It is often supposed that young people tend greatly to underestimate the difficulty of changing the world for the better.  In three major plays, Bernard Shaw puts this received wisdom to the test by portraying in each a young woman who takes on the challenge of effecting social change.  They are Barbara Undershart in Major Barbara, Ellie Dunn in Heartbreak House, and the eponymous heroine of Saint Joan.  How and why do these heroines fail or succeed in transforming a society arraigned against them?

Some claim that Shaw's plays are only lectures in disguise, that al his characters are himself, and that he relies on brilliant wit (which no one denies) with not expression of feeling.  A closer look at Shavian drama will reveal unsuspected substrata of emotion that serve not to convert and instruct, but to provoke and move, an audience.  His claim that "All of the characters in all of my plays must be sympathetic" rests upon his unequalled gift for seeing a contested issue from multiple points of view at once.  Though Shaw actually welcomed the prospect of his works becoming dated by the progress of humanity, his dramas persist as all too needed in our own time- and as entertaining as ever.