SOURCE: Weintraub, Rodelle. “The Irish Lady in Shaw's Plays.” Shaw Review 23, no. 2 (May 1980): 77-89.

In the following essay, Weintraub identifies Shaw's wife, Charlotte Payne Townsend, as a model for the strong, independent female characters in his plays.

Unlike most playwrights since Shakespeare, “St. Bernard,” patron saint of the women's movement, as Bernard Shaw jestingly referred to himself, wrote plays for strong, vital women. Often the play's central figure, his woman does not easily fall into the bitch goddess, virgin mother, whore, ingenue, nor castrating neurotic formula. His female characters generate energy and motivate action rather than merely react to forces buffeting them. When asked how he came to write roles for real women, he responded that he had never imagined women as different from himself. He frequently based his characterizations, however, not merely on himself but on persons he knew and episodes from their lives. Until now critics...