Shaw's Settings: Gardens and Libraries

1. Widowers’ Houses: “Life Here Is a Perfect Idyll”

1 Widowers’ Houses “Life Here Is a Perfect Idyll” Even though Widowers’ Houses is Shaw’s first play, it has an artistic completeness of conceptionand asurprisingsophisticationinstyle,technique, and content. Some critics, ignoring the artistic issue, have chosen to focus on the satiric and propagandistic elements in the play, labeling it Shaw’s “darkest and bleakest” comedy, noting that it is concerned more with “human depravity” rather than the traditional comedic subject of “human folly,”1 and calling it an “insistent piece of economic propaganda.”2 But others have argued for its artistic qualities, qualities, as McDowell says, that “compensate for the flaws that its detractors . . . have overemphasized .”3 McDowell continues by pointing out that for a beginning playwright , Shaw exhibits an expertise in “directness of approach, subtlety of implication, mastery of the tensely drawn scene, and remarkable terseness and economy of line.”4 Indeed, Shaw himself insisted that Widowers’ Houses is not a “pamphlet in dialogue” but a “work of art as much as any comedy by Moliere.”5 Shaw was justifiably proud of its artistic worth and was cognizant of the fullness of its conception, of its “viability in the theater ,” and the “subtlety and the range of implication present in it.”6 This is not to say that the propagandistic element does not make a strong presence in Shaw’s play, as it does in all of his plays, and the play is indeed a virulent attack on greed, exploitation, tainted money, hypocrisy, and the class system. But the artistry, while not perfect, also deserves recognition. By examining Shaw’s use of the garden and the library in Widowers’ Houses in meticulous detail, one gains an appreciation of the complexity, subtlety, and mastery that Shaw therein reveals, as well as an insight into the play’s deeper textual implications. •· 9 · 10 · Shaw’s Settings Aswithanyviablepieceofdramaticliterature,criticshavenotedanumber of different themes in Widowers’ Houses. Some have focused on Shaw’s attack on society, on the exploitation of the poor, on slum-landlordism, on greed, and on indifference toward the destitute. Charles Carpenter, for example , notes that the “broad target is the prevalent assumption that capitalism is the best of all possible economic systems,” that “poverty and its consequences are inevitable,”7 and that “the slum mortgagee and landlord are ‘powerless to alter the state of society.’”8 As Marker puts it, “its theme is ruthless exploitation of the destitute and homeless by the mercantile and the upper classes alike,” and its intent is “to implicate every member of the audience in that social crime.”9 Carpenter adds that Shaw “puts the blame squarely on society as a whole.”10 But,ontheleveloftheindividualcharacters,Shawinculcatesanentirely different theme. While the statements that the play makes about society in general, as noted by the critics, are true, a far more stinging indictment arises from the fact that these evils exist because they are supported by a system of hypocrisy and pretense as practiced by those who are trying to gainrespectandacceptanceintoaclassthattheyyearntobeapartof.Thus Shaw uses the settings of gardens and libraries as a means to develop and dramatize in a subtle and powerful way a major theme involving hypocrisy and pretense. Although the garden and library are merely stage settings, much of Shaw’s intent is contained in his stage directions, and his descriptions support and eventually merge with the action and characters. It has long been recognized that Shaw’s stage directions contain vital insights, and that, as noted in the introduction to this study, his “stage directions are more revelatory than the characters’ speeches.”11 Even as a beginner, Shaw exhibits his determination “from the outset to direct his plays on paper, down to the smallest movement or inflection.”12 In a study of the influence of Shaw’s stage directions on a playwright such as Oscar Wilde, Morrison points out that Shaw “continued to develop stage directions into a combination of psychological analysis, political documentary, and philosophical discourse, shaping flesh and blood characters and their whole moral universe, with a vigour and artistry unmatched by any other playwright .”13 The same may be said of his physical descriptions as well.14 A major working assumption of the present study is that nothing in Shaw is unimportant, and everything down to the smallest detail has significance, such as his use of gardens and libraries, a study of which is rewarded with Widowers’ Houses: “Life Here Is a Perfect Idyll” · 11 an understanding of...