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SHAW The Annual of Bernard Shaw Studies 22 (2001) 198-199



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On Fathers and Daughters


Lagretta Tallent Lenker. Fathers and Daughters in Shakespeare and Shaw. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2001.xii 1 204 pp.

Shaw's millennialist vision of a new world order devoted to the highest principles of equality and fairness is a crucial part of his appeal to many Shavians and one reason he is as relevant now as a century ago. That visionary iconoclasm was nurtured by his own peculiar sense of estrangement from the world, an alienation that marked him forever the self-professed sojourner. Investigation of the life reveals a convoluted psyche full of emotional and psychological ambivalences, and rife with conflicting desires and motives, including the obsessionally expressed life theme of reincarnating Shakespeare. Some of Shaw's ambivalences swirled around a whirlpool of personal gender issues and self-perceptions regarding his own sexual orientation. Nevertheless, intellectually Shaw was from first to last a staunch defender of women, for he identified himself with their plight and risky status. Yet despite his advocacy of women's issues—forward-looking even by today's standards—specialists in gender studies have not always given Shaw his due, sometimes misunderstanding him so completely that they cast him with conservative or reactionary playwrights of his time like Arthur Wing Pinero and Henry Arthur Jones.

In Fathers and Daughters in Shakespeare and Shaw, Lagretta Lenker discusses both playwrights' sensitivities regarding "the woman question" by looking at the father-daugher relationship, territory much more frequently researched in Shakespeare than Shaw. This relationship, Lenker contends, "goes right to the heart of the issue of the challenge to authority sounded by these playwrights in two very similar ages." Identifying herself as a new historicist, she asks the question basic to her methodology: Does art mirror life or does life mirror art? She answers yes to both questions for both playwrights.

However, for the new historicist this seeming reciprocity of life and art completely excludes the personal and autobiographical, as is also the case, for example, for the neo-Aristotelian. But in direct opposition to the neo-Aristotelian concentration on the text in isolation and as a universal work of art, the new historicist limits herself to social context and eschews the aesthetic. For Lenker, then, "the dramas of Shaw and Shakespeare are viewed as active participants in the social, cultural, and even political 'marketplaces,' not as idealized art that transcends the cultural milieu of its original context."

The value of this approach is to avoid the "anchronistic assumptions and beliefs" of the contemporary critic. Lenker insists that Shakespeare and Shaw must be viewed in the framework of their own times and specif- ically asserts that they should not be judged according to current feminist [End Page 198] standards. Emphasizing that both playwrights were sympathetic to the human cause, throughout her book Lenker carries on a running dialogue with those feminist critics she believes either mistinterpet Shaw or ignore his contributions.

Drawing on the findings of cultural and historical scholars, Lenker notes the "historical similitude" between the early modern and late Victorian period, including strong patriarchal systems, the family as an analogue for the state, and nascent feminist rebellions. The first quarter of her book details cultural context and reiterates the concept of art as a barometer of social change. The remainder of the book interweaves extended social commentary on an array of themes with discussions of the plays. Lenker identifies herself with "the more radical camp" of new historicists, those who depart from the fundamentalist view that literature can only be reactionary and support the status quo because authors are "produced" by their social context and nothing else. In so doing, Lenker joins a small liberal wing that endorses the idea that art, especially drama, was part of the struggle for new ideologies, thereby "precipitating the crises" that arose in the early modern period.

The father-daughter pairings she investigates in some nineteen Shaw plays through Saint Joan are not limited to the biological but also include spiritual and surrogate fathers—such as Captain Shotover to...

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