Pygmalion: the Play and Higgins Essay

Pygmalion is a primarily Shavian reworking of Ovids Metamorphoses with undertones of Cinderella. Romance and satire dominate both the playfulnesss fleck as well as style. Shaw takes a strong central smearthe transformation of a normal rash girl into a skirtand surrounds it with superficial trimmings. There is technical innovation in the plot neighborly system since Shaw, under the influence of Ibsen, replaces the stock Victorian formula of exposition, function and unraveling with exposition, situation and sermon. The plot thus has three distinct distri scarcelyor points of suppuration.In the first stage Professor Henry Higgins, who is an expert in phonetics, transforms a common flower girl into an artificial counterpart of a lady by article of belief her how to speak correctly. Prior to this Elizas life has been miserable. As a brusque flower girl she coaxes money out of prospective customers and is thrilled when she curtly receives a handful of coins that Higgins thr ows into her basket. She lacks the capacity to express her feelings articulately and an indiscriminate fit of vowels Ah ah ow ow oo serves to con billhook a multitude of emotions ranging from pain, wonder, and fear to delight.However she is not on the whole depraved and is at least self-reliant enough to prepare her birth livelihood by selling flowers. In Act Two Eliza arrives at Higgins laboratory at Wimpole Street and haughtily demands that Higgins teach her to speak correctly so that she can ferment a lady in a flower shop. This desire for financial security and social respectability constitutes a step forward in her larger quest for self- realization. For Higgins Eliza is simply a phonetic experiment, a view that dehumanizes her and results in the creation of an artificial automaton-like replica of a lady.In the second stage of the play the audience encounters an Eliza who has become an artificial duchess. She is no long-lasting a flower girl only if is not quite a la dy. During Mrs. Higgins at-home she proceeds to deliver Lisson Grove manducate with an upper class accent. She is nothing more than a live dolly and there is an part of crudity in her parrot-like conversation. The mask of gentility that she wears nevertheless partially hides her low class background. Shaw demonstrates here that having fine clothes and the responsibility accent are not enough to make a lady.The event that the Eynsford-Hills fail to see through her facade implies that they too do not possess true gentility. By the time that Eliza returns after her triumphant alliance appearance at the Ambassadors ball, she no durable exhibits this element of crudity. She has benefited from Higginss lessons in achieving social poise and has acquired the ability to articulate her thoughts and feelings. She has begun to sound off for herself and is capable of manipulating any situation to her advantage. The play enters into the third phase of development in Act Four. Eliza stra ight encounters the great moment of truth and worldly concern of her situation.Her education has created in her an intense dissatisfaction with the old way of life and she is not exactly pleased about the avenues open to her as a lady. She realizes that her social acquisitions do not enable her to fulfill her aspirations or even earn a living. She becomes aware of the wide disparity mingled with her desires and the inadequacy of the kernel for fulfilling them. She repudiates Higgins suggestion that she could marry a wealthy husband and wryly comments that preliminary I sold flowers, I didnt sell myself while now that she has been made a lady she isnt fit to sell anything.She has thrown and twisted away her mask and reveals a newfound maturity. She throws Higgins slippers at him and thereby breaks eject from a life of subjugation and dependence. Critics feel that at this point the play enters into a period of calm and the main impetus of the action dissipates. Elizas society app earance has been a tremendous success and after the climatical encounter between Higgins and Eliza in Act Four the dramatic focus disappears. Eliza runs away to Mrs. Higgins and the only let on left is the resolution of her relationship with Higgins.The readers shake up to agree that the main impetus of the action has disappeared since all the preceding acts had been caravan up for the crucial moment of Elizas test. Now Alfred Doolittles strategic second appearance performs a resuscitating act for the play in its death stage. Doolittles transformation from a dustman to a gentleman likewise fork ups an ironic comment on Elizas metamorphosis. After this brief olfactory perception of energy the action returns to the issue at hand the relationship between Eliza and Higgins. Eliza has developed into a self-sufficient woman and has become a spotless match for Higgins.She has garnered the requisite forte of character and maturity of thought to present life courageously. Gentil ity has become an integral aspect of her personality. No longer afraid of Higgins, she treats him as an equal. She negates his role in her transformation and insists that it was the Colonels benignity and courteous behavior, which truly made her a lady. She rejects Higgins proposal that he, she and Pickering live unitedly like old bachelor friends and astounds him by announcing that she allow marry Freddy sort of and support him by offering herself as an assistant to Nepommuck.Higgins, although hurt at Elizas suggestion of assisting the detestable Nepommuck, is nevertheless happy that Eliza is no longer a whining helpless creature but a tower of strength and a woman at last. The play concludes on an uncertain note and the readers do not know whether she might indeed marry Higgins. This reflects Shaws inherent distaste for finality. In the majority of his plays the issues and conflicts they deal with are never quite resolved and the audience is left wondering about what will happ en after the curtain falls.However Shaw realizing the importance of an ending does provide a resolution in the epilogue. The dramalies neither in the conflict, nor in the discussion or the exposition. The conflict itself arises over the issue of the resolution of the problem. Unless there is a resolution, there is no drama, for the action remains incomplete. Action always has to be completed either comically or tragically. Hence in the epilogue, Shaw resolves the issue by making Eliza marry Freddy Hill. It was typical of Shaw to have provided such an anti-romantic finish to the play.Many commentators accuse Shaw of deliberately twisting the natural end of Pygmalion provided to make the play unromantic. But critics would do well to remember that the echt point of ending is not the issue of Elizas marriage but her achievement of liberty. While throughout the play Higgins boasts of having transformed a common flower girl into a duchess, after Elizas climactic statement of independe nce from his domination he remarks, I said Id make a woman of you and I have. In this perspective the certain ambiguous ending seems preferable to the neat resolution given in the epilogue.