Bernard Shaw's Remarkable Religion: A Faith That Fits the Facts

114 Bernard Shaw’s Remarkable Religion
as a game and its participants, like himself, as performers. He is without
shame because he is indifferent to honor and similar idols. The lieutenant,
in contrast, is without shame because he is stone blind to his own failings
and inadequacies. Both are unfailingly cheerful and pleased with who they
are. We might find their real-life counterparts trying: an innkeeper without
scruples is not an invariable joy to his guests, and an incompetent military
officer is hated by both superiors and subordinates, but on the stage
we cannot dislike such cheerfully amusing creatures.
Henceforward, in his efforts to present his own view of the human
drama, one with often intense conflict but without villains or saints, he
relied heavily on the types of characters we encounter in Man of Destiny.
There are the major characters: strong-willed people like Napoleon and the
Strange Lady who are either satisfied with pursuing their wills and are
possessed by larger purposes like the lady, or are devoted to more or less
egoistic ends, or are in conflict to some degree with their own wills, like the
general. The minor characters are largely fools (in the aforesaid technical
sense) who can transform limitations we might despise in our neighbors
into delights on the stage. They might be witty and will-less like Giuseppe
or obtuse and oblivious like the lieutenant, but they manage to avoid making
us hate them while also reminding us of the pervasiveness of human
foibles.
Some of Shaw’s major characters are fortunate souls whose expansive
wills are whole and free from internal conflict, such as Caesar or Joan, but
more interesting are those who find their strong wills in conflict with
high-minded ideals, such as Gloria in You Never Can Tell. If The Man of
Destiny dramatizes “How to Become a Man of Genius,” You Never Can
Tell is the dramatic expression of the first chapter of The Quintessence of
Ibsenism (with a glance at the third). Gloria was raised as a rationalist by a
mother who was a champion not merely of women’s rights but of all the
ideas represented by J. S. Mill, Tyndall, Huxley, and George Eliot. She has
learned to repudiate such ideals as obedience and womanliness. She is an
individual, free from superstition; she declares, “I obey nothing but my
sense of what is right. I respect nothing that is not noble” (1:730–31). Her
mother is justly proud of the “sound training” she has provided for
“Gloria’s mind” (1:749). Yet she finds herself in love with Valentine, a
charming but lighthearted and lightheaded young man for whom the
“Higher Education of Women” is nothing but a ploy in the eternal duel of
the sexes. To her horror and shame she is drawn to someone she cannot