George Bernard Shaw's Major Barbara
Task B - Our answer
Lady Britomart appears to be a very overbearing and domineering woman.
She thus contrasts with the stereotypical 'soft, supportive and caring'
image we normally assume for women, and for mothers in particular. She
is almost as domineering as Lady Bracknell in Wilde's The Importance
of Being Earnest. She completely controls her son, Stephen, even though
he is in his twenties, and, indeed, in some ways she appears to treat
him as if he were still a small boy. Stephen makes the occasional half-hearted
attempt to throw off his mother's yoke, but basically he seems pretty
cowed by her in this scene.
But at the same time Lady Britomart has an image of herself which is
at odds with how she behaves. She does not seem to realise the effect
that she has on others (cf. 'My poor boy, did you think I was angry with
you?' in turn 13, when her previous behaviour has been perfectly consistent
with the interpretation she denies) and she appears to see herself as
weaker than she actually is (she declares that she is 'only a woman' in
turn 15). This is where much of the humour comes from in the piece - the
clear lack if fit between her actual behaviour and her self-image.
We will now systematically examine the turn-taking structure of the extract
to see how it relates to our intuitions about the two characters. We will
collect the turn-taking data and use it to test out our interpretative
hypotheses.
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