Pygmalion

by George Bernard Shaw

Reporters:
Charry Ann Beltran
Marjolyn Rosario
 Background of the Author
George Bernard
- Shaw
was born on July 26, 1856 in Dublin,
Ireland and died on November 2,
1950 in Ayot, St. Lawrence,
Hertforshire, England
- a playwright, literary critic, and
socialist propagandist.
- He won Nobel Prize for Literature in
1925.
- famous for his play, Pygmalion – a
story of a poor, young flower girl
who has been disrespected and
overlooked because of her
appearance and the dialect she
speaks.
- Following his death on 1950, his
plays continued to be studied and
produced worldwide.
 Pygmalion

• Pygmalion is not the typical romance we think of today.

• It tackles issues about women’s right, language, social
class and the idea of transformation.
Vocabulary Words
• Phonetics – the study of speech sounds.
• Linguist -someone who is good at speaking
or learning foreign languages.
• Cockney - a dialect of the English language
traditionally spoken by working-class Londoners.
• Duchess - a woman with the highest social rank
outside a royal family.
• Shilling - a former British coin and monetary
unit.
Characters
Eliza Doolittle is the main character in the story. She is
first introduced as an unpolished, foul-mouthed flower
girl but is transformed into a beautiful woman.

Professor Higgins is a linguist who believes he can

transform Eliza Doolittle into a duchess in six months. He
is an intelligent man but is also disrespectful to others
despite their social class and extremely arrogant.
Colonel Pickering is a linguist who challenges Professor
Higgins to transform Eliza Doolittle into a duchess. Colonel
Pickering funds Professor Higgins' work with Eliza and is
considerate and kind to her.

Alfred Doolittle is Eliza's materialistic father who tries to

obtain money when he learns Professor Higgins is working
with Eliza.
Mrs. Higgins is Professor Higgins's mother, who disagrees
with Higgins' and Pickering's plan to try to change Eliza into
a duchess.

Freddy Eynsford Hill - Freddy first meets Eliza during a

meeting with his mother and sister at Mrs. Higgins' house.
He falls in love with Eliza and writes letters to woo her.

Nepommuck – Henry Higgins’ first language student,

adept in several languages.
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 to 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
The main themes of G. B. Shaw’s play is language and
social class. 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.
“Education is the key to success”

The importance of education can be seen here as well.

We can compare the speech which Eliza uses at first. She
lack the kind of education that Higgins and Pickering have
had, the play reveals them to be intellectual. But in the
latter part of the play, Eliza is not only able to change her
speech but also on how she dressed and how she gained
confidence in her own abilities.
G. Bernard Shaw’s play in relation to the Ancient
Greek myth Pygmalion
Shaw’s play derive it’s name from Ovid’s Metamorphoses. 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 Eliza. Unlike the myth, Shaw's play
does not end in a marriage between the pair, and Elza 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.
References:
https://www.britannica.com/biography/George-Bernard-Shaw
https://www.gradesaver.com/pygmalion/study-guide/character-li
st

https://www.collinsdictionary.com/
https://study.com/academy/lesson/pygmalion-by-shaw-summary-
characters-theme.html#:~:text=Pygmalion%20is%20a%20play
%20by,and%20the%20dialect%20she%20speaks

https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/pygmalion/anal
ysis/title

https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/pygmalion/summary/
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