The Black Girl in Search of God

"The Adventures of the Black Girl in Her Search for God (and Some Lesser Tales)" [cite book
last = Shaw
first = George Bernard
authorlink =
coauthors =
title = The Adventures of the Black Girl in Her Search for God and Some Lesser Tales
publisher = Constable and Company, Ltd.
year = 1934
location = London
pages = 305 pages
url = http://www.wikilivres.info/wiki/index.php/The_Black_Girl_in_Search_of_God
doi =
id =
isbn = ] 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." [Matthew 7:7 and Luke 11:9] and attempts to seek out and actually speak to God. One by one, she meets the pantheon of Judeao-Christian and Muslim deities and dignitaries and disposes of them all by trenchant logic and skilled use of her knobkerry. ["Oxford English Dictionary:" Knobkerrie (or knobkerry): A short thick stick with a knobbed head, used as a weapon or missile by South African peoples. ] 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. 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. Such 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". [ [http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Thing_Happens:_A.D._2170/Act_I%2C_%26sect_i] "Back to Methuselah: The Thing Happens] ]

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. [cite book
last = Gibbs
first = A. M.
authorlink =
coauthors =
title = Bernard Shaw
publisher = University Press of Florida
year = 2005
location = Gainesville
pages = 555 pages
url =
doi =
id =
isbn = 0-8130-2859-0] 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; [cite book
last = Weintraub (Editor)
first = Stanley
authorlink =
coauthors =
title = The Portable Bernard Shaw: Letter to Sister Laurentia McLachlan
publisher = Penguin Books, Ltd.
year = 1977
location = NY, NY
pages = 698 pages
url =
doi =
id =
isbn = 0-140-15090-0] 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. [cite book
last = Holroyd
first = Michael
authorlink =
coauthors =
title = Bernard Shaw: The One-Volume Definitive Edition
publisher = Random House
year = 1997
location = New York
pages = 833 pages
url =
doi =
id =
isbn = 0-375-50049-9]