A Contemporary Shavian Manifesto
A Contemporary Shavian Manifesto presents an appraisal of George Bernard Shaw’s position on women in his plays. The dramatist’s unconventional approach itself is praiseworthy as he creates unwomanly women who are deviant and create their own space outside social conventions and practices. In creating a counterpoint to the norm, Shaw succeeds in creating the image of a “new woman” who is no longer “the angel of the house”.
The book explores the ways in which Shaw addresses gender inequality in society through an examination of women’s role in the social, religious, moral and economic spheres. In addition to studying Shaw’s exploration of the radical woman, this book traces his attempts to project a “new woman” who is the pursuer rather than being pursued. The playwright questions the relegation of woman to the domestic space, the arbitrary distribution of duties between men and women and patriarchally-determined codes of conduct imposed upon woman. His foregrounding of women as the force behind what he calls “Creative Evolution” achieves a kind of feminisation of the “life force”, the central theme in his plays.
Azeez Jasim Mohammed is Assistant Professor of English at Jerash University, Jordan. He studied at the Universities of Baghdad and Pune, and received his DPhil from Banaras Hindu University, India. He previously served as Head of the English Department at the Teachers’ Training Institute, Baghdad, and works as the editor of NUANCES; A Journal of Humanistic Enquiry. His main areas of research are British literature and culture during the Victorian period; modernity and post-modernity; contemporary literature and film; literary and cultural theory; gender studies; literature and science; and psychoanalysis and literature. His publications include “Saving Souls or Saving Money: A Bargain of Conversion in G. B. Shaw’s Major Barbara” (2012), “G. B. Shaw’s Pygmalion: A Test of Two Traits of the Dark Triad” (2013), “Who Philanders in G. B. Shaw’s The Philanderer?” (2013), “Literature, Science and Society Mingled with Feminism in G. B. Shaw’s Man and Superman” (2013), “Zombies and ‘World War Z’: Between Apocalyptic View and Reality” (2015), and “Adaptation of Shakespeare’s Plays into Films: The Dark Side” (2016).
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