Shaw's Blakean Vision: A Dialectic Approach to Heartbreak House

SHAW'S BLAKEAN VISION: A DIALECTIC APPROACH TO HEARTBREAK HOUSE ARIADNE UTTERWORD, ONE OF CAPTAIN SHOTOVER'S DAUGHTERS, provides the thread out of the maze of interpretation that surrounds Heartbreak House with her statement that "there are only two classes in good society in England: the equestrian classes and the neurotic classes."! She is referring to the inmates of Horseback Hall, the compulsive obsessionals who act without desire or imagination and the schizoids of Heartbreak House who dream without will or action.2 In following the clue's complex windings through the labyrinth of these faculties of desire, imagination, will and action, I make use of the writings of William Blake, not so much to show the direct influence of the Romantic poet on Shaw as to suggest Shaw's connection with the whole mythopoetic content of English art.S Specifically, the dialectic quest of the play is for a synthesis of Heartbreak House and Horseback Hall, for a way of reconciling soul and body, contemplation and action. More generally, the dialectic moves from this play, through other major plays, to the world that Shaw's drama continues to reflect. In this second sense, the dialectic tends towards a synthesis of what must, I fear, be described somewhat forbiddingly as the mythopoetic and archetypal aspects of the play. Written between Man and Superman (1901-1903) and Back to Methuselah (1921), Heartbreak House (1913-1916) echoes the one and anticipates the other. In Man and Superman) Don Juan describes the truly successful man as "he who seeks in contemplation to discover the inner will of the world, in invention to discover the means of fulfilling that will, and in action to do that will by the so dis- ! Heartbreak House in Complete Plays, I (New York, 1963), 579. Further references to the play will be made parenthetically in the text. 2 I use the term "schizoid" here as Rollo May does to mean "out of touch; avoiding close relationships; the inability to feel." Love and Will (New York, 1969), p. 16. I cite Rollo May frequently in this article. His insights seem relevant and their applications to Heartbreak House underscores the play's contemporary significance. 3 I am indebted to Mrs. Barbara Newsom and her mentor, Professor David Erdman. Mrs. Newsom delivered a lecture on "Tracing the Origin of Heartbreak House: William Blake's Influence on Shaw" at the September 27, 1969, meeting of the New York Shavians. Though our approaches toward Shaw and Blake are quite different, we are in agreement on the need for relating Shaw to mythopoetic trends in English literature. 89 90 MODERN DRAMA May covered means."4 In Back to Methuselah, the Serpent reaffirms that insight on an archetypal level: "Imagination is the beginning of .creation. You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine, and at last you create what you will."5 In Heartbreak House., Shaw uses characters who are both individually idiosyncratic and racially archetypal in his attempt to present, diagnose and suggest remedies for what he judged was the major disease of his time: aimlessness. It is the same disease, the same neurosis, that troubles our time, whether called apathy, ennui or a sense of absurdity, and to the extent that the play grapples with that issue and seeks a workable synthesis of individually blocked or purposeless forces, it is perennially contemporary . Negatively, the play deals with the tragic in our day, the complete confusion, banality, ambiguity and vacuousness of ethical standards , and the consequent inability to wish, imagine, will, or create. Positively, the play deals with our search for identity, our attempt through contemplation to discover our real desires and activate our imagination, through will and invention to give direction to those dreams, through action and creation to realize those desires and directions. I approach the archetypal aspect of Shaw's play through William Blake's four archetypes which represent for Blake the various capacities of man. In brief, they are the fragmented, compartmentalized faculties of a God that once was and can be again, if desire, imagination , will, and action can be reconciled. Shaw undoubtedly would point out that "an allegory is never quite consistent except when it is...