Man And Superman

“Yet even I cannot wholly conquer shame. We are ashamed of everything that is real about us; ashamed of ourselves, of our relatives, of our incomes, of our accents, of our opinions, of our experience, just as we are ashamed of our naked skins.” 

Much of Jack’s philosophy centers on the idea of ridding themselves of useless social conventions and decorum. But as he describes, the shame of failing to live up to social expectation is deeply ingrained. Therefore, Jack cannot fully live up to his potential as a “Superman.”

“All you mean by that is that you think I ought to be ashamed of talking about my virtues. You don’t mean that I haven’t got them: you know perfectly well that I am as sober and honest a citizen as yourself, as truthful personally, and much more truthful politically and morally.” 

Jack asserts that although Ramsden treats him as if he is immoral, Jack actually lives by a strict moral code. He simply refuses to be modest about his virtues or to stay silent for the purpose of decorum. In fact, Ramsden has been secretly seeing many different women, which suggests that perhaps Jack is even more morally upright.

“If you two men won’t carry them out I must say it is rather hard that you should put the responsibility on Ann. It seems to me that people are always putting things onto other people in this world.” 

Mrs. Whitefield has watched as Ramsden and Jack have argued about what to do about Ann’s guardianship, and criticizes their decision to allow Ann to make the choice. As her guardians, they are the authority, and it is their place to work it out. Unknowingly, she is also critiquing Jack’s tendency to blame women for holding men back. She is also voicing the idea that Jack will repeat later about the reliance of the elite on the working class.

“It is the self-sacrificing women that sacrifice others most recklessly. Because they are unselfish, they are kind in little things. Because they have a purpose which is not their own purpose, but that of the whole universe, a man is nothing to them but an instrument of that purpose.” 

Jack warns Octavius that although Ann may seem self-sacrificing, that makes her even more dangerous because she will use and sacrifice a man as easily as she does herself. In this case, Ann must, in the name of social propriety, get married and have children. She is willing to give herself to this cause, and therefore it is necessary to do whatever she can to trap a man into sacrifice as well.

“What matter, if the slavery makes us happy?” 

Octavius describes the hedonism that the Devil will echo in Act III. He doesn’t find it necessary to uphold some sort of ethical manhood or manly authority. If enslavement by the woman he loves makes him happy, that’s good enough, even if it means that he never fulfills a larger purpose in the world or loses the ability to create art.

“For mark you, Tavy, the artist’s work is to show us ourselves as we really are. Our minds are nothing but this knowledge of ourselves; and he who adds a jot to such knowledge creates new mind as surely as any woman creates new men.” 

Jack elevates the work of the artist as mirroring humans as we are, but also adding to our understanding of ourselves. Adding to the way we understand ourselves changes who we are. This creates new men. Jack compares this to procreation and the way women bring forth new men from birth. 

“I think men make more mistakes by being too clever than by being too good.” 

When Jack tells Ann that Octavius is too good for her, Ann replies that too much goodness is not nearly as much of a liability as too much cleverness. In being “too clever,” Jack rejects her and tries to avoid marriage and procreation. In his goodness, Octavius is malleable and will do anything that Ann asks. In order to marry Jack, Ann must break his strict moral ethics—his cleverness.

“Oh, if you could only see into Enry’s soul, the depth of his contempt for a gentleman, the arrogance of his pride in being an engineer, would appall you. He positively likes the car to break down because it brings out my gentlemanly helplessness and his workmanlike skill and resource.” 

Jack rhapsodizes about Henry’s worker’s soul as if Henry’s role in the working class consciously empowers him. But Henry counters this by explaining that his concerns are practical. He doesn’t hate the educated, and his work is not a revolution. But Jack, so caught up in the romance of the idea, does not listen.

“You’re only a poetic Socialist, Tavy: he’s a scientific one.” 

Jack is responding to Octavius’s assertion of “the dignity of labor.” For Henry, labor is real. It isn’t romantic or idealized. It is his only way of life and of survival. It is ironic that Jack calls Octavius a poetic socialist, when Jack is essentially the same. Jack is still a wealthy man who is utterly helpless if his vehicle breaks down.

“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.” 

Jack tends to minimize women as single-minded and only focused on marriage. In fact, as Violet in particular shows, marriage is only a means to increased social and economic power. A woman must marry while she is young and able to bear children, but once married, she has the freedom to exert social control by controlling her husband.

“All timid women are conventional: we must be conventional, Jack, or we are so cruelly, so vilely misunderstood.” 

Ann defends her mother, who has supposedly refused to allow Rhoda to ride alone in the car with Jack. But she speaks to the larger issue in which a woman who is not as outspoken as Ann or Violet must adhere to social convention and decorum. Otherwise, if she is not speaking out to fight those who would defame her, others will likely consider her improper and scandalous. 

“Well, we think in America that a woman’s moral number is higher than a man’s, and that the purer nature of a woman lifts a man right out of himself, and makes him better than he was.” 

While Jack asserts that women hold men back from progressing, Hector asserts that women have a higher sense of morality than men, and therefore marriage can only improve a man’s ethical morality. This valorizing of women, however, makes them responsible for their husband’s moral growth rather than expecting him to become an ethical man on his own. Thus, Violet must manage Hector’s financial affairs and his relationship with his father because Hector is incapable.

“Precisely the same qualities that make the educated gentleman an artist may make an uneducated manual laborer an able-bodied pauper.” 

In his description of the band of thieves, Shaw identifies the way that class discrepancies cause the same qualities to manifest differently in men of different classes. A man without the sensibility to become a laborer might become an artist if he has the means to education and can support himself. For this, he might receive praise. But people malign these same qualities in the poor, who have no choice but to labor or become beggars. 

“Sir: I will be frank with you. Brigandage is abnormal. Abnormal professions attract two classes: those who are not good enough for ordinary bourgeois life and those who are too good for it.” 

Mendoza explains that within the band of thieves, while most people presume that a thief is a lowlife criminal with no morals—someone who is not good enough for bourgeois life, some are also too good for adhering to the lot of their social class. Mendoza was a successful waiter. But he broke away from that life because living with a group of thieves gave him freedom from the trapped life of a cog in the capitalist machine.

“Not at all: you are a lady; and wherever ladies are is hell.” 

On the surface, Don Juan’s assertion seems to say that women are miserable company. But in this world, Hell is a pleasant place, not a torturous one. For both Don Juan and Jack, women represent temptation. Loving women leads to a life distracted from higher purpose.

“Have you ever had servants who were not devils?”

Once again, Don Juan plays off of this peculiar notion of Hell that is pleasant rather than torturous. The devil servants that Dona Ana speaks of are servants who, in life, had wants and needs that were superfluous to meeting Ana’s wants and needs. These manifest in obstinacy or reluctance. The devils who will serve in the afterlife are the opposite. There is no consequence to using them to fulfill your wants and needs.

“I can tell you that, my dear. It’s because heaven is the most angelically dull place in all creation: that’s why.” 

The Statue prefers pleasure to responsibility. Therefore, he is ready to move from Heaven to Hell. But while it seems as if the play is maligning Heaven in favor of Hell, it is framing Heaven as a place of self-sacrifice rather than a reward. It is a choice to rise above and become a Superman instead of remaining a man and wallowing in pleasure.

“An Englishman thinks he is moral when he is only uncomfortable.” 

The Devil is talking about social decorum, challenging the constructions of morality that serve no purpose other than to demonstrate restraint. The play argues that society should abolish these meaningless virtues. Not all sacrifice is useful.

“The earth is a nursery in which men and women play at being heroes and heroines, saints and sinners; but they are dragged down form their fool’s paradise by their bodies […].” 

Don Juan describes the needs of the body as the downfall of man. Because hunger, thirst, lust, and all other bodily needs lead men to compromise their ethics. The restrictions of the body also cause men to compromise themselves to procreate and to cheat aging. In Hell, the body has no needs and it does not age. Therefore, a person can live in pleasure without worrying about the body. 

“An epoch is but a swing of the pendulum: and each generation thinks the world is progressing because it is always moving.” 

The Devil explains that from the perspective of a human, small changes seem like they have altered the course of humanity. But from an ancient perspective, the world is always moving. A change in era is meaningless in the grand scheme of eternity. Therefore, fighting for change is also meaningless and one might as well enjoy Hell.

“I’ve noticed, madam, that every thousand dollars an Englishman gets seems to add one to the number of people he’s dependent upon.”

Hector Malone, Sr. is criticizing his son for allowing wealth to make him helpless. This echoes Jack’s sentiment that without Henry, he would be unable to operate or repair his vehicle. Ironically, Malone has raised his son to be helpless, and when Hector decides that he will change this about himself and work, Malone does everything in his power to stop this from happening. 

“What’s the use of having money if you have to work for it?” 

Violet describes the true purpose of hoarding wealth, which is to avoid working and to live off the labors of others. Money is about leisure and pleasure rather than earning one’s leisure through hard work. She undermines the way the men (who never work themselves) tend to romanticize work throughout the play. Work is not romantic, but a necessity for life. And money makes it unnecessary.

“There’s no such thing as a willing man when you really go for him.” 

Ann suggests that what Jack has asserted all along is true: Women control the courting process. They choose the men while giving men the illusion that they choose women. Shaw’s depiction of women as manipulative is cynical, but it also bestows women with social agency, even if they use that social agency in secret.