Making women central to an analysis of Shaw’s plays is scarcely something new. The playwright himself drew attention to the radical nature of his practice from the 1890s on. What is less usual is Audrey McNamara embedding the discussion of women’s role in Shaw’s plays within the context of marriage. Some of the plays are romantic comedies culminating in the marriage of the leads, such as Man and Superman (1902), while others are cantered on married couples. One of the most notable is Candida (1897), where the title character has been married for many years to the Reverend James Mavor Morell (they have several children). There is a fine discussion of Candida in chapter 3 of McNamara’s book. But both kinds of plays generally featured a discussion of marriage and what it involved for the woman in terms of legally becoming the property of the husband. McNamara believes that “the...

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