PYGMALION
George Bernard
Shaw
Characters, Plot Analysis,Themes
SETTING
 Pygmalion takes place in London, England in the early 20th century ( 1912).
 At this point, the city was the capital of the largest empire in the world.
 All of the play's action is confined ‫ يقتصر على‬to three places, each located in
 the very fashionable center of town:
 Covent Garden; a large market on London west end
 The lab of Henry Higgins's apartment
 The “living room” of Mrs. Higgins's apartment in Chelsea
 The places are ritzy, about as far away from the poor parts of London you could get.
HISTORICAL CONTEXT:
SOCIAL CLASSES
 Social Classes were clearly defined, and it was
hard to move from class to another.
 Lower Middle Class:
Worked in dangerous jobs and unsanitary conditions
 Lower Class:
Didn’t work, or worked little. Has no financial
freedom. Often servants. In the play : ELIZA
DOOLITLE
HISTORICAL CONTEXT:
SOCIAL CLASSES
 Upper Class:
Didn’t work, noble men and women. In the play the HOST and HOSTESS in
the embassy.
 Upper Middle Class:
Worked but employed in safe, clean jobs (lawyers, doctors, professors). In the play :
HRNERY HIGGIS, COLONEL PICKARING
Women didn’t have the same rights as men, and were looked at as inferior.
PYGMALION GENRE:
ROMANTIC DRAMA, REALISM
 Pygmalion is classified as romantic drama that contains a lot of Shaw’s
opinions about language, society, and the soul. Higgins states about how
language is what makes us human.
 Pygmalion is not the typical romance we think of today. It set out to
examine the social issues.
 They often showcase of poor but honorable leading ladies and male
protagonists who learnt that wealth and social class don’t define a person
character.
PYGMALION SOURCE AND
BACKGROUND
 Shaw took his title from the ancient Greek Legend of the famous sculptor named
Pygmalion who could find nothing good in women, and as a result, he resolved to live
out his life unmarried. However, he carved a statue out of ivory that was so beautiful
and so perfect that he fell in love with his own creation. Indeed, the statue was so
perfect that no living being could possibly be its equal.
 Consequently, at a festival he prayed to the goddess of love, Aphrodite, that he might
have the statue come to life. When he reached home, he found that his wish had been
fulfilled, and he married the statue, which he named Galatea.
PYGMALION SOURCE AND
BACKGROUND
In Shaw’s Pygmalion, Professor Henry Higgins is also like Pygmalion in his
view of women – cynical ‫ ساخر‬and derogatory ‫ ازدرائي‬. Whereas in the myth,
Pygmalion carved something beautiful out of raw stone and gave it life,
Shaw's Higgins takes a "guttersnipe” ‘ and turns her to a refined lady. Shaw's
"Galatea" Eliza develops a soul of her own and a fierce independence from her
creator.
SHAW AND PYGMALION
Pygmalion
HIGGINS
Pygmalion is a sculptor
• :
Higgins is a student of linguistics, a kind of
scientist.
Pygmalion makes a statue of a pretty
woman
Higgins trains Eliza to the point where she
talks and behaves like a beautiful lady
Pygmalion falls in love with his statue.
Higgins cajoles Eliza with deceitful
promises, gives her chocolates, buy her
clothes, gives her a ring.
The statue comes to life in answer to
Pygmalion’s prayers to the goddess of love.
Eliza becomes a real lady and asserts her
independence of her teacher.
Pygmalion marries his ideal beauty
Higgins avoids marrying Eliza.
CHARACTERS
 Professor HENRY HIGGINS:
He is a professor of phonetics who plays Pygmalion to Eliza Doolittle's Galatea. He
is the author of Higgins' Universal Alphabet, believes in concepts like visible speech,
and uses all manner of recording and photographic material to document his phonetic
subjects, reducing people and their dialects into what he sees as understandable units.
He is an unconventional ‫غير تقليدى‬man, who goes in the opposite direction from the
rest of society in most matters. Indeed, he is impatient with high society, forgetful in
his public graces, and poorly considerate of normal social niceties ‫ التأنق‬--the only
reason the world has not turned against him is because he is at heart a good and
harmless man. His biggest fault is that he can be a bully.
CHARACTERS
 ELIZA DOOLITLE:
She is not at all a romantic figure." So is she introduced in Act I. Everything
about Eliza Doolittle seems to defy ‫ يرفض‬- ‫ يتحدى‬any conventional ‫ تقليدى‬notions
‫ مفهوم‬we might have about the romantic heroine.
When she is transformed from a sassy, smart-mouthed curbstone flower girl
with deplorable ‫ بائس‬English, to a (still sassy ‫ ) وقح‬regal figure fit to consort with
nobility, it has less to do with her innate ‫ غريزي‬qualities as a heroine than with
the fairy-tale aspect of the transformation myth itself. In other words, the
character of Eliza comes across as being much more instrumental ‫ مساهم‬than
fundamental.
CHARACTERS
 ELIZA DOOLITLE:
The real (re-)making of Eliza Doolittle happens after the ambassador's
party, when she decides to make a statement for her own dignity against
Higgins' insensitive treatment.
This is when she becomes, not a duchess, but an independent woman;
and this explains why Higgins begins to see Eliza not as a mill ‫طاحونة‬
around his neck but as a creature worthy of his admiration.
CHARACTERS
 COLONEL PICKERING:
He is the author of Spoken Sanskrit, is a match for Higgins (although
somewhat less obsessive) in his passion for phonetics. But where Higgins is a
boorish, careless bully, Pickering is always considerate and a gentleman.
He says little of note in the play, and appears most of all to be a civilized foil to
Higgins' barefoot, absentminded crazy professor. He helps in the Eliza
experiment by making a wager of it, saying he will cover the costs of the
experiment if Higgins does indeed make a convincing duchess of her. It was
Pickering's thoughtful treatment to Eliza that teaches her to respect herself.
CHARACTERS
 ALFRED DOOLITTLE:
He is Eliza's father, an elderly but vigorous dustman who has had at least six
wives and who "seems equally free from fear and conscience." When he learns
that his daughter has entered the home of Henry Higgins, pursues to see if he can
get some money out of the circumstance.
His unique brand of rhetoric, an unembarrassed, unhypocritical advocation of
drink and pleasure (at other people's expense), is amusing to Higgins. Through
Higgins' joking recommendation, Doolittle becomes a richly endowed lecturer to
a moral reform society, transforming him from lowly dustman to a picture of
middle class morality- he becomes miserable.
CHARACTERS
 Mrs. HIGGINS:
Professor Higgins' mother, she is a stately lady in her sixties who sees the Eliza
experiment as idiocy, and Higgins and Pickering as senseless children. She is the
first and only character to have any qualms about the whole affair. When her
worries prove true, it is to her that all the characters turn.
Because no woman can match up to his mother, Higgins claims, he has no interest
in dallying ‫ يداعب‬with them. To observe the mother of Pygmalion (Higgins), who
completely understands all of his failings and inadequacies ‫أوجه القصور‬, is a good
contrast to the mythic proportions to which Higgins builds himself in his selfestimations as a scientist of phonetics and a creator of duchesses.
CHARACTERS
 FREDDY EYNSFORD HILL:
Higgins' surmise‫حدس‬- ‫ ظن‬that Freddy is a fool is probably accurate. In the
opening scene he is a spineless ‫ بدون عمود فقرى – ضعيف‬and resourceless
lackey ‫ خادم‬to his mother and sister. Later, he is comically bowled over by
Eliza, the half-baked duchess who still speaks cockney.
He becomes lovesick for Eliza, and courts her with letters. At the play's
close, Freddy serves as a young, viable marriage option for Eliza, making
the possible path she will follow unclear to the reader.
CHARACTERS
 Mrs. Pearce:
 She is the house keeper. She is also like Pickering, and Mrs. Higgins, a
voice of reason. Heck, if Pickering is the play's father figure, then Mrs.
Pearce is its mother figure. Mrs. Pearce watches out for Eliza from the
very beginning, like Mrs. Higgins, she’s used to dealing With Henry
Higgins, and she knows he can get carried away with his little projects.
After she shows Eliza to the bathroom, she tells Higgins in no
uncertain terms: this scheme is ridiculous, She wants to make sure
Eliza doesn't get hurt.
CHARACTERS
 Mrs. and Miss Eynsfordhill:
 We can cover these two women at the same time. They are always together, after
all. And they really just represent two stages of what Shaw calls "genteel
poverty”.
They're a mother / daughter team of reasonably wealthy ladies. They’ start the
plot going when they ask Eliza if and how she knows Freddy. They represent
everything that Eliza is not: they're clean, well - spoken.
In the third act, we find out via Mrs. Eynsfordhill that the family isn’t doing do
well, and that Clara really doesn't get it. They’re on the decline while Eliza on her
way up.
PLOT ANALYSIS
 Initial Situation:
 Eliza Doolittle is a poor girl with a thick accent and no prospects. Henry
Higgins and Colonel Pickering are gifted linguists. The three have a fateful
encounter one night on Covent Garden during which Higgins reveals his
talents as a teacher.
 Thus, Shaw introduces us to the main characters lets us know that Eliza
has a problem and that Henry has the skills to fix it.
PLOT ANALYSIS
 Rising Action:
 The next day, Pickering and Higgins are working in Higgins's
laboratory. Their conversation is interrupted by the entrance of
Eliza. When the girl demands to be given lessons
PLOT ANALYSIS
 Conflict:
Higgins bets Pickering he can pass her off as a duchess given six months. Pickering
agrees.
 Complication:
Mrs. Higgins - like Mrs. Pearce, reminds them of the problem they have, and not
yet faced. What to do with Eliza after the experiment is over.
PLOT ANALYSIS
 Climax:
 After winning the bet, Higgins acts like he was completely bored by
whole process. He and Pickering proceed to talk about Eliza as if she
hadn’t even taken part in the plan. Eliza gets angry at Higgins and
throws a slipper at him.
 Eliza decides to leave Higgins's home, and the two argue until
HIGGINS loses his Cool nearly hits Eliza.
PLOT ANALYSIS
 Falling Action:
 It turns out that Eliza has been at Mrs. Higgins's apartment the whole time She acts
calm and collected, and gives Pickering most of the credit for her transformation, thus
infuriating ‫ مثير للغيظ‬Higgins.
 When Eliza surprised by the appearance of her father, how he is as she used to before
she was trained, Higgins declares Victory. The two proceed to have a long argument.
The argument which focuses on Eliza's future ends after Eliza threatens to sell
Higgins's trade secrets to support herself.
 Higgins nearly strangles her before deciding that Eliza has finally established herself
as his equal. He invites her comeback and live with him and Pickering again.
PYGMALION THEMES
 Social Class and Manners
Written in 1912, Pygmalion is set in the early 20th century, at the end
of the Victorian period in England. Among other things, this period of
history was characterized by a particularly rigid social hierarchy—
but one that was beginning to decline as social mobility became
increasingly possible. The wealthy, high-class characters of the play
are thus especially concerned with maintaining class distinctions. This
means more than a mere distinction between rich and poor.
PYGMALION THEMES
 Language and Speech
Shaw's play explores aspects of language in a variety of ways.
Higgins and Pickering study linguistics and phonetics, taking note of how
people from different backgrounds speak differently. The play is most
interested, though, in the connections between a person's speech and his or her
identity. As we see in the beginning of the play, Higgins can easily guess where
people are from based on their accent, dialect, and use of particular slang
PYGMALION THEMES
 Appearance and Identity
Pygmalion explores how social identity is formed not only through patterns of
speech, but also through one's general appearance.
Much like speech, one's physical appearance signals social class. In the opening
scene, as people from different walks of life are forced to take shelter under the
same portico, characters' social class is discernible ‫ قابل لإلدراك‬through their
clothing: the poor flower-girl (later revealed to be Eliza) and the gentleman, for
example, easily know each other’s their different attire.
PYGMALION THEMES
 Transformation:
 Shaw explores the theme of transformation by showing how a poor
flower girl becomes a lovely, self-reliant lady, both superficially and at
heart. Her metamorphosis begins with an idea planted by Higgins when he
tells
Pickering in Act I that he could teach "this creature" to speak like a
duchess. It takes a further step when she is given a bath in Act 2, cleaning
her up so well that even her father does not recognize her. By the time she
visits Higgins's mother in Act 3, the transformation is well on its way."
THE END
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