Meghhnaa (On a Review-Writing Break!)'s Reviews > Pygmalion

Pygmalion is a verbose, satirical, romantic play, distributed over 5 Acts, with no scenes!

The play opens with the following preparatory lines-
“It is impossible for an Englishman to open his mouth without making some other Englishman hate or despise him. German and Spanish are accessible to foreigners: English is not accessible even to Englishmen”

I am resistant to above lines, as I am blessed with great English friends, who definitely don’t despise me, but help me to become a better version of myself! 😊

The play focusses on social-class distinction, so maybe GB Shaw, used the above lines as a prop, loosely! I wish, he could have used other tools/examples to exemplify, or made it more of a general approach, than a geographical divide! Coz of the opening lines, in a flash, I deducted 1.5 stars 😊

I couldn’t relate with the lines at all. A human in himself is a complex machinery, irrespective of geographical boundaries! So, I openly defy!!

Pygmalion illustrates the arbitrariness of basing a person’s worth on his/her pronunciation, and the social assumptions of inferiority/superiority in the class system!

The 40-year-old, phonetics professor Henry Higgins, is an expert in dialects/accents. Boasting of educating the social climbers in speech, and phonetically transcribing all that the innocent flower girl Eliza Doolittle says, he teaches Eliza to speak like a lady so that she might be employed in a classy flower store!

A fellow phonetics professor, Colonel Pickering (author of spoken Sanskrit), offers to cover the expenses of the experiment, with the stipulation, if Higgins can pass Eliza off as a duchess at a garden party six months later.

Certain of his abilities, the tyrannical, despotic and condescending Higgins is enticed by the Frankenstein-ian challenge “But you have no idea 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.”

Higgins’ rough manners, rudeness, superciliousness and swearing do not teach her the accompanying social etiquette. Eliza betrays her lack of refinement at a party, by spouting, where she uses the vulgar expression “Not bloody likely,” but in a ladylike manner.

Higgins and Pickering are unaware that their experiment has transformed Eliza, not only in terms of speech, but also in terms of society!

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.

He defends himself, by saying that he believes in treating everyone equally, regardless of his/her social class!!

The humiliated and infuriated, Eliza, no longer willing to be treated like a servant, leaves!

She firmly claims that social class is not determined by one’s pronunciation but by the respect with which one is treated!!

In the meantime, unexpected money has been left to Eliza’s father by a rich American, which transformed him from an alcoholic dustman into a middle-class man in terms of behaviour, but not in terms of pronunciation!

Father’s transformation is based on money and not accent, whereas daughter was transformed in terms of accent, but both stay ambivalent about their new status!

Ultimately, Eliza, marries the petit bourgeois(middle-class) Freddy and opens a flower and vegetable shop with him. She rejects continuing the endurance of Higgins’s disdain, tyranny and rudeness. His derisiveness, keeps putting her down throughout!

Eliza scuffles throughout, to liberate herself from the professor’s tyranny, contempt and oppression!

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Pygmalion is one story, enwrapping couple of other stories in it!

GB shaw links the story of “Cinderella” of a transformation from rags to riches, to sprinkling it with a “Frankenstein-ian” creation of a new life.

It is a re-working of Greek mythology, Pygmalion (King of Cyprus) and Galatea.

In the original Greek mythology, Pygmalion, is a sculptor and falls in love with the ivory statute of a beautiful woman, he created. He falls in love with his own creation. On his request, Aphrodite, the goddess of love and beauty, transformed the statute into actual woman by breathing life into the statue. Both get married, and lived happily ever after!! 😊

Pygmalion is the professor Henry Higgins, who creates Galatea, by transforming a common, ignorant, flower girl Eliza into a duchess by creating a new speech for her!

But we witness a Shaw-nian twist, unlike, the Greek mythology, the professor and the flower-girl don’t fall in love with each other. Eliza, marries someone else(Freddy)!

Beauty is a very subjective attribute. In Pygmalion, Eliza, remains the same from the beginning to the end, but is virtually invisible to Freddy as a Cockney-speaking flower merchant girl. Later, he is totally captivated and smitten by what he perceives as her beauty and grace when she is presented to him as a lady of society! True that, beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder!

My favourite lines of the play are-

The essence of appearance and reality, is defined by Eliza/Liza as: “You see, really and truly, apart from the things anyone can pick up (the dressing and the proper way of speaking, and so on), the difference between a lady and a flower girl is not how she behaves, but how she's treated. I shall always be a flower girl to Professor Higgins, because he always treats me as a flower girl, and always will; but I know I can be a lady to you, because you always treat me as a lady, and always will.”

Questions can be raised about the justifiability of social distinction and the role of women in a patriarchal society. Eliza escapes the suffering of humiliation and degradation by Higgins, with the help of Pickering’s civility.

Pygmalion was later adapted into the popular musical comedy My Fair Lady (1956).

I give 3.5 stars (disappointed with the opening lines!) to this light-hearted play! I can surely classify it as a one-time read, to derive notions and implement the same in life, on your own accord!