SHAW’S BLACK GIRL

Tue Adventures of The Black Girl in Her Search for God. By George Bernard Shaw (with drawings by John Farleigh). $1.50, Dodd.

THE recent visit of George Bernard Shaw to this country after refusing literally thousands of invitations year after year, and the appearance of the erstwhile radical before the staid Academy of Political Science, have caused a renewed interest in all of the Shaw works and a special attention to his latest—The Adventures of the Black Girl in Her Search for God.

This tiny volume has already enjoyed a few weeks of notable success in England and the alternate pounding and pushing of American critics has made it one of the second best-sellers over here. There are two central themes exquisitely interwoven in the story. It is significant that reviewers persist in overlooking the fact that not only is Shaw searching for God, but that he is searching for God through a Black Girl. It is this second theme which falls within the special purview of Opportunity.

The story in itself is simple enough. The Black Girl, converted by a missionary to Africa, sets out with her knobkerry and Bible to find the true spirit of the universe. She meets one by one the various Gods of Noah, Micah, Job, and Jesus with whom she discusses her quest. She ends up by marrying and rearing a family of coffee-colored kids.

It may be an accident that the important words in the title—Black Girl Search—begin with Shaw’s initials. It is hardly accidental that Shaw selected this satin black girl in an African setting as the vehicle for his deepest penetration after the meaning of life. In contrast with a prejudiced picture, the Black Girl is intelligent, fearless, and a virgin.

According to American tradition, Negroes are a happy-go-lucky and emotional lot eager for ‘social equality’. One of the characters tries to ingratiate himself into the affections of the Black Girl by saying, “Though you are black and I am white, we are equal before God.” Not to be swerved from her search, the Black Girl answers, “I am not thinking about that at all.”

With that she—and Shaw, move on to the fundamental indictment of Western Civilization. With all of the inventions, machines, and technological advance “. . . the most wonderful thing that you have is your guns.” If this is true, and as Shaw believes, there is little hope in ashen paleness—what of the future of man? The words of one character may suggest an answer, “. . . the next great civilization will be a black civilization, the white man is played out.”

LAWRENCE D. REDDICK

SOURCE: Reddick, Lawrence D. “Shaw’s Black Girl,” Opportunity 11 (October 1933): 314 (“Our Bookshelf” column).

George Bernard Shaw:
The Adventures of the Black Girl in Her Search for God:
Notes & references
compiled by R. Dumain