Feminism In Pygmalion

Pygmalion in Greek mythology was a Cypriot sculptor who constructed a woman out of ivory and named her Galatea. According to Ovid’s translation, after seeing the Propoetides prostituting themselves in public for their defiance against the gods, he became uninterested in women; however his statue was so beautiful and realistic that he fell in love with it. After a short time, Aphrodite's festival day came, and Pygmalion made several offerings at the shrine of Aphrodite. Pygmalion was too scared to admit his true desire at the altar, so he quietly wished for a bride who would be "the living likeness of my ivory girl". When he returned home, he kissed his Galatea, and found that the statue’s lips felt warm. He kissed it again and found that the ivory had become flesh. Aphrodite had granted Pygmalion's wish. Pygmalion married the ivory sculpture changed to a woman under Aphrodite's blessing. In Ovid's translation, they had a son named Paphos, and in some other translations, they also had a daughter.

In Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw's, we see a myth that has been revamped into a modern tale with a subtle hint of feminism. The underclass flower-girl Eliza Doolittle is metaphorically brought to life by a phonetics professor, Henry Higgins, who polishes her accent, teaches her correct grammar and how to have conversation in social situations and otherwise conduct herself with upper-class manners. In his own way, he sculpts Eliza into his own ivory Galatea, and though it is unclear what becomes of them, he falls in love with her at the end of the play. However, since Bernard Shaw was a feminist, in his adaptation Professor Higgins’s plan to mold Miss Doolittle into the perfect woman backfired, and since he taught her to think for herse...

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...hieve the level of closure that I, personally would want. I would write an alternate ending, where it showed Eliza and Higgins getting along, not necessarily married, but instead showing the audience that Higgins had learned his lesson about being sexist and under appreciative toward women.

George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion is essentially an extremely interesting adaptation of Ovid’s Metamorphose that entertains the audience with playfully mean relationship and witty banter. Shaw is able to tweak the original story of Pygmalion creating “the perfect woman” – something that, realistically, does not exist – into a message against sexism and early twentieth century England’s class-based society. Essentially, George Bernard Shaw makes the bold move of challenging a closed-minded audience to see women in a different light, and that alone makes this work worthy of praise.