Pygmalion

Born in Dublin in 1856 to a middle-class Protestant family bearing pretensions to

nobility (Shaw's embarrassing alcoholic father claimed to be descended from
Macduff, the slayer of Macbeth), George Bernard Shaw grew to become what
some consider the second greatest English playwright, behind only Shakespeare.
Others most certainly disagree with such an assessment, but few question Shaw's
immense talent or the play's that talent produced. Shaw died at the age of 94, a
hypochondriac, socialist, anti-vaccinationist, semi-feminist vegetarian who
believed in the Life Force and only wore wool. He left behind him a truly massive
corpus of work including about 60 plays, 5 novels, 3 volumes of music criticism, 4
volumes of dance and theatrical criticism, and heaps of social commentary,
political theory, and voluminous correspondence. And this list does not include the
opinions that Shaw could always be counted on to hold about any topic, and
which this flamboyant public figure was always most willing to share. Shaw's most
lasting contribution is no doubt his plays, and it has been said that "a day never
passes without a performance of some Shaw play being given somewhere in the
world." One of Shaw's greatest contributions as a modern dramatist is in
establishing drama as serious literature, negotiating publication deals for his
highly popular plays so as to convince the public that the play was no less
important than the novel. In that way, he created the conditions for later
playwrights to write seriously for the theater.
Of all of Shaw's plays, Pygmalion is without the doubt the most beloved and
popularly received, if not the most significant in literary terms. Several film
versions have been made of the play, and it has even been adapted into a
musical. In fact, writing the screenplay for the film version of 1938 helped Shaw to
become the first and only man ever to win the much coveted Double: the Nobel
Prize for literature and an Academy Award. Shaw wrote the part of Eliza in
Pygmalion for the famous actress Mrs. Patrick Campbell, with whom Shaw was
having a prominent affair at the time that had set all of London abuzz. The aborted
romance between Professor Higgins and Eliza Doolittle reflects Shaw's own love
life, which was always peppered with enamored and beautiful women, with whom
he flirted outrageously but with whom he almost never had any further relations.
For example, he had a long marriage to Charlotte Payne-Townsend in which it is
well known that he never touched her once. The fact that Shaw was quietly a
member of the British Society for the Study of Sex Psychology, an organization
whose core members were young men agitating for homosexual liberation, might
or might not inform the way that Higgins would rather focus his passions on
literature or science than on women. That Higgins was a representation of
Pygmalion, the character from the famous story of Ovid's Metamorphoses who is
the very embodiment of male love for the female form, makes Higgins sexual
disinterest all the more compelling. Shaw is too consummate a performer and too
smooth in his self- presentation for us to neatly dissect his sexual background;
these lean biographical facts, however, do support the belief that Shaw would
have an interest in exploding the typical structures of standard fairy tales.
Characters
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.
Summary
Two old gentlemen meet in the rain one night at Covent Garden. Professor
Higgins is a scientist of phonetics, and Colonel Pickering is a linguist of Indian
dialects. The first bets the other that he can, with his knowledge of phonetics,
convince high London society that, in a matter of months, he will be able to
transform the cockney speaking Covent Garden flower girl, Eliza Doolittle, into a
woman as poised and well-spoken as a duchess. The next morning, the girl
appears at his laboratory on Wimpole Street to ask for speech lessons, offering to
pay a shilling, so that she may speak properly enough to work in a flower shop.
Higgins makes merciless fun of her, but is seduced by the idea of working his
magic on her. Pickering goads him on by agreeing to cover the costs of the
experiment if Higgins can pass Eliza off as a duchess at an ambassador's garden
party. The challenge is taken, and Higgins starts by having his housekeeper bathe
Eliza and give her new clothes. Then Eliza's father Alfred Doolittle comes to
demand the return of his daughter, though his real intention is to hit Higgins up for
some money. The professor, amused by Doolittle's unusual rhetoric, gives him five
pounds. On his way out, the dustman fails to recognize the now clean, pretty
flower girl as his daughter.
For a number of months, Higgins trains Eliza to speak properly. Two trials for Eliza
follow. The first occurs at Higgins' mother's home, where Eliza is introduced to the
Eynsford Hills, a trio of mother, daughter, and son. The son Freddy is very
attracted to her, and further taken with what he thinks is her affected "small talk"
when she slips into cockney. Mrs. Higgins worries that the experiment will lead to
problems once it is ended, but Higgins and Pickering are too absorbed in their
game to take heed. A second trial, which takes place some months later at an
ambassador's party (and which is not actually staged), is a resounding success.
The wager is definitely won, but Higgins and Pickering are now bored with the
project, which causes Eliza to be hurt. She throws Higgins' slippers at him in a
rage because she does not know what is to become of her, thereby bewildering
him. He suggests she marry somebody. She returns him the hired jewelry, and he
accuses her of ingratitude.
The following morning, Higgins rushes to his mother, in a panic because Eliza has
run away. On his tail is Eliza's father, now unhappily rich from the trust of a
deceased millionaire who took to heart Higgins' recommendation that Doolittle
was England's "most original moralist." Mrs. Higgins, who has been hiding Eliza
upstairs all along, chides the two of them for playing with the girl's affections.
When she enters, Eliza thanks Pickering for always treating her like a lady, but
threatens Higgins that she will go work with his rival phonetician, Nepommuck.
The outraged Higgins cannot help but start to admire her. As Eliza leaves for her

father's wedding, Higgins shouts out a few errands for her to run, assuming that
she will return to him at Wimpole Street. Eliza, who has a lovelorn sweetheart in
Freddy, and the wherewithal to pass as a duchess, never makes it clear whether
she will or not.
Analysis
Pygmalion derives its name from the famous story in Ovid's Metamorphoses, in
which Pygmalion, disgusted by the loose and shameful lives of the women of his
era, decides to live alone and unmarried. With wondrous art, he creates a
beautiful statue more perfect than any living woman. The more he looks upon her,
the more deeply he falls in love with her, until he wishes that she were more than
a statue. This statue is Galatea. Lovesick, Pygmalion goes to the temple of the
goddess Venus and prays that she give him a lover like his statue; Venus is
touched by his love and brings Galatea to life. When Pygmalion returns from
Venus' temple and kisses his statue, he is delighted to find that she is warm and
soft to the touch--"The maiden felt the kisses, blushed and, lifting her timid eyes
up to the light, saw the sky and her lover at the same time" (Frank Justus Miller,
trans.).
Myths such as this are fine enough when studied through the lens of centuries
and the buffer of translations and editions, but what happens when one tries to
translate such an allegory into Victorian England? That is just what George
Bernard Shaw does in his version of the Pygmalion myth. In doing so, he exposes
the inadequacy of myth and of romance in several ways. For one, he deliberately
twists the myth so that the play does not conclude as euphorically or conveniently,
hanging instead in unconventional ambiguity. Next, he mires the story in the
sordid and mundane whenever he gets a chance. Wherever he can, the
characters are seen to be belabored by the trivial details of life like napkins and
neckties, and of how one is going to find a taxi on a rainy night. These noisome
details keep the story grounded and decidedly less romantic. Finally, and most
significantly, Shaw challenges the possibly insidious assumptions that come with
the Pygmalion myth, forcing us to ask the following: Is the male artist the absolute
and perfect being who has the power to create woman in the image of his
desires? Is the woman necessarily the inferior subject who sees her lover as her
sky? Can there only ever be sexual/romantic relations between a man and a
woman? Does beauty reflect virtue? Does the artist love his creation, or merely
the art that brought that creation into being?
Famous for writing "talky" plays in which barely anything other than witty repartee
takes center stage (plays that the most prominent critics of his day called nonplays), Shaw finds in Pygmalion a way to turn the talk into action, by hinging the
fairy tale outcome of the flower girl on precisely how she talks. In this way, he
draws our attention to his own art, and to his ability to create, through the medium
of speech, not only Pygmalion's Galatea, but Pygmalion himself. More powerful
than Pygmalion, on top of building up his creations, Shaw can take them down as
well by showing their faults and foibles. In this way, it is the playwright alone, and
not some divine will, who breathes life into his characters. While Ovid's Pygmalion
may be said to have idolized his Galatea, Shaw's relentless and humorous
honesty humanizes these archetypes, and in the process brings drama and art
itself to a more contemporarily relevant and human level.