NON-AFRICAN DRAMA BERNARD SHAW: Arms and the Man Assess the character of Raina Petkoff

Answer Details

Raina Petkoff is the heroine of Bernard Shaw's Arms and the Man, and her character carries the play's satire on romantic illusions about love and war. She begins as a self-dramatising idealist and ends as a woman who has learned to prefer honesty to pretence, so that her development mirrors the play's central argument.

A romantic idealist. At the start Raina is intoxicated by noble ideals. She worships her betrothed, Major Sergius Saranoff, as a storybook hero and thrills to the news of his reckless cavalry charge. She speaks of a "higher love" and strikes noble attitudes, treating war and romance as grand and beautiful. Shaw presents this idealism as charming but false, a pose learned from opera and romantic novels.

Given to poses and pretence. Raina is fond of playing a part. She adopts lofty tones and heroic gestures, and she is not above deceit: she admits she has told "only two lies" in her life, and she plants her photograph, inscribed to her "chocolate cream soldier", in Bluntschli's coat. Her theatricality is gently mocked throughout.

Compassionate and brave. Beneath the poses she has real warmth and courage. When the fugitive Swiss soldier Bluntschli climbs into her bedroom, she shelters and protects him at some risk, hiding him from the pursuing soldiers. Her humanity is genuine even when her manner is affected.

Capable of growth and honesty. Raina's importance lies in her capacity to change. Bluntschli's blunt realism, his admission that he carries chocolates instead of cartridges and that soldiers fear death like anyone else, gradually punctures her illusions. She comes to see the falseness of her "higher love" for Sergius, who is himself flirting with the maid Louka. By the end she drops her poses, acknowledges her real feelings, and accepts the practical, truthful Bluntschli.

A vehicle for Shaw's satire. Through Raina, Shaw ridicules the romantic glorification of war and the artificial idealism of conventional courtship, replacing them with common sense and sincerity. Her final choice of the realistic soldier over the theatrical hero embodies the triumph of realism over romance.

Conclusion. Raina Petkoff is a spirited, imaginative and warm-hearted young woman whose early affectation and romantic idealism give way, under the influence of Bluntschli's realism, to honesty and self-knowledge. Her growth from poseur to sincere lover makes her the living illustration of the play's message.