He was born, as a matter of fact, in 1839, and was a Unitarian and Free Trader from his boyhood, and an Evolutionist from the publication of the Origin of Species. Consequently he has always classed himself as an advanced thinker and fearlessly outspoken reformer.
This play is as notable for its descriptive, witty stage directions as it is for its dialogue. This particular stage direction reveals a great deal about the character of Roebuck Ramsden, providing extra insight into his motives and self-image before he even utters a line. Though Ramsden is at heart a deeply conservative person with a strong desire to maintain personal comfort and display his respectable lifestyle, he fancies himself a progressive, open-minded person, having been more open to new ideas in his youth. This self-image makes it harder tor Ramsden to have honest conversations with other characters, especially Tanner, since he's unable to acknowledge that he simply finds Tanner's ideas too radical and disruptive. Through stage directions, Shaw provides grounds for actors and directors to give extra depth even to Ramsden, a fairly static character.
The more things a man is ashamed of, the more respectable he is.
This quote is the most concise summary of Tanner's problems with the middle-class society he both belongs to and detests. He believes—and his belief is generally backed up by the play's plot—that other people fear his ideas, not because their consequences are dangerous, but because he rejects the shame that animates his peers' decisions. Tanner's biggest problem with this shame is not that it prevents people from acting immorally, but that it becomes a status symbol in itself. Therefore, even if there is no reason to feel shame, as Jack points out, people like Roebuck Ramsden reflexively display shame and disgust in the face of anything new or different in order to preserve the appearance of moral integrity.
I feel that I am too young, too inexperienced, to decide. My father's wishes are sacred to me.
Ann is put in quite an unpleasant position by Tanner and Ramsden, who urge her to pick one of them as a guardian, even while Ramsden forbids her to read Tanner's book, therefore compromising her ability to make an informed decision. Ann, however, plays the moment to her advantage, cleverly using Victorian cultural images of the innocent, obedient woman to negotiate the best outcome for herself. Ann wants to preserve her own good reputation in the eyes of the community, and therefore cannot choose the polarizing Tanner over the well-regarded Ramsden. On the other hand, she wants Tanner to be her guardian, since she hopes to stay close with him and ultimately marry him. Therefore she defers to her father's wishes, making herself seem as if she has no agency, while simultaneously using the agency she does have to pursue Jack.
Oh please call me Ricky-ticky-tavy, "Mr. Robinson" would hurt me cruelly.
Ann has a teasing relationship with Octavius, using a manner of affectionate condescension with him to keep him satisfied without directly telling him that she wants to marry him. Octavius, on the other hand, is vulnerable to this maneuver to an absurd degree. He prefers for her to call him by a childish nickname, which to him represents the hope that she might love him, than for her to respectfully distance herself from him by calling him "Mr. Robinson." This quote shows that, while Ann can be manipulative and unkind, Octavius is perhaps too eager to receive the scraps of adoration she offers him.
What matter, if the slavery makes us happy?
Octavius believes that his love for Ann will make him happy even if he gives up all independence in order to marry her, while Tanner regards this choice as both a personal and a moral failure. This throwaway question from Octavius becomes a driving contrast throughout the play, since Tanner, too, will be forced to consider whether unhappily pursuing the demands of the life-force will be a better option than happily and comfortably abandoning the quest for self-improvement. In Tanner's case, however, it is in fact marriage to Ann that constitutes the most self-sacrificing pursuit of the life-force, showing that, while each character faces similar fundamental dilemmas, they make end up choosing very different lifestyles in order to negotiate these options.
We suddenly learn that she has turned from these sillinesses to the fulfilment of her highest purpose and greatest function—to increase, multiply and replenish the earth. And instead of admiring her courage and rejoicing in her instinct; instead of crowning the completed womanhood and raising the triumphal strain of "Unto us a child is born: unto us a son is given," here you are...all pulling long faces and looking as ashamed and disgraced as if the girl had committed the vilest of crimes.
When Ramsden, Ann, and Octavius learn that Violet is pregnant, they announce that Violet has met a fate worse than death. Tanner's rage in response to them displays his fundamentally different understanding of gender. While most of the play's characters regard it as a woman's duty to be chaste and obedient, Tanner understands feminity in relation to the life-force. Since the life-force is basically a drive to reproduce, Tanner regards Violet's pregnancy as the best use of her womanhood. Violet herself is less open to this idea—she ends up feeling both offended by Ramsden's accusations of immorality and impatient with Tanner's assumption that she wants to be implicated or included in his politics.
That's because you confuse construction and destruction with creation and murder. They're quite different: I adore creation and abhor murder. Yes: I adore it in tree and flower, in bird and beast, even in you.
In an early, flirtatious conversation with Ann, Tanner makes the case that destruction is a moral good. Ann is skeptical about this idea, but to Tanner, it is apparent that preconceptions and conventions must be destroyed in order to make way for the new. In a sense, Tanner is arguing that the life-force—though he doesn't use that word—is a force of both destruction and creation, since it destroys anything in its path in order to create new generations of people. For this reason, Tanner links the virtue of destruction to his own attraction to Ann, giving us a hint that he will ignore both social conventions and his own biases in order to marry her.
"That's because you never done any labor Mr. Robinson. My business is to do away with labor. You'll get more out of me and a machine than you will out of twenty laborers, and not so much to drink either."
This jibe from Straker helps keep the play grounded in reality, and prevents it from getting carried away by highflown abstract ideas. In this case, the highflown idea is socialism. George Bernard Shaw generally treats socialism sympathetically, but still points out problems with the socialist movement and its most ardent adherents. In this case the ardent adherent is Tanner, who makes it known that he "believes in the dignity of labor." Straker, an actual laborer, corrects the wealthy gentleman by pointing out that labor only seems virtuous and glamorous to those who have no real relationship to it. With this exchange, Shaw does not so much undermine the ideals of socialism as he does reject the premise that socialism is valuable only insofar as labor is dignified or interesting.
Hell is the home of honor, duty, justice, and the rest of the seven deadly virtues. All the wickedness on earth is done in their name: where else but in hell should they have their reward? Have I not told you that the truly damned are those who are happy in hell?
This speech, delivered by Jack Tanner's alter ego Don Juan, defines the play's relationship to comfort and the virtues associated with a comfortable status quo—virtues like honor and duty, which do the job of paying respect to and propping up that which already exists rather than improving or reinventing it. Don Juan (and Tanner—the two are almost indistinguishable in this moment) believe that humanity's existence is only justified if mankind rejects the comfortable and familiar in favor of an uncomfortable journey of self-improvement. Hence, in Tanner's dream, hell is comfortable and is in fact an enjoyable place for those who belong there. Men who seek greater meaning will find the comfortable stasis of hell unbearable, however, and, paradoxically, have to seek out the discomfort of heaven.
The Life Force respects marriage only because marriage is a contrivance of its own to secure the greatest number of children and the closest care of them. For honor, chastity and all the rest of your moral figments it cares not a rap.
This quotation, easily lost in the shuffle of Tanner's long and wordy dream, almost perfectly summarizes the relationship between evolutionary philosophy and romantic comedy in this work as a whole. Here, Don Juan asserts that marriage is still important and necessary—foreshadowing Tanner's eventual marriage to Ann—but places it in an unfamiliar framework, describing marriage not as a conscious choice made by two individuals but as a tool used by the mysterious life-force to create new generations. Since the life-force dictates that the most physically and mentally fit people will reproduce the most, and since intelligent people like Jack Tanner are horrified by the thought of marriage and romance, we have to conclude, ironically, that most successful marriages in this play will include at least one unwilling or reluctant participant.
English rule drove me and mine out of Ireland. Well, you can keep Ireland. I and my like are coming back to buy England; and we'll buy the best of it.
Hector Malone, Sr. is this play's purest avatar for capitalism and its failures. Cleverly, Shaw doesn't make him a totally greedy and unsympathetic person. While he may not be very appealing, he's motivated by a certain underdog backstory and a logic that will make some degree of sense to audiences: after having the British ruling class decimate his family and home, Malone wants to recover his dignity by essentially buying his way into that ruling class. This strategy, of course, helps nobody—it won't get Malone his childhood back, and it will harm his son and Violet. By giving Malone these childish but understandable motivations, Shaw makes his class of robber baron capitalists appear more human and therefore more vulnerable. Malone's brand of capitalism, Shaw points out, is fueled by an irrational, traumatized desire for dominance, whereas revolutionary politics are in fact more coolheaded and logical.
You have offered to tell Jack that I love him. That's self-sacrifice, I suppose; but there must be some satisfaction in it. Perhaps it's because you're a poet. You are like the bird that presses its breast against the sharp thorn to make itself sing.
Here, Ann astutely points out that love serves different purposes for different people. Octavius, because of his romantic personality, will in fact be happiest if he is pining over a lost love—and will be forever disappointed if he actually gets what he's been searching for. One way in which this play differs from a typical romantic comedy is that not all of the main characters find love, and furthermore, that marriage is rarely the most suitable manifestation of love. Therefore, while Ann may be a selfish person, she's also often correct, and in this case, she accurately diagnoses Octavius's needs.
