Shaw and Feminisms by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University Press of Florida
Published: 2016-09-14T16:00:00+00:00

Notes

1. The cultural and demographic changes throughout the nineteenth-century, and their relationship to the development of reading audiences, has been the subject of numerous works, such as J. A. Sutherland, Victorian Novelists and Publishers (London: U of London, Athlone P, 1976); N. N. Feltes, Modes of Production of Victorian Novels (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1986) and Literary Capital and the Late Victorian Novel (Madison: U of Wisconsin P, 1993); Gaye Tuchman, Edging Women Out: Victorian Novelists, Publishers, and Social Change (New Haven: Yale UP, 1989); and Kate Flint, “The Victorian Novel and Its Readers,” The Cambridge Companion to the Victorian Novel, ed. Deirdre David (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2001, 17–36). For readers wanting a brief overview of this complex topic, I especially recommend Flint’s “The Victorian Novel and Its Readers.”

2. To combat what he saw as gender discrimination, Allen adopted the pseudonym Olive Rayner Pratt to publish some of his “New Woman” novels.

3. The work was Yvette by Guy de Maupassant.

4. See Powell’s Women and Victorian Theatre (83–84, 141–43) for a brief introduction to Clotilde Graves and her career as a playwright.

5. According to notices of performance in the Australian newspapers, Achurch was still performing as late as 12 April 1890 (Argus) and was set to resume on 5 July 1890, although her opening was postponed until 12 July to accommodate an extended of the successful Brough/Bouciault production of School (Sydney). Even with this extra week, Achurch returned to the stage at most six weeks after childbirth.

6. Julia is one of the two main female characters in The Philanderer, both of whom are rivals for the affection of the philanderer, Leonard Charteris. Charteris uses the sexual emancipation of the “New Woman” entirely to his advantage, exploiting the naive Julia, who adopted a New Woman identity because it was fashionable, without understanding the full implications of it. When Julia expects their (possibly sexually intimate) relationship to lead to marriage, Charteris moves on to the other woman, asserting that their “advanced views” preclude any such obligation to Julia. Charteris ultimately connives Julia into a marriage with another man that she doesn’t want so that he can continue to “philander” with her without fear of any further claims by her. The play ends with Julia swooning in profound grief as she realizes how she has been trapped, while Charteris (a semi-autobiographical character) looks on laughing.

7. Sir George Crofts merely tells Vivie, “Your mother has a genius for managing such things…. Of course there are others besides ourselves in it: but we hold most of the capital; and your mother’s indispensable as managing director. Youve noticed, I dare say, that she travels a good deal” (Shaw, Plays Unpleasant, 263). A few lines later he emphasizes his “passive” role in the arrangement—“I take my interest on my capital like other people: I hope you dont think I dirty my own hands with the work” (264). But as Vivie is concerned only with the nature of the business, she doesn’t follow up on the implications of this highly inequitable division of labor.

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