Love and "Vitality" in Candida

Love and "Vitality" in Candida WALTER LAZENBY • MOST CRITICS of Shaw's Candida have approached the play "as if it were a geometry problem whose basic axioms can be located in The Quintessence and other Shaviana."1 They have assumed that Shaw was here merely illustrating his three types (Philistine, Idealist, Realist) and that the play demands a simplistic stock response: automatic scorn for Idealists and Philistines, automatic approval for Realists - that is, after one has identified the characters who represent the types. Unfortunately, they have not been able to agree on whether Morell is Idealist or Philistine ; whether Marchbanks is Idealist or Realist; and, curiously, whether Candida herselfis a Realist or a Philistine!2 . ~ One who surveys critical opinions on the play will not find much detailed , cogent analysis of what actually happens in it. True, there has been considerable general discussion of how the play's action affects Marchbanks and Morell, resulting in agreement that both come to be enlightened . But several specific questions remain to be explored: what and how does Eugene learn about love, and what is Morell's state of mind at the end? More important, critics have neglected Candida's reactions to the play's events; in fact Eric Bentley's emphatic assertion that she is merely a link between the two men and alone remains "unchanged at the end"3 seems to have put an end to consideration ofher as a character capable ofgrowth. What does happen in her story? By attending to patterns in the plot, to hitherto neglected imagery (particularly visual aspects of the staging), and to the effects of dramatic irony, I hope to refine perceptions about the play and to answer these questions. I propose to show that each major character becomes more 2 WALTER LAZENBY ''vital'' (in Shaw's sense) in proportion as he learns more about the reality of love and that this pattern of vitalization, subsuming developments related to all three major characters, earns for each a measure of approval , of dramatic sympathy, which mere recognition of him as a Utype" would rule out. The result may be a reappraisal of the overall effect of the play. Candida's Emancipation At various times in the play Candida exhibits different aspects of her multi-faceted character; and it is extremely difficult, as is evident from faulty and contradictory critical statements about her, to frame valid generalizations about her character. Shaw's own overstated generalizations (applicable to only one aspect or another of her character) have tended to obfuscate rather than to clarify: he called her "the Virgin Mother and nobody else," said that she possessed "unerring wisdom on the domestic plane," and averred that she was a thoroughly immoral woman.4 Similarly Beatrice Webb's characterization of her as a "sentimental prostitute" focuses on only one scene in the play.5 In her earliest appearances she seems the efficient managing woman, in firm control of the household (though not always of the situation developing there); later she takes on the role ofconcerned wife and helpmeet to Morell , and nurse or mother to Marchbanks. In Act Three she combines sacred and profane love, and appears as a "heavenly" mother posing temporarily as a siren. Finally, her role culminates in a scene where she extends her motherliness not to her own biological children (in fact they never appear on the stage) but to her husband as well as her young guest. In studying a character who exhibits such multiplicity it might be easy to mistake gradual revelation of these facets of character for actual change; yet I shall maintain that she does indeed change. Though Candida begins by playing the role of subservient wife deferring to her husband's authority, she gives evidence of being an independent thinker in Act Two and finally takes courage, in the auction scene, to emancipate herselfcompletely from her pretense - in fact from the abstractions that can render a marriage lifeless. And the change results from her new perception ofself, husband, and marriage - a perception brought about by her involvement with and love for Marchbanks. Throughout Act One and well into Act Two, she manages and maneuvers her menfolk in efficient, business-like fashion...