Question: How does Shaw satirize Victorian modern relationships?
Introduction
G. B. Shaw is a genius Irish playwright who highlights the Victorian modern relationship by presenting the cynical conjugal life between Mr. Crampton and Mrs. Clandon. Their mentality is nothing the same. To put it differently, Mrs. Clandon is a feminist but her husband, Mr. Crampton’s mentality is unsmart. That is why their marriage life is judicially separated.
Victorian tendency
In the play, Shaw reveals the Victorian modern tendency of feminist. Victorian women want freedom and privacy from her husband. But in the play, Mr. Crampton is a different one. Because of the difference in taste and temperament, Mrs. Clandon separated herself and her children from her husband whom she considers a domestic tyrant. That is why she changes her family title and teaches her children her own ideas and morality.
More Notes: Modern Drama
Lack of mutual understanding
Shaw expresses in the play that conjugal life depends on mutual understanding but Lack of mutual understanding beings separation. In the play, we notice that lack of mutual understanding here happens judicial separation between Mr. Crampton and his wife, Mrs. Clandon, and children.
Practical experience of life
Mrs. Clandon thinks that she teaches her children her own ideas but she fails to teach them proper manners because her daughter, Gloria disobeys his talk and loves Valentine. When their father meets them, they treat him as a stranger. He speaks Gloria, he expects his children “Duty, affection, respect, obedience!” Then she replied:
“I obey nothing but my sense of what is right. I respect nothing that is not noble. That is my duty. …………………quite know what affection means.”
Conclusion
In termination, we can say that G.B. Shaw deeply satirizes marriage and family life through the mocking relationship between husband-wife and parents-children. So “You Never Can Tell” is the best paradigm of the satirical relationship of Victorian people.
