“Mad On
The Presentation of Higher
Consciousness in Misalliance
By Tony Stafford
In
many of Shaw’s plays, we see one character who struggles to defy society’s
conventions, get in touch with his/her true nature, and raise him/herself above the ordinary, conventional level. In Misalliance, Shaw presents two
characters, John Tarleton and Lina
Szczepanowska, who are fighting to gain a higher
consciousness, and he uses the garden and book motifs to reveal these characters
to us.
A
garden is present for the entire play, but we view it through an enormous glass
pavilion, as though the garden were part of the interior decor. Shaw notes that
the glass pavilion is “a spacious half
hemisphere of glass which forms a pavilion commanding the garden, and, beyond
it, a barren but lovely landscape of
hill profile with fir trees, commons of bracken and gorse, and wonderful
cloud pictures.” Shaw writes that the glass pavilion “springs from a bridgelike arch in the wall of
the house” and that “at intervals
round the pavilion are marble pillars with specimens of Vienese
pottery on them.” In other words, the garden is framed by the marble
pillars and the glass pavilion, emphasizing the garden picture and focusing the
audience’s attention on it. It is also through this glass wall, and by
extension through the garden, that the “aeroplane”
crashes, and Lina breaks through the glass wall of
conventional British society, thereby bringing liberation to the image of women
in the early twentieth century: “I am a free woman [. . .] I am strong: I am
skilful: I am brave: I am independent: I am unbought.”
Her arrival through the glass-framed garden suggests her derivation, not from
society, but from nature, and the natural universe. Moreover, the whole play
moves toward the climactic moment in the garden where the play comes to a point
and truths revealed.
While
the setting has no actual library or bookshelves in it, books define John Tarleton’s very being, for he is “mad about reading.” Tarleton has become a highly successful underwear
manufacturer, but his heart is in books and ideas: “The circumstances that
condemned me to keep a shop are the biggest tragedy in modern life. I ought to
have been a writer. I’m essentially a man of ideas.” Tarleton
constantly commands people to read and quotes from various authors. His thinking has been molded by the books he
has read; he is an unconventional man with recognizable Shavian-like ideas,
ideas about old age and death, parenthood, anti-romanticism, democracy,
anti-materialism, capitalism, business, spiritual qualities, transcendence,
and, ultimately, the superman. He says that “the superman’s an idea. I believe
in ideas. Read Whatshisname (Shaw’s self-referential
note), and when he says that “the superman may come,” it seems that the
superman may have already arrived in the form of John Tarleton
himself, with the aid of the books he has read.