Social Satire in Bernard Shaw’s Play Widower’s Houses

Abstract

This study is an attempt to analyze the play of George Bernard Shaw Widower’s Houses in order to explore the class conflict used in the British society and their effects. It seeks to investigate the major theme, social satire in Bernard Shaw’s play Widower’s Houses and the extent of portraying social struggles between the bourgeoisie and the proletarian in the British society through his characters. Widowers Houses has been considered as a critique of the whole society that makes the rich exploiting the poor in harsh and awful way. In order to demonstrate the class system as well as human depravity, tainted money and greed, used by the bourgeoisies against the proletarian, we have opted for using a descriptive analytical method in analyzing the first and the second acts of the play applying the Marxist theory that deals with the class relations, social conflict, and other ideological issues. In this work we have found that Shaw succeeded in criticizing his society using humour in a witty way. Shaw caused a change to the British society by clarifying the greed and human depravity that was used by the bourgeoisie against the proletarian in addition to their tainted money that was exploited from the working class.Cette étude est une tentative d’analyser la pièce de théâtre afin d’explorer le conflit de classes et son effet dans la pièce de théâtre de Bernard Shaw Widowers’ Houses, dans le but d’enquêter sur le thème principal utilisé dans la pièce de ‘Bernard Shaw’ et la mesure de dépeindre les luttes sociales entre la bourgeoisie et le prolétariat à travers ses personnages. Widowers’ Houses à été considèré comme une critique de la société tout entière qui rend les riches exploiter les pauvres. Afin de démontrer le system de classe, ainsi que le dépravation humaine, l’argent corrompu et de la cupidité, nous avons opté pour l’utilisation descriptive analytique méthode a l’aide de la théorie Marxiste qui traite des rapports de classe, les conflits sociaux et d’autres problèmes idéologiques.