Major Barbara: Preface Summary & Analysis

The playwright, George Bernard Shaw, doesn’t count on the ability of British theater critics to properly appreciate his work and its context. Thus, he writes an extended preface to explain the more salient points of Major Barbara’s social criticism. The first of these is that poverty is the greatest sin and evil in society. This can be seen in the way poverty breeds disease, urban blight, and crime. A character in the play named Andrew Undershaft worships wealth, and he is, for this reason, framed as the play’s hero. Having recognized an important truth, he acts accordingly and shows how society could improve itself by following his example. If audiences are distressed that society rewards people like Undershaft for such choices, then they should work to reorganize society so that resources are more equitably shared.

Shaw also suggests that society’s tendency to pretend poverty is somehow honorable only keeps the poor oppressed while endangering everyone’s health and safety. This mindset also leads to a misplaced emphasis on individuals rather than on the common good. When it comes to helping people, Shaw believes it’s important to focus on the health and salvation of the community as a whole—and, more importantly, that action is more valuable than talk. 

Shaw takes aim at what he sees as the central mistake of both mainstream Christianity and society: an emphasis vengeance masquerading as just punishment. He contrasts this idea of just punishment with the radical forgiveness put forth in the Bible. Forgiveness free of any threat of punishment forces sinner and criminals to either make themselves into better people or to prove themselves irredeemable. Normal forms of punishment exact revenge but fail to reform character.

Shaw insists that people who abhor vengeance and celebrate equality are seen as dangerous because they imperil the status quo. Shaw asks those who find his conclusions distasteful to examine their own beliefs. A society’s laws should apply to everybody; unjust laws should be changed rather than ignored. People naturally become anarchists, he argues, when the legal, social, and moral institutions of a nation become divorced from social progress. Anarchism is sometimes a necessary corrective agent, but it’s not a good ongoing situation, and when it becomes popular, this suggests that a society needs to figure out how to encourage the kind of moral responsibility that makes people into good citizens. But until most people can see the state of the world as clearly as so-called cynics like Shaw, society will not arrive at that point.