The play "Pygmalion" describes the process of the transformation of Eliza, who appears in three images in the story: Eliza begins as a flower girl, then she transforms into a lady with noble accent and in good manners, then an independent woman with self-respect and dignity.
By naming his drama "Pygmalion," Shaw reminds people of the ancient Pygmalion Myth. Pygmalion, a sculptor, makes a beautiful statue and falls in love with his own creation. He prays that life may be granted to it. The gods give him his wish. The statue becomes a living girl named Galatea. In Shaw's play, Eliza, the heroine, is transformed from a flower girl into a graceful lady. This change is like that of a stone into a statue of perfect beauty. But just as Pygmalion can only create the statue while never being able to give life to it, Higgins creates a beautiful object out of crude raw materials, but the last great gift of a living soul is more than he has power to give by himself. The god that transforms Eliza into an independent woman lies within Eliza herself. It is Eliza's evocation of her self-consciousness and her sense of self-respect and dignity that transform her completely.
As a flower girl, Eliza is neither cared for nor loved at home or in the neighborhood. Although she has a father, Eliza is no more than an orphan. Doolittle, her father, is a thorough rascal. He cares nothing for his family responsibility. He is addicted to drink and women. He believes in the philosophy that a strap is the best way to improve his daughter's mind. So Eliza is often beaten by her father when he loses his temper. Among her mates, Eliza has no friends and is often laughed at by other girls. The hard life cultivates her a strong character. She learns to support...
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...lf. The problem of how to survive no longer worries her. She struggles for her right to be cared for and to be loved and to live in a dignified way. When the former poor flower girl transforms into a strong-minded independent woman both externally and internally, even Higgins, the stubborn, arrogant scholar respects her heartily: "Now youre a tower of strength: a consort battle ship. You and I and Pickering will be three old bachelors together." Eliza now is regarded as equal to man. She can stand on her dignity as a true woman. The internal transformation is exactly what Bernard Shaw preaches. In this sense, the drama Pygmalion is a play of women's revolt.
Works Cited
Schwartz, Grace Horowitz. "George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion". Beijing: Foreign Languages Teaching and Research Press, 1996.
Shaw, George Bernard. "Pygmalion". London: Longman Group Ltd, 1957.
Shaw, Bernard. Pygmalion. Rpt. in The Longman Anthology of British Literature. Ed. David Damrosch, et al. Vol. 2. New York: Addison-Wesley Educational Publishers Inc., 2003. 2,087-2,143.
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...
A coquette is a woman who flirts without a sincere affection to gain the attention of the man. Eliza Wharton does her fair share of flirting in Hannah Webster Foster’s novel. She is stubborn and refuses all the advice she is offered. Eliza misses things right in front of her and doesn’t realize her mistakes until it is too late. Eliza Wharton was responsible for her own downfall.
Both Rita and Eliza rebel against the inflexible class system and have problems developing their potential. They suggest that everyone is capable of fulfilling his potential if he is only given the opportunity. And their teachers and other members of their class misunderstand them. Furthermore they reject the traditional role of women as well.
Twentieth century Britain is dubbed the Victorian era in which the woman is just the female of humanity, and that they have certain things to do in society. It is socially accepted that women care solely for the children, the house, the cooking and the cleaning and the men are the breadwinners and disciplinarians. Writer, Bernard Shaw, who was "dedicated to tearing down what he saw as the oppressive veil of Victorian ideal of womanhood-that women are self-sacrificing, pure, noble, and passive" (2215). Damrosch, Dettmar, and Wicke the editors of The Longman Anthology of British Literature argue that Shaw designates the excitement, vigor, and advancement behind women who have exploded out the confines of domestic duty and into the work force of Britain by sidelining them with the newest ideas'. However, Shaw is suppressing women; the main character in Pygmalion is Eliza Doolittle is a poor, young woman and Professor Higgins is influenced by a bet to turn into a fine young woman by teaching her to speak correctly. Although Higgins is giving her the chance to learn how to speak like a lady, it is not through grammar one moves through social classes but by connections and hard work to gain money. By giving Eliza the gift of grammar, Higgins says she could get a job in a flower shop and pursue her dreams from there. However, Higgins is forcing her to pretend to become a typical Victorian lady; one who courts and then marries a gentlemen like Freddy and stays at home conforming to the Victorian ideals of womanhood.
People are always in the pursuit of erasing their flaws and becoming what society would say is "perfect." In the play Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw the main character Eliza Doolittle was not content with her life and her lamentable speech and manners. In order to become what she considered "perfect" Eliza relied on Higgins to change her into a proper and sophisticated woman. Higgins pounded lessons of proper speech and how to conduct one 's self with eloquence into Eliza 's head minute after minute and day after day. Although Eliza was being transformed externally, as she continued to grow from her lessons, she also began to transform internally and realize that she deserved respect, whether she was a kerbstone flower girl or a duchess.
An important lesson that has been learned throughout life and the beginning of time is to respect the individual’s content and not their image. It is shown throughout George Bernard Shaw’s play, Pygmalion, that different people can be brought together in the same circumstance, being a heavy rain shower in London, but distance themselves so effusively because of outer appearances. The situation between the nonintellectual flower-girl and the sophisticated Pickering, Higgins, and the Mother-daughter is drawn out over the judgment of her poor speech and her value as a person as she constantly defends herself against their prejudice. Shaw uses Pygmalion to show how language shallowly reflects the importance of social classes within the Victorian era through the portrayal of characters, their conflicts, and transformation in the first act of the play.
Among the number of similarities readers will come across are the likenesses between the two works in character interaction. For example, in both the play and the film, Professor Henry Higgins has an overbearing paternal mentality regarding Eliza Doolittle. In accordance with the dialogue that Higgins speaks in the film regarding Eliza?s filthy disposition, readers of Pygmalion discover practically the same words: ?You know, Pickering, if you consider a shilling, not as a simple shilling, but as a percentage of this girl?s income, it works out as fully equivalent to sixty or seventy guineas from a millionaire? (Shaw 21). In addition, in both the film and the play, Eliza and Colonel Pickering share a bond that stems from her vulnerability and his compassion. For the duration of her stay at 27A Wimpole Street, Eliza often seeks comfort in the sympathetic Colonel because without this ally, she knows that she will not survive the wrath of Henry Higgins. In Shaw?s original version, readers can interpret Eliza?s trepidation through the dialogue. Similarly, in Cukor?s musical adaptation, viewers have the ability to watch Eliza?s facial expressions and body movement to understand her emotions. The videocassette offers the viewers a whole new world that they did not experience during their novel reading. Although the presentation of character interaction differs slightly in Pygmalion and My Fair Lady, the same themes occur.
Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw is a play that shows a great change in the character Eliza Doolittle. As Eliza lives in poverty, she sells flowers to earn her living. Eliza does not have an education. This shows through the way that she does not have the most proper way of speaking. This happens through when Eliza is speaking to the other characters when she meets then when she is still at a low level of poverty in her life. To understand the reasons Eliza is able to change and be changed into an almost Cinderella like character. With Eliza going from and growing and changing through the hardship she faces. In the play Eliza begins with no confidence and works towards having a way to reach trough from learning during her life experiences. Learning through the other characters Eliza meets through out the play. Eliza grows stronger and shows how she is able to change her ways one can understand how she is able to change and makes these changes by seeing her through poverty, how she is interacting with the other characters in the play, and through the things she learns from the options that are provided to her. Eliza’s beginning education skills of learning to speak clearly through learning diction, etiquette, and looking proper for society. In addition, from how Eliza feels rich when she has money from the broken flowers and when she is able to be riding in the taxi, her ideas showing her strong will her insistence on marrying Freddy. Both Eliza and Cinderella grow up in poverty, have a stepmother figure, have a fairy godmother figure, arrive at the ball, show confidence, and married. By comparing and contrasting Eliza to Cinderella, we can better understand why and how Eliza changes.
“Manners are the happy way of doing things” according to Ralph Waldo Emerson. According to Emerson people use manners as a front to make themselves look better. Inherently, this will lead to a contradiction of the front and the reality. One such man who is most concerned with manners is the protagonist of Shaw’s Pygmalion, Professor Henry Higgins. Higgins is a man who displays contradictions within his character. He is in the business of teaching proper manners, although lacks them himself. In addition, Higgins is an intelligent man, and yet he is ignorant of the feelings of those around him. Another apparent contradiction is that Higgins’ outer charm serves to hide his bullying nature. He manipulates Eliza and others around him to serve his own purposes, without any regard for her feelings.
George Bernard Shaw’s play Pygmalion is based on an ancient Greek myth where a sculptor fell in love with a statue he created himself. In this play, Shaw tells a story of the protagonist, Eliza Doolittle, a poor flower gi...
The play Pygmalion offers the readers a view on the theme of class distinction, and the problem of the barriers separating classes and people. Shaw reveals to us the truth about the artificiality of classes and how anybody can overcome them, He also shows us that society puts up high standards and that people are distinguished by their way of speaking, and their appearance alone and of course that's wrong.
Bernard Shaw's play, entitled Pygmalion, transcends the nature of drama as a medium to be utilized for sheer entertainment value. Shaw's play powerfully comments on the capacity for the individual to overcome the boundaries established by systems of class and gender. Dominant assumptions and expectations may essentially prevent an individual from becoming socially mobile within a seemingly rigid hierarchical social structure. However, Liza, the protagonist utilizes language as the tool which enables the her to escape the confines of the lower class and to be regarded as a human of a certain degree of worth within society. As Liza transforms from flower girl to duchess, the audience is witness to the many ways that an individual can be dehumanised through the socialisation process. Issues of both class and gender arise from the tensions within the play that surround the interactions between Higgins and Liza and the viewer is able to openly question the values that exist within a society that judges the character of a person on the basis of wealth and education.
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.