Pygmalion Summary - eNotes.com Pygmalion Summary George Bernard Shaw Pygmalion Summary In Pygmalion, phonetics professor Henry Higgins takes in a flower girl named Eliza Doolittle. He intends to turn Eliza into a lady by teaching her elocution. He succeeds, but never truly believes that she's a lady, and as a result Eliza runs away, escaping his tyranny. Henry meets Eliza on the street one night when she attempts to sell him a flower. He bets that he can teach her elocution and pass her off as a lady, and after many objections Eliza agrees to their experiment. Eliza turns out to be an apt student and easily convinces the ladies at a garden party that she's one of them. Nevertheless, Henry never truly thinks of her as a lady and still treats her as a servant. She runs away, seeking her independence. Meanwhile, Eliza's father, who previously milked Henry out of money, becomes a rich man thanks to an offhand comment Henry makes in a letter to a rich philanthropist. He bemoans his new station in life, but of course doesn't return the money.

Download Study Guide Start Free Trial Start your free trial with eNotes to access more than 30,000 study guides. Get help with any book. link Link Like The Doctor’s Dilemma (pr. 1906, pb. 1911), Pygmalion is a problem play that examines a social issue. Shaw deals here with the assumptions of social superiority and inferiority that underlie the class system. He demonstrates how speech and etiquette preserve class distinctions. As he wrote in the play’s preface, “It is impossible for an Englishman to open his mouth without making some other Englishman hate or despise him.” Pygmalion therefore tries to illustrate the arbitrariness of basing a person’s worth on his or her pronunciation. The phonetics professor Henry Higgins is an expert in dialects and accents. At Covent Garden he phonetically transcribes all that the innocent flower girl Eliza Doolittle says. Since he boasted of his successes in educating social climbers in speech, Eliza comes to Higgins’s house the next day, asking to be taught to speak like a lady so that she might be employed in a classy flower store.

A fellow phonetics professor, Colonel Pickering, offers to cover the expenses of the experiment if Higgins can pass Eliza off as a duchess at a garden party six months later. Sure of his abilities, the tyrannical and condescending Higgins is enticed by the Frankensteinian challenge “to take a human being and change her into a quite different human being by creating a new speech for her.” While Higgins is successful in transforming Eliza in terms of speech, his rough manners, rudeness, and swearing do not teach her the accompanying social etiquette. Eliza betrays her lack of refinement at a parlor party not through her pronunciation but through what she says. The comic climax is reached when she uses the vulgar expression “Not bloody likely,” although she pronounces it in a ladylike manner. Higgins and Pickering seem unaware that their experiment has transformed Eliza not only in terms of her speech. Even after she has successfully passed for a lady at a garden party, Higgins still does not treat her like a lady.

Higgins’s excuse is that while Pickering may treat a flower girl like a duchess, he would also treat a duchess like a flower girl, since he believes in treating everyone equally, regardless of his or her social class. Feeling disappointed and humiliated, Eliza leaves Higgins by night, no longer willing to be treated like a servant. She believes that she has risen to a higher social class and claims that social class is not determined by one’s pronunciation but by the respect with which one is treated. In the meantime, money has been left to Eliza’s father by a rich American. This unexpected wealth has transformed him from an alcoholic dustman into a middle-class man in terms of behavior and ideology, although not in terms of pronunciation. Since it is based on money and not on accent, his character transformation seems more secure than his daughter’s, although both seem ambivalent about their new status. Although the play leaves Eliza and Higgins’s future open, Shaw wrote in his afterword that she will marry the petit bourgeois Freddy and open a flower and vegetable shop with him instead of continuing to endure Higgins’s unrefinement and rudeness. She has been struggling throughout the play to liberate herself from the professor’s tyranny.

In Pygmalion, Shaw links the Cinderella story of a transformation from rags to riches with a Frankensteinian creation of a new life. Underneath the play’s comedy, questions are raised about the justifiability of social distinction and the role of women in a patriarchal society. Although Shaw felt ambivalent about the feminist movement of the early twentieth century, he presents Eliza as suffering degradation and escaping from it with the help of Pickering’s civility, Mrs. Higgins’s understanding, and her own awakened self-reliance. Pygmalion was later made into the popular musical comedy My Fair Lady (1956). Related Content (hide) link Link Late one evening in the Covent Garden theater district of London, playgoers are attempting to summon taxicabs in the rain when a crowd gathers around an unkempt young woman selling flowers. The flower girl has been speaking in a very strong Cockney dialect, and a distinguished gentleman has been transcribing her speech into a notebook. The gentleman, Henry Higgins, is a professional phonetician who earns a handsome income teaching people how to change their lower- and middle-class accents so that they can pass as members of the upper class.

Higgins amazes the crowd by using his analysis of individuals’ accents to pinpoint where each of them lives. Appalled by the flower girl’s lower-class dialect, Higgins boasts that in a matter of months he could teach her how to speak properly and pass as a duchess at an ambassador’s garden party. The next morning, in the drawing room and laboratory of Higgins’s Wimpole Street residence, Higgins is showing Colonel Pickering his elaborate equipment for recording speech when the housekeeper, Mrs. Pearce, announces the arrival of the flower girl, Eliza Doolittle. Eliza wants to take lessons from Higgins so she can improve her speech and get a job as a clerk in a proper flower shop. Higgins is impressed by the percentage of her meager wealth that Eliza is willing to pay and accepts her as a student, making a wager with Pickering that in six months he can pass Eliza off as a duchess. Mrs. Pearce asks what is to become of Eliza when Higgins has finished his teaching, but Higgins dismisses the question as trivial. After Mrs.

Pearce takes Eliza away so that the young woman can bathe, Pickering asks Higgins if his intentions toward Eliza are honorable; Higgins assures Pickering that he is a confirmed bachelor, determined not to let women into his life. After helping Eliza into the bath, Mrs. Pearce reenters the drawing room to set down rules for Higgins’s behavior while Eliza is staying in the house—proper dress and table manners and no swearing. Eliza’s father, Alfred Doolittle, a dustman, or trash collector, arrives and attempts to extort money from Higgins. When Higgins insists that Doolittle take his daughter back immediately, he drives down Doolittle’s price to a five-pound note. Higgins offers Doolittle ten pounds, but Doolittle refuses the extra five because he does not want to be tempted to save money. On his way out, Doolittle sees his daughter but does not immediately recognize her, as Eliza is clean and well dressed. After a few months, the training has gone so well that Higgins decides to test Eliza by taking her to his mother’s flat for a formal visit.

He arrives first to prepare his mother, informing her that Eliza can converse on only two topics—the weather and everyone’s health. Unfortunately, as Higgins is explaining the situation, three unexpected visitors are announced: Mrs. Eynsford Hill, her daughter Clara, and her son Freddy. Initially, Higgins is upset with the intrusion of the Eynsford Hills, but then he welcomes them as a greater challenge for Eliza’s performance. When Eliza arrives she is exquisitely dressed and produces an impression of remarkable distinction and beauty. She begins conversing quite adeptly, but as she becomes more engaged in the conversation she slips back into some of her lower-class speech patterns. Higgins, however, is able to convince the Eynsford Hills that her speech is a new and fashionable way of speaking, the “new small talk,” and they are convinced that she is a lady of high society; by the time Eliza leaves, Freddy has obviously fallen in love with her. After the Eynsford Hills leave, Higgins is exultant, but his mother asks him what is to be done with Eliza after the lessons are completed. When the time comes for Eliza’s performance at the ambassador’s garden party, she succeeds splendidly.

Afterward, Higgins and Pickering celebrate their triumph, talking of how glad they are that their work is over and complaining that they had ultimately become bored by the whole affair. Eliza, on the other hand, is brooding and silent. Higgins wonders out loud where his slippers are, and Eliza leaves the room and fetches them for him. Higgins and Pickering talk of the evening as if Eliza were not there, and as they are leaving for bed, Eliza throws Higgins’s slippers after him, calling him a selfish brute. Now Eliza asks the question, “What’s to become of me?” That evening, Eliza leaves Higgins’s flat to walk the streets of London, and by morning she has gone to stay with Higgins’s mother. Later that morning, Higgins and Pickering, bewildered and worried about Eliza’s disappearance, arrive at the mother’s home. They are shortly followed by Eliza’s father, who enters dressed like a gentleman, complaining that his life has been ruined because of Higgins. Higgins had written a joking letter to an American millionaire, and that letter has led to Alfred Doolittle’s inheriting a huge sum of money.

Now, Doolittle complains, everyone is begging money from him. His life is no longer impoverished, free, and simple. Higgins’s mother reveals that Eliza is upstairs, angered by the insensitivity and indifference Higgins has shown her. Mrs. Higgins asks Doolittle to step outside so that Eliza will not be shocked by his appearance when she comes downstairs. Eliza then enters and meets Higgins and Pickering as a refined lady, the transformation complete. Eliza explains that she has learned her nice manners from Pickering and that the real difference between a lady and a flower girl is not in how she behaves but in how she is treated. Eliza’s father reenters the room, and Eliza is surprised at how he looks. Doolittle reports that he is now a victim of middle-class morality and is on his way to his wedding. He invites everyone to come to the wedding, and Pickering and Mrs. Higgins leave to get ready, leaving Eliza and Higgins behind. Pickering has urged Eliza to return to live with him and Higgins, but in her last conversation with Higgins, Eliza has decided to leave Higgins forever.

She claims that she is only looking for a little kindness and that she will marry Freddy Eynsford Hill. She will earn her living as a teacher of phonetics, teaching others as she has been taught. Higgins is incensed but impressed with Eliza’s spirit, and finally he sees her as more of an equal. As Eliza leaves, vowing never to see Higgins again, Higgins asserts confidently that she will return. G. B. Shaw s "Pygmalion" Essay - 2314 Words Please sign up to read full document. Text Preview Like all of Shaw's great dramatic creations, Pygmalion is a richly complex play. It combines a central story of the transformation of a young woman with elements of myth, fairy tale, and romance, while also combining an interesting plot with an exploration of social identity, the power of science, relations between men and women, and other issues. Pygmalion is one of Shaw's most popular plays as well as one of his most straightforward ones. The form has none of the complexity that we find in Heartbreak House or Saint Joan, nor are the ideas in Pygmalion nearly as profound as the ideas in any of Shaw's other major works.

It can be considerated an issue of language. This play was written by George Bernard Shaw in 1912, presents a comic Edwardian version of the classical myth about Pygmalion, legendary sculptor and King of Cyprus, who fell in love with his own statue of Aphrodite. At his prayer, Aphrodite brought the statue to life as Galatea. George Bernard Shaw's play Pygmalion is the story of Henry Higgins, a master phonetician, and his mischievous plot to pass a common flower girl, Eliza Doolittle, off as a duchess at the Embassy Ball. In order to achieve his goal, Higgins must teach Eliza how to speak properly and how to act in upper-class society. The play looks at middle class morality and upper-class superficiality, and reflects the social ills of nineteenth century England, and attests that all people are worthy of respect and dignity. Shaw is a British socialist who sympathized with the lower classes. Shaw criticized that the way of speaking of a person reveals his the social class of the people.

Shaw’s Pygmalion is Henry Higgins, a voluble professor of phonetics, who undertakes in a wanger with his colleague Colonel Pickering to turn a cockney flower-girl, Eliza Doolittle, how to speak English in an upper-class manner and transform her as to pass her off for a lady. In one sense she is the very antithesis of Galatea, since she starts a child of nature and ends an artefact. Nor is Higgins ever allowed to acknowledge to himself that he might fall in love with her. But another sense runs counter to this. Eliza’s transformation is more than from a common girl to lady. Higgins begins with what is to him no meant, and eventually has to acknowledge his creation as an enjoying and suffering woman. The play thus comes to move, in a manner unusual with Shaw, at more levels than one. ‘You have no idea’, Higgins tells his mother, ‘how frightfully interesting it is to take a human being and change her into a quite different human being by creating a new speech for her. It’s filling up the deepest gulf that separates class from class and soul from soul.’ This has—particularly, perhaps, in England—its social truth and comic potentiality.

Higgins on the one hand can be described as a rude, careless and impolite character, but at the same time likeable because of his fascination and dedication to his work. His rudeness may be revealed when he said about Eliza: "A woman who utters such depressing and disgusting sounds has no right to be anywhere - no right to live. Remember that you are a human being with a soul and the divine gift or articulate speech: that your native language is the language of Shakespeare and Milton and The Bible; and don't sit there crooning like a bilious pigeon." Higgins’s mother holds a great fascination for him, she speaks properly, has good manners and is the only woman Higgins adores. In general, he appears small-minded and doesn't reflect about problems Eliza might be confronted with. Eliza, on the other hand, is willing to learn and does her best to please Higgins. When she becomes aware of Higgins' goals she eventually gets disappointing and angry. She feels as the subject of the experiment, while Higgins, never reflecting about her feelings, treats her in an impersonal way and can't understand her. Eliza’s father is a dustman, he play a little role which is pretty...

Please sign up to read full document. YOU MAY ALSO FIND THESE DOCUMENTS HELPFUL G. B. Shaw’s Pygmalion: Study Guide | Dr. Vishwanath Bite G. B. Shaw’s Pygmalion: Study Guide August 17, 2012 About Pygmalion Pygmalion has become by far Shaw’s most famous play, mostly through its film adaptation in 1938. Shaw was intimately involved with the making of the film. He wrote the screenplay and was the first man to win both a Nobel Prize and an Academy Award. Shaw wrote the part of Eliza Doolittle for a beautiful actress named Mrs. Patrick Campbell, with whom it was rumored that he was having an affair. This rumor later turned out not to be true, and some critics read the disappointed love affair between Higgins and Eliza as reflecting Shaw’s own romantic frustrations including a long, celibate marriage. Shaw once proclaimed: “The English have no respect for their language, and will not teach their children to speak it.

They spell it so abominably that no man can teach himself what it sounds like.” Much ofPygmalion is wrapped up with the class identification that comes with having an accent in British society. As a socialist with strong convictions, Shaw used the stage to expose hypocrisies surrounding marriage, language, and convention. Shaw’s preoccupation with language in this play may also have had something to do with the fact that the most frequent criticism of his earlier plays was that his characters engaged in witty banter that lacked depth. By making language the center of this play, Shaw highlights the significance of something that his critics, despite their criticisms, were tending to downplay. Pygmalion Summary In Covent Garden, the Eynsford Hills wait for a cab in the rain. When Freddy goes to hail one, he knocks Liza’s flowers out of her basket. She accepts money from Freddy’s mother, then Colonel Pickering. A bystander warns her that a man is writing down what she is saying, and she confronts him, saying that she has done nothing wrong. Higgins amazes the crowd by imitating her accent and guessing where they all come from.

Pickering and Higgins meet and agree to have dinner, and Higgins fills Liza’s basket with money before he leaves. Liza leaves in a cab. The next day, Liza intrudes upon Pickering and Higgins in Higgins’s home. She wants English lessons, and Pickering bets that Higgins could not pass her off as a lady at the ambassador’s ball in a month’s time.Mrs. Pearce takes Liza away to bathe her and dress her more appropriately, and Liza’s father arrives and demands some payment. Higgins likes him and gives him five pounds. A few months later, Mrs. Higgins is writing letters at home when she is interrupted by her son, who shocks her by telling her that he is bringing a flower-girl to his house. The Eynsford Hills arrive for a visit, as does Eliza–with her newly elegant accent and manner. Freddy is infatuated right away. Eliza makes the mistake of swearing and describing her aunt’s alcoholism, and she is hustled away by Higgins. Clara thinks that swearing is the new fashion and shocks her mother by saying “bloody” on the way out. Mrs.

Higgins scolds Pickering and her son for not considering what is to be done with Eliza after the experiment. At midnight at Higgins’s house, Eliza enters looking exhausted. Higgins ignores her, looking for his slippers and crowing over her success at fooling everyone as his own. Eliza begins to look furious. When Higgins asks where his slippers are, Eliza throws them at his face. She explains that she does not know what to do with herself now that Higgins has transformed her. He suggests that she marry, to which she responds that she used to be something better than a prostitute when she sold flowers. She throws the ring that he gave her into the fireplace, and he loses his temper at her and leaves the room. She looks for the ring in the ashes. Mrs. Higgins is in her drawing room when her son comes and tells her that Eliza has run away. Doolittle arrives and announces that after he spoke with Higgins, Higgins recommended him as a speaker to an American millionaire who died and left him everything. Doolittle is now middle-class and hating every minute of it; his mistress is forcing him to marry her that afternoon. Eliza comes downstairs (she ran away to Mrs.

Higgins’s house), and Higgins looks flabbergasted. Doolittle invites Pickering and Mrs. Higgins to the wedding, and they leave Eliza and Higgins alone to talk. Eliza says that she does not want to be treated like a pair of slippers–and Freddy writes her love letters every day. When she threatens to become a phonetics teacher herself and use Higgins’s methods, he says that he likes the new, stronger version of Eliza. He wants to live with her and Pickering as “three bachelors.” Mrs. Higgins returns dressed for the wedding, and she takes Eliza with her. Higgins asks her to run his errands for him, including that of buying some cheese and ham. She says a final goodbye to him, and he seems confident that she will follow his command. The onstage drama ends, and Shaw narrates, in an epilogue, that Eliza recognizes Higgins as predestined to be a bachelor; she marries Freddy instead. With a gift from Colonel Pickering, Eliza opens a flower shop. The only person truly bothered by this state of affairs is Clara, who decides that the marriage will not help her own marriage prospects. But then she begins to read H.G.

Wells and travel in the circles of his fans, and she is convinced to begin working in a furniture shop herself in the hopes that she might meet Wells (because the woman who owns the shop is also a fan of his). Freddy is not very practical, and he and Eliza must take classes in bookkeeping to make their business a success. They do reach success, and they live a fairly comfortable life. Character List Liza a poor girl who was thrown out by her parents as soon as she was old enough to make a living selling flowers on the street Eliza Doolittle the same person as Liza; what she begins to be called when she acquires a genteel accent and set of manners under Higgins’s tutelage Henry Higgins a professor of phonetics who takes on Liza as a pupil as a dare, or as an experiment Colonial Pickering an Englishman who has served in India and written in the field of liguistics there; a perfect gentleman who always treats Liza with utmost kindness Mrs. Higgins Henry’s mother, who disapproves of her son’s wild ways and who takes Liza under her wing Mrs.

Pearce Higgins’s housekeeper; an extremely proper and class-aware lady, she heartily disapproves of the experiment Freddy a poor, genteel young man who falls in love with Eliza Clara Freddy’s sister, who regards Higgins as marriageable Mrs. Eynsford Hill Freddy’s and Clara’s mother Mr. Doolittle Liza’s father, who amuses Higgins very much; he comes into a fortune after the death of an American millionaire to whom Higgins had recommended him Major Themes Class The social hierarchy is an unavoidable reality in Britain, and it is interesting to watch it play out in the work of a socialist playwright. Shaw includes members of all social classes from the lowest (Liza) to the servant class (Mrs. Pearce) to the middle class (Doolittle after his inheritance) to the genteel poor (the Eynsford Hills) to the upper class (Pickering and the Higginses). The general sense is that class structures are rigid and should not be tampered with, so the example of Liza’s class mobility is most shocking. The issue of language is tied up in class quite closely; the fact that Higgins is able to identify where people were born by their accents is telling.

British class and identity are very much tied up in their land and their birthplace, so it becomes hard to be socially mobile if your accent marks you as coming from a certain location. Gentility and Manners Good manners (or any manners at all) were mostly associated with the upper class at this time. Shaw’s position on manners is somewhat unclear; as a socialist, one would think that he would have no time for them because they are a marker of class divisions. Yet, Higgins’s pattern of treating everyone like dirt–while just as democratic as Pickering’s of treating everyone like a duke or duchess–is less satisfactory than Pickering’s. It is a poignant moment at the end of Pygmalion when Liza thanks Pickering for teaching her manners and pointedly comments that otherwise she would have had no way of learning them. Marriage and Prostitution These institutions are very much related in Shaw’s plays, especially in Mrs. Warren’s profession. From his unusual standpoint of being committed to a celibate marriage, Shaw apparently feels free to denounce marriage as an exchange of sexuality for money similar to prostitution (even though this was not happening in his own marriage).

Ironically, while her father expresses no regrets when he is led to believe that Liza will take up this profession, it is she who denounces it. She declares that she was less degraded as a flower-seller than as a “genteel” lady trying to make an appropriate marriage–because as a flower-seller, at least, she wasn’t selling her body. Myths of Creation Of all Shaw’s plays, Pygmalion has the most references to Greek and Roman mythology. Higgins represents Pygmalion, a Greek sculptor who lived alone because he hated women. Pygmalion created a sculpture of a perfect woman and fell in love with it; after he prayed, Aphrodite brought it to life for him. This statue is named Galatea, and it is represented in Shaw’s play by Liza. Unlike the myth, Shaw’s play does not end in a marriage between the pair, and Liza is infuriated with Higgins’s suggestion that her success is his success and that he has made her what she is. She has worked to recreate her identity as well. Language In this play and in British society at large, language is closely tied with class.

From a person’s accent, one can determine where the person comes from and usually what the person’s socioeconomic background is. Because accents are not very malleable, poor people are marked as poor for life. Higgins’s teachings are somewhat radical in that they disrupt this social marker, allowing for greater social mobility. Professionalism At the time that this play was written, the idea of female professionals was somewhat new. Aside from the profession of prostitution, women were generally housewives before this period, and there is some residual resistance to the idea of normally male professions being entered by females in the play. Moreover, Pickering is initially horrified by the idea of Eliza opening a flower shop, since being involved in a trade was a mark of belonging to the lower class. Pickering is shaken similarly after his experience of watching Eliza fool everyone at a garden and dinner party, saying that she played her part almost too well. The idea of a professional female socialite is somehow threatening to him. Gender Solidarity or Antagonism Although British society is supposed to break down along class lines, Shaw makes a point of highlighting gender loyalties in this play. Although Mrs.

Higgins initially is horrified by the idea that her son might bring a flower-girl into her home, she quickly grows sympathetic to Liza. As a woman, she is the first to express a concern for what will be done with the girl after the experiment–the idea that her training makes her highly unmarriageable by anyone anywhere on the social scale. When Liza runs away from Wimpole St., she instinctively knows that Mrs. Higgins will take good care of her. Higgins’s mother sides with Liza before even her son, not revealing that Liza is in the house while Higgins is dialing the police. In contrast, relations between people of opposite genders are generally portrayed by Shaw as antagonistic. Higgins and his mother have a troubled relationship, as do the professor and Mrs. Pearce. Freddy and Liza get along better perhaps only due to his more passive, feminine demeanor. Precursors to Pygmalion Shaw’s play, as its title indicates, owes much to previous sources, mostly mythology. Pygmalion was a character in the tenth book of Ovid’s Metamorphoses.

A sculptor from Cyprus who did not enjoy the company of women, the man Pygmalion created an idealized female form out of ivory and then fell in love with the statue. He began to bring it presents as he would a lover, and he prayed to Aphrodite-the goddess of love-to meet a woman like his statue. Instead, Aphrodite brought his statue to life. Pygmalion named her Galatea, married her, and had a son named Paphos. This myth differs from Shaw’s interpretation in several regards. Most importantly, Eliza (as Galatea) was already a living person before Higgins (as Pygmalion) “created” her. Higgins certainly shapes Eliza’s demeanor, her voice, and the way she looks, but he does not fashion her out of marble. Higgins gives Eliza a new human life in the the way that Aphrodite did, while it was Eliza’s father who “created” Eliza’s material reality. Moreover (and quite rightly), Eliza is indignant when Higgins claims that her success at winning his bet is his own.

When she realizes that she no longer fits into any stratum of society, Eliza curses Higgins for “creating” her at all. The largest difference between the play and the myth is the ending. In Shaw’s play, the stand-in for Galatea does not choose to marry the stand-in for Pygmalion. In the prologue, Shaw explains that “Galatea never does quite like Pygmalion: His relation to her is too god-like to be altogether agreeable.” In ancient myth, it was not so bad to have a relationship with a god, but this is not the kind of thing Eliza wants. Shaw’s Pygmalion has one other major source, the tale of King Cophetua. King Cophetua was an apocryphal monarch who was not interested in women until he met a beggar-woman. He fell in love with her and elevated her to be his queen. The Cophetua complex names an attraction to lower-class women, a tendency which Higgins exhibits in his interactions with Eliza.

(The broader rags-to-riches theme is common in Western literature; compare the film Pretty Woman.) Higgins assures Pickering that his students are “sacred,” because he has always found them so before. But he finds himself attracted to Eliza, who is quite different from the millionaires he taught before. Part of this difference is in the power dynamic which is so central to Higgins’ relationship to Eliza. Like Pygmalion and King Cophetua, if he were to choose Eliza as his consort, he would be in a position of great power in the relationship. Suggested Essay Questions How does the play deal with the issue of social class? Does Shaw ultimately uphold it or not–is there enough evidence in the play to demonstrate Shaw’s point of view? Consider Pickering, for example, who is very much a product of the British hierarchy, and who is one of the most sympathetic characters. Does the play suggest that true love is possible and good? On the basis of evidence in the text, what are the feelings that Liza has for Higgins and Freddy, and why does Liza marry Freddy? Does language itself have transformative power, or does its power come entirely through the people who use it?

In what sense is Eliza a new person after she learns to speak differently? The subtitle of the play is “A Romance in Five Acts.” Discuss the ways that the play is a romance–or might it more properly be called a tragedy or a comedy? Is Freddy the perfect match for Eliza? If the story is a romance, is Freddy or Higgins a romantic hero? How does the knowledge that Shaw was a socialist color one’s reading of this play? Consider, for instance, Doolittle’s speech on the undeserving poor. Does Shaw sympathize with this “class” of people, or should we view his presentation of each character uniquely? How does the movement from the public space of Covent Garden to the private spaces of Wimpole Street and Mrs. Higgins’s home affect the behavior of the characters? What is the safest space for Eliza? How does the audience appreciate dramatic irony in the play? For instance, What does it mean when Clara swears using the term “bloody”? Shaw gives one of the reasons that a marriage between Eliza and Higgins would never work out as that Eliza would have been unable to come between Higgins and his mother, suggesting that such a dynamic is necessary in marriage.

Given the events of the last act, does this reason seem accurate? How does the quotation from Nietzsche that Shaw quotes at the end of the play, “when you go to women, take your whip with you,” relate to Eliza’s relationship with Higgins? With Pickering? With Freddy? Rate this: the summary omits the presentation scene where Eliza passes the test and wins the bet! Laurel English Thank you. Excellent suggestions for essays. ~ Laurel English, Glenmora High School, Louisiana S.M.Haque Comment on the representation of class and society in shaws pygmalion. Leave a Reply Shaw, Bernard. 1916. Pygmalion Bernard Shaw Based on classical myth, Bernard Shaws Pygmalion plays on the complex business of human relationships in a social world. Phonetics Professor Henry Higgins tutors the very Cockney Eliza Doolittle, not only in the refinement of speech, but also in the refinement of her manner. When the end result produces a very ladylike Miss Doolittle, the lessons learned become much more far reaching. The successful musical My Fair Lady was based on this Bernard Shaw classic.

SparkNotes: Pygmalion: Characters SparkNotes Summary Act I Professor Henry Higgins - Henry Higgins is a professor of phonetics who plays Pygmalion to Eliza Doolittle's Galatea. He is the author of Higgins' Universal Alphabet, believes in concepts like visible speech, and uses all manner of recording and photographic material to document his phonetic subjects, reducing people and their dialects into what he sees as readily understandable units. He is an unconventional man, who goes in the opposite direction from the rest of society in most matters. Indeed, he is impatient with high society, forgetful in his public graces, and poorly considerate of normal social niceties--the only reason the world has not turned against him is because he is at heart a good and harmless man. His biggest fault is that he can be a bully. Eliza Doolittle - "She is not at all a romantic figure." So is she introduced in Act I. Everything about Eliza Doolittle seems to defy any conventional notions we might have about the romantic heroine.

When she is transformed from a sassy, smart-mouthed kerbstone flower girl with deplorable English, to a (still sassy) regal figure fit to consort with nobility, it has less to do with her innate qualities as a heroine than with the fairy-tale aspect of the transformation myth itself. In other words, the character of Eliza Doolittle comes across as being much more instrumental than fundamental. The real (re-)making of Eliza Doolittle happens after the ambassador's party, when she decides to make a statement for her own dignity against Higgins' insensitive treatment. This is when she becomes, not a duchess, but an independent woman; and this explains why Higgins begins to see Eliza not as a mill around his neck but as a creature worthy of his admiration. Colonel Pickering - Colonel Pickering, the author of Spoken Sanskrit, is a match for Higgins (although somewhat less obsessive) in his passion for phonetics. But where Higgins is a boorish, careless bully, Pickering is always considerate and a genuinely gentleman. He says little of note in the play, and appears most of all to be a civilized foil to Higgins' barefoot, absentminded crazy professor.

He helps in the Eliza Doolittle experiment by making a wager of it, saying he will cover the costs of the experiment if Higgins does indeed make a convincing duchess of her. However, while Higgins only manages to teach Eliza pronunciations, it is Pickering's thoughtful treatment towards Eliza that teaches her to respect herself. Alfred Doolittle - Alfred Doolittle is Eliza's father, an elderly but vigorous dustman who has had at least six wives and who "seems equally free from fear and conscience." When he learns that his daughter has entered the home of Henry Higgins, he immediately pursues to see if he can get some money out of the circumstance. His unique brand of rhetoric, an unembarrassed, unhypocritical advocation of drink and pleasure (at other people's expense), is amusing to Higgins. Through Higgins' joking recommendation, Doolittle becomes a richly endowed lecturer to a moral reform society, transforming him from lowly dustman to a picture of middle class morality--he becomes miserable.

Throughout, Alfred is a scoundrel who is willing to sell his daughter to make a few pounds, but he is one of the few unaffected characters in the play, unmasked by appearance or language. Though scandalous, his speeches are honest. At points, it even seems that he might be Shaw's voice piece of social criticism (Alfred's proletariat status, given Shaw's socialist leanings, makes the prospect all the more likely). Mrs. Higgins - Professor Higgins' mother, Mrs. Higgins is a stately lady in her sixties who sees the Eliza Doolittle experiment as idiocy, and Higgins and Pickering as senseless children. She is the first and only character to have any qualms about the whole affair. When her worries prove true, it is to her that all the characters turn. Because no woman can match up to his mother, Higgins claims, he has no interest in dallying with them. To observe the mother of Pygmalion (Higgins), who completely understands all of his failings and inadequacies, is a good contrast to the mythic proportions to which Higgins builds himself in his self-estimations as a scientist of phonetics and a creator of duchesses.

Freddy Eynsford Hill - Higgins' surmise that Freddy is a fool is probably accurate. In the opening scene he is a spineless and resourceless lackey to his mother and sister. Later, he is comically bowled over by Eliza, the half-baked duchess who still speaks cockney. He becomes lovesick for Eliza, and courts her with letters. At the play's close, Freddy serves as a young, viable marriage option for Eliza, making the possible path she will follow unclear to the reader. More Help Pygmalion Pygmalion or browse other Shmoopers' Questions In A Nutshell Pygmalion, written in 1912 by George Bernard Shaw and first performed two years later, tells the story of Henry Higgins, a professor of phonetics (speech), who bets his friend that he can pass off a poor flower girl with a Cockney accent as a duchess by teaching her to speak with an upper class accent. In addition to being a playwright, Shaw was a theater critic, an essayist, a lifelong socialist and advocate for the working class, and, like Higgins, something of a phonetician.

Given the scope of his interests, it should come as no surprise that he had a lot to say about a lot of things. Pygmalion, like most of Shaw's plays, is didactic. That is, it's meant to teach the audience about something. In this case, Shaw wants us to think about the problems caused by our "common" language, and how language can separate people from different places and classes, even different parts of the same town. In his preface to the play, entitled, "A Professor of Phonetics," he writes, "The English have no respect for their language, and will not teach their children to speak it. They spell it so abominably that no man can teach himself what it sounds like" ( source ). Seems like he's about ready to yell, "We have a failure to communicate!" Well, instead of screaming, he wrote Pygmalion. (He called for the creation of an "improved" system of spelling English, but, thankfully, it didn't catch on. You can read more about it in "Trivia.") It's easy to sympathize with Shaw, though.

If you've ever had trouble understanding someone because his accent was different than yours, or had trouble pronouncing an unfamiliar word (why does "subtle" have a "b" in it anyway?), you probably know what Shaw's talking about: sometimes English doesn't really make much sense, even to native speakers. When you consider that Shaw was writing at a time when the British Empire was still around, when people from all over the globe were expected and sometimes forced to communicate in English, and the situation only becomes more complicated. All this talk about language is only the beginning, though. Shaw uses it as a base to discuss other issues: problems about society, class, and gender. No need to get overwhelmed right off the bat, though. It's best to take it slow and start with words. That's where all literature begins, right? Given that we can all relate to these problems, however, it's no surprise that Pygmalion was and is extremely popular.

Most people know the plot from My Fair Lady , the musical film adaptation of Shaw's play (sorry to say, there's no rain in Spain falling mainly on the plain in the original), and it's been parodied by everyone from The Three Stooges to The Simpsons and Family Guy . Shaw also wrote the Academy Award -winning screenplay for the 1938 film version, making him the only person ever to win both an Oscar and the Nobel Prize in Literature . Pretty good for a play about a grouchy professor and a poor flower girl, no? Why Should I Care? There's a reason why Pygmalion's been turned into a movie, a musical, and a movie musical, with a twist. It's a Cinderella story, complete with slippers…although in this case they're thrown, not worn. There's even a ball – well, maybe not a ball, but a couple of parties. And there's a stepmother in there too, although we never see her. Problem is, there's no Prince Charming. This fairy tale's got no happy ending. Now, you may be thinking, "Come on, everybody loves a good happy ending!" And it's true, almost everybody does.

But life's not always so sweet, and it rarely comes wrapped up in a bow. In the end, Eliza, the Cinderella character, is all dressed up with nowhere to go. Maybe something will turn up, maybe she will find her Prince, but we can't know for sure. Here's another let down: there's no magic in Pygmalion, at least none of that Fairy Godmother stuff. But Shaw does you one better. You get to read about…the magic of teaching…and the transforming power of words. Cool, right? We know what you're thinking. Enough with the words already. OK, how about some numbers. Get this: approximately 375 million people speak English as their first language. Most of them are American, Indian, Nigerian, British, Filipino, Canadian, and Australian. They're not all quite speaking the same variety of English. Have you ever heard of the term "to borrow leg"? That's Nigerian slang for "to flee," as in, "When I saw that dog coming for me I had to borrow leg." Some of these regional colloquialisms have become better known: lots of people know that "barbie" is Australian slang for barbecue.

This is only the tip of the iceberg, though: at least another half a billion people speak English as a second language, and more are learning everyday. Knowledge of English can mean the difference between poverty and employment, and, just like Eliza, thousands if not millions of people are held back because they don't speak English as well as they could. Even today, characters with "funny accents" – whether they be from Brooklyn, China, France, Scotland, or India – can be seen on television and in movies. And though there's nothing wrong with a little fun every now and again (we love jokes, we swear – jokes and learning), they hint at some uncomfortable realities. That accent can make a big difference. Shaw was writing about all this stuff nearly a hundred years ago, and his thoughts are still fresh. Pygmalion is so tightly constructed that he can fit all of this in to about seventy pages of text – the play runs about two hours – and tackle hard issues like poverty. Oh, and did we mention it's a lot a fun? Because it is.

Question: What is the name of the professor of phonetics in G.B. Shaw’s play ‘Pygmalion’?
Answer: HENRY HIGGINS