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Chapter – 5

THE IMAGE OF A WOMAN IN CANDIDA

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Anais Nin once remarked: “I, with a deeper instinct, choose a

man who compels my strength, who makes enormous demands on

me, who does not doubt my courage, or my toughness, who does not

believe me naïve or innocent, who has the courage to treat me like a

woman.”94 Woman is an epitome of flesh and trade since the

emergence of human civilization. Woman is seen as a commodity and

an instrument to derive pleasure and satisfy the needs of man and a

natural trained domestic care-taker of complex responsibilities at

home and work. During Neolithic Era, woman was treated as an equal

to man. She gathered food like grains, nuts, roots and lentils and men

went for hunting, barely supporting women in the agricultural fields.

She made pottery and grinding the corn as some of the daily activities

apart from raising her children. In Bronze Age, woman was seen as a

centre figure and made her husband realize her importance either in

domesticity, financial or political matters other than her daily chores

at home. During Iron Age, she was skilled and talented in making

earthenware vessels, taking care of food, milking the cows, making

bread and cheese and drying up meat and fish under the sun. Taking

care of livestock was more important task for woman during this era.

In medieval age, woman had to go through a difficult phase of life. She

has no freedom because of high and powerful domination of man in

the society. She becomes the property of her husband after marriage

and is confined to giving birth to children and a male child was

regarded important and demanding; so many young wives tried and

spent most of their years in delivering a male heir. But medical

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facilities were very poor and many women died at a very young age in

childbirths. She was just like an instrument being used by man since

the evolution of human kind.

In modern times, woman changed the society and established

her position as a strong and independent magnitude of today’s world.

According to Chrissy Iley, “For a modern woman it is important to be

supported and that there is equality in every aspect, and that it’s not

two halves that make a whole, it’s two wholes that make a whole.”95

Woman occupies a prominent role to reform society in her own realm.

She is a pacifist and accepts a thoughtful twilight for a better dawn.

Her astute in balancing domestic as well as work proved her as the

supreme over all the species of the world.

Candida: A Mystery is considered as the ‘Mother Play’ by Shaw

in many ways. He opines that this play induces audience to its

deepest level of fraternity; embodiment of romance with an infatuated

boy and a questioning marital relationship with her husband. Candida

is portrayed as the ‘Holy Mother’ where she treats both as her children

and discusses freedom, individualism and relationships, and Daniel

Dervin has rightly said that “Candida… is the Virgin Mother and

nobody else.”96 Shaw in his letters to the Abbess of Stanbrook: a

contemplative house for Benedictine nuns, gives an insight why Shaw

intended to make Candida a ‘Mother Play’. “Shaw believes in a

catholic religion as he believes in a universal Madonna, whom he calls

Our Lady of Everywhere…always saying Hail Mary! … as he

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encounters Her in many forms…the ideal wet nurse, healthy, comely

and completely brainless… her instinctive, direct, self-sufficient

nature, her combination of the Philistine-realist temperament, and her

embodiment of the Life Force.”97

Candida written in 1894 was first performed in The Royal Court

Theatre, London in 1897 and was published in 1898. This play echoes

with ‘Madonna and Child’ concept as Mary with her child Jesus takes

care in every detail, likewise Candida with her two children: Morell

and Marchbanks, shows motherly concern towards them, even though

Morell is thirty five and Marchbanks eighteen. The title Candida is

taken from the Voltaire’s novel Candide published in 1759, who is the

male protagonist of Voltaire’s novel. The title means ‘optimist, clean as

white, pure, frank and truthful’. Candida in Shaw’s play is an optimist

who cares for both of them equally, clean in her actions; decides to

choose her husband who is the weakest of the two and above all pure

in her thoughts and frank about her notions on liberty of woman in

Victorian England. Candida, the protagonist of Voltaire’s novel is an

optimist as well, who at the end of the play resorts to a simple living

with farming and hard work and sees life in a positive and assuring

way after many tumultuous experiences in his life as Candida restores

back to her husband as a normal duty-minded wife with affection and

care.

Candida is a domestic play that focuses essentially on the

home. It refers mainly to the decent conduct and standards of

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everyday life in the Victorian England. The theme of marriage and

openness especially in reverence of love, romance and human

relationship and the theme of freedom of a domestic woman in

Victorian period rejuvenate the plot and take the discussion to a

higher note. This play speaks about the freedom of woman: at home or

in society.

The narrative technique of this play is discussion and authorial.

The discussion in the play evokes an insignia of a woman towards

salvation and liberation from narrow and skeptical society. This play

preaches the gospel of Shaw: woman is regarded as the quintessence

of endurance. The three characters Candida, Morell and Marchbanks

discuss freedom of woman and leave a message of tolerance over the

constricted animosity in the society.

Shashi Deshpande’s That Long Silence published in 1988 is a

comparative study on feminism: though woman being the toy for

many centuries, she did not forget her admiration towards her

husband and society in India. This play narrates the ideals of woman

being tormented and torn apart and considering her as a useless

commodity in the society. This play has won Sahitya Akademi Award

in 1991 for the outstanding work by Shashi Deshpande on New

Woman, who breaks her silence and gets on to create her new world

with her own courage. The Indian society has the stench of ailing

pragmatics on woman: she is confined to kitchen, cannot dare to come

before her in-laws and incapable to make or take a decision. After

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marriage she lands herself into the middle of nowhere and delusions

haunt within her heart for the rest of her life. Jaya is the protagonist

who is in search of her true identity as a woman in the light of male

dominated society. Her husband Mohan was once a good man he

changes his attitude towards his wife Jaya and starts hating her for

writing an article about their life in a cynical way. Jaya is a writer of

short stories, magazines and newspaper. She is educated and smart

with all prerequisites to be a perfect woman. She once writes that a

man cannot reach his wife completely except through her body,

shatters his mind to an extent that he shuns her from his life. Mohan

always irritates her by disrespecting her work either in her domesticity

or in her career as a writer. He sees the guilt in her as if she has done

‘a thousand sins’ in her life. This ridiculous atrocity and illogical

supremacy over women by men has to be emptied and wiped off by

efficient women like Jaya and Candida.

Candida is the new woman like Jaya, who admonishes the

cruelty of male dominance and sustains her stature with her

cleverness and astute nature in realizing Morell his weakness and

making him strong to recognize his ideologies over her as Jaya took

her world in her own hands to change her husband’s gloomy ideals

and absurd society. Jaya can be related to Candida, who makes a

mistake unconsciously by writing about their marital life, may be for

good, as she comes to know about her strength and passion to

establish her own identity in the society. Candida on the other hand,

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makes the mistake in welcoming Marchbanks to lure her for good

reason and may be, Candida is fed up with the behaviour and life

style of her husband Morell, and she wants to envy Morell through

Marchbanks, to realize Morell about the love and affection she has for

him. Mohan’s attitude is uncommon with that of Jaya’s. He wants a

traditional wife who understands him and takes care of house hold

chores. He even changes her name to Suhasini, which means soft and

motherly woman and Jaya signifies victory and triumph. Marriage is a

door that transforms woman with different shades of marital life.

Shaw views that “… if marriage cannot be made to produce something

better than we are, marriage will have to go, or else the nation will

have to go. It is no use talking of honor, virtue, purity…”98

Jaya reconciles herself and realizes what she has done by

writing the piece of her own inner self, builds to regain her identity

without her husband for sometime but feels lonely and alienated. She

revolts in her silence against her husband and the society to establish

a new horizon for a better tomorrow and convinces her heart to live up

the life in sorrow as the phoenix rises from its ashes for a new

beginning. Candida too builds up a new life even after their twenty

years of marriage in a new twist and of course making the bond even

stronger than before. The Victorian woman has also set up an

example in regaining the happiness of her family in a different angle:

where Candida is happy without any regrets, but Jaya, being an

Indian psyche adores the old tradition with old ethics to brighten up

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her family with old lantern: perhaps the consumption of paraffin oil is

less. Indian psychology is different from western globe where the

Indian woman, though is ill-treated by her husband and society,

wishes to return to her abode with much aspirations and new life.

Jaya, even though she was tortured mentally by her husband, comes

back to her husband when he writes to her about his visit. She does

not want to shatter her life just because of her blunders, as she

thinks, and suffer complete life. The twentieth century woman

brushes away the conventional and orthodox way of living, making her

own destination without much zeal in her personal and marital life,

ends her domain of relationships with emptiness.

Shaw says, “The central note of the play is that with the true

woman, weakness which appeals to the maternal instinct is more

powerful than strength which offers protection.”99 Woman sees the

heart that twines emotions with responsibilities and the tears from

eyes with passion and anxiety to embody the incessant shower of love,

kindness and affection on her. To Shaw, “Candida is quite un-poetic

… have small delight in poetry, but are the stuff of which poems and

dreams are made … husband glorying in his strength but convicted of

his weakness, the poet pitiful in his physical impotence but strong in

his perception of truth … which the drama of any language may be

challenged to rival.”100

The character of Candida Morell is the most alluring and

intoxicating pill every reader takes while reading the play. She belongs

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to a Victorian Era with a dictum in her behaviour and conscience in

her life. She has a single thought of her home and displays all the

qualities of a lady who transcends a boy into a man with subtle

instincts of her nature. She stands as an achiever of independence to

expose the basic womanhood for her husband, children and society.

She makes Marchbanks realize about true love in taking up the

responsibilities of the household, respect the husband and not with

mere poems and infatuation, where the words and rhythms of poetry

glitter, but not life. She shows the virtual world behind the dreams

Marchbanks illustrates her compels him to have salvation in his life

through her inspiration and self-righteousness. She even further goes

to a point with her charm in her wit and makes Morell realize that he

is weak and desolate without her. She gives a strong image as a

woman and an exceptional paradigm of emancipation.

Morell, husband to the enticing and captivating Candida, is a

happy man. He is, after all, a handsome, sought after public speaker

and a successful minister. The fact that his readers are mainly

women must certainly indicate that he has a certain understanding of

their needs. It is perfectly plausible that the Church secretary, the

lady typewriter Miss Proserpine Garnett, is in love with Morell, and

that most of his female parishioners share Prossy’s complaint. Morell

is, at bottom, every bit romantic as a poet, but Morell’s passion takes

the form of Christian Socialism. The pastor’s shining righteousness

would also be a bit too much, were he not restrained by the humbling

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example of the Social Gospel, and the pomposity and the pricking

frankness of his down-to-earth wife. Candida says:

…Why does Prossy condescend to wash up the things,

and to peel potatoes and abase herself in all manner of

ways for six shillings a week less than she used to get in a

city office? She’s in love with you, James: that’s the

reason. 101 (Act I, P.563)

There is a precious little public discussion of the emotional and

psychological dynamics in male-female romantic relationships. Why

specific people become couples, and how self-effacing strength

supports hidden weakness is a topic rarely explored in the play.

Candida spontaneously expresses her fondness for Marchbanks who

appears to her, sincere in showering love and affection on her. She

says:

….I have grown fonder and fonder of him all the time I

was away…though he has not the least suspicion of it

himself, he is ready to fall madly in love with me?

(Act I, P.564)

Without getting Oedipal, the play suggests a part of a female’s

attraction for a male involves her ability to maternally nurture him. If

Shaw dealt only with that, Candida would be noteworthy, but he does

further into territory few males eagerly examine. Candida is the

shining exception, and Shaw’s admiration for women often led him to

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place them on pedestals, and that is certainly the case with Candida,

known more for Shaw’s political oratory than his religious rhetoric.

Candida provokes Morell, by telling that Marchbanks is right in

understanding her:

He is always right. He understands you; he understands

me; he understands Prossy; and you, you understand

nothing. (Act II, P.565)

It is the extreme disaster in the life of Morell to ask his wife to

choose between him and Marchbanks. Woman, as a wife is the

greatest treasure to her husband on the earth who cares for

everything for the sake of her beloved husband. But Candida here sets

an example in showing her virulent side of her attitude and throws

herself for auction and asks them to offer their bidding. She says:

…. And pray, my lords and masters, what have you to

offer for my choice? I am up for auction, it seems. What

do you bid, James? (Act III, P.590)

Both men want her and Shaw here sets up the moment when

Candida must choose between them. Candida as a woman is a

masterpiece of many sovereigns who despise the ruthless commotion

in the family and cleverly gives her decision in an intoxicating

agreement. She says:

I give myself to the weaker of the two. (Act III, P.591)

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Candida is the image, description, and ingenious centre of the

play. She is mesmeric and captivating in stature and movement. The

ending is the confrontation of the three where the self composed

Candida cuts through the male scrapping with icy clarity. The two

men force Candida to choose between them. She keenly filters

through the play’s arguments about material strength and weakness

until finally the husband realizes that she is the stronger of the two.

She is Queen of the house. Both the men forget that she belongs to

her own identity as a Shavian woman, a nightingale. Clark rightly

observes “… Shaw attempts to shatter the ideals of the ‘Sanctity of the

family’, and shows a weak man and a strong man, each at first

appearing to be the reverse with a woman between them. The woman

finally clings to the weaker, as he needs her most, not, Shaw implies,

because she happens to be his wife”.102

Sensing the sense of her observation, Marchbanks understands

that he is lost. On the other hand, Morell droops down with sorrow at

the outset, later when Candida says Morell is weaker of the two, he

recovers from the shock and feels happy. Here Candida justifies

herself as a true wife to her husband. She pretty well knows that it is

Morell who is longing her from his heart, but he could not express it

due to his futile approach and weak mind-set. She makes him the

man of the house because there will be no prudence and liberty to a

husband until he is ordained by a pious and intelligent wife who

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cajoles goodness and misfortunes of the family with a daring heart. In

an attempt to justify Morell’s weakness, Candida says:

….We go once a fortnight to see his parents … Ask me

what it costs to be James’s mother and three sisters and

wife and mother to his children all in one….When there is

money to give, he gives it: when there is money to refuse,

I refuse it. I build a castle of comfort and indulgence and

love for him …. I make him master here, though he does

not know it and could not tell you a moment ago how it

came to be so. (Act III, P.592)

Eugene Marchbanks is an intricate character who displays

multifarious attitudes and temperament on Candida. He is a novice in

taking care of a woman. He conjures up the heart of Candida with his

witty poetry and magnetic flamboyance attitude. He goes an extra mile

to expose the tiresome chores of household and a snivelling life with

Morell. He is selective in his conduct with Candida and Morell; makes

Candida to realize him as her best suitor than Morell. He gives a

snobbish pretense and intensifies the gravity of the situation and

makes Morell to outburst and resort to prejudiced statements.

Candida, indeed does not like this as her conscience pricks and

restores the situation under her control. Even though Marchbanks

acquires ‘gift of the gab’, a skill obtained to flatter others, he could not

reconcile Candida to embrace him. Marchbanks, as if discerning

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unhappiness in Candida’s marital relationship, argues with Morell by

expressing his displeasure over it. He says:

Happy: Your marriage, you think that: you believe that:

Marchbanks is the epitome of a love-intoxicated romantic

young man consumed by his passion and hungry for the

grand gesture. Our amusement comes from how

completely he fulfills the stereotype of immature starry-

eyed obsession. Marchbanks wants Morell to come to a

settlement regarding his undisclosed love for Candida.

He says:

I must speak to you. There is something that must be

settled between us. (Act I, P.540)

Marchbanks, the absurdly romantic poet who is in love with

Candida, is an odd figure. He understands everything Candida says,

and yet he has the social grace of a badly–trained puppy. It’s

amusing, and it is the tiniest bit too much which is just right. His

behaviour is a kind of first draft of a poet’s love affair and gets the raw

impulse out now, cleans up the style, and regularizes the meter later.

Marchbanks comes out with the truth that he has fallen in love with

Candida:

I love your wife. (Act I, P.540)

Until the appearance of a certain young poet, whom both

husband and wife have taken under wing, begins the romantic

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triangle that reveals, sometimes painfully, a great deal about what

men think they know about the women in their lives, or about

themselves, for that matter. Morell has not taken care of any

house-hold work. Marchbanks, who is present there, incoherently

expresses the horror that has haunted his heart, bursts out poetically

before Candida:

No, not a scrubbing brush, but boat: a tiny shallop to sail

away in, far from the world, where the marble floors are

washed by the rain and dried by the sun….a Chariot: to

carry us up into the sky, where the lamps are stars, and

don’t need to be filled with paraffin oil every day.

(Act I, P.558)

Morell symbolizes a good husband, but let not Candida go off

his hands as she is the true gesture of womanhood in Morell’s life.

Marchbanks should understand quickly that infatuation doesn’t stand

for a longer time as it sweeps away the notions of responsibility in

scruples of time. Ultimately, each must learn something important

about mature love, duty, and more importantly, passion. Marchbanks

being induced by over powering love for Candida musically sings:

Candida, Candida, Candida, Candida, Candida. I must

say that now, because you have put me on my honour

and truth; and I never think or feel Mrs. Morell: it is

always Candida. (Act III, P.575)

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Marchbanks is experiencing love for the first time, and he’s

being very imaginative about it. It stimulated him to write a lot of

poems and it has awakened him because he’s been much neglected in

his life. Responding to Morell’s utterance in calling Marchbanks a

beggar, seeking her favour, Marchbanks poetically says:

She offered me all I chose to ask for; her shawl, her wings,

the wreath of stars on her head, the lilies in her hand, the

crescent moon beneath her feet. (Act III, P.579)

Marchbanks brings the confusion into the life of Morell and

Candida. The situation demands the respect for marriage that it has

to be dealt with stimulation of thoughtful insight on mature

relationship. Marchbanks investitures his love for Candida and is mad

about her. But he is in love with a woman who is older to him and has

more know-how in matured love. The young man assumes the

attitude of the lovesick poet, and declares that Morell doesn’t deserve

his wife’s attention and affection, says:

…I am the happiest of men. I desire nothing now but her

happiness…let us both give her up. Why should she have

to choose between a wretched little nervous disease like

me, and pig-headed parson like you? Let us go on a

pilgrimage, you to the east and I to the west, in search of

a worthy lover for her: some beautiful archangel with

purple wings. (Act III, P.580)

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Marchbanks redeems his love for a more matured man who can

manage Candida well and asks her lover’s husband to search a better

bridegroom to Candida along with him. Desmond Mac Carthy opines

that “Candida is a direct response to A Doll’s House, claiming that, in

the real typical doll’s house it is the man who is the doll, and, indeed,

like Ibsen’s Nora, it is Morell who is steadily disillusioned during the

course of the three acts.”103 However, at the end, since everything

goes out of Marchbanks’s hands, to express his innate love for

Candida, Marchbanks tells Morell that he has filled her heart with his

happiness. He says:

I no longer desire happiness: Life is nobler than that.

Parson James: I give you my happiness with both hands:

I love you because you have filled the heart of the woman

I loved. Good bye. (Act III, P.594)

Marchbanks and Morell completely differ in their ways of

thinking about love. Marchbanks is romantically rhythmical and

Morell is romantically conservative. Candida does her best to teach

Morell to become outwardly discerning. Maurice Charney rightly

remarks: “Candida is constantly aware of how obtuse her husband

really is, and that it is her role to point out to him that marriage

depends on love and not on a handful of high-minded principles.”104

Marchbanks enigmatically rushes out by expressing that he has a

better secret in his heart. He says:

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… But I have a better secret than that in my heart. Let

me go now. The night outside grows impatient.

(Act III, P.594)

The Reverend James Mavor Morell symbolizes an ideal husband

to Candida. He has tact in his attitude that represents his identity as

a clergyman in the society with a little conscience on household

chores and responsibilities due to the façade of time in his marital life.

The author too puts his thoughts through this character to evaluate

the motives of Marchbanks, and what Morell and Marchbanks have to

offer a woman like Candida in true sense.

Proserpine Garnett the typist, Alexander Lexy the assistant to

Morell and Mr. Burgess, the father of Candida are minor characters

who take the situation of complexities to a more frantic one. These

three characters build an atmosphere of sensibility with a rare

combination of attitudes and motifs. Petrified by Marchbanks’s love

for Candida, Morell tells him that it has become a common feature for

everyone to love Candida. Morell says:

…Everybody loves her: they cant help it. I like it.

(Act I, P.541)

Like Shaw, the Rev. James Morell is a democratic socialist

dedicated to promoting an egalitarian society. There was nothing to

suggest a crisis in the marriage between Pastor Morell and Candida

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until Marchbanks, a fervid and callow poet, met the clergyman’s wife.

Morell says:

…You little snivelling cowardly whelp. Go, before you

frighten yourself into a fit. (Act I, P.544)

Morell is enthusiastic and watchful to the outside world, but

without any clues about the sensitive situation within his own

marriage. Marchbanks breaches into the good life of Morell and

withers the pure relationship between Morell and Candida, making

Candida realize the vicissitudes of household work and commands

Morell to ask her to choose between them. He says:

Oh, you fool, you fool, you triple fool: I am the man,

Morell: I am the man. You don’t understand what a

woman is send for her, Morell: send for her and let her

choose between. (Act III, P.580)

This play gives us a powerful insight to know better about male

and female relationships that deepens our comprehension of human

necessities. Morell confesses his innocence when Candida opines that

a poet sees everything. As it becomes inevitable to hide the secret any

longer, Morell tells Candida to choose between them. He says:

… I will not go about tortured with doubts and

suspicions. I will not live with you and keep a secret from

you …we have agreed - he and I that you shall choose

between us now. I await your decision. (Act III, P.590)

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As Leigh Hunt puts it, “Candida stands between two men

declaring their undying love and tell them both that they are acting

like little boys.”105 Shaw sets the heroine a real challenge in his

description of Candida as “a woman who has found that she can

always manage people by engaging their affection, and who does so

frankly and instinctively…but Candida’s serene brow, courageous eyes

... signify largeness of mind and dignity of character to ennoble her

cunning in the affections.”106 Marchbanks has certainly ruined the

serenity of the relationship between Morell and Candida. He is a crib

who tries to demoralize the temperament of Candida and Morell with

much proud humility says:

I have nothing to offer you but my strength for your

defense, my honesty for your surety, my ability and

industry for your livelihood, my authority and position for

your dignity. That is all it becomes a man to offer to a

woman. (Act III, P.591)

Morell tries to confess his innocence and carelessness about the

chores of household but has shrunk himself in glorifying his office

work as a Pastor. He forgot that the glorification of wife is the

elevation of husband to a happy ending. But the situation now has

gone up to a level where Candida has been pestered by the poet

Marchbanks and Candida asks Marchbanks to offer what he has. He

offers:

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My weakness. My desolation. My heart’s need.

(Act III, P.591)

It’s hard to imagine why Shaw said that marriage “is an alliance

entered into by a man who can’t sleep with the window shut, and a

woman who can’t sleep with the window open,”107 as Singh marks it,

would be so fascinated with writing about the domestic union, but

fascinated with it, Shaw was, and the crackling energy of much of his

dramatic work comes from the tension between husband and wife.

The ending is never in doubt: As a true Shavian heroine, Candida will

settle where she is required, fostering the earthbound body and

psyche of the brawny but uninspired parson who is her husband,

while freeing the soul of her poet-admirer to create stunning and

fanatical art.

The secret of Candida is Shaw’s closing admission that, though

“the poet has no business with the small beer of domestic comfort and

cuddling and petting at the apron-string of some dear nice woman,”

Eugene probably eventually discovered that “he had to keep his feet

on the ground as much as Morell, and that some enterprising woman

married him and made him dress himself properly and take regular

meals.”108 “An additional interpretation of the ‘secret in the poet’s

heart,’ one not acknowledged by Shaw in any of his numerous letters

on the subject, is the secret alluded to by Thomas Carlyle in The Hero

as Poet in Heroes and Hero-Worship.”109 Mac Carthy says that “the

poet and prophet are fundamentally alike and in some ages

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synonymous because both are ‘Hero-souls’ sent by nature to penetrate

into the sacred mystery of the Universe.”110

There were two stalwarts who brought a new hope for women

across the world to free up from the clutches of superstitious society.

Mary Wollstonecraft and John Stuart Mill are the two crusaders who

reformed women in the society. Mary Wollstonecraft born in 1759 was

an eighteenth century British writer and an ardent promoter of

women’s rights. Her work A Vindication of the Rights of Woman written

in 1792 is a treatise on the backdrop of French Revolution (1789 to

1799), especially the rise of women for their basic rights. She wrote

this wonderful exposition to alleviate the cries of women during

eighteenth century. Equality is one of the main concepts and the

pre-requisite of the women era. She authored that every woman

should acquire her right; equality to men, right to educate: not until

the age of eight, but till she desires, stance in politics where women

were considered as passive citizens and in marriage she should given

an equal status with husband not as a commodity where Mary rightly

puts it “… marriage will never be held sacred till women, by being

brought up with men, are prepared to be their companions rather

than their mistress…”111 John Stuart Mill born in 1806 was a

nineteenth century British philosopher, political economist and a civil

servant. His work The Subjection of Women written in 1861 but

published in 1869 was an essay on the equality between the sexes.

“… women are brought up as they are, a man and a woman will but

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rarely find in one another real agreement of tastes and wishes as to

daily life… dullness and want of spirit are not always a guarantee of

the submission which is so confidently expected from them… in this

case does the man obtain it, except an upper servant, a nurse, or a

mistress?”112 He too fought for the same cause as Mary Wollstonecraft

struggled and culminated his efforts to wipe out the blasphemies on

the existence of a woman as a mere property to trade and a toy to

satisfy the lustful needs of men. He captivated the minds of the

contemporary readers of Mill by discussing society and gender

construction, education and marriage in his work. This fracas

changed the mind sets of domineering men and gradually these men

started to realize women as humans. As Gail Finney remarks, “The

term feminism came into being in 1895 and GB Shaw was an

upcoming dramatist and a social worker.”113 The New Woman has

certain characteristic features that distinguish from the conventional

woman according to Kate Stein, as “bounded on the north by

servants, on the south by children, on the east by ailments and on the

west by clothes.”114

The Indian feminists were much there to fight for the women’s

rights in India. The emergence of feminism in India has three phases:

the first phase starts from 1850 to 1915, second phase from 1915 to

1947 and third phase from post 1947 onwards. The first phase

advocates uproot of sati: widow immolation. This has been the main

context of this period and Raja Ram Mohan Roy during eighteenth

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century took a big leap to ban sati sahagamana in India. He also

fought for the property inheritance to women and against social evils

in the society such as inequality, economy and caste system. He

enriched a good source of confidence into the minds of women by

brushing away the treacherous tradition of sati, which was considered

as the dreadful inhuman act of the world. Kamini Roy born in 1864

was the leading Bengali feminist and poet, social worker and the first

woman to acquire graduation during British India; Sarala Devi

Chaudhurani born in 1872 was the founder of the first women’s

organization in India during the British Raj. Both women fought for

female education all over India. Education was the right of men;

schools and colleges were meant only to the male dominated society

and were treated as the supreme over female society. Women were

confined to kitchens and other household works.

The second phase was a watershed for women. This phase gave

a scope to intensify the claims and agony for the rights. Under the

ubiquitous shadow of Mahatma Gandhi, women flourished and took

part in numerous National Movements alongside with Gandhi.

Sarojini Naidu born in 1879 in Hyderabad actively took part in Salt

Satyagraha and set a role model to all kinds of women such as

peasants, class women and aristocratic women. Durgabai Deshmukh

born in 1909 in Kakinada, Andhra Pradesh felt the need for female

education in the country. She too participated sincerely in many

National Movements with Gandhi and uplifted women in every

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possible way. The third phase fought on unequal wages for women,

ignoring women as a cheap, weak and unskilled and of course

education. The then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi born in 1917

focused on equal pay for both women and men as per the Indian

Constitution. She even cared for the education system and catered the

needs of the women. Brinda Karat, Lalithambika Antharjanam,

Jasodhara Bagchi, Prem Chowdary and many more had put their

souls in upbringing the girl child and women’s rights for spearheading

the country in a good way.

As Pauline Reage has rightly said that “Woman ... is the divine

object, violated, endlessly sacrificed yet always reborn, whose only joy,

achieved through a subtle interplay of images, lies in contemplation of

herself.”115 Women of this century are voluptuous and intensified with

all the brimming sensualities of purposeful lives. Man epitomizes

modern woman as the fortitude for the oppressed and dejected

women, encourages taking up profession and living up the fascinating

façade of a true life with household chores.

Candida is a true and versatile woman who is the Life Force

with power on her side for a better tomorrow. She makes the readers

think about the freedom and individuality given by parents, husband

and children to liberalise the culture of a good sovereignty over her

family. She is a filial endogamy who prostrates to Christian Beliefs

and endows herself in a perfect decision-making resolute for

sustainable and productive results.