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

seized me and threw me into her arms as a sailor throws a scrap of fish into the mouth of a seabird. The Statue You might as well have gone without thinking such a lot about it, Juan. You are like all the clever men: you have more brains than is good for you. The Devil And were you not the happier for the experience, Señor Don Juan? Don Juan The happier, no: the wiser, yes. That moment introduced me for the first time to myself, and, through myself, to the world. I saw then how useless it is to attempt to impose conditions on the irresistible force of life; to preach prudence, careful selection, virtue, honor, chastity⁠— Ana Don Juan: a word against chastity is an insult to me. Don Juan I say nothing against your chastity, Señora, since it took the form of a husband and twelve children. What more could you have done had you been the most abandoned of women? Ana I could have had twelve husbands and no children that’s what I could have done, Juan. And let me tell you that that would have made all the difference to the Earth which I replenished. The Statue Bravo Ana! Juan: you are floored, quelled, annihilated. Don Juan No; for though that difference is the true essential difference⁠—Doña Ana has, I admit, gone straight to the real point⁠—yet it is not a difference of love or chastity, or even constancy; for twelve children by twelve different husbands would have replenished the Earth perhaps more effectively. Suppose my friend Ottavio had died when you were thirty, you would never have remained a widow: you were too beautiful. Suppose the successor of Ottavio had died when you were forty, you would still have been irresistible; and a woman who marries twice marries three times if she becomes free to do so. Twelve lawful children borne by one highly respectable lady to three different fathers is not impossible nor condemned by public opinion. That such a lady may be more law abiding than the poor girl whom we used to spurn into the gutter for bearing one unlawful infant is no doubt true; but dare you say she is less self-indulgent? Ana She is less virtuous: that is enough for me. Don Juan In that case, what is virtue but the Trade Unionism of the married? Let us face the facts, dear Ana. The life force respects marriage only because marriage is a contrivance of its own to secure the greatest number of children and the closest care of them. For honor, chastity and all the rest of your moral figments it cares not a rap. Marriage is the most licentious of human institutions⁠— Ana Juan! The Statue Protesting. Really!⁠— Don Juan Determinedly. I say the most licentious of human institutions: that is the secret of its popularity. And a woman seeking a husband is the most unscrupulous of all the beasts of prey. The confusion of marriage with morality has done more to destroy the conscience of the human race than any other single error. Come, Ana! Do not look shocked: you know better than any of us that marriage is a mantrap baited with simulated accomplishments and delusive idealizations. When your sainted mother, by dint of scoldings and punishments, forced you to learn how to play half a dozen pieces on the spinet which she hated as much as you did⁠—had she any other purpose than to delude your suitors into the belief that your husband would have in his home an angel who would fill it with melody, or at least play him to sleep after dinner? You married my friend Ottavio: well, did you ever open the spinet from the hour when the Church united him to you? Ana You are a fool, Juan. A young married woman has something else to do than sit at the spinet without any support for her back; so she gets out of the habit of playing. Don Juan Not if she loves music. No: believe me, she only throws away the bait when the bird is in the net. Ana Bitterly. And men, I suppose, never throw off the mask when their bird is in the net. The husband never becomes negligent, selfish, brutal⁠—oh never! Don Juan What do these recriminations prove, Ana? Only that the hero is as gross an imposture as the heroine. Ana It is all nonsense: most marriages are perfectly comfortable. Don Juan “Perfectly” is a strong expression, Ana. What you mean is that sensible people make the best of one another. Send me to the galleys and chain me to the felon whose number happens to be next before mine; and I must accept the inevitable and make the best of the companionship. Many such companionships, they tell me, are touchingly affectionate; and most are at least tolerably friendly. But that does not make a chain a desirable ornament nor the galleys an abode of bliss. Those who talk most about the blessings of marriage and the constancy of its vows are the very people who declare that if the chain were broken and the prisoners left free to choose, the whole social fabric would fly asunder. You cannot have the argument both ways. If the prisoner is happy, why lock him in? If he is not, why pretend that he is? Ana At all events, let me take an old woman’s privilege again, and tell you flatly that marriage peoples the world and debauchery does not. Don Juan How if a time comes when this shall cease to be true? Do you not know that where there is a will there is a way⁠—that whatever Man really wishes to do he will finally discover a means of doing? Well, you have done your best, you virtuous ladies, and others of your way of thinking, to bend Man’s mind wholly towards honorable love as the highest good, and to understand by honorable love romance and beauty and happiness in the possession of beautiful, refined, delicate, affectionate women. You have taught women