Bernard Shaw was a feminist long before the term became familiar. In his plays and prefaces, he exposes the iniquities suffered by women; his women characters do not conform to the Victorian notions of femininity. He was the first to present the New Woman on the British stage. His portrayal of three great historical figures, Cleopatra, Joan of Arc and Catherine II, shatters their romantic image. Cleopatra masters statecraft; Joan defies the well-entrenched feudal system and the Church; Catherine who dominated 18^th century Europe, appears human with her frailties. The de-romanticized New Woman appears in Shaw's nonage novels as early as 1880. Marian Lind in The Irrational Knot anticipates Henrik Ibsen's Nora Helmar by six years. She yearns to be "a wife and not a fragile ornament kept in a glass case." She even uses the word `doll', while referring to her position in her husband's home. Candida, Ann Whitefield and Eliza Doolittle are a few examples to show Shaw's concern for women. Shaw accords woman the nobler role of the life force which, in his view, would eventually produce a superior race. He says that he had always assumed that `a woman is exactly like a man.'

George Bernard Shaw was a rare breed; he was the quintessential male feminist. The term `male feminist' may appear a contradiction in terms to hardboiled feminists. Many of the latter-day feminists who claim exclusive monopoly over feminism might doubt that such a species as a male feminist ever existed and, if it did, it was extinct long before Mrs. Virginia Woolf, Simone de Beauvoir, Germaine Greer, Kate Millet, Elaine Showalter and others started blowing the trumpet of feminism.

Shaw was a feminist long before the term, `feminism' became familiar or fashionable. In his plays, prefaces and innumerable other writings, he exposed the iniquities suffered by women and the double standards applied to them. His women characters are out of step with the 18^th century gallantry and the Victorian notions of femininity. They might have appeared as unwomanly and hence unacceptable to a fast fading Victorian morality. Shaw's plays presented the New Woman on the British stage. More of this later.

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