Candida's choice

Obviously, being a comedy, Shaw was going for laughs as much as he could get. Misalliance would probably rate a lot higher for laughs (especially about age differences) than does Candida. Because Marchbanks can't appear to be a viable choice for Candida other than any temporary young lover in British society, the character then plays the silly foolish boy for all it's worth, tripping over the furniture, etc. expressing his immaturity, lost in his attraction for the older Candida. Because the Brits are great at concealing the emotions, anyone who lets his emotions wreak havoc thus is to be portrayed as the fool. If Shaw really wanted Candida to have a real choice, he would not have directed so many laughs at Marchbanks, but more for the windbag Morrell, Candida's husband. She doesn't choose Morrell to be "moral," but because it's the thing to do for all good British wives who at least felt they deserved the power of running a household on their own terms. She prefers the comfort of dictating to her "sweet baby James," to the unsure future of running off with a youngster who rejects the standard British notion that containing one's emotions is paramount. Don't forget--Shaw said he didn't "like" Candida after he had written her that way. But he felt Ibsen's A Doll House needed a response, so he went as opposite as he could. A pity.

Shaw's Candida by no means degrades women and says they should follow society and only choose the "comfortable" place of staying with her husband. If she were to really leave Morell, she would not be following her heart, but her temporary lust that will die when, as she says to Marchbanks in the last scene, "when I am thirty, she will be forty-five, when I am sixty, she will be seventy-five." She stays with Morell not only because he needs her more, but also because she loves him. The two of them have a love that has lasted for many years and will last many, many more. For her to forsake her true love for an affair that would not last, that would only leave an emptiness, it is there that people become lost! She tells Morell to put trust in her love, not her purity and goodness, and in the end, her love wins out, just as it should, and proves how much she truly loves her husband.

Depicted as a "strong woman," Candida makes the wrong choice, but being a strong woman at the time the play was written simply meant that she did have the power to make her own choices. The sad thing is in the last act, Candida chooses to be a co-dependent, because as her husband James is "the weakest" and indeed, the neediest, of her two choices, she prefers to be the strong partner by choosing the role of mother to her "baby" James. She turns to the real baby and scolds him with the reminder of their age difference, the only thing Shaw could possibly think of at the time to justify Candida's choice. So in the end putting the beggar poet's future in the hands of his own heart, Candida refuses to follow the longing in her own heart for the passion and excitement that the younger suitor's presence has allowed her "the choice...>" To put this play into production in this day and age with the last comments of Act III dedicated to the ageist excuse Candida uses to dismiss the young poet I think is quite unsuitable considering the progress women have made in regard to making their choices, at many times preferring the companionship of younger more adventurous men directed by their longing hearts, to the boredom and "comfort" of older men that in essence crave their wives to be their second "mothers."