Man and Superman, George Bernard Shaw [hardest books to read txt] 📗

and weep when we die; but the tears are not for us, but for a father wasted, a son’s breeding thrown away. They accuse us of treating them as a mere means to our pleasure; but how can so feeble and transient a folly as a man’s selfish pleasure enslave a woman as the whole purpose of Nature embodied in a woman can enslave a man? Octavius What matter, if the slavery makes us happy? Tanner No matter at all if you have no purpose of your own, and are, like most men, a mere breadwinner. But you, Tavy, are an artist: that is, you have a purpose as absorbing and as unscrupulous as a woman’s purpose. Octavius Not unscrupulous. Tanner Quite unscrupulous. The true artist will let his wife starve, his children go barefoot, his mother drudge for his living at seventy, sooner than work at anything but his art. To women he is half vivisector, half vampire. He gets into intimate relations with them to study them, to strip the mask of convention from them, to surprise their inmost secrets, knowing that they have the power to rouse his deepest creative energies, to rescue him from his cold reason, to make him see visions and dream dreams, to inspire him, as he calls it. He persuades women that they may do this for their own purpose whilst he really means them to do it for his. He steals the mother’s milk and blackens it to make printer’s ink to scoff at her and glorify ideal women with. He pretends to spare her the pangs of childbearing so that he may have for himself the tenderness and fostering that belong of right to her children. Since marriage began, the great artist has been known as a bad husband. But he is worse: he is a child-robber, a bloodsucker, a hypocrite and a cheat. Perish the race and wither a thousand women if only the sacrifice of them enable him to act Hamlet better, to paint a finer picture, to write a deeper poem, a greater play, a profounder philosophy! 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. In the rage of that creation he is as ruthless as the woman, as dangerous to her as she to him, and as horribly fascinating. Of all human struggles there is none so treacherous and remorseless as the struggle between the artist man and the mother woman. Which shall use up the other? that is the issue between them. And it is all the deadlier because, in your romanticist cant, they love one another. Octavius Even if it were so⁠—and I don’t admit it for a moment⁠—it is out of the deadliest struggles that we get the noblest characters. Tanner Remember that the next time you meet a grizzly bear or a Bengal tiger, Tavy. Octavius I meant where there is love, Jack. Tanner Oh, the tiger will love you. There is no love sincerer than the love of food. I think Ann loves you that way: she patted your cheek as if it were a nicely underdone chop. Octavius You know, Jack, I should have to run away from you if I did not make it a fixed rule not to mind anything you say. You come out with perfectly revolting things sometimes. Ramsden returns, followed by Ann. They come in quickly, with their former leisurely air of decorous grief changed to one of genuine concern, and, on Ramsden’s part, of worry. He comes between the two men, intending to address Octavius, but pulls himself up abruptly as he sees Tanner. Ramsden I hardly expected to find you still here, Mr. Tanner. Tanner Am I in the way? Good morning, fellow guardian. He goes towards the door. Ann Stop, Jack. Granny: he must know, sooner or later. Ramsden Octavius: I have a very serious piece of news for you. It is of the most private and delicate nature⁠—of the most painful nature too, I am sorry to say. Do you wish Mr. Tanner to be present whilst I explain? Octavius Turning pale. I have no secrets from Jack. Ramsden Before you decide that finally, let me say that the news concerns your sister, and that it is terrible news. Octavius Violet! What has happened? Is she⁠—dead? Ramsden I am not sure that it is not even worse than that. Octavius Is she badly hurt? Has there been an accident? Ramsden No: nothing of that sort. Tanner Ann: will you have the common humanity to tell us what the matter is? Ann Half whispering. I can’t. Violet has done something dreadful. We shall have to get her away somewhere. She flutters to the writing table and sits in Ramsden’s chair, leaving the three men to fight it out between them. Octavius Enlightened. Is that what you meant, Mr. Ramsden? Ramsden Yes. Octavius sinks upon a chair, crushed. I am afraid there is no doubt that Violet did not really go to Eastbourne three weeks ago when we thought she was with the Parry Whitefields. And she called on a strange doctor yesterday with a wedding ring on her finger. Mrs. Parry Whitefield met her there by chance; and so the whole thing came out. Octavius Rising with his fists clenched. Who is the scoundrel? Ann She won’t tell us. Octavius Collapsing upon his chair again. What a frightful thing! Tanner With angry sarcasm. Dreadful. Appalling. Worse than death, as Ramsden says. He comes to Octavius. What would you not give, Tavy, to turn it into a railway accident, with all her bones broken or something equally respectable and deserving of sympathy? Octavius Don’t be brutal, Jack. Tanner Brutal! Good Heavens, man, what are you crying for? Here is a woman whom we all supposed to be making bad water color sketches, practising Grieg and Brahms, gadding about to concerts and