Pygmalion Essay

604 Words2 Pages

Pygmalion, a play by George Bernard Shaw, the main characters, Professor Henry Higgins and flower girl Eliza Doolittle are discrete. Higgins is a successful linguist and member of the upper class, while Doolittle is a common flower girl who sells her flowers on the streets of London. Bernard Shaw utilizes Eliza’s speech as a derogatory towards British society, though this same criticism is cast upon the upper class. Throughout the story, Eliza Doolittle develops as a women, and rises to a higher ranking because of her expertise of Higgins and Pickering. Her father Alfred Doolittle has a much different perspective of the upper class than she does, which result in different perspectives of the bourgeoisie. Even though the theme of class is evident …show more content…

“Ow, eez yə-ooa san, is e? Wal, fewd dan y' də-ooty bawmz a mather should, eed now bettern to spawl a pore gel's flahrzn than ran awy athaht pyin. Will ye-oo py me f'them?' (Here, with apologies, this desperate attempt to represent her dialect without a phonetic alphabet must be abandoned as unintelligible outside London)." As this excerpt demonstrates, Shaw shrewdly uses dialect to not only criticize the lower class, but also the superficiality of the upper class. If we take a deeper look, Shaw is a self-proclaimed socialist, who claims that speech alone is what makes a difference between a flower girl and a duchess. In the novel it is clear through dialect that there is a major difference between the …show more content…

Pickering, shown as gentle and courteous, he is immediately touched by Eliza’s vulgarity and innocence by offering to pay for her lessons himself. Even Eliza appreciates Pickering, accrediting his treatment as a catalyst. "Your calling me Miss Doolittle that day when I first came to Wimpole Street," claims Eliza, "That was the beginning of self-respect for me" (79). Contrasting from Pickering, Higgins claims he has "created this thing out of squashed cabbage leaves of Covent Garden" in reference to Eliza (78). Pickering distinctly treats a lowly flower girl, Eliza Doolittle, the in the same fashion as he would treat a lady. He, in fact, eliminates the class distinction through treatment that does not take such distinctions into account. Higgins treats Eliza just as rudely and inconsiderately as he treats every other character in the play, including his mother and Mrs. Pearce. Eliza metamorphoses not only into the "duchess" Higgins promises, or the shop girl Eliza wants, but also rather into a self-reliant professional woman. Eliza originates as the "incarnate insult to the English language," according to Higgins, yet her personal evolution of character is dramatically shown by Shaw as a theme of favoritism

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