Bernard Shaw eBooks

Mrs. Warren's Profession. E-book. Formato Mobipocket Bernard Shaw   -  Ionlineshopping.Com, 2019  - 

Mrs. Warren's Profession is a play written by George Bernard Shaw in 1893, and first performed in London in 1902. The play is about a former prostitute, now a madam (brothel proprietor), who attempts to come to terms with her disapproving daughter. It is a problem play, offering social commentary to illustrate Shaw's belief that the act of prostitution was not caused by moral failure but by economic necessity. Elements of the play were borrowed from Shaw's 1882 novel Cashel Byron's Profession, about a man who becomes a boxer due to limited employment opportunities. Vivie Warren, a thoroughly modern young woman, has just graduated from the University of Cambridge with honours in Mathematics (equal Third Wrangler), and is available for suitors. Her mother, Mrs. Warren (her name changed to hide her identity and give the impression that she is married), arranges for her to meet her friend Mr. Praed, a middle-aged, handsome architect, at the home where Vivie is staying. Mrs. Warren arrives with her business partner, Sir George Crofts, who is attracted to Vivie despite their 25-year age difference. Vivie is romantically involved with the youthful Frank Gardner, who sees her as his meal ticket. His father, the (married) Reverend Samuel Gardner, has a history with Vivie's mother. As we discover later, he may be Vivie's out-of-wedlock father, which would make Vivie and Frank half-siblings. Mrs. Warren successfully justifies to her daughter how she chose her particular profession in order to support her daughter and give her the opportunities she never had. She saved enough money to buy into the business with her sister, and she now owns (with Sir George) a chain of brothels across Europe. Vivie is, at first, horrified by the revelation, but then lauds her mother as a champion. However, the reconciliation ends when Vivie finds out that her mother continues to run the business even though she no longer needs to. Vivie takes an office job in the city and dumps Frank, vowing she will never marry. She disowns her mother, and Mrs. Warren is left heartbroken, having looked forward to growing old with her daughter.  

Misalliance. E-book. Formato Mobipocket Bernard Shaw   -  Ionlineshopping.Com, 2019  - 

Misalliance is a play written in 1909–1910 by George Bernard Shaw. The play takes place entirely on a single Saturday afternoon in the conservatory of a large country house in Hindhead, Surrey in Edwardian era England. It is a continuation of some of the ideas on marriage that he expressed in 1908 in his play, Getting Married. It was also a continuation of some of his other ideas on Socialism, physical fitness, the Life Force, and "The New Woman": i.e. women intent on escaping Victorian standards of helplessness, passivity, stuffy propriety, and non-involvement in politics or general affairs. Shaw subtitled his play A Debate in One Sitting, and in the program of its first presentation in 1910 inserting this program note: "The debate takes place at the house of John Tarleton of Hindhead, Surrey, on 31 May 1909. As the debate is a long one, the curtain will be lowered twice. The audience is requested to excuse these interruptions, which are made solely for its convenience." Misalliance is an ironic examination of the mating instincts of a varied group of people gathered at a wealthy man's country home on a summer weekend. Most of the romantic interest centers on the host's daughter, Hypatia Tarleton, a typical Shaw heroine who exemplifies his lifelong theory that in courtship, women are the relentless pursuers and men the apprehensively pursued. Hypatia is the daughter of newly-wealthy John Tarleton who made his fortune in the unglamorous but lucrative underwear business. She is fed up with the stuffy conventions that surround her and with the hyperactive talk of the men in her life. Hypatia is engaged to Bentley Summerhays, an intellectually bright but physically and emotionally underdeveloped aristocrat. Hypatia is restless with her engagement as the play starts, even as it is revealed she has also had a proposal of engagement from her betrothed's father, Lord Summerhays. She has no desire to be a nurse to the elderly and is in no hurry to be made a widow. She longs for some adventure to drop out of the sky, and it does ... an aircraft crashes through the roof of the conservatory to close the end of the first act. At the beginning of Act II, it is revealed that the aircraft brings two unexpected guests. The pilot, Joey Percival, is a handsome young man who immediately arouses Hypatia's hunting instinct. The passenger, Lina Szczepanowska, is a female dare-devil of a circus acrobat whose vitality and directness inflame all the other men at the house-party. Read this complete famous novel for further story....  

Treatise on Parents and Children. E-book. Formato Mobipocket Bernard Shaw   -  Ionlineshopping.Com, 2019  - 

George Bernard Shaw's classic collection of essays and musings on parenthood, childhood, and the connections within humanity. In a characteristically polemic essay, Shaw excoriated schools as prisons and family homes as theaters of abuse and neglect. He argued that children who are governed for the convenience of adults—through the use or threat of violence, uninspired and dogmatic instruction, and confinement to the school room—will become adults who are unfit for the duties of citizenship in a democratic society, unable to tolerate difference or engage in dialogue with others. Shaw raised a series of concerns with regard to what we would now call children’s agency, particularly their rights to their own physical person, to explore and choose their own beliefs, and to develop their own appreciation for the cultural forms that most interest them. While he criticized the disparity between the rights of children and adults he recognized that children do not have the same capacity to provide for or protect themselves, calling for a middle path for the reasonable protection of children’s safety while encouraging the development of their own agency and socialization.  One hundred years later, George Bernard Shaw’s Treaties on parents and children (1914) may still challenge quite a few minds and ‚values’. So get ready for a mental earthquake, if a combination of dramatic, comic and socially corrective attitudes are not an usual spot for you, as a reader.