8). Petkoff’s personal beliefs on being an aristocrat and having the soul of controlling over other people, who are in lower class, is more obvious when Shaw, during a conversation in the play, show’s Petkoff and Catherine’s, in the beginning, a way of thinking towards strict and having a good reputation: Catherine. you are a barbarian at heart still, Paul. I hope you behaved yourself before all those Russian officers.
Petkoff. I did my best. I took care to let them know that we have a library.
Catherine. ah; but you didn’t tell them that we have an electric bell in it? I have had one put up. (AM.39)
This is how Shaw presents Petkoff character to the audience and readers in order to show this idealistic ideas and beliefs that are subject of manner in a sense of transformation seen with many other characters. In spite of that transitional state of mind in some characters, yet, Petkoff doesn’t change his thoughts about perfectionism and class distinction.
3.3.2.2. Shavian Realists
Another character of this play is Nicola whose state of presentation stands curious till the end of the play. Nicola’s personality indeed is the most curious case of this play.
Sometimes Shaw presents him as a refined Victorian and some other times he is presented as ‘the most crawling baseness'(AM.71). Nicola is the manservant of the Petkoffs. He is a middle aged man, calm and controlled, and calculating his manners. He accepts with the abuse of his superior people and knows how to deal with his situation as a servant who treats carefully in the family he works for and keeping their private secrets. Louka accuses him of having the soul of a servant, but he justifies Louka’s 43
works by saying that ‘the secret of success in service’ (AM: 27). He accepts class distinctions, though his plan is to gain enough money for opening a shop in Sofia. Nicola is in the relationship with Louka in the beginning of the play, but the moment she refuses him by going after Sergius, he tries to help her by advising and how to adopt with the family, which shows his obedient soul in surface and creative thinker on how to live up his situation. Here the artist shows the creative evolution in both servants, each in a different way.
In its beginning of Act II, Shaw describes Nicola by some quite obvious comments according to his personality and state of mind, which makes the reader and the audience to be skeptical about judging on Nicola’s outside personality:
He is a middle-aged man of cool temperament and low but clear and keen intelligence, with the complacency of the servant who values himself on his rank in servility, and the imperturbability of the accurate calculator who has no illusions’His head is shaved up to the crown, giving him a high Japanese forehead. (AM. 26)
The only characteristic that takes him considered as a Victorian character is his obedient and ‘The soul of a servant’ (AM.27) which is representing his curious personality until the end of the play. Nicola is very careful of himself to keep his job in Pitkoff’s family.
He has taken hold to warn Louka because he has detected in her hostile attitudes and defiant manners. Nicola threatens Louka plainly with the consequence of warning her “If you quarrel with the family, I never can marry you” (AM.26).
It is quite clear that Nicola is more attached to the Petcoffs for some material benefits than to Louka for the emotional reasons. FatimehAzizmohammadi believes that ‘Nicola is wise but he accepts to be scapegoat of the family or is fired by them. He has desire to go out of his positions and improves. He wants to buy a shop in Sofia in order to be independent.’ (2014:7). Indeed, he plans to have a more promoted life position, but he is a bit slow in that progress and that is because Nicola wants to keep those ideas secret for advancing his material prospects.
This attitude of Nicola doesn’t mean that he is totally obedient or naturalistic, but rather as a creative realist going on with reality. He is as aware of his situation as a manservant in Petkoff’s family; he is not like a woman to be attracted by others to the family like the other servant is, Louka. That’s why he just lives up in a quiet and calm way for his personal or vested interests to be accepted by others and not losing his only job until his time comes and have his own independent job.
As soon as Nicola finds that Louka and Sergius are going to marry, he becomes more socially realistic by releasing her immediately in cold-blooded acceptance within his position:
Nicola. But it was only to give Louka protection. She had a soul above her station, and I’ve been no more than her confidential servant” (AM.71).
However, this can’t be analyzed as an act of stoicism but rather as creative evolutionist.
Nicola is, indeed, obedient and but absolutely satisfied with his position in the family as a servant. He seems to be an obedient character, but deep inside he has admissions toward a better future, but in a slow and calm progress of development until he gets his chance.
In act III during conversations, Sergius and Bluntschli talk about Nicola with some keen descriptions about him and his uncertain and ambiguous character and personality: SERGIUS. This is either the finest heroism or the most crawling baseness. Which is it, Bluntschli?
BLUNTSCHLI. Never mind whether it’s heroism or baseness. Nicola’s the ablest man I’ve met in Bulgaria. I’ll make him manager of a hotel if he can speak French and German. (AM.71)
This is the curious case of Nicola, from the early beginning till the end of the play, the reader is skeptical of ranking him with refined Victorian and at the same time. In some 45
comments of Shaw and in Bluntschli’s words towards Nicola, it seems that he is realistically having some creative imagination for his life and future career, but in a slow progress, and this can rank him with Shavian realists.
Another character who is quite evident to be ranked with Shavian realists is Bluntschli. He is a man with ” undistinguished appearance, with strong neck and shoulders, a roundish, obstinate looking head covered with short crisp bronze curls’with a sense of humor’ (AM. 13).
Throughout the presentation of this character, Shaw has definitely given new conceptual beliefs and thoughts of an individual. Bluntschli is the rise of new creative evolutionary environmental individualism and social realism. He is presented to be calm and smart when it comes to be treated with life conditions like love and war. Through some events undergoing within this character, Shaw is consciously aiming to cover up the possible positive face in a problematic condition. Shaw finds Bluntschli as a best way to convey his multiple contradictory notions about life in general and in love and war in particular.
The slaw continuous progressive development in Bluntschli is to be considered as Shaw’s creativity over his dramatic victory in which Shaw as a critic satirizes the notion of outdated and false idealism of Sergius by Bluntschli with the sense of humor.
Indeed, in can be deliberate that Bluntschli is presented by Shaw as an object exactly for satirizing those old notions through his realistic ideas and more practical thoughts than those of Serguis and some others. In the beginning, they can guess less than what Shaw gives Bluntschli’s personality because of his hidden capacity. Bluntschli doesn’t risk in any unquestionable tasks, he confesses in a very realistic way to Raina about his awareness of conscious on life:
MAN[Bluntschli]. Well, I don’t intend to get killed if I can help it. (Still more determinedly.) Do you understand that? (He locks the door with a snap.)
RAINA (disdainfully). I suppose not. (She draws herself up superbly, and looks him straight in the face, saying with emphasis) Some soldiers, I know, are afraid of death.
MAN[Bluntschli] (with grim goodhumor). All of them, dear lady, all of them, believe me. It is our duty to live as long as we can. (AM.13)
The reader may call this confession of Bluntschli’s awareness of life as being a coward, but indeed, he is to be analyzed as simply and realistically as un heroic hero. In some other words, Bluntschli has all characteristics of a real hero but they are not appearing in his outside appearance, they are appearing only in practical manners. This is what Shaw exactly tends to convey, he makes the individual more practical and realistic ideologically imaginations. This indicates that Shaw has firmly intended to make a better ideology in the society for his readers and audiences.
This is more evident when Bluntschli reveals his true character, personality when he says ‘My rank is the highest in Switzerland: I am a free citizen’ (AM.75) Indeed, ‘Bluntschli is a Swiss, a professional soldier fighting for the Serbs’ (Harper, 1984:52) but carries sweet candies instead of bullets. This leads to present Bluntschli’s understanding between being mercenary and a ‘chocolate cream soldier’ (AM.21). The implication of this descriptive complement shows Blintschli’s anti-glorification on war and anti-romanticism of love; he is so realistic in these manners.
This kind of mental transition is not really happening to Bluntshcli. Indeed, as a result of what the dramatist has conveyed, it becomes more obvious that the source of this transition and transformation is due to the effect of Bluntshcli who introduces new ideas of love and informational reports about warfare issues. Raina becomes aware more consciously after Bluntshcli comes into her life, she changes her perspectives and the way she thinks towards almost every manner she deals with her real life including love and war, all by Bluntshcli’s support. This is what a Shavian social realist does; s/he is regarded to be treated with life in a creative and realistic way of understanding.
As the play goes to its final scenes, Shaw reveals the hidden and slow progress of Bluntshcli’s victory and success accordingly with his social realism understanding over the outdated and false ideas of Victorian idealist characters: first when Raina admits her confession to Sergius and Bluntschli:
SERGIUS. What says the lady?
RAINA (pretending to sulk). The lady says that he can keep his tablecloths and his omnibuses. I am not here to be sold to the highest bidder.
BLUNTSCHLI. I won’t take that answer. I appealed to you as a fugitive, a beggar, and a starving man. You accepted me. You gave me your hand to kiss, your bed to sleep in, and your roof to shelter me-
RAINA (interrupting him). I did not give them to the Emperor of Switzerland!
BLUNTSCHLI. That’s just what I say. (He catches her hand quickly and looks her straight in the face as he adds, with confident mastery) Now tell us who you did give them to.
RAINA (succumbing with a shy smile). To my chocolate cream soldier! (AM.75-76)
In this extract, Shaw is to be shocking his readers with such a great victory of realization. However, the second evident to Bluntschli’s success is found in the same extract. Even though the Petkoffs and all other characters know the real rich Bluntschli, yet his proposal to Raina can be analyzed as the simplest way possible. The last evident is Sergius’ last comment on Bluntschli ‘What a man! What a man!’ (AM.76).
Louka is another Shavian socialist and creative character that has no beliefs for the strict Victorian values. Louka is the earthy and spirited maidservant of the Petkoff family. She is kind of proud, rebellious and insolent to Raina that she sees through.
Louka flirts with Sergius under the noses others. She declares that she will never have the soul of a servant. Louka is Raina’s rival for Sergius, she is intelligent and witty, knowing how to control Sergius so that he proposes to her.
Louka is the main voice for the equality of the classes in the play, or in other words, she is the voice of the Shavian New Woman that looks for her absolute rights in the society and doesn’t believe in class distinction, the new woman who is interested in social matters and she is socialist dreamer. This notion of Shavian modernism in individuals and Shaw’s beliefs about it is explained by Piers J. Hale that ‘If modern civilization was to survive, Shaw believed, humanity would have to attain to a higher character, something that could only be brought about by bringing human evolution under conscious control’ (2006:201). Louka claims that she has an absolute right to choose whomever she wants to marry. Her feeling of sense that Raina will marry Bluntschi in the end.
Louka as a woman is described as a strong dreamer and firmly hopeful. For his dramatic purpose, Shaw’s presentation of this character as a servant is too conveyable to be covering up the circumstances of a woman living in a high class in such a society.
Louka’s part in this play can be taken as the bravest rule that is going to be taken in the play, in which Shaw changes and proves her position in the society from a maidservant to a wife of a man belonging to the high class. The character development in Louka is, perhaps, Shaw’s own aiming goal for a better or anti-class distinctive environmental society.
Through enabling Louka to a stronger and more confident woman, Shaw presents the firm and creative self-improvement of an individual which is not to be illustrated as sense of sympathy but rather as self-esteem from a willing woman.
Florence Boos makes a statement in his article The Socialist “New Woman” by stating that the ‘Socialist-feminist reformers similarly demanded an utter end to prudery and assertion of women’s (hetero)sexual desires’ (1995:164).
From the early beginning of the play, Louka is presented to be eyeing on some goals to achieve that are higher than her position as a servant. The reader feels that she is not having ‘soul of a servant’ (AM.28). Through this self-esteem, Shaw breaks off all social barriers and expectations in Louka’s path, she starts from the zero point by getting to the highest point she probably wanted to get, which is making somebody fall into her love from the highest principals and standing in her society. Another hint that takes reader’s response to her strong personality is found when Louka claims to Nicola:
Louka (scornfully). You were born to be a servant. I was not. When you set up your shop you will only be everybody’s servant instead of somebody’s servant. (AM.58) This indicates Shaw’s concept of the creative evolution in individual self-esteem and improvement. However, Louka is further seen to be developed in her psychological state of mind when she makes Sergius fall in love with her and ask her hand for marriage. She is not seen as wishing that Sergius would ask her hand, but rather she is proving her personality to him and making him leave his idealistic false ideas and outdated habits towards class distinction by telling Sergius:
LOUKA. I would marry the man I loved, which no other queen in Europe has the courage to do. If I loved you, though you would be as far beneath me as I am beneath you, I would dare to be the equal of my inferior. Would you dare as much if you loved me? No’You dare not: you would marry a rich man’s daughter because you would be afraid of what other people would say of you. (AM.61)
This is the most shocking acclaim to Sergius which later makes him realize that Louka is the best choice to marry and break those false social barriers that he was advocate to.
3.3.2.3. Victorian Shavians
The most significant character of this play that transforms and changes her beliefs from Victorian to Shavian’s is Raina. Raina Petkoff is the very beautiful daughter of the Bulgarian landowner, Major Paul Petkoff. She is twenty-three years old and engaged to Major SergiusSaranoff. Raina is a daydreamer desiring to take on adventures and romance. Later on, she becomes surprised to find herself attracted and interested to the enemy, Captain Bluntschli. She falls in love with him and finds him suitable for her, because he is able to see through her and the opposite.
In the first beginning, Raina is seen as a Victorian idealistic girl in her way of thinking towards the romantic love and glorified war. For this understanding towards her principles, Marilynn D. Harper has noted that ‘Raina is seen, at first, as the romantic idealist, but she is also characterized as being a fleeting realist when she wonders if her idealism and Sergius’ idealism might be due simply to the fact that they have read so much poetry by Byron and other romantics’ (1984:61). For the war as well, she is presented in the beginning of the play to show the idealism in the war, according to Raina, should be glorified as its more remarkably been stated that ‘Raina wants to glory in the noble idealism of the war’ (Harper. 1984:61). However, she has the soul of transition or transformation within her state of mind. After the meeting, introducing to and falling in love with Captain Bluntschli, Raina becomes totally transformed from idealized Victorian to a Shavian modernist and social realist. And all her thoughts are gradually changing about class distinction, war and love.
Indeed, Raina is presented to be one of Shaw’s most representative conflict
through whom, Shaw performs the contradicted and multiple ideas that are presented in this character. Raina is analyzed to be sort of a hero for her most struggling and conflicting events. From her transformation in idealistic beliefs towards war and highly imaginative feelings towards love into a realist woman, Shaw aims to make the individual realize the truth in realization.
Undergoing through some events, Shaw presents some rhetorical and philosophical speech that makes his drama famous in such a figurative style. This is seen when Raina examines Bluntschli to know if he can find the true personality inside her, as she says ‘I want to be quite perfect with Sergius-no meanness, no smallness, no deceit’ (AM.53).
However, Shaw’s progressive change in Raina’s personality is, again, to assert on the concept of identity realization and one’s true goal for achieving according to what s/he wants not to what others want in him or her with the realistic understanding on society rather than an idealized and romantic one. Here and again, the artist shows the triumph of the anti-class distinctive woman over the social barriers and restrictive 51
conditions with a transitional change in the state of mind. This is the reason why she refuses to marry the highest bidder and instead, claims she would give her hands to Bluntschli as in words to ‘my chocolate cream soldier’ (AM.70).
Another character who is facing transformation and transitions from Victorian idealism towards social realism is Catherine. She is the proper mother of Raina and the wife of Major Paul Petkoff. She can run her household in an energetical way. Catherine is seemed to be proud of their position and sometimes she is presented that she wants to be modern and up to date.
At the beginning of the play Catherine is so strict with social principles.
‘Catherine is another character who makes division between her family and the servants, while play attacks division of ranks’ (Azizmohammadi. 2014:8). Indeed, she is quite conscious and aware of what social conditions she may be about to that’s why Catherine is every time looking for small details not to be blamed by others opinion in a strict way.
But later, again, after the coming of Bluntschli with his new thoughts and ideas to reality in socialism, she becomes more comfortable because of her inside desire of being modernist. Finally with her logical conscious and realistic treatment, she welcomes and accepts Captain Bluntschli of being her daughter’s husband.
Actually, Catherine is presented in the beginning of the play as a very refined Victorian character for her idealism toward love and life in general. She thinks that Sergius can be Raina’s ideal husband and she doesn’t like Bluntschli for his outside appearance, but after figuring out his true personality and that he is richer that Sergius, then Catherine realistically changes to accept the situation. The dramatist has presented Catherine in this manner, even in her treatment with her servants. As it is presented in the play, she used to show her priority and control over her servants since they are in a lower class, but again after Louka is getting married to Sergius, and then Catherine accepts such a reality to live up with it despite her previous snobbery and silliness.
3.4. Coming of Modernism in Shaw’ Arms and the Man
3.4.1. Arms and The Man and The Rejection to The Old Romantic Traditions
3.4.1.1. Anti-Romantic Love
In Arms and The Man, there are two kinds of love; one is highly idealistic and the other one is simply realistic. The main contrasts are going around this understanding and convictions of love which is G. B. Shaw’s intends to convey. In the beginning of the play, it can be seen that Shaw presents the idealism of love within some characters like Sergius, Raina and Catherine and their way of thinking toward love with a highly imaginative and idealist notion. For instance, the way Sergius and Raina is talking to each other and sharing their love feeling is so idealistic that they usually read the romantic Lord Byron’s poetry. Raina sometimes even imagines herself in another world of fantasy when she is with Sergius. On one occasion Raina confesses her feeling to her mother about her love feelings to Sergius by saying ” it came into my head just as he was holding me in his arms and looking into my eyes, that perhaps we only had our heroic ideas because we are so fond of reading Byron and Pushkin”(AM.10).
It is the same with Catherine, for she thinks that Sergius can be Raina’s ideal husband for his wealth and social position. Indeed, all these characters in these early scenes are unrealistically thinking about love which is Shaw’s purpose to show the Victorians’ understanding toward love in such a period of time.
To be more realistic on Shaw’s eye on romance notions, it can be said that Shaw is not extremely against romantic feelings and ways towards love, but instead, he is only against the heroic and highly exaggerated romantic love. Furthermore, it becomes more clear that his choice of such a satirical, comedy and anti-romantic play is because ‘Shaw wrote this play at the time when people in England were fond of an exaggerated form of romanticism in comedies'(Singh and Dubey. 2013:3).
Shaw is very skillfully rejecting such notions towards love by presenting such satirical comedy in the play to show the negative consequences of such convictions. And that creativity makes his purpose successfully conveyed when the realistic notions and ideas 53
about love are presented by Captain Bluntschli who changes Raina’s way of thinking towards love and reality as well and wins her hand in the end.
3.4.1.2. Anti-Glorifying War
Indeed, G. B. Shaw has taken the title of the play from Virgil’s epic poem Aenied (19 B.C.) that starts with ‘Of arms and the man I sing’ in which Virgil glorifies war and its heroism in the battlefield. But here Shaw uses this title as a satire on those romantic traditions of war.
Shaw introduces the play that there is a war taken by the Bulgarians in a very romantic, traditional point of view, especially by the Petkoffs and Sergius. They think taking the war would give them a sense of honor, of the victory, no matter how many people die.
Shaw ironically presents this notion as a kind of victory to cover up the probable idealism held by some advocates to such ideas like Sergius particularly. Sergius thinks that war is kind of a ‘tournament’ (AM.31). Sergius is usually talking about traditional war victories which were taken in ancient times. But Shaw satirizes these notions in a humorous way that, again, indicates to his style. Here, Shaw’s aiming goal is not against the war as all, but rather he is against glorifying the war because of him, as a social realist, there should not be any glorification towards war since there is nothing except killing people. This is also what a modern literary critic is against.
Concerning to how Shaw’s presentation of this notion, the reader would find a great amount of satirical humor against those characters who are upholding such ideas.
Sergius, for example, is found to be praised by all the Petkoffs for his heroic notions towards warfare. But when it comes to the practical manner, he is found to be opposed to how they have been thinking about him.
Moreover, this notion is seen even with Catherine Petkoff when she hears that the victory of Bulgarians, not because it is over or because peace has been announced, but rather because her joy towards the victory as a glorification and for praising Sergius, as in the following extracts:
CATHERINE. A great battle at Slivnitza! A victory! And it was won by Sergius.
RAINA (with a cry of delight). Ah! (Rapturously.) Oh, mother! (Then, with
sudden anxiety) Is father safe?
CATHERINE. Of course: he sent me the news. Sergius is the hero of the hour,
the idol of the regiment. (AM.35)
Catherine, like Sergius, is upholding a false idealism towards the war. She doesn’t know what a war would cost. Shaw underlines this concept and satirizes it even more when a sense of disappointment is seen by Catherine when she knows that the peace is announced, she declares her glorifying beliefs to her husband that he ‘could have annexed Servia and made Prince Alexander Emperor of the Balkans. That’s what I would have done’ (AM.29).
War for Shaw is not totally rejected, but realistically he rejects the glorification of war because of its negative consequences. In an article titled as Anti-Romantic Views On War, ParulYadav state to Shaw’s critical and realistic view about the war in the following words:
Shaw’s main aim was to expose the society deliberately and powerfully. Shaw in his dramas like Caesar and Cleopatra, Arms and the Man, & Man of Destiny create heroes who are naturally great, who can see things out of reach of ordinary man. He describes his heroes by putting them in amazing situations in which they act with self-control and with total freedom from convention. His realism is that of a critic of society, he creates characters who are his mouthpieces expressing his views. (Yadav. 2013:82)
However, the style of Shaw comes to be clear through the representation of these characters and the way they speak. Indeed, it is Shaw’s more important dramatic technique to convey a message through rhetorical speech than action. His plays are always famous as full of ideas and less action.
Nevertheless, Shaw’s message for a realistic and social condition in war is more seen as peaceful notion which a modern critic would take it worth considering. Shaw’s presentation of Bluntschli is at the best level for such a goal. From the beginning of the play till the end of it, he is against taking himself into a blind risk and losing his life.
Instead, Bluntschli is even begging Raina to save his life. Instead of carrying weapon and bullets, he takes sweet chocolates to save the sugar percentage of his body so it would give him more time to survive in the unexpected case of war. Through the personality of Bluntschli the conceptual notions of democracy and realism are found to be illustrated and related to what a modern society stands with.
3.4.2. Conflicts and Struggles in Arms and the Man
3.4.2.1. Survival of the Social Realist
The social realists or the Shavians or as some critics may call them sometimes as Fabians are those characters who live with socially realist principles and stand with a humane sense of equality in a society with no class distinctions and boundaries according to one’s freedom of choice and beliefs. These characters are presented with a gradual progress of development in their state of mind.
In this play, Arms and The Man, G. B. Shaw presents his characters in this field in a way that are presented from the beginning of the play until its end as creative social realists like Captain Bluntschli, who is present in the early beginning as a middle class character for his outside appearance, and Louka who is a maidservant of the Petkoffs. G.
B. Shaw presents the portrait of Bluntschli as survival of love and war. Bluntschli is seen many times throughout the play to be satirizing the old notions of romantic love and of the glorification of war as a melodramatic skill of Shaw himself. Bluntachli is always simple and realistic towards these two concepts. He deals with every matter in a cool and creative way of thinking, he is not a highest bidder as Sergius, but rather, simpler in spite of his wealth, he prefers to be called as the same chocolate cream soldier and so he wins the conflicts and struggles for his beliefs. On the other hand, Shaw presents Louka as another Shavian social realist character. Despite her belonging to a lower class as a servant, yet she is presented as the most creative social realist woman that lives with strong beliefs and self-confident in her dreams.
Shaw’s aim of presenting Louka as such is to convey, to a great extent, his feminist beliefs so as to show the voice of the new woman. Louka is like an evolutionist woman seeking for her place and identity and a deserved position in the society. She fights as a servant that doesn’t believe in the concept of class distinction and any sort of individual barriers to achieving a dream. She tries to get herself off the top of stage by making Sergius, who is the most idealistic, romantic and a rich aristocratic person, fall in love with her and then in the end asking her hand and his ” admiration for fixed principles traps him into marriage with Louka’ (Iqbal & Ali. 2013:233).
Louka the servant is now proposed by the rich and aristocratic Major SergiusSaranoff.
This is, indeed, Shaw’s intention to show the triumph of social realism over the Victorian idealism in class distinction and in marriage, and also to present the new voice and charisma of a new modern woman that is side by side with the man equally in all aspects. This notion of new modern woman is demonstrated in ChutaratBanthakit’s Feminism and Realism in George Bernard Shaw as in the following words:
Modern women turned their interest towards this new womanhood by pondering on rational dress, education, profession, social status, financial independence and personal fulfillment as men did. The topic of marriage and motherhood, traditionally regarded as woman’s nature and ultimate goal, came in for criticism by feminist thinkers”. (2011:3)
This new understanding and reality of new woman is extremely seen with Louka and her success.
3.4.2.2. Failure of Victorian Idealist
The failure of Victorian idealism in this play is seen by the idealist characters that are strict with some out-of-date and old fashioned ideas and principles. The failure of such characters is seen, to a great extent, in Raina, Sergius, Petkoff and Catherine’s character.
As presented in the early beginning of the play, Raina thinks about war with 57
glorification and about love in highly imaginative and idealistic perspective. Berst believes that the romantic notions of love with Raina and Serguis are ‘the one which meets restrictions even in its simplest contracts with life’ (1966:201). She is too much exaggerating while thinking towards life. Later on, after Bluntschli comes into her life, Raina becomes someone else and her way of thinking towards war and love gradually changes in a transitional progress in the state of mind and so she becomes more realistic than before. It is believed that after she meets Bluntschli ‘Raina’s vague romantic dreams about war, warriors, and heroism become more real’ (Hooti&Boldaji. 2013:959). That’s because she fails in treating with life in an idealistic way that’s why she becomes realistic.
Sergius as well as Raina is a very refined idealistic Victorian character, he is an aristocrat person. Sergius, as mentioned before, is sharing his higher love feelings in many occasions that are called by Raina as the ‘highest bidder’ (AM.75). Shaw’s portrait of Sergius is ironically presented for those who take life so seriously or Sergiusly, his personality is suggested by Muhammad Iqbal in these words:
Sergius perceives that his self and the principles of patriotism, love and chivalry that he was prepared to die for stand at opposite poles. So he slides to disillusionment, accept the banality of the world and starts taking life as a tale told by an idiot. (2013:232)
The case of Sergius is to a further meaning behind himself is pointed straightly direct to the Victorian idealistic false understanding within traditional convictions. However, Shaw’s intention about portraying the character of Sergius and Raina and their early idealistic convictions is declared by Hooti&Boldaji stating that Shaw ‘wants his audience to see through the realities of life as it is not as it would be in our vision and imagination'(2013:957).
Shaw through Catherine and Petkoff’s point of view towards class distinction, love and war again tries, ironically, to show the failure of idealistic convictions. This is considered to be pointed out when the two Petkoff accepting their servant Louka, after 58
being proposed by Sergius, as a new respected and one of their class members. It is also seen when the Catherine warmly agrees Bluntschli over Sergius to be her Daughter’s husband. In this case, their opinions and way of thinking toward old traditions about class and life, in a transitional progress, changes and becomes more modernized and realistic after the failure of old ones.
3.5. Shaw’s Language and The Use of Figurative Elements
In this subsection, the most important literary elements related to figures of speech taken from the play will be demonstrated and semantically analyzed. Semantic elements like symbols, motifs, metaphors, similes, irony, and imagery will be illustrated from some important speech by characters’ conversation conversations and from some figurative occasions within the play Arms and the Man.
The most important figure in the play can be the title of the play itself. The Arms and the Man is taken from the opening lines of John Dryden’s translation of Virgil’s epic The Aeneid. Dryden’s translates Virgil’s Armavirmaquecanoas ‘Arms and the man I sing’.
The Virgil’s poem does indeed sing of several battles, and of a hero, Aeneas, who led the defeated Trojans to Rome to found there a new nation. Shaw’s play, set in the early days of a new nation, Bulgaria, attempts to distinguish between true and false concepts of heroism, virtue, honor and national dignity. Shaw’s ‘Man’ is Bluntschli, as the last words of the play remind us. Bluntschli too shows the way forward to a new nation. But his morality and courage is very different from Aeneas’ and he is highly suspicious of idealism. For Shaw, ancient Roman concepts and standards, among others, have had their day, and Bluntschli is his modern Aeneas-the ‘Man’ of new age. Furthermore, Shaw’s choice of creating the ‘Chocolate Cream Soldier’ is perhaps one of the most significant symbols in the play which is used as a paradox. In the early beginning of the play, Raina calls Bluntschli as a chocolate cream soldier because he was carrying sweets in his pocket instead of carrying cartridge for battle. In the beginning, Raina uses that phrase as an insult on Bluntschli. She thinks that carrying sweets for battle is sort of unheroic act and not brave. Later on, Raina is shocked and amazed after she realizes 59
Bluntschli’s true personality and realistic notions towards love and war, not so highly imaginative and romantic heroism as Sergius. In the end, the ‘Chocolate Cream Soldier’
becomes a pet name used by Raina for Bluntschli. Another figurative symbol used in the play, is the Major Petkoff’s Coat. After Raina gives her father’s coat to Bluntschli, the coat becomes bigger from the back of shoulders. This makes Petkoff realize that his coat is given to another man by his wife and daughter without his knowledge, a man who is, as Shaw tries to convey, more a man than Petkoff both figuratively and literally.
Shaw’s use of electric bells and library in Petkoff’s house is used both ironically and hinting towards new pretentions for the modern family. The reader can get to a realization that the library is nothing more than a pretention of high class status for showing off by education and at the same time they don’t use even one book to read, all the books in the library are covered by dust. Catherine is happier by using the electronic bell for yelling the servants than just shouting at them like her husband does. In one opinion, this presents Show’s affirmation in this character in a transitional progress towards a modern family class, and it also shows the Victorian class’ pretentions as it is seen in Petkoff’s ignorance to the bell.
In other hand, Shaw’s ironic presentation of the highly imaginative pretensions of love and war are seen in Raina’s personality in the beginning of the play, before she is introduced to Bluntschli. This is seen with Sergius’ portrait in Raina’s room. When she knows of Sergius’ victory in charge, she reacts as if it is a piece of religious iconography, she tries to exalt the portrait, but throughout the scene of the play, it doesn’t show any ‘bodily affection’ for Sergius’ image but rather for the portrait (AM:5). This also makes Raina feel of her ‘ideas’ of romantic love. This can be illustrated allegorically that Shaw is presenting Raina act with the use of simile ‘like a priestess’ towards Sergius’ portrait.
In the scenes when Raina asks Bluntschli is he knows her beloved Sergius, Bluntschli uses many similes to compare Sergius to some other names for comical and ironic purposes. He describes Sergius as an ‘operatic tenor’ and contradictory looks of his appearance and of his real and practical personality. Some other times, he refers Sergius 60
as ‘Don Quixote’ (AM: 14). Just like his Sergius is always showing off that he is a heroic man and when it comes to face reality, Sergius’ true personality is revealed to be shattered. Bluntschli reveals Sergius’ true personality by revealing that his success is all a result of dumb luck rather than a true soldier.
In another figurative name used for Bluntschli, Shaw tries to show his personal notions of social realism and anti-class distinction. This is seen when Sergius describes Bluntschli like a ‘commercial traveler’ (AM: 30).
In this chapter, a clear and effective demonstration on the first start of practical part has been illustrated. For this chapter, Shaw’s drama Arms and the Man have taken and so it has been studied and analyzed with the data methods. First, a short introduction to the present author’s biography, works and style of writing have been presented. Then, the concentration is presented to be keener to go further into the work and illustrate the transitional traits in the novel found within the events presented by the characters and within some figurative occasions. The transition that comes to change characters’
perspectives and state of mind from Victorian Idealism towards Social Realism and the rise of modernism is also presented within the mentioned data analysis. The traits and evidential examples that proof the rise of modern literature and modern thinking of life in general have been illustrated and presented.
CHAPTER FOUR
4.1. Biography of E. M. Forster
The author, Edward Morgan Forster was born on January/1/1879 in London from an upper middle class family (Bradshaw. 2007:1). His father was an architect who died two years later, after Forster’s birth and the younger Forster was grown up by his mother and aunt. That’s why the influence of women became an important preference for most of his great works of novels, which shed light on some characters in many of his novels.
Forster graduated from King’s College in Cambridge in 1901, and later on he found his career in writing. He traveled to Italy and Greece with his mother, and worked as a teacher in Germany in 1905. In the same year he published the first novel “Where Angels Fear to tread”. The Longest Journey 1907 and A Room with a View
1908(Bradshaw. 2007:1). Forster wrote the first part of A Room with a View while he was staying in Italy with his mother. The novel shows his great support for the liberal social behaviors about Edwardian age against some of old fashion Victorian age ideals.
He wrote this novel and some other ones in the Edwardian world, in which the traditions and modernity has been conflicting with each other’s notions (Poole. 2009:346) from his earlier works and even later, Forster was more famous of his lighter and more conversational in diction than the other English novelists. Not to ignore his significance, it is worth to mention that Forster has lived in the Late Victorian period, observing and practicing with the cultural issues, and published most of his famous novels in the Edwardian era. What makes Forster get such a great style was the effectiveness and advantages of his travels and, to a great extent, his good interaction with everyone around him that made him such a social analysis writer. His Howard’s End has been published in 1910 and then in 1924 A Passage to India has been published which is known as his most mature and the masterpiece of his works.
During the Edwardian Age, an optimistic ideal had come to existence to stand against Victorian old fashions and turned almost everything upside down for a new world of liberty as Barbera states more figuratively in her own words that “‘a great deal of Forster’s literary work illustrates, almost to the point of perfection, in late 19th and early 20th-century England -or, what has conventionally been referred to as ‘Victorian-Edwardian England’, the clash between two sensibilities, one ”Victorian”, the other ‘liberal'”(Barbera. 2002:2).
A general optimism come to prevail which manifested in the belief that man might be better through a more liberal education. Throughout his life, Forster emphasized on the importance of individuality and the good and on his belief in humanity’s potential towards self-improvement. Forster became one of active member of a movement of writers and thinkers known as the Bloomsbury Group which is a number of intellectuals defined as radical opposition to Victorian traditions(Bradshaw. 2007:9). The other famous members of the group were Virginia Woolf and John Maynard Keynes.
4.2. Style
The works of the novelist E. M. Forster are most famous in his unique style of writing in which his career has been developed as an author. His style of writing is mostly in the third person narration and novels go around a lot of dialogues to rely on developing the storyline, as Peter Hill states that “If the style makes itself apparent, then the presence of the author [Forster] comes closer to the fore, making the reader more aware of the subjective nature of the narrator’s judgments”(2008:72). There is also a unique way of choosing the setting of his novels for his artistic and cultural purpose as seen in A Passage to India and A Room with a View specifically.
The use of third person omniscient narration in Forster’s style of writing is useful for the reader in which, all the events can be easily understood that are going around the story of the novel, and it gives depth of a level for creating ideas. By reading novels in such an interesting style, the reader can be able to control over all characters’ personalities and their thoughts. This unique style of writing also helps the reader to analyze the events and judge the novel in an easier ways and even in more interesting ways. Critics assert that this style makes Forster’s writing kind of ambiguous for considering him either as a Victorian or modernist novelist, this perspective of studying author’s style is further described by Peter S. Hill’s words:
His [Forster] novels tended toward a more straightforward narrative style; Malcolm Bradbury describes Forster as ‘not, in the conventional sense, a modernist, but rather a central figure of the transition into modernism.’ Likewise, Forster described himself as belonging to the ‘fag-end of Victorian liberalism. (2008:6)
This kind of perspective takes the reader interestingly to follow up with Forster’s event actions in a way that it helps the reader to understand the actions and read their reaction in spite of too much events as they go on throughout the uprising, climax and downrising action.
Forster’s style of writing is laid on an overwhelming perspective in a way that it gives an intimation sense of emotional discourse of music, Mahmoud Salami has stated on this concern about Forster’s style in writing by declaring that “Forster is concerned with how music can vividly convey one’s own stories and experiences’ Forster has appropriately employed music as a narrative discourse because it quite literally functions as a site through which the inner feelings and intentions of characters are dramatically revealed”(2009:136). However, the reader has the ability to understand the well rounded events of the story as it goes on in Forster’s novels and still expecting characters sketch as the way they are narrated. Nevertheless, Forster’s uniqueness is lied on his perception on taking his reader’s attention more than only ahis desire just to reader and slide over the novel’s pages:
While acknowledging the high quality of plot and characterization, they see that the author is not simply aiming to make his readers turn the pages. He is inviting them to pause and reflect from time to time: to see in the events as they are described patterns which constantly recur in our world and to judge them by moral principles which are sensitive to the full implications of each particular situation. (Beer. 1962:3)
The uniqueness in his writing style is that Forster gives a chance to his reader, sometimes, to feel sympathizing to the characters. In this perspective, it can be said that the significance of Forster’s style is laid on the way he takes the readers’ impression and attention to his characters. By doing so, the reader can have the ability to have the imaginative and creative control of analyzing characters and figuring out the good and bad sides of the story, this is kind of refreshing to the reader for the reason that s/he becomes sort of creative critic on judging the novel. Forster does not give all clear images of the plot or of his characters but instead, he allows the reader to figure out and analyze the events by the open-ended story according to the characters reactions, thoughts and feelings. This notion of Forster’s artificial open-ending events is, perhaps, intentionally meant to make the reader involved in analyzing and interpreting the text. In this concern, Dalia Oppenheimer states that ‘Forster reminds us that it is the reader’s responsibility to respond the particular engagement with culture that the author offersand that this action is in and of itself a form of cultural transmission”(2011:243). This is seen, for example, in A Room with a View when Forster makes some contradictory events and actions with his character.
On the other side, there are some joyful backdrop settings that Forster intentionally creates to put his emotional imagination stylistically as the third narration style. There are some characters that are travelling to Italy for a new view in which they get more views about other views. The idea of “a view” is significant in A Room with a View in which the artist create some contradictory and impressive scene settings for the purpose of contrasting and tracing cultures. By doing so, Forster has artificially tried to show “how an author might try to transmit cultural artifacts culled from ancient to modern times”(Oppenheimer. 2011:244).
4.3. Transitional Traits in Forster’s A Room with A View
4.3.1. Forster’s Gaze on the ‘New Woman’
After the death of Queen Victoria (1901), English society has been gradually changing toward a modern life through the Edwardian period. “Before 1900 a critical transition in the standard of living had already been accomplished in Britain. The majority of the population was no longer struggling” (Thompson. 1992:191).