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    Major Barbara
    Major Barbara
    Major Barbara
    Ebook151 pages1 hour

    Major Barbara

    By George Bernard Shaw

    3.5/5

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    Major Barbara is thought to be one of Shaw's most controversial works. While trying to give a realistic presentation of how he saw Christianity, many accused him of blasphemy. Major Barbara Undershaft thought it hypocrisy that her church accepted charity from companies, such as a whisky distiller, and eventually decided that it would be more fulfilling to bring salvation to people who had plenty of vises, the people in need. Shaw intended to show that no matter how terrible the donor may be, the donation can produce good.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherStart Publishing LLC
    Release dateDec 28, 2012
    ISBN9781625585769
    Author

    George Bernard Shaw

    George Bernard Shaw was born in Dublin in 1856 and moved to London in 1876. He initially wrote novels then went on to achieve fame through his career as a journalist, critic and public speaker. A committed and active socialist, he was one of the leaders of the Fabian Society. He was a prolific and much lauded playwright and was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature. He died in 1950.

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    Reviews for Major Barbara

    3.5/5

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    • 4/5
      Barbara, a major in the Salvation Army, is in the business of saving souls. Her father, a wealthy arms dealer, is in the business of war, death, and destruction. He sells weapons to anyone who wants them, without regard for the aims or ideals of the buyer.The conflict between Barbara and her father is at the heart of this play, which addresses social and philosophical questions in a brilliant and witty manner.This play made me both laugh and think, which had to be exactly Shaw's intention.
    • 5/5
      What a fantastic play. Although I expected not to enjoy this, I thoroughly loved it. It was funny and thought provoking. How I would love to know how his contemporaries reviewed the play to elicit such a long, defensive introduction.
    • 2/5
      A play that doesn't know whether it wants to be a light drawing-room comedy or a Greek tragedy. The juxtaposition of light and dark scenes just doesn't work.
    • 3/5
      This is one weird play. None of the characters seem like real people and they are all obnoxious. The main theme is an interesting one: an argument betwixt right and wrong. Shaw points out that all money for organizations like the Salvation Army comes from the war-makers and booze-makers. What meaning does salvation have in this context? Also, how much does a salvation borne of starvation fed mean? It actually occurs to me that the dynamic between charity/morality and between industry/immorality is somewhat reminiscent of The Fountainhead.

      George Bernard Shaw has a fairly recognizable style. The most noticeable aspect is his scene setup. He describes the scene down to every last detail. Where Shakespeare plays have exceedingly brief notes, Shaw goes on for a page or two any time there is a location change. I really have trouble imagining how the scene change in the middle of the third act would be accomplished, since two very precise sets would need to be made.

      The other thing about Shaw that I noticed is that he is much like Wilde, only perhaps not so funny. Both Wilde and Shaw were born Irishman. Shaw moved to England as a young boy. Still, you can see his judgment of the English in his writing, which is why the characters are so irritating. Like Wilde, the humor in the story comes from the mocking of the English, particularly the upper crust.

      Best line, which comes after Undershaft tells Barbara that he saved her from the seven deadly sins:
      "Yes, the deadly seven. [Counting on his fingers.] Food, clothing, firing, rent, taxes, respectability and children."
      And yes, I do love this largely because children are listed as a deadly sin. How hilarious is that?
    • 2/5
      I feel like the genius of the play's ideas merits more than 2 stars; HOWEVER, this wasn't an enjoyable read. Far from it. From hopelessly trying to decipher the writing style Shaw uses to portray the dialect of the poor to struggling to determine what exactly Shaw was recommending, I found it difficult to appreciate Major Barbara.

      What I think Shaw is trying to say is that only through wealth can we eradicate poverty. Which, in the case of Undershaft using his munitions factory to outfit potentially oppressed peoples with weapons, is valid. It's also valid since Undershaft's factory complex is a mini-socialist utopia where all the needs of the workers are met. But in reality, I don't agree with this "solution" to poverty. Unfortunately, most wealthy people aren't intelligent and kindly Undershafts. Most rich business owners work selfishly for themselves and fail to protect the needs of the poor.

      But then again, I may have completely missed the point of the play; I truly have no idea. Perhaps I would better appreciate this if I saw it staged. Then some of my problems--namely the unreadable dialect--would disappear. It's also rather funny in spots, and again, humor always translates better on stage.
    • 5/5
      Wow is Shaw a master of putting a lot of provocative ideas in a short play. A young lady rejects society to try to save the bellies, livers, and souls of the poor - is she truly a good person? An arms manufacturer claims power over government to get them to make war so he can sell weapons to all who can pay - is he truly a bad person? Is the pragmatic matron or the idealistic professor more likely to hold sway over their own destinies? Or over the destinies of the others in the family?

      A line from the beginning that made me realize this polemic was going to be funny is spoken by the society matron, Barbara's mother, a strong & opinionated woman, Let snobbish people say what they please: Barbara shall marry, not the man they like, but the man *I* like."

      And an exchange from the end that reminds me of Oscar Wilde, first Lady B. again, "[You] ought to know better than to go about saying that wrong things are true. What does it matter whether they are true if they are wrong?" The arms merchant retorts, "What does it matter whether they are wrong if they are true?"

      What indeed? What is right? What is true? What is valuable? What do people need in this life, or in the hereafter? What is our duty to ourselves, to truth, to God, to our family, to our fellow man? Don't expect Shaw to tell you - he wants you to do the work to figure it out for yourself."

    Book preview

    Major Barbara - George Bernard Shaw

    Act I

    It is after dinner on a January night, in the library in

    Lady Britomart Undershaft’s house in Wilton Crescent. A large and

    comfortable settee is in the middle of the room, upholstered in

    dark leather. A person sitting on it [it is vacant at present]

    would have, on his right, Lady Britomart’s writing table, with

    the lady herself busy at it; a smaller writing table behind him

    on his left; the door behind him on Lady Britomart’s side; and a

    window with a window seat directly on his left. Near the window

    is an armchair.

    Lady Britomart is a woman of fifty or thereabouts, well dressed

    and yet careless of her dress, well bred and quite reckless of

    her breeding, well mannered and yet appallingly outspoken and

    indifferent to the opinion of her interlocutory, amiable and yet

    peremptory, arbitrary, and high-tempered to the last bearable

    degree, and withal a very typical managing matron of the upper

    class, treated as a naughty child until she grew into a scolding

    mother, and finally settling down with plenty of practical

    ability and worldly experience, limited in the oddest way with

    domestic and class limitations, conceiving the universe exactly

    as if it were a large house in Wilton Crescent, though handling

    her corner of it very effectively on that assumption, and being

    quite enlightened and liberal as to the books in the library, the

    pictures on the walls, the music in the portfolios, and the

    articles in the papers.

    Her son, Stephen, comes in. He is a gravely correct young man

    under 25, taking himself very seriously, but still in some awe of

    his mother, from childish habit and bachelor shyness rather than

    from any weakness of character.

    STEPHEN. What’s the matter?

    LADY BRITOMART. Presently, Stephen.

    Stephen submissively walks to the settee and sits down. He takes

    up The Speaker.

    LADY BRITOMART. Don’t begin to read, Stephen. I shall require all

    your attention.

    STEPHEN. It was only while I was waiting–

    LADY BRITOMART. Don’t make excuses, Stephen. [He puts down The

    Speaker]. Now! [She finishes her writing; rises; and comes to the

    settee]. I have not kept you waiting very long, I think.

    STEPHEN. Not at all, mother.

    LADY BRITOMART. Bring me my cushion. [He takes the cushion from

    the chair at the desk and arranges it for her as she sits down on

    the settee]. Sit down. [He sits down and fingers his tie

    nervously]. Don’t fiddle with your tie, Stephen: there is nothing

    the matter with it.

    STEPHEN. I beg your pardon. [He fiddles with his watch chain

    instead].

    LADY BRITOMART. Now are you attending to me, Stephen?

    STEPHEN. Of course, mother.

    LADY BRITOMART. No: it’s not of course. I want something much

    more than your everyday matter-of-course attention. I am going to

    speak to you very seriously, Stephen. I wish you would let that

    chain alone.

    STEPHEN [hastily relinquishing the chain] Have I done anything to

    annoy you, mother? If so, it was quite unintentional.

    LADY BRITOMART [astonished] Nonsense! [With some remorse] My poor

    boy, did you think I was angry with you?

    STEPHEN. What is it, then, mother? You are making me very uneasy.

    LADY BRITOMART [squaring herself at him rather aggressively]

    Stephen: may I ask how soon you intend to realize that you are a

    grown-up man, and that I am only a woman?

    STEPHEN [amazed] Only a–

    LADY BRITOMART. Don’t repeat my words, please: It is a most

    aggravating habit. You must learn to face life seriously,

    Stephen. I really cannot bear the whole burden of our family

    affairs any longer. You must advise me: you must assume the

    responsibility.

    STEPHEN. I!

    LADY BRITOMART. Yes, you, of course. You were 24 last June.

    You’ve been at Harrow and Cambridge. You’ve been to India and

    Japan. You must know a lot of things now; unless you have wasted

    your time most scandalously. Well, advise me.

    STEPHEN [much perplexed] You know I have never interfered in the

    household–

    LADY BRITOMART. No: I should think not. I don’t want you to order

    the dinner.

    STEPHEN. I mean in our family affairs.

    LADY BRITOMART. Well, you must interfere now; for they are

    getting quite beyond me.

    STEPHEN [troubled] I have thought sometimes that perhaps I ought;

    but really, mother, I know so little about them; and what I do

    know is so painful–it is so impossible to mention some things to

    you–[he stops, ashamed].

    LADY BRITOMART. I suppose you mean your father.

    STEPHEN [almost inaudibly] Yes.

    LADY BRITOMART. My dear: we can’t go on all our lives not

    mentioning him. Of course you were quite right not to open the

    subject until I asked you to; but you are old enough now to be

    taken into my confidence, and to help me to deal with him about

    the girls.

    STEPHEN. But the girls are all right. They are engaged.

    LADY BRITOMART [complacently] Yes: I have made a very good match

    for Sarah. Charles Lomax will be a millionaire at 35. But that is

    ten years ahead; and in the meantime his trustees cannot under

    the terms of his father’s will allow him more than 800 pounds a

    year.

    STEPHEN. But the will says also that if he increases his income

    by his own exertions, they may double the increase.

    LADY BRITOMART. Charles Lomax’s exertions are much more likely to

    decrease his income than to increase it. Sarah will have to find

    at least another 800 pounds a year for the next ten years; and

    even then they will be as poor as church mice. And what about

    Barbara? I thought Barbara was going to make the most brilliant

    career of all of you. And what does she do? Joins the Salvation

    Army; discharges her maid; lives on a pound a week; and walks in

    one evening with a professor of Greek whom she has picked up in

    the street, and who pretends to be a Salvationist, and actually

    plays the big drum for her in public because he has fallen head

    over ears in love with her.

    STEPHEN. I was certainly rather taken aback when I heard they

    were engaged. Cusins is a very nice fellow, certainly: nobody

    would ever guess that he was born in Australia; but–

    LADY BRITOMART. Oh, Adolphus Cusins will make a very good

    husband. After all, nobody can say a word against Greek: it

    stamps a man at once as an educated gentleman. And my family,

    thank Heaven, is not a pig-headed Tory one. We are Whigs, and

    believe in liberty. Let snobbish people say what they please:

    Barbara shall marry, not the man they like, but the man I like.

    STEPHEN. Of course I was thinking only of his income. However, he

    is not likely to be extravagant.

    LADY BRITOMART. Don’t be too sure of that, Stephen. I know your

    quiet, simple, refined, poetic people like Adolphus–quite

    content with the best of everything! They cost more than your

    extravagant people, who are always as mean as they are second

    rate. No: Barbara will need at least 2000 pounds a year. You see

    it means two additional households. Besides, my dear, you must

    marry soon. I don’t approve of the present fashion of

    philandering bachelors and late marriages; and I am trying to

    arrange something for you.

    STEPHEN. It’s very good of you, mother; but perhaps I had better

    arrange that for myself.

    LADY BRITOMART. Nonsense! you are much too young to begin

    matchmaking: you would be taken in by some pretty little nobody.

    Of course I don’t mean that you are not to be consulted: you know

    that as well as I do. [Stephen closes his lips and is silent].

    Now don’t sulk, Stephen.

    STEPHEN. I am not sulking, mother. What has all this got to do

    with–with–with my father?

    LADY BRITOMART. My dear Stephen: where is the money to come from?

    It is easy enough for you and the other children to live on my

    income as long as we are in the same house; but I can’t keep four

    families in four separate houses. You know how poor my father is:

    he has barely seven thousand a year now; and really, if he were

    not the Earl of Stevenage, he would have to give up society. He

    can do nothing for us: he says, naturally enough, that it is

    absurd that he should be asked to provide for the children of a

    man who is rolling in money. You see, Stephen, your father must

    be fabulously wealthy, because there is always a war going on

    somewhere.

    STEPHEN. You need not remind me of that, mother. I have hardly

    ever opened a newspaper in my life without seeing our name in it.

    The Undershaft torpedo! The Undershaft quick firers! The

    Undershaft ten inch! the Undershaft disappearing rampart gun! the

    Undershaft submarine! and now the Undershaft aerial battleship!

    At Harrow they called me the Woolwich Infant. At Cambridge it was

    the same. A little brute at King’s who was always trying to get

    up revivals, spoilt my Bible–your first birthday present to me–

    by writing under my name, "Son and heir to Undershaft and

    Lazarus, Death and Destruction Dealers: address, Christendom and

    Judea." But that was not so bad as the way I was kowtowed to

    everywhere because my father was making millions by selling

    cannons.

    LADY BRITOMART. It is not only the cannons, but the war loans

    that Lazarus arranges under cover of giving credit for the

    cannons. You know, Stephen, it’s perfectly scandalous. Those two

    men, Andrew Undershaft and Lazarus, positively have Europe under

    their thumbs. That is why your father is able to behave as he

    does. He is above the law. Do you think Bismarck or Gladstone or

    Disraeli could have openly defied every social and moral

    obligation all their lives as your father

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