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ELT 40 : 1 1997 Following naturally from the previous chapter where Born traces Forster 's interplay between individual and cultural transgression in domination politics in Howards End, the explication of Wells's novel is a brilliant rhetorical move. He traces the liberal guilt within each of these novels to conclude that there is, in these novels and in our world, an "awareness of radical evil, obsession with it, the bitter flavor of social relations gone awry." Rarely does a book of this type, whose agenda is complex and crossdisciplinary , have so much to recommend it. While his literary readings are a bit uneven, and his agenda seems a bit grandiose for a short book, his clear thinking and skillful writing do not fail to engage the reader. Born does not over-simplify (which certainly must be a temptation). He is cognizant of the theoretical paradigms within each canonical era, and provides insight on the tension within those whose personal responsibility is threatened by political reality. The Birth of Liberal Guilt in the English Novel thoughtfully plays out seeming disjunctives and theoretical problems. What Born says of others applies to his own writing: "in most of the novels considered here, self-reflection of a sober and serious kind proves to be one of liberalism's most valuable assets." Deborah Martinson ------------------------ Occidental College Shaw & Freudian Games Sally Peters. Bernard Shaw: The Ascent of Superman. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996. xvi + 328 pp. 27 black & white photographs $28.50 ABOUT THREE-QUARTERS of the way into Bernard Shaw: The Ascent of the Superman, we learn that the Shakespeare of Shaw's 1949 puppet play, Shakes Versus Shav, was a victim of "verbal emasculation." Sally Peters asks of the 93-year-old Irishman: "Is Shaw playing a little Freudian game here?" Perhaps he is; but so is Peters, and a rather a big Freudian game at 259 pages of text and 42 pages of notes. Although her short preface is ambiguous as to the book's central thesis, she assures us that "everything from existential phenomenology to popular culture" was used "to track down clues" along "tortuous paths studded with erotic secrets." Before too long we have gathered so many homoerotic pebbles along the Freudian path that, weighed down by "clues," we are almost forced to exclaim out of sheer exasperation (and with all manner of puns intended): "Ecce Homo!" 72 BOOK REVIEWS Yes, Bernard Shaw was gay, "fixed in a hypocritical pose that he despised." We discover that childhood (true to the Freudian game) had much to do with the construction of Shaw's homosexuality: a loveless mother (and her lover, who was possibly sexually interested in Shaw), a dipsomaniac father, and early years whose legacy was "feehngs of longing and betrayal." The result: "deprivation, hypocrisy, and rage." Hence our playwright, journalist, socialist, feminist, vegetarian and self-proclaimed philanderer was in reality, behind all those masks, a paranoid hypochondriac, a misogynist, a man whose "darkest feelings toward women" flickered "between masochism and sadism," and whose "inner journey traced a tortuous path through sexual anxiety and ambivalence." In short, Shaw was, as Peters puts it, "a secret invert." And with a loftiness of expression befitting these revelations, we read that he wove his resentments into "a private drama of punishment and purgation, atonement and flight," that he needed "to escape the sticky web of heredity and environment that held his own gender identification hostage," and that when Shaw had his first sexual experience at twentynine with Jenny Patterson, he feared "being swallowed by female flesh, fears he never resolved." Let the Freudian games begin. Everything and everyone, it seems, conspired to create a homoerotic Shaw. His pursuits, temperament, friends, clothes, even his physique are interpreted by Peters as feminized, feminine, effeminate, or womanly . Shaw the child "dressed in the feminine shift and white petticoats worn by young children of both sexes." Shaw the boy played the piano, "the necessary musical instrument for girls being readied for the marriage market, and he played with his miniature theater, just as girls played with dollhouses." Shaw the teenager preferred watercolors over contact sports, "the artistic and the traditionally feminine over the vulgar and the traditionally masculine." Shaw...

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