Named after a Greek mythological character, Pygmalion is the most successful play written by George Bernard Shaw. The play reveals the story of a poor flower girl, Eliza Doolittle, who's being transformed into a duchess by the phonetic professor Henry Higgins and his friend Colonel Pickering.
The very first act of the play is revealing a collision between two different classes. This contrast suggests the whole direction of the story. The meeting between Eliza, a member of London's lower class, and the famous phonetic professor Higgins and his fellow Mr Pickering is putting the base of the whole work.
From the way professor Higgins is referring to the flower girl, we can see how the lower class's members were treated so we can guess how the interaction between them would be.
Higgins keeps on treating her badly. He does so, although he claims to be ‘free of malice’. He is provoked by what a challenge the flower girl might be: “It’s almost irresistible. She’s so deliciously low, so horribly dirty.” Higgins promises to turn her into “a Duchess out of this draggle-tailed guttersnipe” and authoritatively rejects the advice he receives, “what is to become of her?”. The stage is bound to be conflictual ever since Eliza walks on Wimpole Street. This is a reflection of Shaw`s opinion over the conflict of sexes. Seeing that none of them is likely to accept change easily, disputes, misunderstanding and vengeful acts will happen.
From the beginning Mr Higgins has cold, rather harsh attitude towards Eliza. The very first time he addressed her with : "silly girl", which is not showing only his pride, but also his regard towards women at all (as we see later in the play, when he says to his mother: Can't waste time with young women. They're idio...
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...e quite fond of her. His words are offending to because she thinks he is trying to manipulate her, so that she will continue being his maid.
Eventually, after one more argument, Higgins is again in control of the situation, and he tells Eliza that he thinks she will come back. He feels rather satisfied, thinking he won the bet and she would not leave. In his opinion, the fact that he was right stands proof of how good of a teacher he is.
It is unclear what Eliza`s feelings are. When she is told by Higgins that she would come back, Eliza thinks that he might be right and that she might not be able to resist him but we will never find out, since the play has an open ending. It remains a mystery whether Eliza decides to live on her own and be a flower girl, independent of Higgins, or risk coming back to him and spending the rest of her life tending to an old bachelor.
Eliza's assaults against True Womanhood are violations of the virtues submissiveness and purity. When Eliza refuses to ignore the gallantry of Major Sanford in favor of the proposals of Reverend Boyer despite the warnings of her friends and mother, she disregards submissiveness in favor of her own fanc...
In order to understand the main idea of the play, it is important to understand details of the background of the author as it will help to illustrate a possible connection to the play.
Eliza Wharton has sinned. She has also seduced, deceived, loved, and been had. With The Coquette Hannah Webster Foster uses Eliza as an allegory, the archetype of a woman gone wrong. To a twentieth century reader Eliza's fate seems over-dramatized, pathetic, perhaps even silly. She loved a man but circumstance dissuaded their marriage and forced them to establish a guilt-laden, whirlwind of a tryst that destroyed both of their lives. A twentieth century reader may have championed Sanford's divorce, she may have championed the affair, she may have championed Eliza's acceptance of Boyer's proposal. She may have thrown the book angrily at the floor, disgraced by the picture of ineffectual, trapped, female characters.
The epistolary novel challenges gender roles because in a society where the most accepted form of female writing was letters, the epistolary novel gives a new voice to women. The letters written by the characters especially the women go hand in hand with new republican virtues of society. Women were becoming more educated and their letters became more frequent. The epistolary form gives a sense of realism. It allows the reader to dive head first into the lives and problems of the characters, it is set up in a way where the reader ultimately knows more than the character does. This style of writing allows us to get the story from each character as an individual, which is important because if told from another character, events and emotions might get lost in translation or become skewed. Through reading Eliza’s letters, the audience can get a grasp of her personality, her morals, her humor, and her intentions. Eliza’s voice is strong and as she begins to decline her voice starts to dwindle and become muffled and eventually lost. Through being able to see how her voice gets lost, the reader can get a real sense of her decline as a character. Eliza begins to fade and other characters start to step into the light. Eliza’s letters are what makes her relatable and without these snippets from Eliza, the audience might not want to side with her. William Brown Hill’s preface to The Power of
In Pygmalion, the two professors decided to help Eliza Doolittle, only because Professor Pickering made a bet with Professor Higgins that he would be able to change Liza into a lady by the time the ambassador’s garden party came around. Pickering
At the start of the novel, Eliza Haywood places her protagonist in a very interesting, unique position, with regards to society of the time. The nameless main character is first illustrated in a playhouse, observing the interactions of the strangers around her. She notices a prostitute, surrounded by a swarm of men. “She could not help testifying her contempt of men who...threw away their time in such a manner, to some Ladies...the greater was her wonder, that men, some of whom she knew were accounted to have wit, should have tastes for very depraved” (257-258.) “Fantomina”, as she later comes to be called, oversees all of this. Haywood seems to put her above this crowd of men and prostitutes, while she observes and makes judgments on the nature of their behaviors. She expresses that she is disgusted by the mindlessness of the men in this situation. One might argue that this depicts a reversal of gender roles. Typically, men would look at women in this way, and the male character wo...
... as being an ideal and virtuous women because she is dignified and views marriage as a form of prostitution, making her a character that is not sexualized. Because Eliza is embodied as being a perfect woman, she is similar to women in earlier works. The Country Wife is a more ideal representation of what women are because real women are flawed and as the play suggests, women should be allowed to be what they want to be instead of allowing others to decide for them. Despite Pygmalion’s advocacy of equality between men and women, it idolizes flawless women, which contradicts with its’ message of equality.
The opening scene is after an opera. The higher class people spill out into the streets. It is here that Eliza is selling her flowers. Eliza is a poor girl with a very thick accent. She is a respectable girl, which she insist throughout the movie, saying to Mr. Higgins, “I’m a good girl”. She’s had a hard life, her father being a drunk and therefore she and her mother had no money. It is hard for her to get a job because of her accent, so she resorts to selling flowers. She is always wishing for more out of life.
"Trifles," a one-act play written by Susan Glaspell, is a cleverly written story about a murder and more importantly, it effectively describes the treatment of women during the early 1900s. In the opening scene, we learn a great deal of information about the people of the play and of their opinions. We know that there are five main characters, three men and two women. The weather outside is frighteningly cold, and yet the men enter the warm farmhouse first. The women stand together away from the men, which immediately puts the men against the women. Mrs. Hale?s and Mrs. Peters?s treatment from the men in the play is reflective of the beliefs of that time. These women, aware of the powerless slot that has been made for them, manage to use their power in a way that gives them an edge. This power enables them to succeed in protecting Minnie, the accused. "Trifles" not only tells a story, it shows the demeaning view the men have for the women, the women?s reaction to man?s prejudice, and the women?s defiance of their powerless position.
... her true self begins to come out for the first time in months. She starts talking and acting like the flower girl she used to be instead of Eliza, the girl Higgins made her.
Doolittle (Stanley Halloway), a dustman, appears as the protector father when in reality he only want to extract some money to Higgins and he ‘sells’ his daughter for £5. Higgins is so impressed by the man’s lack of moral and his natural gift for language (he is very eloquent) that he recommends him to a wealthy and tiresome American who is interested in morality. Meanwhile, professor Higgins is very exigent with Eliza, degrading her and not showing any empathy for her. As she does not seem to improve, all of them are about to surrender but fortunately, at that moment she starts to speak with an impeccable upper class accent.
Professor Higgins' rudeness is an embarrassment to his mother Mrs. Higgins, who knows how to treat everybody with respect, and who isn?t fooled by Eliza's good looks and ways of talking. Mrs. Higgins can stil...
Shaw finally found his specialty around 1885 when William Archer suggested that he became a playwright. The play he is most well known for is Pygmalion. It is a classic play that comes from an ancient myth in which a statue is made of an ideal woman, and by prayer to the gods she is brought to life.
Eliza does not want to continue being part of the high society and has to stay under Higgins watch but wants to return to where she came from (Berst 100).
Higgins could never see the "new" Eliza. Higgins only saw the dirty flower girl that had become his "experiment." Much like an author never sees a work as finished, Higgins could not view Eliza lady or duchess. Since Higgins knew where Eliza came from it was difficult for him to make her parts fit together as a masterpiece that he respected. Part of Higgins' problem in recognizing the "new" Eliza is his immaturity. He does not see her as what she is, he only sees her as what she was. This immaturity is representative of Higgins' childish tendencies that the reader can see throughout the play. Higgins' child-like actions can partially explain the variations in his philosophy. Try to imagine Higgins as a young teenager. A young Higgins, or any teenage boy for that matter, has a very limited outlook. They treat everyone the same; depending on the situation they may be little gentlemen or rude dudes. When around parents the teenager is rude and inconsiderate yet when among his friends he a complete gentleman. The adult Higgins' actions are the same as the