Social climbing
Shaw’s socialist values are very much on display in Arms and the Man, though they are lightly expressed through his gentle lampooning of the class assumptions and pretensions of his characters. It is the Petkoffs who are the most obvious source of his social satire, with their nouveau riche snobbery. Their inflated pride in their washing their hands every day, and in their modest library, is ridiculous but also naively touching. According to Shaw’s stage directions the library consists of “a single fixed shelf stocked with old paper covered novels, broken backed, coffee stained, torn and thumbed; and a couple of little hanging shelves with a few gift books on them: the rest of the wall space being occupied by trophies of war and the chase”. It somewhat belies Catherine’s claims to cultural standing on the basis of their visits to the opera in Bucharest or the shops in Vienna.

The Petkoffs look down on anyone employed in what they would call ‘trade’. Major Petkoff disparagingly describes the Swiss officer they negotiate a prisoner exchange with as “like a commercial traveller in uniform. Bourgeois to his boots.”  When it transpires that this same officer, Bluntschli, becomes a suitor for their daughter’s hand in marriage, Catherine Petkoff assumes that he is not worthy of the match, as “the Petkoffs are known as one of the richest and most important families in the country”, despite the fact their superior position only dates back twenty years. Of course, as the extent of Bluntschli’s inherited wealth becomes clear, Catherine is all too quick to welcome him into the family, presuming also to speak for her husband, even before Raina has accepted Bluntschli’s proposal: “since you are my daughter’s choice…I shall not stand in the way of her happiness. That is Major Petkoff’s feeling also.”

Shaw’s view that people’s value should not be defined primarily by wealth is underlined by his fleshing out Bluntchli’s other qualities: he has “four medals for distinguished services”, the “rank of an officer and the standing of a gentleman”, as well as “three native languages”. And most importantly he possesses the highest rank known in Switzerland – that of a free citizen. A symbol of a society where everyone has an equal status.

Shaw’s point that a notional idea of social standing should not define or constrain people is further expressed in Louka’s success in realising her ambition to escape her position as a servant. Although she does that in one of the few ways possible for her at the time, by marrying upwards. By contrast the house servant Nicola navigates his way through the social hierarchy by leveraging his discretion and his loyalty to earn enough to achieve his modest aim of setting up a shop in town.