Paper: G B Shaw’s Androgynous Women: A Reading from Indian Perspective
Abstract
Some of the women characters in the
plays 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’ which carries echoes of the ‘Cosmic Force of Nature’ as found in
the Indian philosophical tradition. The paper explores some of the women
characters of Shaw in the light of the concept of androgyny.
Rajni Singh, Associate Professor of English at Indian School of Mines, Dhanbad, obtained her Ph.D. from Banaras Hindu University. Her areas
of interest include Contemporary Literary
Theory, Contemporary Indian English Fiction, Literature of Indian Diaspora,
Gender Studies, and Professional Communication. She has
published articles in Archiv Orientalni,
Asian Journal of Women’s Studies, Time Present, Folklore Fellows, Rupkatha and other journals, and authored two books
on T.S. Eliot and edited two books on Indian Writing in English.
