G. B. SHAW’S ANDROGYNOUS WOMEN: A Reading from Indian Perspective
Some of the women characters of George Bernard Shaw are a blend of heterogeneous elements, which finally culminate in androgyny. Shaw’s creative world is full of strong, self-complacent women, who take androgynous position instead of exchanging places with men. His heroines overturn customs and emph...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Dharmaram College
2016
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| In: |
Journal of Dharma
Year: 2016, Volume: 41, Issue: 1, Pages: 9-26 |
| Further subjects: | B
Shaw’s Women
B Life Force B Androgyny B George Bernard Shaw B Cosmic Force of Nature |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (kostenfrei) |
| Summary: | Some of the women characters of George Bernard Shaw are a blend of heterogeneous elements, which finally culminate in androgyny. Shaw’s creative world is full of strong, self-complacent women, who take androgynous position instead of exchanging places with men. His heroines overturn customs and emphatically demand for their status as human beings. It is interesting to note that Shaw departed from the Victorian standards of morality and presented woman as a manifestation of ‘Life Force’ (presented in plays such as, Candida, Back to Methuselah; and in "The New Theology", a sermon delivered in 1907 in London) which carries echoes of the ‘Cosmic Force of Nature’ as found in the Indian philosophical tradition. ‘Androgyny’ in Indian tradition is highly plural and conceptually complex. The ungendered ‘Brahman’, ‘PurushaPrakrti’, ‘Siva-Sakti’, and ‘Ardhanarisvara’ are different concepts from different ancient Indian scritpures that signify Wholeness, completion, Unity, androgyny. Shaw firmly believed in elimination of social, economic and political differences between sexes and strived for bringing about a state of social unity in which principles of distributive social justice are lived to the core by each and all members of the society. With this vision, he provided full spectrum of experiences and feelings to his women characters. The Shavian women come out of the confines of gendered boundaries and move toward plurality by taking androgynous position. The paper examines some of the women |
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| ISSN: | 0253-7222 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Journal of Dharma
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