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There are a lot of scholars both at home and aboard who have studied the play Major Barbara from many aspects. Most people study Major Barbara from the interpersonal point of view. Some scholars study the elements of realistic features in Major Barbara. Some others study the principle of concession. Margery Morgan analyzes the play from a dramatic perspective in his book York Notes: Notes on Major Barbara. He offers us a brief introduction to Shaw’ s life and plays, a summary of Major Barbara and its commentary, including mainly its themes, the settings, the theatrical styles, characterization, etc. He also presents us with hints and suggestions for study and further reading. Chinese scholar Yang Xue analyzes the female image in Major Barbara. She thinks the book clearly illustrates George Bernard Shaw’s feminist ideas. Shaw endows the heroine, Barbara, with strong independence, distinctiveness, bravery and unwomanly quality.
II. Formation of George Bernard Shaw’ s Satirical Writing Style
George Bernard Shaw is a great master of drama in British history after Shakespeare. His spicy writing techniques brought a strong shock to the society at that time and left a rich cultural heritage to future generations. In his work Major Barbara, George Bernard Shaw revealed a series of social problems caused by the gap between the rich and the poor mainly through the satirical writing techniques. The formation of this writing style is inseparable with George Bernard Shaw’s growing experience. In this part, the author analyzed the causes of the formation of satirical writing style mainly from the British social background and George Bernard Shaw’s living environment.
2.1 Social Influences
From the 1850s to the early 1970s, the growth of British industry and commerce as well as more foreign colonial expansion made Britain become the international monopoly, and the Secondary Reform Program in 1867 further slowed down the conflict between the proletariat and the middle class. After the British seized the Suez Canal, the Victorian eras which formally declare in 1876 was the public display of political triumph. However, the two World Wars greatly consumed the national strength, the influence of economy and politics were replaced by the United States. As the colonies independence movement emerged, the British Empire suffered a heavy blow and lost a large number of sources of raw materials in the past and the overseas market (Evans 23). Own recession and external shocks led to the decline of the British Empire, and ideological struggle was corresponding with the capital imperialism political and economic recession. In the 1880s, the working class and the bourgeoisie conflict ignited once again, such as Workers uprising in Lyon, France, British Chartist movement, Workers uprising in Silesia, Germany, but these movements finally ended in failure.