George Bernard Shaw was the distinguished dramatist of twentieth century England who propounded the theory and concept of Life Force. He considers that the instincts and wills of female are more determined than male. This is the reason that almost in all his plays women are influenced and commanded by Life Force. Shaw’s plays Candida and Pygmalion are no exception in this regard. In both of these plays the heroines are intellectually daring, independent in spirit, morally courageous and clear-headed. In the play Candida, the heroine (Candida) does not let herself get bullied into ‘choosing’ between her husband and her poetic lover. She takes the situation under her control and chooses to live with the weaker of the two (husband). Life Force enables her to take right decision. In Pygmalion also Life Force is the chief instinct behind the actions of its heroine (Eliza Doolittle). Life Force makes her think independently, helps her turn into a lady of manners and choose a perfect person to marry. So, it is noticed that the concept of Life Force is very relevant in the plays of G B Shaw. It is with the help of this concept that Shaw tries to give equal rights and equal status to women, and make them the driving force in society.

George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) was one of the outstanding, extraordinary personalities of Modern British Literature. In fact, he was the most distinguished personality of the twentieth century England. He was born in a protestant family in Dublin on July 26, 1856. Though music was his first love, his mind was always directed by the Life Force towards some kind of spiritual creativity. At the age of 15, he began his working life in an estate agent’s office. But as he saw no future for himself in Ireland, he came to London in 1876. Shaw wrote five unsuccessful novels between 1880 and 1883, but soon he abandoned this form. He joined the Fabian Society, an organization of British Socialists established in 1884, with the aim of reforming the society with ‘evolutionary changes’ and not with ‘revolutionary actions’.

Shaw was a Fabian, pacifist, vegetarian and teetotaler. He entered the profession of public speaking. After this he chose the field of journalism in 1885 and wrote for The Pall-Mall Gazette and The World. He wrote musical criticism for The Star in 1888 and dramatic criticism for The Saturday Review in 1895. Meanwhile, he also started writing plays for the stage and achieved huge success. In his hands, the British Drama became a drama of ideas (with the treatment of actual English life), the mirror of the age, the reflection of the present, the stern monitor of time and the drama of social and domestic tragedy
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Shaw’s greatest contribution to New Drama was that he introduced the concept of dramatic conflict—that is, conflict of thought and belief instead of conflict of passion. G B Shaw was a fervent admirer of Henrik Ibsen. It was under Ibsen’s influence that human emotions became dominant and sex and the problems of sex occupied pivotal place in New Drama. New investigation into the meaning of sex, which gave the twentieth century the philosophy of Sigmund Freud, brought men to believe in love, what Shaw had styled as the Life Force, and not romantic love.

Shaw produced more than sixty plays and out of which thirty are major works: they are Widower’s House (1892), Mrs. Warren’s Profession (1898), Arms and the Man (1894), Man and Superman (1903), Major Barbara (1905), The Doctor’s Dilemma (1906), Getting Married (1908), Pygmalion, Heartbreak House, Back to Methuselah, Saint Joan (for which he won the Nobel Prize in 1925) and The Apple Cart. G B Shaw was a dominating personality which would be remembered though his plays might go into oblivion. It is the combination of the actor and the critic, of the clown and the prophet that makes him unique in literature. Beyond his speeches, debates, plays and prefaces would remain the man, G B Shaw.

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