Technology and its effect on Poverty in Pygmalion

Due to rapid advancement in technology, it makes great impact on many fields and helps to improve the standard of living. Undoubtedly, technology can make eradicate the bad effects of poverty and can improve the lives of poor. Poverty is the most difficult way of living. It makes the life of humans very pathetic and pitiful. Life in poverty leads the poor to struggle from day to day. If such poor person has given an opportunity to make changes in lives, he or she will try to utilize the opportunity to bring change to his or her life. “Pygmalion,” a movie based on Bernard Shaw’s play, is about the life of a poor, young flower girl who has been overlooked and disrespected because of her low standard of living, shabby appearance, and the filthy language she speaks. Huxley rightly says in his essay “Hyperion to a Satyr,” “Stinking rags or clean linen, liveries, uniforms, canonicals, the latest fashions… are the symbols in terms of which men and women have thought about the relations of class with class, of person with person…” (Hyperion to a Satyr). While analyzing the Act II of the “Pygmalion” with the help of Huxley’s essay, it is clear that technology has made a great impact on changing the poor Eliza’s life. The technologies that played vital role in the effort of transforming Eliza are technology of washing clothes, wearing fashionable dresses, linguistic techniques, and teaching methods used by Huggins.

The phonetic expert, Higgins, takes the challenge of molding Eliza Doolittle, poor, cockney flower girl. As a first attempt, he wants to change the appearance of the Eliza, as appearance helps her to show herself off as a high-class girl. By keeping herself and her clothes clean, she can grow up in the ladder of status in the so...

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...spect of the poor, not just the bereaved or working poor. He presents the life of poor Eliza as an example from the poverty-stricken people and applies technology over her to prove that it has the ability to reduce the bad effects of poverty. In the essay, the technologies discussed have really changed the way the other people look at Eliza and helped her to gain respect in the society. In the Act II, the appearance of Doolittle, Eliza’s father, is important, as it helps the readers to realize the family background of Eliza and the social she comes from. The linguistic signals are closely tied up in class. The fact is that by the accent and dialect of the people, Higgins can identify where they were born. Even though these technologies do not change the character of Eliza, it made a great impact on her life that gains her confidence to lead a standard way of living.