Pygmalion Research Paper

Some are refined, like gold, in the furnace of affliction. Others are refined, like school children, by a professor in phonetics. Pygmalion, a play written by George Bernard Shaw in 1912, tells the story of how a young Cockney flower girl, named Eliza Doolittle, is taught by Professor Henry Higgins to become an educated duchess in the late Victorian Era. The Victorian Era in London greatly impacted the setting and influences in Pygmalion. The stressed government could not fund multiple programs, like education, and many of the lower class did not receive proper schooling, like Eliza. Since the upper class could afford to pay for basic education they became the minority of Londoners who could properly speak and behave. This divide between the classes is clearly noticed in Shaw’s Pygmalion. Shaw’s hope that Pygmalion would influence future generations of both men and women of the divide in the caste system would in fact play a key role in the 20th-21st century. Patrick Berry believes that Higgins is acting as all teachers do by engaging in the transmission of customs and linguistic markers because in most cases

Eliza’s father, Alfred P. Doolittle, is an excellent example of marrying into a higher class. He reluctantly marries after coming into a great deal of money. Although he has been lifted out of his class, he could not be more displeased. Confronting Higgins, he says, “Who asked him to make a gentleman of me? I was happy. I was free” (Shaw 78). Despite his lack of formal education, Alfred Doolittle is extremely conscious of the workings of each social class. As a lower class drunkard, Alfred had no responsibilities and could do as he pleased. He did not marry and was dirt poor, but perfectly content. He is unaffected by lower class resentment and envy. Alfred proves that there are other classes of people within each class, and that not everyone has the same