Shaw-a Social Reformer

“SHAW”—A SOCIAL REFORMER: OR “MAJOR BARBRA”—COMEDY OF IDEAS: OR “UNDERSHAFT”—MOUTH PIECE OF SHAW: G.B.Shaw is the father of revolutionary playwrights who dared to create in English drama an atmosphere for discussions and ideas. Before Shaw the field of reform was limited to religious and political personalities. But, with Shaw the social reforms became a theme for creative writers. In the words of Earnest Reynolds, “ The English Drama was an ostrich unwilling to draw its head out of the comfortable golden sands of force, pageantry and poetic melodrama into the rational area of discussion and intellectual progress. It is only due to Shaw that this unwilling ostrich compelled to breathe this fresh air.” Shaw’s sense of life was histrionic and in the drama, he found the only literary genre which could all satisfy his demand for life and art. He never bothered to achieve greatness of art; rather he utilized his art as a medium to transmit his ides to the world. To play, Socrates says that the modern metropolis required new techniques of argument, a vast fund of highly liberal knowledge, a fast and gay mind, a personality visible from a greater distance, brilliance, charm and comic gift. These requirements specify the formula of Shaw’s primal invention, the Shavian persona. G.B. Shaw invented himself in much the same way that he invented his long procession of vital, talky characters. Mrs. Warren, Candida, lady Cicely, Saint Joan, john Tames, Undershaft, Lisa etc. He knew that in the words of repressed and conventionalized responses, of dead moral reflexes, a measure of solvent anger was crucial to raise the temperature of perception. He wanted strong reactions to himself and to his art. His art is one of productive strife between official sentiments and actual feelings even more than it is a comedy of ideas. The fact is that Shaw was historically awake earlier, more persistently and with less compromise than any of his contemporaries. He was more rather than less serious than other men, as comic geniuses are. Shaw’s conviction that the theater can be a place of truth, if the playwright knows enough about the two essentials which make drama vital human circumstances and the craft of the theater. “Shaw was more aggressively intelligent than most artists.” Says K.J.kaufman. His literary preoccupation does not separate him from life. Shaw was a born rebel and iconoclast who was out to destroy old and accepted conventions in order to make reform for new and fresh ideas. In this regard Nichol has observed in his book “English Drama” as: “The key notes to Shaw’s works are rationalism and critical rebellion. He was a social reformer but his socialism is not of the emotional kind but a rational one.” “Major Barbra” together with “Man and Superman” and “John Bull’s other Island” forms part of a trilogy of philosophical comedies, all of which deal with the brute facts of sex, nationalism and poverty. In “Major Barbra”, the Salvation Army heroine finds that in her work for the poor, she is forced to accept assistance from both a whisky magnet and her millionaire father, Undershafts, who has created himself an ideal little society of his own from the proceeds of his ornament factory. Shaw has his eyes on the real lines of force, involving money, good and evil do not in practice exist apart from the context of money and Under Shaft’s wealth. Such powers we must respect, expending the evil into good. Advance depends on such men as Undershaft, we need more and not less of them and the revolutionary who thinks otherwise impedes progress. The Shavian critique of morality is basically a plea that we be rather more discriminating (in realizing that poverty is a “Crime” e.g.), then people usually are in making such judgments. In the second edition of the “Quintessence” Shaw had insisted that conduct must justify itself by its effect upon life and not by its conformity to any thing. The morality of Major Barbra is the same when bill maker refuses to give his name to Barbra; she puts him down as the man who “struck poor little enemy Hill-in-the mouth.” Instead of the emotions of lower and mistress, Shaw renders the emotions of parents and children and particularly the emotions of the child rejection of the parents. Major Barbra is perhaps the grandest example of this archetype, aristocratic, self assertive, spirit and natural masterfulness at odds with these ideals. It is clear from the following dialogue: Stephen: 1

“And my family, thank heavens, is not pig headed Tory one. We are Whigs and believe in liberty. Let Selfish people say what they please. Barbra shall marry not The man they like, but the man I like.” Then she says: “I’ve always made you my companions and friends and always you perfect freedom to do, and say whatever you liked, so long as you liked what I could approve of.” Then snobbish attitude is apparent in these lines: “It is only in the middle classes, Stephen, that people get into a state of dumb helpless horror when they find that there are wicked people in the world.” Shaw’s dramatic technique throughout relies on starling, comic surprises, replaces the tensions, suspense and expediencies of tragedy. Shaw added humour to his plays because otherwise they would have been indigestible. He says very serious things in a comic manner. He lacks the seriousness of an artist. He was called “irresponsible jester”, “super fiction” and “naughty” by the critics. Contemporary indifference to his work in art reflects a European tradition of finding comedy indigestible. But in spite of all this he is a social reformer and his philosophy lies in his comic art. His voices have logical relevance with one constant theme of reforming society.

Written& Composed By: Prof. A.R. Somroo M.A. English& Education. 0662610063 Cell: 03339971417 Khangarh.

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