Language and Metadrama in Major Barbara and Pygmalion

This book focuses on two important topics in Shaw’s Major Barbara and Pygmalion that have received little attention from critics: language and metadrama. If we look beyond the social, political, and economic issues that Shaw explored in these two plays, we discover that the stories of the two “Shavian sisters”— Barbara Undershaft and Eliza Doolittle—are deeply concerned with performance and what Jacques Derrida calls “the problem of language.” Nearly every character in Major Barbara produces, directs, or acts in at least one miniature play. In Pygmalion, Henry Higgins is Eliza’s acting coach and phonetics teacher, as well as the star of an impromptu, open-air phonetics show. The language content in these two plays is just as intriguing. Did Eliza Doolittle have to learn Standard English to become a complete human being? Should we worry about the bad grammar we hear at Barbara Undershaft’s Salvation Army shelter? Is English losing its precision and purity?Meanwhile, in the background, Shaw keeps reminding us that language and theatre are always present in our everyday lives—sometimes serving as stabilizing forces, and sometimes working to undo them.

In this study of Major Barbara and Pygmalion, Jean Reynolds draws from performance theory, mythology, psychology, and linguistics to create a work of scholarship at once wide-ranging and intimate. With equal measures of erudition and love, she invites readers to re-examine these two most fascinating and frustrating Shavian dramas, especially the extraordinary women at their centers.  

-Mary Christian, Author of Marriage and Late-Victorian Dramatists, Assistant Professor of English, Middle Georgia State University, USA

Jean Reynolds shows that the language Shaw uses is not merely accent and grammar, but a complex reflection of his inner struggles and how he experienced the world. Exploring the works of scholars and theorists, she examines the issues that spawned these two plays, both in Shaw himself and in our modern world. Reynolds does so thoughtfully and with a fresh eye, leading to an awareness that is compelling and quite absorbing. I heartily recommend her book.  

Jesse Hellman, Psychiatrist, Baltimore, Maryland, USA 

Reynolds loves words as much as her inspiration, Mr. Shaw, and she uses them to liberate him from Victorian, Edwardian, World I, and even World War II straitjackets, showcasing him centerstage in a thoroughly modern literary and theatrical framework. Explaining his work in terms of metadrama, often using a deconstructionist/postmodernist methodology, she arrives at innovative conclusions proving Shaw’s relevance beyond his own time, and perhaps beyond ours as well.

– Bob Gaines, President, The International Shaw Society Professor Emeritus, Auburn University, USA

“Jean Reynolds invites us to consider a close kinship between two of Shaw’s most popular and enigmatic plays. On the surface, Pygmalion and Major Barbara seem to have little in common, but as Reynolds unpacks the status of language and its effect on identity and attitudes in both plays, the similarities start to emerge clearly, and pave the way for a new approach to other Shaw plays as well. In true Shavian fashion, Reynolds expands her argument beyond Shaw’s fictional characters to show that what we learn from his plays has important implications for the way we approach and teach language in the real world as well.”

– D.A. Hadfield, Lecturer, University of Waterloo, Canada, and Editor of Shaw and Feminisms: On Stage and Off (2013) 

Jean Reynolds is Professor Emerita of English at Polk State College, USA. Her previous publications include Shaw and Feminisms (2013), co-edited with D.L. Hadfield, and Pygmalion’s Wordplay: The Postmodern Shaw (1999), as well as multiple articles and reviews for SHAW: The Journal of Shaw Studies, of which she is an editorial board member.