G.B. Shaw was an eminent playwright, thinker, a social reformer and a profound philosopher. In all most all his plays Shaw discusses the burning problems of his society and of the contemporary modern civilization. What is more, Shaw’s philosophy of creative evolution and life force found its first extended treatment in ‘Man and Superman’.
No problem of modern society has exercised. Shaw’s imagination so powerfully as the problems of love marriage and sex relations. As a biologist, he thinks the creation of a child to be the most sacred work of all and as a socialist he demands that all works should be suitably remunerated. The under payment in one industrial world has led to Mrs Warren’s profession but in the domestic sphere where women are not paid anything for their housewifery and mothering. There is much worse forms of prostitution then Mrs. Warren condition. As women don’t get any independent income for their work in the household, social system has been raised on the foundation of Freud’s theory. Marriage, Shaw believe, it is a lifelong companionship and it is an organization for love.
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Candida is a typical Shavian play. In this play Shaw attacks the economic system of society in its greatest and in the most popular institution marriage. In getting married the characters only talk about problems of marriage but in Candida, a real drama of passion and action is perceptible. Candida’s husband James Morell enjoys respect and has his credibility in his society for his munificence and his services to the people. But in his private life he is an ideal husband intensely devoted to his wife, who is a treasure to him and at the same time he is also a parasite on his wife’s work. It is Candida who has to do all the drudgery of the household. Morell is a do nothing husband. Quite obviously moral is the most affectionate and the novelist husband. Shaw in this drama wants to underline this idea that marriage is unsound from the socialist’s point of views. And he demonstrate this idea not through the portraiture of a tyrannical ideal do nothing husband but through one who is himself devout Christian and an ardent socialist. There is a contradiction between Morell’s external strength and his inner weakness. In the great crisis of life he acts with reason and common sense with much perseverance. He acts and behaves in dignified ways. He becomes furious at the comments and at the daredevil behaviour of March Banks but like a Shavian hero he keeps the poise of his mind. He handles March Banks with much patience and much control on his feelings. Morell doesn’t behave like the typical jealous husband, Othello. He does not turn out March Banks knowing very well that he has weakness for his wife Candida. In his most frenzied moments, he keeps his head cool and acts with fair mindedness and dignity. Further the discussion of Candida to live with Morell for leading a happy conjugal life instead of running away with March Banks makes this play an anti-sentimental one. Like all the plays, in Candida also Shaw discusses the rampant problems, the conflict struggles and significantly they are resolved through reason and common sense.
The theme of this play Candida is not concentrated on one particular theme. Shaw in this play mixes up so many problems for example the exploitation of the workers specially women workers by the capitalist and the hollow boastfulness of the husband who is steeped in all his duties and he is quite negligent and indifferent to the his duties towards his wife. Indeed, Shaw has assigned much more roles to Candida than Morell. True, Shaw in this play has exposed the hollowness of conventional respectabilities and the ideal of happiness. The social, the economic and the realistic problems have been focused and the sentiments have been severely looked down upon by Shaw.
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