Shaw has often been criticized for his inability to create well- developed round characters. His characters are usually seen as mere puppets propelled by the crisis of the plot or as mouthpieces for his socialist viewpoint. However in Pygmalion,, Shaw vindicates himself of these charges by the creation of rounded and life-like characters such as Higgins and Eliza. Clearly they are not authorial stooges. They have a peculiar quality that leaves a lasting imprint on the reader's memory. But there is some truth in the charge that Shaw created a mouthpiece for his own ideas and the character of Alfred Doolittle is a case in point. While Doolittle is undoubtedly a staple comic character, he is an artificial and flat one. Doolittle is there for a purpose - he serves Shaw's didactic needs. As such he is in the Dickens' vein of exaggeration. Doolittle's character is drawn for the sole purpose of ridiculing the Victorian philosophy of the "undeserving poor." One cannot imagine such a character existing in real life. On the whole, however, Pygmalion is peopled with imaginative and lively characters. While Higgins and Eliza are excellent, even the minor characters are well drawn.
Henry Higgins
Higgins is an extremely interesting character and the life of the play. Although the play's obvious concern is the metamorphosis of a common flower girl into a duchess, the development of Higgins' character is also important. The play isn't only Eliza's story. One also detects changes in Higgins or to be more precise he appears to the reader in a new light at the end. This is seen when he tells Eliza that he has grown accustomed to seeing her face and hearing her voice. This is not much of a sensitive display of emotions but it is quite diffe...
... middle of paper ...
...ough the character of Higgins. It is obvious that Higgins's manners are not much better than those of the Covent Garden flower girl. In fact Higgins comes off much worse because of the fact that he has had all the civilizing benefits of wealth and education yet he is rude to the point of being boorish and ill mannered, is given to frequent inflammatory outbursts, and possesses abominable table manners. The fact that such an ill- mannered person is accepted by society as a "gentleman" provides Shaw with an opportunity to expose the shallowness and hypocrisy of such a society. Shaw thus critiques a society that views wealth and the ability to speak correctly as the constitutive criteria of a prescriptive gentleman. It is one of Shaw's master ironic strokes to make such a rude and boorish egotistical bully the main agent for transforming a common flower girl into a lady.
Christopher and Whitson claim that “working-class culture has its own exceptional people who do not choose to leave their culture.” O’Connor’s pieces support this idea. Often she paints the middle-class characters in her pieces as ridiculous or unhappy where the working-class is seemingly well-adjusted and satisfied with their place in life. Old Dudley, in the story “The Geranium,” finds himself living in “better” conditions in New York City, having left the poor country life as a boarder and fix-it man in Georgia.
Characters in D.H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover struggle to escape the inescapable confines of money, class, and power.
My fair lady is movie about a flower girl named Eliza Doolittle and a man named Henry Higgins of Phonetics. One night professor Higgins was at the Covent Garden market talking to his friend Colonel Pickering. While Eliza was selling flowers she overheard Higgins and Pickering talking. Higgins told Pickering that he can make anyone fluent in the English language the proper way. Eliza later found where Higgins lived and wanted to him to teach her how to speak like a proper lady in a flower shop. Higgins did not want to. Pickering at that time was at Higgins house and he bet that Higgins could not teach Eliza to how to speak as a proper lady and make her a duchess. Higgins at that moment bet. Higgins bet Pickering that he can teach Eliza to speak and be a duchess within 3 months. Over these several months Eliza who moved into Higgins household is put through depressive lessons. Eliza eventually was ready for the big day when she was tested in her skills. Eliza went to the embassy Ball. She was very beautiful, elegant and well-spoken and she proved to be very successful in Higgins and Pickering’s bet. She especially impressed a man named Freddy Eynsford-Hill falls in love with her. After the ball Higgins, Picke...
Oscar Wilde’s treatment of high society and manners are explored in the play “The Importance of Being Earnest”. Here, members of the upper class display a great deal of pride and pretense, feeling that they are inherently entitled to their wealth and higher social position. An example is Lady Bracknell, who is preoccupied with maintaining the status quo that she quickly squashes any signs of rebellion. Characters from higher societies/classes are mainly concerned about their reputation and respectability. Thus, expectations of the upper class for both men and women include being upstanding, rich and come from a wealthy family. Wilde’s criticism on high society and manners are explored through the characteristics of Lady Bracknell; the dialogue between Gwendolen and Cecily; and the characteristics of Jack in the country.
Margaret is an intelligent, articulate, and ambitious woman who desires to rise up in social status by marrying a man of higher social rank. She attends to those above her, in hopes of elevating her status as she becomes closer to the upper-class. As a minor character, she plays a small yet crucial role in advancing Don John’s plot to slander Hero and spoil her wedding. As a lower-class character, Margaret serves as a foil to the rich girls, particularly Hero, who embodies every attitude and mindset Margaret does not. But she also offers an alternative perspective on the upper-class characters in the play. Because Margaret is victimized because of her social ambitions, punished for wanting to rise above her ...
The novel of manners gives, using most of the time a rather satirical tone, a sharp portrayal of the actual life as it really is and also of the social behaviour and attitudes that are closely related with it. This type of novel concentrates on people of a certain class, time and place are clearly defined. The individual attitudes of those people, their inner desires, get into conflict with the more conventional values, which are defined by the society they live in. The result is, that the protagonist has the problem of combining himself and his desires with the rules (the manners) of society, that he himself as a part of this society helped to establish, involuntarily. Examples for this special kind of novel are creations of authors like Henry Fielding and Jane Austen.
Eliza seems to have stood up for herself against Higgins and support Shaw's theory of Victorian women breaking the ideals of the housewife and child-rearer but once she is married to Freddy, or to anyone else, and starts a family she will have to go behind the scenes and keep the house and tend to her children. Pulling Eliza from the gutter and making her into a duchess revolves around a friendly bet between Higgins and Pickering. Eliza is passed off as a duchess but as the play draws to a close the bet is uncovered and Higgins and her squabble. The play ends ambiguously, we are told she is going to marry Freddy but their marriage is left up to the reader. However, it is with the understanding of Victorian ideals the reader can hypothesize what is going to happen once they are married; which is taking on the original roles of men and women in the Victorian era.
People are always in the pursuit of erasing their flaws and becoming what society would say is "perfect." In the play Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw the main character Eliza Doolittle was not content with her life and her lamentable speech and manners. In order to become what she considered "perfect" Eliza relied on Higgins to change her into a proper and sophisticated woman. Higgins pounded lessons of proper speech and how to conduct one 's self with eloquence into Eliza 's head minute after minute and day after day. Although Eliza was being transformed externally, as she continued to grow from her lessons, she also began to transform internally and realize that she deserved respect, whether she was a kerbstone flower girl or a duchess.
An important lesson that has been learned throughout life and the beginning of time is to respect the individual’s content and not their image. It is shown throughout George Bernard Shaw’s play, Pygmalion, that different people can be brought together in the same circumstance, being a heavy rain shower in London, but distance themselves so effusively because of outer appearances. The situation between the nonintellectual flower-girl and the sophisticated Pickering, Higgins, and the Mother-daughter is drawn out over the judgment of her poor speech and her value as a person as she constantly defends herself against their prejudice. Shaw uses Pygmalion to show how language shallowly reflects the importance of social classes within the Victorian era through the portrayal of characters, their conflicts, and transformation in the first act of the play.
A full change for Eliza comes when she begins being able to take care of herself and others. Berst explains “Eliza grows as a woman (not a lady) though progressively rising to the engaging this counter force and coming to grips with alternatives--Freddy and independence” (Berst 133). The differences between Eliza and Cinderella are that we see a happily ever after for Cinderella marring the prince. A similarity is that Eliza has reached her goal and she may not be at the top of society.
Higgins, a teacher of proprietary manners, lacks those very manners which others pay to learn from him. Ironically, Higgins believes that he is the greatest teacher of manners. He announces that in “three months [he] could pass [Eliza] off as a duchess.” Higgins thinks that he can take any lower class girl and pass her off as a duchess. He truly believes that he is capable of transforming Eliza. Once the teaching begins, Higgins shows no respect for others in his life. When he goes to see his mother, she reminds him that “[he] promised not to come on” her days when she is having guests. He ignores this promise to his mother because he believes that his newest experiment is more important than his mother’s insignificant visitors are. This behavior continues throughout the ...
...nd an upper-class gentleman while she is ignorant and a lower-class flower girl. The man is superior, intelligent and reasonable whereas the woman is inferior, stupid and emotional. However, in Act 5, which can be considered as a climax, Eliza begins to disobey Mr. Higgins and oblige him to treat her equally and respectfully. This shows Eliza’s independence and maturity. This self-confidence and revolution against the existing conventions is a plain criticism of Shaw on the existing ideas at that time.
Professor Higgins' rudeness is an embarrassment to his mother Mrs. Higgins, who knows how to treat everybody with respect, and who isn?t fooled by Eliza's good looks and ways of talking. Mrs. Higgins can stil...
...y a set of expectations and values that are established on mannerisms and conduct challenged by Elizabeth. From this novel, it is evident that the author wrote it with awareness of the class issues that affect different societies. Her annotations on the fixed social structure are important in giving a solution to the current social issues; that even the class distinctions and restrictions can be negotiated when an individual turns down bogus first impression s.
...t Fielding tends to mock the upper class more and it can be argued they are the ones with worse characteristics however he also ridicules lower class characters such as Mrs. Slipslop, the middle aged plump lady's maid who is also a bully ; Peter Pounce, the swindling skinflint, Mrs. Tow-wouse, the scolding innkeepers wife and Pamela's hypocrisy in the sense she once saw Fanny as her equal but now deems herself to be superior. In conclusion we see that Fielding does not so much then make a distinction between class, but shows us that hypocrisy, vanity, unkindness and cruelty are vices that belong to all members of society and it is only those who see the goodness in humanity and who treat all others with kindness and respect regardless of class that are superior individuals.