The Rhetoric of Candida

"THE RHETORIC OF CANDIDA OF ALL THE PLAYS in the Shavian canon Candida is certainly one of the more provocative, in the sense that it has roused more outraged contempt, more thoughtless praise, than any other Shaw piece. Yet it remaiJis a considerable puzzle, even'to critics sympathetic to Shavian ideology and esthetic. That the play has withstood criticism of varying tone and quality attests to its vitality; ,that it has lured the competent and the incompetent into exegetical adventures underscores its perennial attractiveness. Nevertheless, the fact that the Candida controversy is by no means over argues the possibility that somewhere there exists a key for its interpretation, as yet unfound. Whether such a key exists at all is perhaps·dubious, but my own impression is that if there be one, it lies'within the rhetoric.of the play, and that by attending closely to the rhetorical twists and turns of the dialogue and stage directions, we can cOme as near to the secret of the playas we can ever come to the secret of any piece of verbal'art. Not that I promise any minute analysis of Shaw's diction, syntax or grammar, any catalog~g of tropes and schemes. "The Prose Style of Bernard Shaw" has, yet to be written and will add substantially to ' our knowledge'of Shaw, once 'it is undertaken successfully. But repeated readings of the play have convinced me that it is a neatly wrought verbal fabric, highly integrated throughout, and,that to neglect the verbal patterning is to pass by an essential clue to the play's meaning . Such neglect is in part responsible for the Candida controversy, which began in excessive attention to subjective character analysis and threatens to remain there unless another critical approach is attempted. A resume of the various interpretations via characterization may not be uncalled for, then, if only to define the problem that rhetorical analysis can perhaps resolve. For in all fairness it must be admitted that sharp attention to rhetoric leads back inevitably to characterization . I should say that previous interpretations fall into three general categories: those broached by Candida haters; those broached by Candida lovers; and those broached by a more cautious set of critics who seek impartial judgment by balancing critical acuity against historical knowledge. But in every case the assumption seems to be that Candida is the play, in spite of the statistical fact that she appears less frequently in the first two acts and says less than either Morell or Marchbanks. Characteristically Beatrice Webb leads the troupe of Candida haters 71 72 MODERN DRAMA September with her school-mannish dictum that Candida is nothing but "a sentimental prostitute;"1 and no doubt she is to someone like Mrs. Webb who preferred statistics to sentiment and seems frequently to have consoled herself for living in a sentimental world by laying down the law to sentimentalists. Fortunately, Mrs. Webb's name-calling can be dismissed as understandable intemperance. It is less easy to ignore the "heresy," as he calls it himself, of Edmund Fuller, who maintains that "Candida herself becomes no more than an idle and vain woman with nothing better to do than embarass a busy husband by cradlesnatching ."2 But if it pays to be skeptical with respect to Candida haters, common sense suggests equal skepticism with respect to Candida lovers. G. K. Chesterton long ago set the tone for this group in his brilliantly antithetical comments upon the presence in Candida of the "reality of the nonnal wife's attitude toward the normal husband, an attitude which is not romantic but which is yet quite quixotic; which is insanely unselfish and yet quite cynically clearsighted . It involves human sacrifice without in the least involving idolatry."8 Undoubtedly there is sound sense in these observations, as there is in much of the criticism of Candida lovers. Yet the chilling light of reflection promotes the suspicion that Chesterton is leading us back willy-nilly to Beatrice Webb's brutal aspersion and that with the addition of anqther antithesis he would have us almost there. But we should be equally on our guard against a third kind of critic who tempts us to accept...