Bernard Shaw
Pygmalion
A Romance in Five Acts
1. Summary of the Play, page 2
2. Introduction and Short Analysis of the Main Character, page 4
3. Interpretation, page 5
4. Additional Information, page 7
5. Literature and Links, page 8
1. Summary
London at 11.15 a.m., on a rainy summer day.
Everybody’s running for shelter because of the torrential storm. A bunch of people ist gathering in St. Pauls church, looking outside and waiting for the rain to stop.
Among the crowd, there is a young flower girl which grew up in the slums of London and therefore has a terribly bad language, although she is a good-natured, simple and pure being.
She is carrying a basket with flowers. As there is nothing else to do while waiting for the rain to end, she asks a gentleman next to her to buy a flower.
The way she speaks attracts the attention of a bystander, who is constantly scribbling down something in his notebook. The flower girl first thinks that he is a police officer and begins to defend herself that she didn’t do anything wrong, but it soon becomes clear that the bystander isn’t a policeman at all, but a professor of didactics, an analyst of dialects, specialised in London’s suburbal accents. He is so fascinated of the absolutely disgusting slang of the flower girl, that he has taken down all the expressions she used. He explains to the crowd, that he has no bad intention at all. He is just a collector of dialects.
Home again, Eliza (the flower girl) thinks about what this strange man just said, and she takes a decision. She looks around in her miserable room, and it’s clear to her that something has to change.
At the same time in the house of Henry Higgins, the phonetician. He is visited by Pickering, whom he met at St. Paul’s church. While they are talking, the maid is coming in, saying that a girl named Eliza Doolittle is waiting at the door.
Not knowing the name of the flower girl, Higgins invites her in. When he recognizes the flower girl, he is very surprised. She confronts him with an offer: she wants to pay him (with nearly all she’s got, and that’s not much), and he in return should teach her how to speak like a lady. Her dream is to work in a flower shop, but at present she surely won’t be accepted and employed because of her bad language.
At first, Higgins rejects the offer. He can see no use in it for him. But the...
... middle of paper ...
...e more 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 brings the statue alive; Venus is touched by his love and brings Galatea to life.
Personal Impression
To me, it was a good book. I enjoyed reading it very much because of it’s sarcastic wit. It’s also quite easy to read, and you never get bored. I read it at one go, it’s not too long and very fluent.
What I personally don’t like about the play is that the transformation of Eliza works out a little bit too well. I simply can’t imagine a person changing her whole character and thinking within six months. Dressing her up like a queen seems to be a rational aim, but changing her way of being, and in such a short time... in my opinion this is quite unrealistic.
But apart from that I really enjoyed the book.
5. Sources of Information
Shaw, Bernard, Pygmalion, Philipp Reclam jun. GmbH & Co., Stuttgart (1990) http://www.bartleby.com/138 , 05.06.2005 http://www.eng.fju.edu.tw/English_Literature/shaw/Pygmalion.html, 02.05.2005 http://www.bookrags.com/notes/pyg/PART2.htm, 05.06.2005
My overall opinion of this book is good I really liked it and recommend it to anyone. It is a good book to read and it keep you interested throughout the whole book.
This is my personal reflection about this book. First and foremost, I would like to say that this book is very thick and long to read. There are about nineteen chapters and 278 pages altogether. As a slow reader, it is a quite hard for me to finish reading it within time. It took me weeks to finish reading it as a whole. Furthermore, it is written in English version. My English is just in average so sometimes I need to refer to dictionary for certain words. Sometimes I use google translate and ask my friends to explain the meaning of certain terms.
At the start of the play, all of the characters enter the abandoned farmhouse of John Wright, who was recently hanged by an unknown killer. The Sheriff and County Attorney start scanning the house for clues as to who killed Mr. Wright, but make a major error when they search the kitchen poorly, claiming that there is nothing there ?but kitchen things.? This illustrates the men?s incorrect belief that a kitchen is a place of trivial matters, a place where nothing of any importance may be found. Mrs. Peters then notices that Mrs. Wright?s fruit froze in the cold weather, and the men mock her and reveal their stereotype of females by saying ?women are used to worrying over trifles.? The men then venture to the upstairs of the house to look for clues, while the women remain downstairs in the kitchen where they discuss the frozen fruit and the Wrights. Mrs. Hale explains that Mrs. Wright, whose maiden name was Minnie Foster, used to be a lively woman who sang in the choir. She suggests that the reason Mrs. Wright stopped being cheerful and active because of her irritable husband.
Both the brains and the hearts of the audience have been convinced. She also used many rhetorical strategies, like emotional appeal to convey her rough childhood to the reader. She gave numerous examples of being discriminated, and stereotyped because of their race. Tan’s audience reaches out to family members who speak broken English. Amy Tan also comprehends that although people may not be able to speak perfect English, they can comprehend what others are saying, and that you shouldn't discriminate others because of their race. A persons understanding of someone who speaks “broken-English” could be very limited, but the wisdom of the “broken English” speaker is
Overall I think this is a great book. I would recommend this book to others but you would have to read the first two books before this one. I would recommend this book because it has a great story line and there is never a dull moment.
Elisa Allen is working on her garden and she sees her husband, Henry, speaking with two men about selling his steers. The garden bed and the house are called to attention and it is pointed out that they are very clean and organized. Once the strangers leave, Henry comes over to her and politely praises her on how lovely the garden looks and then wishes that she would attend to the orchards in the same way. She at first is egger to help but realizes that he was joking. Henry says they should celebrate by going to town and jokingly suggests seeing a fight, to which Elisa turns down. Henry leaves and a wagon pulls up with a charming, yet uneducated, tinker. They joke about the ferocity of the dogs. He asks for work to pay to feed his self and Elisa denies that there is work for him to do. He notices the chrysanthemums and tells her that he has a client that wants to raise some. She suddenly is excited and begins to ready some plants for him to take with him, and she instructs him on how to take care of them. She expresses her passion and her connection to the flowers in a seductive manner, even to the point of wanting to have physical contact with the tinker. She refrains from touching. The tinker points out that it’s hard to feel that way when hungry. Elisa gives in and finds something for him to work on. As the tinker works, Elisa expresses her opinion that women can do that same kind of work he does, to which he says it would be to lo...
Miss Hancock is a strange yet charming character, who is classified as both round and dynamic. Miss Hancock is flashy, bizarre, with “too much enthusiasm.” But she is more than simply that. After a discussion on “The Metaphor”, she asks Charlotte talk about her own metaphor on her mother. Here, a different side of her is shown. “She
“The Garden Lodge” takes the reader into the world of a once poor girl who found relief in a wealthy and successful man. Cather uses the point of view and characterization to help fully understand what the protagonist was thinking and why she chose the things she did. She makes this story understandable and a good read.
The speaker personifies the flower by describing how the moon-lily sings: “…it is singing—very far/ but very clear and sweet” (10-11). The voice of the flower is the voice of the woman. The flower is calling out to the man. The fact that the flower has to call out to the man implies that he does not accept the love of the woman. The speaker also describes the distance between the two people. He states, “The voice is always in some other room” (12). Once again the speaker is describing distance, but the man does not try to close the distance. The reason the man does not try to close the distance is because he does not love the woman. The lily represents the female and their love. In the poem, the speaker talks about a “garden” which is a metaphor for the female’s life (13). In the garden the speaker describes the flower as “in bloom” and that the flower “stands full and/ proud” (13,14-15). This section of the poem tells the reader that the woman’s love is strong and unwavering. The speaker compares the woman’s love to a lily because the love is pure of heart and beautiful. The relationship that the poem depicts is unhealthy for the female. The woman is putting too much effort into a nonexistent
She cared for people. She cared for Miss Lottie. At this moment all she wanted to do was apologize. She felt guilty. The guiltiest she has ever felt in her entire life. She single-handedly ruined the one thing Miss Lottie had a hope for in this world. Lizabeth grew up and realized it in one moment. She looked back on this moment, and talked about how after this year. Miss Lottie never grew marigolds again. But Lizabeth looks back at this time in her life, and she embodies Miss Lottie. Lizabeth then realizes you must look at the beauty in your life, and not the despair. “For one does not have to be ignorant and poor to find that his life is as barren as the dusty yards of our town. And I too have planted marigolds” (Collier 148). In a different period of time, Lizabeth gives back to Miss Lottie, even after she has passed, with a peace offering. Her marigolds. Her marigolds that Lizabeth grew now symbolize the hope that Miss Lottie had in the world in the future. Her marigolds were Miss Lottie’s. Even after her death, Lizabeth uses marigolds to make the legend of Miss Lottie live
Eliza’s blatant disregard for the concern of those around her contributed heavily to her demise. Had she listened to her friends and family when they told her to marry Mr...
...ots her memory, the blossoms her dreams, and the branches her vision. After each unsuccessful marriage, she waits for the springtime pollen to be sprinkled over her life once again. Even after Tea Cake's death, she has a garden of her own to sit and revel in.
The first time Kingston had to speak English in kindergarten was the moment silence infiltrated her world. Simple dialogue such as “hello” or asking for directions was hell for her because people usually couldn’t hear her the first time she asked, and her voice became weaker every time she tried to repeat the question (422). No matter what, speaking English just shattered her self-esteem.
Although the dialogues have basically been unchanged from the dramatic version to the prose fiction version, Glaspell has passed her message more effectively in the narrative. While Glaspell uses the characters or actors to vocalize the emotions of the story from the play “Trifles”, she makes the reader feel the emotions in “A Jury of Her Peers” by including descriptive passages to accompany the dialogue in her narration. The opening paragraph of the story was a description of Mrs. Hale’s unkempt kitchen “… which will later serve as a point of comparison with the major scene of the story, Mrs. Wright’s kitchen” (Mustazza). This opening description helps readers foreshadow why Mrs. Hale could easily identify with Mrs. Wright. “Through her brief opening description of the landscape Glaspell establishes the physical context for the loneliness and isolation, an isolation Minnie inherited from and shared with generations of pioneer and farm women before her” (Hedges). The description of the road to Mr. Wright’s farm also helps reveal to readers Mrs. Wright’s “geographical isolation” (Hedges). Glaspell provides the short story v...
In the opening of the story Elisa is emasculated by the description of her clothing. She wears "a man’s black hat pulled low down over her eyes, clodhopper shoes, a figured print dress almost completely covered by a big corduroy apron…" (paragraph 5). When Elisa’s husband Henry comes over and compliments her garden and ability to grow things Elisa is smug with him and very proud of her skill with the flowers. Her "green thumb" makes her an equal in her own eyes. When Elisa’s husband asks her if she would like to go to dinner her feminine side comes out. She is excited to go eat at a restaurant and states that she would much rather go to the movies than go see the fights, she "wouldn’t like the fight’s" at all (paragraph 21). Elisa is taken aback with her own submissiveness and quickly becomes preoccupied with her flowers as soon as her husband leaves. When the drifter comes and asks Elisa for work to do she is stern with him and refuses him a job. She acts as a man would to another strange man and becomes irritated. When he persists in asking her she reply’s "I tell you I have nothing like that for you to do" (paragraph 46). The drifter mentions Elisa’s chrysanthemums and she immediately loosens up as "the irritation and resistance melt(ed) from her face" (paragraph 51). The drifter feigns great interest in Elisa’s chrysanthemums and asks her many questions about them. He tells her he knows a lady who said to him "if you ever come across some nice chrysanthemums I wish you’d try to get me a few seeds" (paragraph 56). Elisa is overjoyed by any interest in her flowers and gives the man chrysanthemum sprouts to take to his friend.