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Major Barbara Paperback – January 27, 2010
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- Print length124 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherSMK Books
- Publication dateJanuary 27, 2010
- Dimensions6 x 0.31 x 9 inches
- ISBN-101604596856
- ISBN-13978-1604596854
- Lexile measureNP0L
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Product details
- Publisher : SMK Books (January 27, 2010)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 124 pages
- ISBN-10 : 1604596856
- ISBN-13 : 978-1604596854
- Lexile measure : NP0L
- Item Weight : 6.7 ounces
- Dimensions : 6 x 0.31 x 9 inches
- Customer Reviews:
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on Victorian England society. Well worth reading. For the real literature and sociology/economics buff, read the opening essay. Religious
issues are also dealt with in an interesting way.
Briefly stated, this play is a conversion story centered around a Salvation Army worker named Barbara, her scholar fiancé, and her rich, munitions-dealing father. Who, whom, and to what, you ask? Well, naturally, the conversion in question is to Shaw’s own political ideas. Shaw’s own preface(in the penguin edition) will elaborate in case you’re unfamiliar with them. In abbreviated form: Shaw believes some people simply don’t have enough money to live on, while others have far too much; and that the only real social crime is poverty. As a committed Fabian Society member Shaw was remarkably hard-headed and fact-focused in his quest to transform England into a socialist utopia sometime soonish. Can one be a materialist and a Utopian? Shaw seems to have thought so. Revolution was superannuated in favor of substantive reform, detailed city planning, and pragmatic democracy. Ideals of a purely qualitative beauty failed to impress him. By providing a sustainable income to all, not only would poverty be relieved, government would render most crime extinct—for those recalcitrant enough to keep to old, anti-social habits GBS could be very hard headed indeed, explicitly advocating after a failure of cajolery a speedy execution for persistent violent offenders. Crime wouldn’t suffer the only demise after an equitable distribution of pounds, Shaw insisted. Religion would be substantially reduced—or at least the need to seek and submit to it in order to provide for one’s basic needs. Bribing an impoverished human into Christianity held an inherent abhorrence for Shaw. Prayers in exchange for the possession of bread moved the social crime of poverty out of its real life circumstances. For Shaw, the design of switching the victim out for a sinner performed a self-serving deceit of the worst sort. This common ill earned Shaw’s harsh derision as the bribers were often notoriously well fed and subsidized, though perhaps of earnest intentions. Accepting money with intent of doing good wasn’t necessarily wrong, but buying the poor off to convert them to, say, Christianity was. A human being has an obligation to be useful to his society, but society has as equal a responsibility to make sure that every human has enough money to live. Baldly stated, this sounds fairly concrete in application. However, in consequence, proper intentions are narrowed by Shaw to an alarming degree. Not only is rendering an adequate supply of money to each person a moral imperative, it becomes the only appropriate imperative. Charity encouraged based on lesser motives earns only mockery from Shaw. Ruskin, Morris, and Kropotkin are castigated in Major Barbara’s preface as aesthetes who merely want to improve the look of their neighborhood and neighbors through socialism. All Idealism appears to be inexorably connected to sinister shenanigans for the Fabian Shaw, yet demanding a leveling of a given society’s pool of money rather smells of economic justice, which is rather idealistic no matter how hard-headed and factual you might present yourself as you espouse it. Shaw is interested in saving souls, but his salvation boasts of the creation of a single enlightened middle class that faces up to its overall social obligations. Now, after all this, does the “conversion” in Major Barbara work out? I’m inclined to have my own doubts. Obviously the playwright wanted his audience to leave his story with a feeling of optimism. A man as intelligent as Shaw must’ve had a ample serving of both, however, but he likely felt that one must try to build the best society one can for those about it with as much realistic chance of success as possible. Otherwise, one might as well move in next door to Ruskin, become a national celebrity, and write light comedies...
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I had seen the 1940 film version of this story before reading the play, but found myself understanding the longer philosophical speeches better in the written form, so gained new enjoyment from Shaw's(sometimes rather long-winded)writing.
Twenty first century readers should not be put off by the writers Victorian style, there is much food for thought in the underlying messages of this play.







