The Adventures of the Black Girl in her Search for God

[steepholm]

Having just read Crux Ansata, it was something of a relief to turn to Bernard Shaw's The Adventures of the Black Girl in her Search for God (1932), which I acquired at the same time. Both books were on my aunt Naomi's shelves, from which I was invited to help myself.



I'd never heard of this book before, but it's a very striking one, with handsome engravings by John Farleigh. I gather that this allegory (written during a brief sojourn in Africa) caused controversy when it was first published, not least for its use of a black woman as an active, intelligent, no-nonsense quester after truth, but mostly because of the interracial marriage with which it concludes (she ends up with an Irish gardener). Here she is laying about an Old Testament Nobodaddy with her trusty knobkerry:



Anyway, it also struck me that Shaw's book, being an allegory in which a protagonist wanders a landscape littered with people offering their own answers (some historical or archetypal, some satirical takes on distinctively modern positions) to questions about God and the meaning of life, may possibly have had some bearing on C. S. Lewis's The Pilgrim's Regress, published the following year. Obviously, Lewis is mostly riffing on John Bunyan, but in tone he comes a lot closer to Shaw at times, although he is leading in a very different direction.

Comments

[kalypso]

The illustrations look terrific; we had a copy in the house where I grew up, but I think it was a basic Penguin. I remember looking at it, but I think I was too young to make a great deal of it. Isn't marrying the gardener something to do with Voltaire and "il faut cultiver notre jardin"?

(I remember the knobkerry, but thought it would be bigger!)

[steepholm]

Yes, she falls in love with a Voltaire figure (well, he's not named as such, but he comes out with the Candide line pretty much straight away, so I assumed it), but he insists that he's too old for her, and that she should marry the red-headed Irish gardener instead, who bears a passing resemblance to GBS. She does, and they have coffee-coloured children together.

[kalypso]

What is the edition? I've just been looking on abebooks, where the booksellers keep telling me that their copy has slight wear on the spine and not whether it includes stunning illustrations by John Farleigh. Is it the original 1932 hardback?

[steepholm]

Yes, it's the fifth reprinting of the first edition, 1932, hardback. (All five took place in December - it was clearly the perfect Christmas gift!)

[kalypso]

Exactly what you'd want in your stocking! I've now tried adding "Farleigh" as a key word, and that's brought up quite a few copies - there's also a 1966 Penguin which has the engravings, I think ours must have been the 1946 one which just had the standard orange and white cover.

[steepholm]

It's certainly worth getting hold of a copy with the engravings, if you're tempted to reread it!

[kalypso]

Just ordered one!

[gillpolack.livejournal.com]

I think the world would come to an end if Lewis and GBS shared too much direction.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Reading Chesterton's essays as a teenager left me with the impression that intellectual life in Britain in the first part of the century was a kind of tag wrestling match, in which Wells and Shaw were pitted against Chesterton and Belloc. I've since adjusted this mental picture, but every now and then it comes back to haunt me. I've always thought that, Catholicism aside, Lewis would have found Chesterton very congenial. The love of beer and beef, and of paradox and inversion, linked the two in my mind; so it was strange to think of CSL's waxing Shavian to any degree whatsoever.