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SHAW The Annual of Bernard Shaw Studies 21 (2001) 81-93



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Barbara's Progress

Sidney P. Albert


CUSINS: Then the way of life lies through the factory of death?

BARBARA: Yes, through the raising of hell to heaven and of man to God, Through the unveiling of an eternal light in the Valley of The Shadow. 1

The Valley of the Shadow in this exchange, near the end of Major Barbara, is an obvious allusion to Psalm 23:4: "Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me." Equally biblical in character are the drama's contrasts of life and death, heaven and hell, light and darkness. At the same time these qualities of the passage bring to mind another major influence on the language and thought of Bernard Shaw: John Bunyan. Shaw repeatedly paraded the lofty esteem in which he held Bunyan, adjudging him "one of our leading authorities on human nature," and one of the artist-philosophers he so admired; even more, naming him "among the writers whose peculiar sense of the world I recognize as more or less akin to my own." 2

In a chapter added in 1913 to The Quintessence of Ibsenism, he coupled his Salvation Army play with The Pilgrim's Progress parables rejected by "literal people" incapable of understanding "that in real life truth is revealed by parables and falsehood supported by facts." It was this "confusion of truth with mere fact" that led the Army's elders to decline his proffered illustration of how the "dramatic method might be used for their gospel.". . . 3 The presence of the Valley of The Shadow 4 in Major Barbara suggests a closer tie between the two literary masterworks. Since Shaw readily converted both faiths and works to his own creative religious and dramatic uses, Bunyan could supply him with abundant ideational and imaginative material, especially since, like that predecessor, he frequently preached sermons, albeit ironic ones, to biblical texts.

An illustrative instance of such deployment of Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress in Shaw's critical writing is a late comment in "The Illusions of Socialism": "Socialism wins its disciples," he notes, "by presenting civilization to them as a popular melodrama, or as a Pilgrim's Progress through [End Page 81] suffering, trial and combat against the powers of evil to the bar of poetic justice with paradise beyond . . ." 5

With regard to Shavian drama, Martin Meisel, in turn, has discerned that "Shaw used Melodrama to present the Bunyanesque perils, conversions, instructive temptations, and Pilgrim's Progresses of the soul," and he includes Barbara among the playwright's characters who "make a spiritual progress and discovery through trial and temptation." 6

The Pilgrim's Progress From This World To That Which Is To Come: Delivered Under the Similitude of a Dream (Bunyan's extended title) is a theological allegory. It chronicles the pilgrimage of its protagonist, Christian, from the evil City of Destruction, which faces extinction by "fire from Heaven" 7 to Mount Zion, the Celestial City. During his onerous and perilous wandering, he encounters an array of people and spirits who personify varying aspects of human nature and conduct. The Second Part of the book tracks the pilgrimage undertaken after his death by his wife, Christiana, who traverses essentially the same terrain and meets new characters.

The progress of Barbara Undershaft, Shaw's distaff Christian, from her home in sheltered Wilton Crescent to the Salvation Army shelter in West Ham, and thence to Perivale St. Andrews, is the dramatization of a similar spiritual migration. In a different but equally significant sense, her pilgrimage from the City of Destruction to the City of Zion may be taken to be a shorter, more compressed, spiritual journey; for Shaw's Mount Zion, nestling ammunition works in its midst, is itself, in its literal potential, a City of Destruction as well. Shaw's heroine, like Bunyan's hero, is engaged in Christian warfare: she has even held military rank. Accompanying Christian are two steadfast friends: first Faithful...

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