The Natural History of Major Barbara

Abstract

WHEN IN 1949 FRANCIS FERGUSSON DESCRIBED the content of Shavian drama as "unresolved paradox," using Major Barbara and Heartbreak House as an illustration, he not only echoed countless early critics, but also furthered the label-sticking method of interpretation which has vitiated so much of Shaw criticism. "The play," says Fergusson, "is a parlor-game based upon the freedom of the mind to name and then to rationalize anything, without ever deviating from the concept to the thing." It is, therefore, not grounded in reality, but merely "a string of jokes which touch nothing.” This thesis certainly does run counter to Shaw's professed dramatic aims, and its influence seems due both to Fergusson's persuasive style and to concepts of realism which shortcircuit the subtle relation of the dramatic signs with their extradramatic referents. This difficulty in relating the play's ideas to some consistent Weltanschauung, some formative reality, has apparently led a recent study, in spite of criticizing Fergusson and brilliantly enlarging our understanding of Major Barbara by describing the play's mythical pattern and analogies, to conclude that "as a total structure of ideas the play remains a paradox in which antitheses retain their full value and cannot be resolved away.”