Juan Padilla
In the letter “To Arthur Bingham Walkley,” George Bernard Shaw mentions his Don Juan character’s preference for reading the work of Friedrich Nietzsche over a classical author: “Instead of pretending to read Ovid he does actually read…Nietzsche” (71). Don Juan’s disinterest in classical literature is a sign of Shaw’s dissociation from tradition and, more importantly, the effect of Nietzsche on Shaw’s work. The philosopher’s influence on Shaw has been discussed by many scholars, and though how much Shaw has been impacted by Nietzsche is debated, the philosopher’s influence is undeniable (Mueller 184). For instance, Craig N. Owens has written on Shaw’s use of Nietzsche to convey “the extent to which he himself, as a philosopher, is ‘unintelligible’” (24). The impact of Nietzsche’s The Birth of Tragedy on Shaw’s conception of theatre is displayed by David Kornhaber, who writes that Shaw believed that “the representations of the playwright and the virtuosic talents of the actor are indelibly connected” (36) and, in “The ‘Breeding of Humanity:’ Nietzsche and Shaw’s Man and Superman,” Reinhard G. Mueller finds that Nietzsche’s non-eugenic idea of the breeding of mankind is embodied by Shaw’s Don Juan character. Mueller’s observation of Nietzsche’s influence on Man and Superman is not surprising considering Shaw’s blatant references to the philosopher. Shaw writes, “Did you not meet in Heaven, among the new arrivals, that German Polish madman—what was his name? Nietzsche?” (174).
Scholars have, however, ignored Nietzsche’s influence on Shaw’s conception of shame in Man and Superman. Reading the play with Nietzsche’s ideas of shame in mind produces a new, significant interpretation of Shaw’s text. I argue that the ideas of shame and repentance in the hell scene of Man and Superman are derived from Nietzsche’s conception of shame and that Shaw’s play portrays these ideas as obstacles to creating one’s own virtues, which relates to Nietzsche’s advancement of modernity, a relationship which will be explained below. First, I will discuss how Nietzsche’s conception of shame relates to Nietzsche’s ideal of personal virtues. Then, I intend to connect Shaw’s conception of shame and repentance in Man and Superman with Nietzsche’s ideas of shame and show how the play portrays shame and repentance in the hell scene of Act III. This has implications for the rest of the play and for Shaw’s other works, but these implications will not be discussed in depth in this paper.
Friedrich Nietzsche is considered by many to be a harbinger of modernism. He published The Birth of Tragedy, his first work, in 1872 and went on to publish several other works such as The Gay Science (1882), Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1884), Beyond Good and Evil (1886), and Twilight of the Idols (1889). His works challenged traditional values and announced the arrival of modernism in the 20th century. One can get a clear picture of Nietzsche’s contribution to modernism in the following passage about a madman who proclaimed his message at a market: “‘Whither is God?…I will tell you. We have killed him….What were we doing when we unchained this earth from its sun? Whither is it moving now? Whither are we moving?…. Is there still any up or down?” (The Gay Science 181, emphasis in original). The announcement of the death of God signifies a disbelief in the idea of God and, consequently, a disbelief in the traditional values that religious institutions have taught. That we have “unchained this earth from its sun” expresses the importance and value that the idea of God gave to humanity, and the question of where we are heading suggests that without the former belief in God, the future of humanity is uncertain. Nietzsche is specifically thinking of humanity’s future in terms of its morals and values. When the madman asks whether there “still [is] any up or down,” this implies that humanity’s morals and values have lost their foundation with the death of God. So, one can see that Nietzsche heralded the advent of modernism with his claim that “God is dead” (Gay Science 181) and by indicating the implications that this death has on morals and values. Because “God is dead,” the values of the past are no longer validated, and one is free to create one’s virtues, a task that Nietzsche believes is necessary for an individual’s well-being. Shame, however, could provide an obstacle to creating new values.
In order to more clearly explain shame’s obstruction to the creation of one’s own virtues, I introduce Joel A.Van Fossen’s “Nietzsche and Shame.” In this article about Nietzsche’s conceptions of shame, Fossen describes the two necessary components of shame: “shame occurs when a person’s audience would judge her as behaving inappropriately and when that person agrees with such judgment” (235). So, when one feels shame, one must agree with the moral judgment of society. The problem for Nietzsche with the moral judgment of “a person’s audience” is that heeding this moral judgment can prevent one from achieving the creation of one’s own virtues, a necessity for the well-being of individuals. In The Gay Science, Nietzsche writes, “The popular medical formulation of morality that goes back to Ariston of Chios, ‘virtue is the health of the soul,’ would have to be changed to become useful, at least to read: ‘your virtue is the health of your soul’” (176, emphasis in original). Here, Nietzsche is indicating that an individualized morality (“‘your virtue’”) is necessary for one’s well-being. This is also asserted in The Antichrist: “A virtue must be our own invention, our most necessary self-expression…any other kind of virtue is merely a danger” (577, emphasis in original). Again, Nietzsche is claiming that one must create one’s virtue for the benefit of one’s own well-being (“any other kind of virtue is merely a danger”). Shame prevents the cultivation of personal virtue because it requires one to be subject to the moral judgment of society. Instead of thinking for oneself, learning what “our most necessary self-expression” is and creating one’s own virtues, one is deciding to believe what society believes to be true. The harm that impersonal virtues can inflict on individuals is expressed by Nietzsche in the following passage: “A man’s virtues are called good depending on their probable consequences not for him but for us and society: the praise of virtues has always been far from ‘selfless,’ far from ‘unegoistic’…. One praises the industrious even though they harm their eyesight or the spontaneity and freshness of their spirit” (Gay Science 92, emphasis in original). Thus, one can see that impersonal virtues are beneficial to others but that they can be injurious to those that possess them. Those that are industrious, for example, are praised “even though they harm their eyesight or the spontaneity and freshness of their spirit.” Therefore, the creation of personal virtues are necessary for “‘the health of your soul.’”
Only a fraction of Shaw’s Man and Superman actually takes place in hell. The rest of the play is set in London, Spain’s Sierra Nevada, and a villa in Granada. Furthermore, none of the characters from the main plot appear in the hell scene. When the characters fall asleep in Act III, the set of the play transforms, and “Instead of the Sierra there is nothing; omnipresent nothing. No sky, no peaks, no light…utter void” (139, italics in original). Shaw sets the play in hell and his characters, like the setting, undergo a transformation. For instance, the notorious Don Juan is identified as the counterpart of the iconoclastic John Tanner (140) and Ana, a woman from the 15th or 16th century who has recently entered the afterlife, is connected to the character of Ann Whitefield (144), a childhood friend of Tanner and, by the end of the play, Tanner’s fiancé. So, when one discusses the characters’ relationship with repentance and shame in the hell scene, one is also discussing the relationship that the parallel characters have with repentance and shame. I will start with Ana, the character who presents the first interesting discussion of repentance and shame in the hell scene of Act III.
When Ana arrives in hell, she is frightened and surprised. She does not understand why she is in hell because she was a faithful catholic during her life. Her association with Catholicism is displayed in her love of confession, the “coarse brown frock of some religious order” (140, italics in original) that she is wearing at the beginning of the hell scene, and the fact that Ana is from 15th or 16th century Spain, a Catholic country. When asked about her repentance, Ana says there were “More sins than I really committed. I loved confession” (141). This, Don Juan informs her, is “perhaps as bad as confessing too little” (141). She is filled with regret when she realizes she could have behaved differently: “Oh! and I might have been so much wickeder!” (141). Here, the play depicts shame as harmful to individuals because it can keep them from living as they would like. One is kept from living as one would like by the possibility of being shamed by society for one’s actions. Ana’s love of confession and her regret of not having “been so much wickeder” in life reveals that Ana’s actions in life were controlled by shame and that shame’s control was not for her benefit. Though repentance and shame are not exactly identical, they are related and share an essential feature in the play and in Nietzsche’s conception of shame. Shame caused Ana to act a certain way (which later lead to her regret in the afterlife) and to seek repentance for actions that were deemed sinful. Without shame, Ana would not have looked for repentance. Her repentance, then, further condemned her actions. The essential feature that repentance shares with shame is the requirement of a negative moral judgment of one’s actions. If Ana claims to repent but does not truly believe or feel that her actions were wrong, then one would assert that she does not truly repent. Similarly, Ana must feel or think that she has done something wrong if she claims to be experiencing shame. Hence, when Ana says that she could “have been so much wickeder,” this means that the negative moral judgment of repentance (“I loved confession”) and shame kept Ana from living life as she would have preferred. The shame and repentance that controlled her actions during her life can be attributed to the values of Catholicism. So, if Ana’s shame and repentance was caused by Catholicism, then Catholicism can be viewed as an obstruction to living as freely as one would like.
Shame’s influence on Ana is not only seen in her regrets but also in her beliefs about chastity and marriage. When Don Juan expresses his thoughts on the uselessness of trying to force virtues on life, Ana warns Don Juan: “a word against chastity is an insult to me” (163). She goes on to proudly declare that she “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” (163). Ana suggests that she was virtuous because she chose to enter motherhood instead of having “had twelve husbands and no children,” which is implied to be shameful. Here, shame is portrayed as having made Ana choose motherhood, and as having made her sexuality only permissible as a means for procreation. This is also evident in her response to Don Juan’s profession that his propositions to women were unrelated to a desire for marriage: “You mean that it was an immoral impulse” (168). Ana believes that the desire for sex without marriage is “an immoral impulse” because shame has influenced her views on sexuality. If one is not married and attempting to have children, then, according to Ana, sex is immoral. This instance of shame, like Ana’s love of confession and her regret, is due to Ana’s Catholicism. Catholicism condemns sex outside of marriage (“You mean that it was an immoral impulse”). For example, in the Bible, widows and unmarried people are told that “if they do not have self-control, they should marry, for it is better to marry than to burn with desire” (Holman Christian Standard Bible, 1 Corinthians 7.8-9). The “self-control” that is mentioned is referring to control over one’s sexual desires (“burn with desire”). This is particularly relevant to Ana’s belief that sexual desire is “an immoral impulse” when it does not occur within marriage. So, it is evident that Ana’s opinion of motherhood as a virtuous duty and her thoughts on sex outside of marriage were influenced by her religion’s use of shame.
Though Ana warns Don Juan to not speak on chastity, he is undaunted. He does so and then provides an interpretation of marriage that suggests that the shame brought about by marriage norms has created irrational and unfair demands on individuals’ sexuality. Don Juan tells his companions in hell that when he attempted to woo a woman, “The lady would say that she would countenance my advances, provided they were honorable” (167). What is meant by “honorable” is that Don Juan’s intentions were to marry. However, as Don Juan goes on to explain, this honorable act calls for individuals to dedicate their lives to something that may ultimately be a disadvantage: “her constant companionship might…become intolerably tedious to me; that I could not answer for my feelings for a week in advance, much less to the end of my life…that, finally, my proposals to her were wholly unconnected with any of these matters, and were the outcome of a perfectly simple impulse of my manhood towards her womanhood” (168). Don Juan’s explanation that a woman’s “constant companionship” could become bothersome and that he “could not answer” for how he will feel in the future exhibits the difficult realities of marriage towards which shame pushes people regardless of their reasons for pursuing a relationship. Like Don Juan says, he was only interested because “of a perfectly simple impulse of my manhood towards her womanhood.” He suggests that marriage is setting strict restraints on individuals who are pursuing a romantic relationship because of their sexual urges. These urges, however, do not require the demands of marriage. He elaborates on this and says that “Nature is a pandar….I have always preferred to stand up to those facts and build institutions on their recognition” (168). That “Nature is a pandar” indicates that nature is supposed to bring people together to have sexual relations. Don Juan’s decision to “build institutions” on the realities of sex and nature shows his rejection of the marriage norms that govern society and, consequently, his rejection of the shame that accompanies these norms. His rejection of shame relates Don Juan to Nietzsche’s idea that freedom from shame signifies freedom for an individual. Nietzsche writes, “What is the seal of liberation?—No longer being ashamed in front of oneself” (Gay Science 220, emphasis in original). Don Juan’s rejection of marriage norms and their influence on sexuality allows him to be an example of what Nietzsche calls the “seal of liberation” because he has spurned ideas that would have caused him shame. If he had believed in the same ideals as Ana, his sexuality would have brought him shame.
All of these instances of shame prevent the creation of one’s own virtues because shame hinders a greater understanding of oneself. This is depicted in the hell scene by portraying shame as a barrier to entering Don Juan’s heaven. Although Ana is advised that heaven would not suit her, she is persistent. Soon, however, she learns that she cannot reach heaven if she is afflicted by shame. Ana asks Don Juan if he has repented, and Don Juan replies, “Do you suppose heaven is like earth, where people persuade themselves that what is done can be undone by repentance…that what is true can be annihilated by a general agreement to give it the lie? No: heaven is the home of the masters of reality” (151). Repentance’s association with falsehood (“a general agreement to give it the lie”) makes repentance (and also shame) a barrier to truth, an essential feature of Shaw’s heaven (“heaven is the home of the masters of reality”). This is significant because it means that repentance prevents what Don Juan calls “the work of helping Life in its struggle upward” (153). The “work of helping Life” is found in heaven and requires “an organ by which it can attain not only self-consciousness but self-understanding” (159) in order to, as Don Juan says, “know what I do, lest in my blind efforts to live I should be slaying myself” (152). The task that Don Juan wishes to assist in heaven corresponds with the function that one’s personal virtues are supposed to hold in Nietzsche’s philosophy. For instance, whereas Don Juan asserts the need of self-understanding so that one may live correctly and prevent harm to oneself, Nietzsche implies a similar need when he writes that “A virtue must be our own invention, our most necessary self-expression…any other kind of virtue is merely a danger.” So, one must have virtues that are “our most necessary self-expression” if one desires their well-being. This, however, requires “not only self-consciousness but self-understanding” so that one can learn what their virtue or “most necessary self-expression” is. Another example of the similarity between “the work of helping Life” and Nietzsche’s idea of personal virtues is seen in the following passage: “We Europeans of the day after tomorrow…if we should have virtues we shall presumably have only virtues which have learned to get along best with our most secret and cordial inclinations, with our most ardent needs. Well then, let us look for them in our labyrinths” (Beyond Good and Evil 145, emphasis in original). In this passage, the need for “not only self-consciousness but self-understanding” that is needed to assist the “work of helping Life” is also shown to be necessary for attaining one’s own virtues, which, like the work of heaven, prevent one’s harm. However, if repentance is, as Don Juan says, a “general agreement” to lie about what is true, then one will be unable to find virtues that “get along best with our…most ardent needs” and which are found “in our labyrinths” if one practices repentance.
I have shown that Shaw’s hell scene in Man and Superman presents ideas of shame and repentance that are influenced by Nietzsche and which are represented as deterrents to the creation of personal virtues, an essential act for the prosperity of individuals and an example of Nietzsche’s contribution to modernity. Through an analysis of Ana and Don Juan, one can see that the shame created by Catholicism can lead to the denial of an individual’s true desires in life and to a constrained ideal of sexuality. Don Juan’s lack of shame, however, shows that “No longer being ashamed in front of oneself” is a mark of freedom and is conducive to the creation of one’s own virtues. These ideas not only have ramifications for the rest of the play (particularly for the character of John Tanner), but also for Shaw’s other plays. For instance, Shaw’s Mrs. Warren’s Profession demonstrates a conception of shame that reminds one of Don Juan when Mrs. Warren states that “it’s only good manners to be ashamed of” (40) her sex work. Her shamelessness points to the possibility of new interpretations of Shaw’s works when one considers Nietzsche’s influence on Shaw’s conception of shame and repentance.
Works Referenced
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Kornhaber, David. “The Philosopher, the Playwright, and the Actor: Friedrich Nietzsche and the Modern Drama’s Concept of Performance.” Theatre Journal, vol. 64, no. 1, Mar. 2012, p. 25. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=mzh&AN=2012441516&site=ehost-live&scope=site.
Mueller, Reinhard G. “The ‘Breeding of Humanity’: Nietzsche and Shaw’s Man and Superman.” SHAW: The Journal of Bernard Shaw Studies, vol. 39, no. 2, 2019, pp. 183–203. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=mzh&AN=202019397477&site=ehost-live&scope=site.
Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Antichrist. The Portable Nietzsche, edited by Walter Kaufmann, Penguin Books, 1982, pp. 565-656.
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—-. The Gay Science. Translated by Walter Kaufmann, Vintage Books, 1974.
Owens, Craig N. “Bernard Shaw’s Weekly Supplément.” Modern Drama, vol. 48, no. 1, 2005, pp. 11–29. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1353/mdr.2005.0017.
Shaw, George Bernard. Man and Superman. George Bernard Shaw’s Plays, edited by Sandie Byrne, W. W. Norton & Company, 2002, pp. 77- 202.
Shaw, George Bernard. Mrs. Warren’s Profession. George Bernard Shaw’s Plays, edited by Sandie Byrne, W. W. Norton & Company, 2002, pp. 13-66.
Shaw, George Bernard. “To Arthur Bingham Walkley.” George Bernard Shaw’s Plays, edited by Sandie Byrne, W. W. Norton & Company, 2002, pp. 67-77.
Van Fossen, Joel,A. "Nietzsche and Shame." Journal of Nietzsche Studies, vol. 50, no. 2, 2019, pp. 233-249. ProQuest, https://search-proquest-com.lib-proxy.fullerton.edu/scholarly-journals/nietzsche-shame/docview/2381614166/se-2?accountid=9840.
Biography
Juan Padilla is a first-year English graduate student at Cal State Fullerton.
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