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

80 Bernard Shaw’s Remarkable Religion
whereas the capitalist cannot because the working-man will not let him”
(“Illusions of Socialism” 418). So his message to millionaire philanthropists
was that they should “create new needs: the old ones will take care of
themselves” (“Socialism for Millionaires” 403). New needs are created by
awakening human aspiration.
Perhaps this is why Shaw felt impotent in his chosen profession. The
theater is not a particularly good tool for doing what he believed most
needed doing: stirring the souls of people who were insensitive to the finer
things of civilization—including its art. Poverty will end when those who
suffer most from it determine to end it, but poverty has degraded their
souls and destroyed their will. The only thing to be done about the poor is
to relieve them of poverty, and that cannot be achieved with art. One may
awaken the souls only of those whose bodies are not half-starved and brutalized:
the comfortable classes who profit from exploitation of the poor.
One way to do that is to shock their consciences with that terrible truth:
the way of the “unpleasant plays.” The method Shaw eventually chose
attempted to awaken a respect for reality and the courage to face the truth
without having it shoved violently in one’s face. He was following the
Chinese proverb that one can feed a man for a day by giving him a fish or
feed him for life by teaching him how to fish. How well he succeeded is
another matter; the task was formidable.
His biggest obstacles were those faced by Zola or anyone else attempting
to promote unwelcome truths: to make the audience listen and think
about what he had to say and to make them believe that it is indeed the
truth. Shaw knew why Zola “wanted, not works of literary art, but stories
he could believe in as records of things that really happen” (Pref. Three
Plays by Brieux 1192). Prosaic as they may seem, they were necessary for
his audience.
If Zola had had a sense of humor, or a great artist’s delight in playing
with his ideas, his materials, and his readers, he would have become
either as unreadable to the very people he came to wake up as Anatole
France is, or as incredible as Victor Hugo was. He would also have
incurred the mistrust and hatred of the majority of Frenchmen, who,
like the majority of men of all nations, are not merely incapable of
fine art, but resent it furiously. . . . What they like to read is the police
intelligence, especially the murder cases and divorce cases. The invented
murders and divorces of the novelists and playwrights do not
satisfy them, because they cannot believe in them; and belief that the