Partners in a Moral Crime A Social study in George Bernard Shaw ' s Play Widowers

The madly rush upon money may derive a person to sell the values and ethics that he is supposed to enjoy having. The human emotions could be affected by the exaggeration of the greed for money and also magnifies its negative impact on a noble feeling like love, but is love a parcel to be bought and sold by money and for the sake of money? Is it not a supreme value upon which there isn’t any compromise? If the case became that business becomes the justification for the rich to profit from the sweat and misery of the poor and disadvantaged, is there any sense of love and compassion left in them? George Bernard Shaw in his play Widowers' Houses gives answers to these questions outweighing money on morality and love in the time when feelings become of little value, and the collected money becomes the measure of manhood and success .In such time ,there is no place for true love in the world of business. Bernard Shaw grants his pen the freedom to portrait money in the figure of a contagious disease which attacks the rich to make themselves richer ,and the poor get the disease from the rich so that they might exceed the poverty situation even if it is at the expense of their feelings, sympathy and morals .


Introduction :
For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.
( Bible-1 Timothy 6:10King James Version (KJV)) Money is twofold weapon .On one hand it can be a person's friend ensuring him/her wealth that enhances his /her ability to achieve things that are achievable via money , and happiness which would include him/her and the people around , or it can be , on the other hand , the worst enemy when it corrupts the person's morals . Sophocles wrote : Money is the worst currency that ever grew among mankind. This sacks cities, this drives men from their homes, this teaches and corrupts the worthiest minds to turn base deeds. 1 this message is universal in its meaning and became an unavoidable truth that most of us get affected by. It touches our daily life to the extent that we became obsessed with it. It became a truth which assures us that it is so hard for any of us to make his calculations for present and future plans without thinking of this truth . However, some people think the opposite : they believe that life can be happy and joyful without having money in their pockets, and they lean to the opinion saying that love, respect, and selfsacrifice can be vivid sources of happiness and dignity . This opinion goes hand in hand with Immanuel Kant's opinion about morality. He assures that " Morality is not the doctrine of how we may make ourselves happy, but how we may make ourselves worthy of happiness. " 2

Evil to Come
In his play Widower's Houses (1892) G.B. Shaw presents a young doctor, Harry Trentch ,who meets a rich young lady, Blanche Sartorius, with whom he has a love relationship and plans to marry. He demands that he and Balnche would live on the modest income that he gets .However, he finds out that he was raised by the money that comes from the mortgage that his family holds on Sartorius's properties , the widowers' houses (the name was given to these houses and was mentioned in one of the reports of the English Parliament.) These houses are resided by poor people who became widowers and used to live alone in separate or shared rooms .The land on which these houses are erected belongs to a rich family, The doctor's family . Shaw puts these two characters and the other ones : Sartorius , Blanche's father , Cokane and Lickcheese, before the audience and gives the latter a chance to comprehend the playwright's philosophy, which will be further discussed in the present study . Deliberately,Sartorius talks about the source of his income and the income of Lady Roxdale which happens to be the same source of the young doctor's income from which he spends for his living and learning tuition .
He wants to say that corrupted money is the common thing among the characters of the play . It is also a reminder to Harry's family to treat Balnche in the best way and accepts her as one of the new family because she is just like them and they all deal with money that is raised from the widowers' agony . Cokane could smell the rotten smell and that led him to look compassionately at him and accused money to be the biggest evil:

Ah, my dear fellow, the love of money is the root of all evil . 18
And a sudden fury came to Harry :

It's a damnable business from beginning to end ; and you deserve no better luck for helping in it. Ive seen it all among the out-patients at the hospital ; and it used to make my blood boil to think that such things couldnt be prevented . 19
He saw miserable patients suffering and that was outrageous and moving enough for him . The question remains, Is it enough to be angry at wrong situation and practices without taking any action to correct it? Someone should do something to correct something. Which character is eligible to be the hero in this play in such a situation? Is it Harry Trench?
Harry Trench cares not to Lickcheese' critical situation and begging that Harry speaks to his future father -in -law to let Lickcheese keep his job. Lickcheese told Trench about the future fortune the latter will get when marrying Blanche and that will make him another copy of Mr. Sartorius, therefore, if that happens who will be more mean ? is it Lickcheese in his meanness in colleting the rent amounts or Mr. Sartorius and Trench who spend that money ? Lickcheese furiously said : In an attempt to think of living without Blanche's father's money , Trench asks her if she is ready to live without her father's money and she answers him that she refuses to do so because her father promised her that she will live rich when she gets married and her life will be as happy as he could provide her. Trench tries to convince her to be satisfied with the seven hundred pounds he gets but she does not go along with that suggestion giving him a justification that the money she will get form her father will enable her and her husband to live luxuriously. He refuses Blanche's attempt to make him accept her father's money and things went wrong that she curses and asks him not to try to see her again . When her father talked to him to know the reason behind the fight between the two young people , Trench tells him that he wants Blanche only , not her father's money because of the source of that money which is the widowers' houses.
Mr.Sartorius tries to convince Harry Trench that Lickcheese is a liar and that it is a matter of business to rent the houses .Harry objects to the type of houses and the living conditions in them and that people there do suffer.
Mr. Sartorius explains that those people are too poor and they steal the wood and glass in the houses to sell them and live and that the best income they could get is four shillings and that is the rent of the house. Mr.
Sartorius dares to ask Trench about the source of his income and the latter defiantly answers : Instead of taking any corrective action , Harry Trench surrenders to the circumstances and admits that he has a hand with Mr. Sartorius in the suffering of the dwellers of the widowers' houses . Mr. Sartorius tries to make his daughter change her mind and accept Harry Trench as a husband but she refuses accusing him to be proud and arrogant thinking himself to be better than her family and father .
Money charm doesn't spare Lickcheese who is fired by Mr.
Sartorius but this was so beneficial for the former. Lickcheese returns to tell Mr. Sartorius that he learned from him a way of being rich which is to buy widowers' house and rent them to poor people . It seems that chasing money is contagious. He tells his old master about the compensation that the government will pay for the houses that will be demolished to make a road ,so he suggests that they buy those houses before being demolished just to get the compensation amount after demolishing them; the dwellers, once more, are the victims of those plans . Blanche learns that her father's income is from the widowers' house and feels ashamed of herself and wishes that she had no such a father and feels sorry for accusing Harry Trench of being proud to refuse her father's money . Her conscious refuses that she lives on people's agony and believes that to live in poverty with honor is better thousand times than to live rich with disgrace.
The men's greed does not stop. Mr. Sartorius and Lickcheese meet again and Cokane and Trench come to Mr. Sartorius' house for another attempt to win Blanche's heart once more . Mr. Sartorius and Lickcheese try to make Trench accept the project of the compensation because he represents his aunt ,the land owner . Mr. Sartorius refuses to be part of the deal and therefore Lickcheese suggests that Trench marries Blanche so that the houses and the land will establish a company. This marriage is for the sake of money, not for love. Blanche's destiny is discussed as a financial case .When he is left alone , Trench goes to Balnche's photo and kisses it and farewells her despite his love to her . She comes to him and kisses him . This sudden change in the girl's stand makes him agree to join Mr.Sartorius in the compensation project regardless of the profit or loss that the project might risk facing. Mr. Sartorius shakes Trench's hand , Cokane applauds, and Lickcheese hugs Trench. Every one of these men has his own benefit ,and Money is still the motive. They all step on their morals for the sake of money ,and that is the worst thing that a person may do.
They incarnate the meaning of dissatisfaction in greed. Greed is so mean that it affects a person's morality in a negative way .It provokes the person's dissatisfaction . Rabbi Benjamin Blech explains that Greed will always leave you dissatisfied because you'll never be able to get everything you desire. Greed never allows you to think you have enough; it always destroys you by making you strive ever harder for more. 25 As a father , Mr. Sartorius does not play the role of a loving father who loves his daughter , instead he thinks of Trenches' family's fortune to be added to the fortune he himself has . As a lover , Trench forgets about his feelings and passions and prefers to be a businessman who conducts business with his future father-in -law . As a rent collector , Lickcheese is ready to lick other people's shoes to reach his goal :money. With his devilish plans in mind , he will always be busy looking for a tender to submit of a project to share.

Conclusion
Money has the power of magic in which some people , on one side , are convinced that this power is believable and can guarantee them happy life without any pain of consciousness . Other people , on the opposite side, disagree to that belief and they believe that it is no more than illusion . For them ,following the illusion is misleading and the result is unhappy . Mr.
Sartorius and Lickcheese belong to the first group and they practice their meanness and greed on the poor dwellers of the widowers' houses .Harry Trench , Knowing the real source of Mr. Sartorius's future , refuses to take the money and makes us believe that he is a man of morals ,but he disappoints us when he accepts the money and participate in the project suggested by Lickchesse , and thus he becomes a partner in the moral crime .
Blanche's has no real opinion about refusing or accepting the marriage between herself and Trench ,and thus she becomes a helpless young girl who cannot fight the strong stream of greed generated by the three men .
The bad characters' lust for money is the moral crime that needs to be punished and the good one's patience and nobility need to be rewarded.