The Black Girl in Search of God

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The Adventures of the Black Girl in Her Search for God (and Some Lesser Tales) [1] is a book of short stories written by George Bernard Shaw. The title story is an allegory relating the experiences of an African black girl, freshly converted to Christianity, who takes literally the biblical injunction to "Seek and you shall find me."[2] and attempts to seek out and actually speak to God. One by one, she meets the pantheon of Judaeo-Christian and Muslim deities and dignitaries and disposes of them all by trenchant logic and skilled use of her knobkerry. Eventually she abandons her quest and settles down with a red-headed Irishman and rears a family. Only after the children are grown and gone does she resume her searching, and by then her "strengthened mental powers take her far beyond the stage at which there is fun in smashing idols".

The Black Girl, as protagonist, serves the same purpose as Christian in Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress; that is to say she makes interesting adventures of what, otherwise, would be bleak theological and sociological discussions.[citation needed] She may also be viewed as an emerging feminist figure, able to defend herself with her knobkerry and—although naive—capable of formulating searching theological questions.[citation needed] The speculation is supported by her apparent prior appearance as "The Negress"—a powerful figure in The Thing Happens, which is the third part of Back to Methuselah.[3]

The book was first published in 1932, as Short Stories, Scraps and Shavings. The 1934 reprinting added Black Girl, already serialized in 1932, along with a companion essay that disclaimed the supernatural origin of the Bible. In the essay, Shaw declares the Bible to be a book without divine authority—but still important for its ethical messages and valuable as history. Both the story and the essay outraged the religious public, creating a demand that supported five reprintings.[4] Shaw was greatly distressed when the irreligious tone of Black Girl caused a rift in his long-term friendship with Dame Laurentia McLachlan, Abbess of Stanbrook;[5] eventually they reconciled. Shaw exacerbated the general furor by proposing intermarriage of blacks and whites as a solution to racial problems in South Africa. This was taken as a bad joke in Britain and as blasphemy in Nazi Germany.[6] The full text of this story is available on-line. [7]

[edit] References

  1. ^ Shaw, George Bernard (1934). The Adventures of the Black Girl in Her Search for God and Some Lesser Tales. London: Constable and Company, Ltd.. pp. 305 pages. http://www.wikilivres.info/wiki/index.php/The_Black_Girl_in_Search_of_God. 
  2. ^ Matthew 7:7 and Luke 11:9
  3. ^ [1] Back to Methuselah: The Thing Happens]
  4. ^ Gibbs, A. M. (2005). Bernard Shaw. Gainesville: University Press of Florida. pp. 555 pages. ISBN 0-8130-2859-0. 
  5. ^ Weintraub (Editor), Stanley (1977). The Portable Bernard Shaw: Letter to Sister Laurentia McLachlan. NY, NY: Penguin Books, Ltd.. pp. 698 pages. ISBN 0-140-15090-0. 
  6. ^ Holroyd, Michael (1997). Bernard Shaw: The One-Volume Definitive Edition. New York: Random House. pp. 833 pages. ISBN 0-375-50049-9. 
  7. ^ Shaw, George Bernard. "The Black Girl in Search of God". http://www.wikilivres.info/wiki/The_Black_Girl_in_Search_of_God. Retrieved on 2009-05-19. 
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