Man And Superman

Ramsden is an old family friend of the Whitefields. He believes that he is liberal and progressive, but he strongly dislikes Jack’s ideas. He also gets annoyed when he learns he must share Ann’s guardianship with Jack, but agrees to fulfill the role anyway. Next to Jack, Ramsden is conservative. Violet’s secret marriage shocks him, and he’s very concerned about Jack’s influence on Ann. However, Mendoza reveals that Ramsden has been carrying on affairs with many women, giving the appearance of staunch propriety while living however he pleases. As someone who was likely once considered progressive, he finds Jack threatening because Jack’s progressiveness pushes him away from the cutting edge. In fact, it’s insinuated that Ramsden didn’t read Jack’s book because it was too difficult for him. In the end, Ramsden becomes more open to Jack when Jack becomes a proper suitor for Ann, buying into at least one conservative social convention.

Octavius is a sweet but willingly naïve young man, an artist who is often overly emotional and has devoted himself entirely to the pursuit of Ann, whom he idealizes. He trusts easily, becoming offended when Jack suggests that Ann is cunning and manipulative, and believes every lie Ann puts forth even when he knows it’s a lie. But despite his devotion to love and romance, Ann categorizes him as the type of man who will never marry. If he were to marry, no woman could live up to his ideal. Octavius can only be a poet from afar. He is a generous person, however, and quickly forgives Jack for being the object of Ann’s affection.   

The young ingenue, Ann is anything but naïve. Jack describes her as a boa constrictor who will set her sights on a man and then squeeze him tight. Ann is charming, and she lies and manipulates easily. She rarely reveals the mechanisms of her manipulation, as it seems to come second nature to her. When one lie fails, as is the case with Rhoda’s letter, she easily offers another. At the end of the play, she coerces Jack into marriage, and it is never clear which of her emotions are real and which are to serve her purposes. Jack calls Ann a bully and a hypocrite, insinuating that as schoolchildren, Ann used to manipulate the other girls. But she also projects innocence and sweetness, contrary to Jack’s assertion that she will ultimately destroy him.

Violet, Octavius’s sister, has little patience with social expectation. She has found a husband who is an heir to a fortune and has no difficulty controlling him or winning over her new father-in-law. She is also uninterested in the romanticized notion of work and has no intention of allowing her new husband to emancipate himself from his father’s money. Violet also detests Jack Tanner, perhaps because he seeks to destroy a system that she is able to manipulate well. She forges ahead with her own desires, marrying without waiting for permission and refusing to allow her husband’s ideals to interfere with her own goals.

Ann and the unseen Rhoda’s mother, Mrs. Whitefield is widowed before the play begins. She adheres to social convention and seems like a quiet, timid woman, but she sees much more than she lets on. For instance, she sees that her daughter is manipulative, and that Jack is the only man who might be able to tame Ann. 

Henry, also known as Enry, is, as Jack describes, proud of being working class. Jack describes Henry as a “New Man,” a man who is self-sufficient and capable. Henry is not particularly interested in the way Jack romanticizes him, but he serves to show just how far Jack is from the working-class character that he idealizes. Henry is a realist, off-setting Jack’s loftiness with pragmatism.  

An American, Hector Malone is set to inherit a fortune from his father. However, he is also under his father’s thumb. Like Octavius, Hector is a romantic. He marries Violet in secret and then desperately wants to tell everyone so that he might defend her honor. He attempts to stand up to his father, imagining that he will work and stand on his own without anyone’s financial support. But Violet balances him out, forcing practicality instead of romanticism.

The elder Hector Malone, Hector’s father, is a man from humble beginnings who made his fortune and is obsessed with social class. His family fled the Irish potato famine, and Malone has dedicated his life to earning enough money to exact revenge on England by buying up their prime properties. He is determined that his son will marry someone with a title, but Violet quickly manipulates him into accepting her as a daughter-in-law.

Mendoza was once a waiter who fell in love with a woman who rejected him. As a waiter, his job centered on decorum. But after he loses his love, he retreats and decides to leave society altogether and become a thief. He becomes the president of the thieves, free of society but still a romantic, composing poetry and weeping for his lost love every night. Mendoza finds more financial success by bilking rich men like Malone out of their money.  

Played by Jack, Don Juan is Jack’s philosophical ancestor. In the third act, Don Juan is in Hell. The legendary lover has lost interest in women and beauty and focuses now on philosophy. His goal is to bring forth the Superman, an ultimate, philosophically pure man who is unmoved by the temptation of women. He gives up the pleasures of Hell to ascend to Heaven, where he plans to spend his eternity in contemplation.

Dona Ana, played by Ann, is an older woman who died at 77 and is surprised to find herself in Hell. In life, she upheld religious morality and social propriety. When she meets Don Juan and learns that she can make herself younger, he recognizes her as the woman whose father he once killed in a duel because of his love for her. Ana decides that she belongs in Heaven, regardless of what anyone says. She attempts to follow Don Juan to Heaven, but he leaves her and it is unclear whether she ever finds her own way. 

Played by Ramsden, Ana’s father, who died in a duel with Don Juan, chooses to manifest as a statue because that is the form in which he was most admired on earth. The Statue was in Heaven, but on the day that he visits Hell, he announces that he has decided to leave Heaven for Hell. The Statue admits that he is not interested in philosophy and has no desire to think about the pleasures he enjoys in Hell.