Review - Man and Superman, by Bernard Shaw

George Bernard Shaw

Man and Superman chronicles what the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche might be like if someone followed them nearly to the letter, as represented fictionally by Jack Tanner. And yes, he's the kind of uncompromising asshole whose exploits you hate to enjoy, since he's following the kind of ideological examples set forth by Nietzsche. Horrified at the knowledge that his former beau, Ann, intends to marry him, and thus compromise his male pride and means of attaining true self-realization through independence, Jack flees the country in search of matrimonial freedom. Ann jets off in hot pursuit, undaunted by the setback, to reel in the one fish she can't catch.

Man and Superman is ripe with archetypal personas that you might recognize from real-life, perhaps even within your own close-knit circle of friends. You have the self-made man following tradition and remaining true to ideals of manhood and virtue, Roebuck Ramsden. You have the hopeless romantic, Octavius, sheepishly fawning over the beautiful Ann Whitefield -- intending nothing more than to idolize and worship her as a muse and the end to which his life was built. You have the beauty herself, Ann Whitefield, presupposing womanly virtue without acknowledging that she's using the poor man (read: men) who fawn over her for attention and self-confidence, meanwhile pretending she doesn't need the man who doesn't need her in return: Jack Tanner -- though secretly in love with him for that very fact.

Ultimately, Shaw must've read the philosophies of Friedrich Nietzsche and been very taken with them -- whether agreeably so, or simply as a matter of fascination. We'll never know for sure, although given Shaw's preponderance for thematically exposing old-school starch-of-character and the foolishness of asceticism, it's probably a safe bet that he was clearly in favor. Either way, Man and Superman stands a fictional testament to the kind of fellow one might become if following something akin to that particular ideology. And so Jack Tanner represents the man aspiring to be the superman, while others like Ramsden and Octavius represent the normal dime-a-dozen men you might meet otherwise. This is not to say that I or anyone should prefer the character of Tanner over the others, or that I am placing sleights against their personality types -- though Shaw is oft to portray their shortcomings over those of Tanner.

We've all seen the Octavius type -- idolizing women and glorifying every possible aspect of their being, showing them unrequited love if only to see that love returned. Literally giving himself as an offering and simply waiting to be accepted so whole-heartedly in return, only to become forelorn at a level of reciprocation not even close to that elicited.

"Whether Ann is good-looking or not depends upon your taste; also and perhaps chiefly on your age and sex. To Octavius she is an enchantingly beautiful woman, in whose presence the world becomes transfigured, and the puny limits of individual consciousness are suddenly made infinite by a mystic memory of the whole life of the race to its beginnings in the east, or even back to the paradise from which it fell. She is to him the reality of romance, the inner good sense of nonsense, the unveiling of his eyes, the freeing of his soul, the abolition of time, place, and circumstance, the etherealization of his blood into rapturous rivers of the very water of life itself, the revelation of all the mysteries and the sanctification of all the dogmas."

Meanwhile, Shaw takes the high road in giving us an equally ostentatious view from that of the incorrigible and uncompromising Tanner.

"As he comes along the drive from the house with Mrs Whitefield he is sedulously making himself agreeable and entertaining, and thereby placing on her slender wit a burden it is unable to bear. An Englishman would let her alone, accepting boredom and indifference of their common lot; and the poor lady wants to be either let alone or let prattle about the things that interest her.”

Ye olde performance of Man and Superman

It's often tragic in two regards; that someone like Octavius could potentially lack knowledge about women before idolizing them, or that someone like Tanner may have far too much. Although while he may have quite a bit about women figured out, Tanner's views are often completely skewed with a naturalist tinge - to the point of presupposing an evolutionary purpose behind even the tiniest details. He views the fact that humans are simply animals driven by naturalistic needs as self-evident.

Tanner: Yes: she breaks everybody's back with the stroke of her paw; but the question is, which of us will she eat? My own opinion is that she means to eat you.

Octavius: It's horrible for you to talk like that about her when she is upstairs crying for her father. But I do so want her to eat me that I can bear your brutalities because they give me hope.

Tanner: Tavy: that's the devilish side of a woman's fascination: she makes you will your own destruction.

Octavius: But it's not destruction: it's fulfilment.

Tanner: Yes, of her purpose; and that purpose is neither her happiness nor yours, but Nature's.

A man of his word, Tanner exhibits his true existentialist's flair for remaining true to his ideals; genuine from scene to scene. He is often completely straight with Ann about his views concerning nature, concerning man -- and especially concerning the plight of women.

Tanner: Even then you had acquired by instinct that damnable woman's trick of heaping obligations on a man, of placing yourself so entirely and helplessly at his mercy that at last he dare not take a step without running to you for leave ... That is what all women do. If we try to go where you do not want us to go there is no law to prevent us; but when we take the first step your breasts are under our foot as it descends: your bodies are under our wheels as we start. No woman shall ever enslave me in that way.

Ann's responses are usually at least someone askew, given that Shaw probably had no idea how a woman would actually react to such a line. As a result, women don't necessarily get the fair coverage in this eternal battle that they truly deserve. Shaw himself had probably never uttered much close to that sort of dialogue with women in his life, although it's clear he was quite curious how it would work out. Ann often responds in such a way as to leave her own feelings quite behind -- although whether this is intentional, as to play the feminine card from one situation to the next, or unintentional, as a literary cop-out from Shaw, we can't know for sure. But the play is, after all, Man and Superman -- thus it tends to cater mostly to the male psyche.

While Tanner's view of life is eclipsed by evolutionary naturalism - to a fault - he often has no notice of the obvious shortcomings in his ideology.

Tanner: Be just a little patient with me. I am not discussing literature: the book about the bee is natural history. It's an awful lesson to mankind. You think that you are Ann's suitor; that you are the pursuer and she the pursued; that it is your part to woo, to persuade, to prevail, to overcome. Fool: it is you who are the pursued, the marked down quarry, the destined prey. You need not sit looking longingly at the bait through the wires of the trap: the door is open, and will remain so until it shuts behind you forever.

Octavius: I wish I could believe that, vilely as you put it.

Tanner: Why, man, what other work has she in life but to get a husband? It is a woman's business to get married as soon as possible and a man's to keep unmarried as long as he can. You have your poems and your tragedies to work at: Ann has nothing.

Octavius: I cannot write without inspiration. And nobody can give me that except Ann.

Tanner: Well, hadn't you better get it from her at a safe distance? Petrarch didn't see half as much of Laura, nor Dante of Beatrice, as you see of Ann now; and yet they wrote first-hand poetry - at least so I'm told. They never exposed their idolatry to the test of domestic familiarity; and it lasted them to their graves. Marry Ann; and at the end of a week you'll find no more inspiration in her than in a plate of muffins.