How He Lied to Her Husband By George Bernard Shaw

 

How He Lied to Her Husband By G.B. Shaw

Answer the following questions in 15-20 words each:

1. Why is Aurora worried for the lost poems?

Answer: Aurora is worried for the lost poems as her name was clearly mentioned in those poems. She feared that her sister-in-law Georgina would read them to her husband.

2. Why did Aurora deny going to play after learning about the ticket?

Answer: Aurora wanted to see the play ‘Lohengrin’ but Henry brought the tickets for the play ‘Candida’ which she had already seen.

3. Why did Aurora ask Henry to lie to her husband?

Answer: Henry addressed his poems to Aurora. She feared that her husband would know the reality so she urged Henry to lie that the Aurora in the poems was someone else.

4. Why was her husband late for the dinner?

Answer: Her husband was late for the dinner as Georgina, Teddy’s sister, had sent a messenger to call him to meet her.

  Answer the following questions in 40-50 words each:

1. What are ‘growing pains’ according to Henry?

Answer: Henry has suffered a lot since his birth. From childhood to youth, there is a long journey, and Henry has to bear the pains, sufferings, bitter experiences of love etc; which are growing pains. He says that his love is destroyed in just fifteen minutes, his dreams are shattered and his honour was hurt.

2. How does Henry react when his manuscript is produced to him by Aurora’s husband?

Answer: Henry tries to prove that those poems are not addresses to his wife. He says that he wrote these poems many years ago after reading Swinburne’s Songs before Sunrise. His poems are addressed to Aurora, the goddess of dawn.

3. How did her husband Teddy prove that Henry was lying?

Answer: Teddy says Henry’s poems were addressed to his wife Aurora and not to the goddess of dawn Aurora. He said that when the Sun rises, Henry is lying in his bed. It means he had never experienced the beauty of the time of rising Sun.

4. Why did her husband get angry on Henry?

Answer: Henry tried to convince Teddy that his poems were addressed to Aurora, the goddess of dawn, and not to his wife Aurora. The cuckolded Teddy provoked Henry and shouted that it was an insult to his beautiful wife Aurora Henry lacked the poetic talent to praise his wife’s beauty.

 

Answer the following questions in 150 words each:

1. Describe Mr. Bompass’s character and state how he described his wife to Henry?

Answer: Mr. Teddy Bompass is the husband of Aurora. He was a robust, thicknecked, well groomed city man. He had a strong chin but a blithering eye and credulous mouth. He had a momentous air but he showed no signs of displeasure; rather contrary.

Mr. Bompass showed Henry poems composed by the latter; addressing someone by the name of Aurora. Henry tried to convince him that the Aurora in the poems was the goddess of dawn. Tactfully Mr. Bompass made the young man to accept that he loved his wife.

Mr. Bompass is shrewd, clever and tactful. He is a cuckolded man who does not hesitate to boast hsi wife’s beauty in front of another man to arouse his interest in her. He says to Henry, “She’s is the smartest woman in the smartest set in South Kensington.” He angrily says to Henry,”Introducing a fine woman to you is casting pearls before a swine”.

Mr. Bompass had a combat with Henry and the young man had a great blow. When Henry accepted his affairs with his wife and revealed that they had made plan to elope but Aurora refused on the last moment; Mr. Bompass showed his willingness to publish Henry’s poems.

 

2. Justify the title of the play, “How He Lied to Her Husband’.

Answer: There is the whole setting - the very beautiful and wealthy Aurora who is married to a common businessman although able to have a social life of consorting with various artists and so forth. And then the play begins to unfold. The husband, the very practical and very much bourgeois man who has provided his wife with everything she could ever wish for in terms of wealth and social life, has now rumoured to have found out about the poet and the wife. Teddy Bompass’ sister Georgina has told him about the poet's writing extensive poetry every day about the wife, and the love (still platonic in fact) that is the soil for the poetry to grow from, and so on. And the wife has come to know about the husband having been informed, and she is frantic in worry about what will happen.

The poet who is in love with her, writing poems to her, willing to do anything for her, whether taking her to theatre every evening or stay in and amuse her or be shot by her husband or elope with her, whatever destiny might have in store for the love of his very exhilarated heights of romance. The poet is willing to do anything she wishes, while his own noble instinct is to accept the blame and confront the husband with the truth and walk off into the sunset with his beloved beautiful Aurora.

After a brief confrontation and even a duel with Teddy; Henry accepts his love for Aurora. Surprisingly Teddy proposes to publish his poetry and ask the suggestion for the title of the book. Henry suggests that it should be “How He Lied to Her Husband’.

The title is very suggestive as it gives a hint that there is an affair between a married woman and a boy/man and when it is exposed how the man/boy lied to hide it.

3. Write Henry Apjohn’s character.

Answer: Henry Apjohn is a very handsome youth. He seems as if he is moving in a dream or walking as on air. He is in love with a middle aged woman Aurora and has composed some beautiful poems praising her beauty. He is a talented poet and in the end Mr. Bompass proposes to publish his poems, “It shall be done in the best style”. The young man seems to have no respect or fear of social constraints and law. He says to Aurora, “when you are divorced, we shall go through whatever idle legal ceremony you may desire”. The boy boasts his physical strength in front of Aurora and claims that he is “active enough to keep out of his reach for fifteen seconds; and after that I should be simply all over him”. But ironically he is beaten by Teddy. The boy is as immature as Eugene in Candida.

The boy’s love for Aurora is compared to Eugene’s love for Candida in the play Candia. When Aurora asks him that he should have written his poems “with some little reserve”; Henry cannot understand why was it wrong to address her in his poems.

4. Write Mrs. Bompass’s character.

Answer: Mrs. Bompass has an air of being a young and beautiful woman; but as a matter of hard fact, she is, dress and pretensions apart, a very ordinary South Kensington female of about 37, hopelessly inferior in physical and spiritual distinction to the beautiful youth. She has spoilt, petted ways; and wears many diamonds (Henry does not like diamonds).

She has an affair with a young boy Henry. Henry has composed some poems addressing her. Unfortunately she has misplaced these poems and now fears that if her sister-in-law Georgina finds the poems and shows to her husband Teddy; her affair with Henry will come into light. This can ruin her life.

When Henry boasts about his physical strength and claims that he can knock down her husband in a few seconds; she shows her concern for the well being of her husband. Even she tries to stop the duel and later on forces the two men to compromise. It seems she is confused whom to choose like Candida in the play Candida. She likes to go to theatre and has bitter experiences of life. That’s why she says that Candida lacks a character Georgina “If Georgina had been there to make trouble, that play would have been a true-to-life tragedy”.