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

Major Barbara 129
acters in a play, such as Broadbent, Larry, and Keegan in John Bull’s Other
Island. The use of three points of view permits greater complexity and
avoids a simple dichotomy that would tempt us to see the issues as opposites
of right and wrong. Here, the obvious trio is Undershaft, his daughter
Barbara, and her fiancé Cusins, but nearly all of the characters are set off
against each other in revealing ways. Sometimes the characters are paired
and then bracketed with another person or set of characters. Lady Brit and
Stephen are contrasted to Undershaft and Barbara. Mrs. Baines and Barbara
represent different views of the mission of the Salvation Army. The
four proletarians of the second act—Snobby, Rummy, Peter Shirley, and
Bill Walker—serve as foils for and mirrors to each other.
Stephen and his mother, who open the play, are the representatives of
the aristocracy, the traditional ruling classes. The scene between the two of
them is not merely exposition; it begins, with a single note, the theme that
will resonate in many complex chords later in the play. The issue is money,
and the question is where to get it. Or so it seems, for we quickly learn,
with Stephen, that the money must come from Undershaft’s factory of
death because there is no other possible source. Lady Brit’s true objective
in consulting with her son is not to ask for advice but to avoid responsibility
for a moral decision that, although necessary, appears distasteful. She
has made her decision and acted on it; she merely wants Stephen to take
responsibility for it. In this scene, Lady Brit is the schoolmistress and
Stephen her pupil. She instructs him, in word and deed, how the aristocracy
approaches difficult moral questions. Stephen’s horror of mentioning
such “frightful” things as his father and his money produces this admonition
from his mother: “It is only in the middle classes, Stephen, that people
get into a state of dumb helpless horror when they find that there are
wicked people in the world. In our class, we have to decide what is to be
done with wicked people; and nothing should disturb our self-possession”
(3:73). Thus we have the ruling-class solution: boldly face the facts, confidently
take the money, and deftly shift the responsibility onto someone
else.
This approach is not without its price. Lady Britomart steams into view
as a classical dowager dreadnought, a moving mountain of indomitable
will, but we later see that it is all bluff. She has no genuine power apart
from her (very considerable) strength of character. When her husband,
who has real power and knows it, opposes her, she is helpless. Even her son,
who seemed so firmly under her thumb in the first scene, has only to declare
his independence to achieve it. The strength that comes from position