The Arrogantly Wealthy:
a class based look at Pygmalion and My Fair Lady
With all the texts that we’ve read in this course, George Bernard Shaw's play
Pygmalion and its subsequent adaptation into the film My Fair Lady provides the most
through explorations in the class dynamics and the divides between the wealthy and the
working. Throughout the work, we are subject to the rigid social hierarchies that define
identity and opportunity, revealing how language, education, and behavior can dictate
one’s place within the social order. At the heart of the narrative is the transformation of
Eliza Doolittle, a flower girl from the lower class, as she navigates the complexities of
class dynamics through her rocky relationship with the upper-class phonetics professor,
Henry Higgins. However it doesn’t take long before you start to see the true messaging
baked into this work; The disregard Higgin’s has for anyone but himself and the distain
that most of the upper class treat Eliza with when given the knowledge that she is of
lower birth really paint a picture of the disrespect the upper class of the period for
anyone outside of their interests and/or income bracket. But it is told in such subtle a
way that, the wealthy patrons that may have saw this at the time would be none the
wiser to the underlying story being told, yet at the same time it is direct enough to allow
anyone who might slightly relate to Eliza more than the wealthier members of the class
to be able to see the lesson being taught clearly through this deception. The story being
told is one deceptively describing the gap between the classes through the coarse
personality of Professor Higgins, the driven yet desperate spirit of Eliza, the uncaring
and judgmental attitude of the other members of the upper middle class, and
surprisingly the class conscience compassions of Colonel Pickering and Mr. Doolittle.
In Pygmalion, the main exposure to the uncaring stance that the wealthy take to
the lower class is through Professor Henry Higgins. He acts as the main representative
of the well off intellectuals commonly seen in these positions at this point in European
history. Now it must be said that even in the work itself, Higgins is painted as especially
self-absorb to even the annoyance of those occupying the same circles as him, but this
can be seen as a way to emphasize the more subtle points of the classism of the time.
His disinterest in anything besides himself and his current interests at the time serve to
depict the general callousness that those of his standing generally held towards the
world around then; even though most would likely feign interest in their upper class
acquaintances. They tended to present themselves as if they knew better than most
others around them, as if their thoughts and actions were backed by more knowledge
and held more weight than both others of lower income than them and even some of
their peers. And from a purely academic standpoint it’s not hard to see why, they
generally were more educated and informed than those outside of their circles. By the
time of the piece, in the early 20th century, middle class families had more time and
money to spend investing in their education. “Middle class parents could afford to send
their children to private schools such as the Grammar School. … After secondary
school, many middle class children went on to higher education at college or university,
whereas most working class children left school at 14,” (2. Discovering Leeds) For
Higgins, someone who completed university and continued his education even further
through research, it only makes logical sense that even those in his own class are
beneath his focus and attention. We can see this through how he only ever really
considers the opinions of Colonel Pickering, someone he see as an intellectual equal.
However, this line of thinkings leads to Higgins’ greatest flaw; while academically he can
be considered the top of his field, socially he is a complete buffoon. He does not
consider the subjects of his research as human beings in the same way he would
consider his colleagues people. Instead they are just another point to be researched
until he tires of it. This can be extrapolated to many aspects of society, not just in
academic for professional fields, that can explain the general sentiment of the wealthy
to the lower class. Those not fortunate enough to be able to follow the latest fashion
trends are seen akin to a stray cat, a glance brings a passing pity and nothing more.
The service workers, to customers and the all but the most compassionate store
owners, were seen as automatons, unfeeling servants made to work and nothing more.
That is until any of the lower class accidentally found themselves in a place where they
can’t be ignored, then they are simply trash who dared to be in a place that doesn’t
belong to them, as seen in My Fair Lady’s added horse race scene. Higgins displays the
callousness of the 1900s British upper class in a way that doesn’t hide behind normal
society pleasantry allowing the audience to fully notice the disregard that they live their
lives with.
On the other side of the coin, from the man of money we must move to the view
of the working woman as we see that the story’s female lead, Eliza Doolittle, was given
the unbelievably lucky chance to do something about her societal standing in order to
achieve her dreams; at it is through this view point that we are able to properly see the
difference between the social classes of the period. At this time while percentage
women working started to significantly grow, it was still expected for women to stay at
home and act as home maker and maternal figureheads rather than participate in the
workforce. However, that luxury was only afforded to the upper class. Lower class
women like Eliza were given no other choice but to work in order to support themselves
and their families. They took work in factories that generally required dexterous work
such as textiles, in family businesses, or as domestic servants in richer households.
According to the 1911 census (the year before Pygmalion was originally published),
“domestic service was the largest employer of women and girls, with 28% of all
employed women (1.35 million women) in England and Wales engaged in domestic
service,”(5. Striking Women). They even took jobs working in coal and tin mines just to
make ends meet And of course, this work would have been done on top of their
expected household duties like cooking, cleaning, childcare and often keeping small
animals like chickens and growing vegetables and fruit to help feed their families. Of
course there were also women like Eliza who took to street corners selling flowers,
shoes, offering laundry services anything to make enough money to survive. The
struggle of both the men and women of this lower “working” class brought a stark
contrast to the decadence seen from many of the people that they work for. Dreams like
Eliza’s of opening a flower shop would never see the light of day as the hours of work
necessary to even live snuffed out the drive to do anything beyond survive. That’s why
even through the Olympian tasks of learning an upbringing of etiquette in a year and
dealing Higgins’ terrible demeanor were worth the effort. There was almost no way the
open her flower shop otherwise. The work done be women like Eliza was generally
known “ as 'sweated industries' because the working hours were long and pay was very
low,” meaning that for women especially had basically no economic mobility unless
extremely lucky (5). With an outlook that bleak, it’s no wonder that despite putting up
with the professor’s obnoxious personality for the entirety of the experiment, at the end
Eliza experience true panic and frustration at the possibility of having to return to her life
before the story. After experiencing the luxury of the higher class, Eliza knows that the
gap between the middle and lower classes was so immense that dropping back down
would break her spirit beyond repair and possibly throw her into a depressive insanity.
But so what? That is simply the viewpoint of the two central characters used to
show the extremes of that society. There’s no way that such a divide manifested itself to
such an extent among the general public. Luckily, the adaptation My Fair Lady adds in
rather important scenes displaying that the attitude of the wealthy in this work aren’t
monopolized by the Higgins family. A midpoint horse race scene as well as a depiction
of the story’s “final test” allows us to see high society in full force and how it treats Eliza.
For the former event, we had an average showing of how the wealthy treat someone
acting out of turn. From an initial teasing fascination on how peculiar Eliza spoke
compared to them to the disgust displayed her outbursts at the race. It was almost as if
the honesty of her actions and emotions offended them. Now we compare that to the
final test, the ball, it’s like night and day. Eliza had learned their ways, how to blend in
with them, how to communicate with them, how to impress them. The honesty she
originally had was now completely hidden and for the facade she displayed, they
applauded. It is pomp and foolishness that allows them to even falsely assess her as
foreign royalty. But why is that? Why would these people so confident and reliant on
their own education and prestige not only not fully question qualities in their new guest
but also go out of their way to completely make it up for her. In the second half of the
20th century, British Historian E.P. Thompson saw similar inconsistencies and conducted
several surveys to try and figure out why. As it turned out, while almost every person
asked was able to confidently state what class they believed they were in, they would
hesitate or stumbled over their attempts to describe the causes and consequences of
class. Thompson’s explanation for this was that for the people survey, “Abstract analysis
of the wider world was something they found difficult, precisely because […] class is a
relationship, not a 'thing',” that the entire notion of class was simply a train of thought (3.
Social History). I slightly disagree with this conclusion as a difference in material
conditions can create an extreme difference between otherwise equal people, however
Thompson is trying to make the argument that class is more of a gradient rather than in
layers. That one place in society is only what they believe it to be. Now granted, this
study was publish in 1977, a whole two world wars and a recession beyond the time of
Pygmalion however if we take this account as an evolution of the views on class
developed throughout recent history there is one important conclusion we can draw
from Thompson’s study. That the idea of an upper class, that there is this scale of better
and lesser, that one can simply be of greater importance by their birth or their bank
account is purely idiotic, to put it in the nice terms possible. That was already shown for
all its faults in the final test, where not a single person unbeholden to the experiment
saw her awkward properness as inexperience in such manners, but as a foreign
dignitary not use the British ways. It’s no wonder why Higgin’s seemed so amused after
the fact; not only did he manage to win his wager, but he also got to witness utter
buffoons pretend like they masterful court such exotic personal. The upper class
ensemble in these works are nothing more than arrogant talking heads of no real
personal substance, which I believe is exact messaging Shaw was trying to convey
through his original work.
Not through all this division and misguided disgust, the story still goes out of it’s
way to show that neither side of this social war is entirely black and white. The most
obvious source of this complexity is the apparent kindness of Colonel Pickering. Though
not an ever present characters, Pickering shows a patience and relative concern for
Eliza not mirror by many other characters in the work, especially Professor Higgins.
Now, I am not saying that Pickering displays a saint-like for those less fortunate than
him, but he has been stated on multiple occasions to be quite charitable with his riche,
and has a notable conscience to him that is not see in most of the members of the
upper class. In act 2 of Pygmalion during the initialization of the “contest” central to the
story, Pickering had next to no worry about how Higgins would fare over the course of
his tutoring, but how he would treat Eliza and whether or not Eliza fully understood what
she was getting herself into. Initially, he took Higgins’ carelessness about Eliza in a
jovial manner joking to the Professor “Does it occur to you, Higgins, that the girl has
some feelings?”(4. Pygmalion Act II). But as the actual talks for the parameters of the
experiment continued and Higgins continued to treat Eliza like some sort of talking pet,
whether by a sense of obligation or a true moment of concern, Pickering questions the
imbalance of strength, authority, and knowledge that would be apparent in the main
characters shared living arrangement, even going so far as to directly state, “If I’m to be
in this business I shall feel responsible for that girl. I hope it’s understood that no
advantage is to be taken of her position,”(4). This, while establishing the bar for
compassion is truly in hell, shows a basic acknowledgement of Eliza’s personhood is a
step above the rest of the wealthy in this story, who treat her natural self like an animal.
But not just the compassion of the “betters” is shown off, but the capacity of callousness
and change in the lower class is show through Eliza’s Father, Alfred Doolittle. When we
are first introduced to Doolittle in Act 2, he was “slimy” sort of man; he was willing to sell
of his daughter, presumably one of his many children considering how Eliza says she’s
on her 6th step-mother by this time, for a bit of coin. But we know why he chooses to do
this, at the end of the story as he exposits his life story explaining how he lived before
the Professor’s remarks landed him a job as a lecturer, he reveals that his working to
such an extent that he has to dye his hair just to be able to continuing working in order
to provided for his family. Now he oh his way to wealth and is afforded the room for
compassion that he couldn’t allow as a pauper. The wealth afforded to the middle class,
while a corrupting force to many with it’s reach also gives opportunity for the kindhearted to truly exist in their own right as the display through these two men of the,
Colonel Pickering and Mr. Doolittle.
Pygmalion, and by extension My Fair Lady, is a story about social movement.
Both Doolittle’s experience insanely luck odds to have both graduated from the ranks of
the working poor of the course of the narrative. Of course, this kind of movement was
possible in their time and these types of stories did unironically occur, but even as the
BBC, Britain’s greatest form of state propaganda, will admit “A close reading of these
stories often reveals that personal contacts and supportive connections were important
in establishing a business or in gaining entry to a profession” much like how Eliza and
Alfred had made their living by the end(1. The Rise of the Victorian Middle Class). Never
the less, this play was an exploration of many aspects of class dynamics in that period
of the UK. Shaw is not particularly subtle in his depiction or description of these class
dynamics nor does it seem like that was anything other than his intentions. The wealthy,
who were the only ones with the full unhindered ability to display compassion to the
world, actively choose to turn up their noses to the ones working at their feet. They
believed that poor were nothing but animals they have the misfortune of sharing a city
with despite the fact that the majority of their differences was due to simple luck. And
while similar sentiments can be seen in this day and age, that is not in the scope of this
essay; it is simply to point of the arrogant rich.
Works Cited
1) Loftus, Dr Donna. “History - British History in Depth: The Rise of the Victorian Middle
Class.” BBC, BBC, 17 Feb. 2011,
www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/victorians/middle_classes_01.shtml.
2) “The Middle Classes 1900 – 1950.” Discovering Leeds, 4 May 2022,
discoveringleeds.wordpress.com/poverty-and-riches-the-middle-classes-19001950/.
3) Todd, Selina. “Class, Experience and Britain’s Twentieth Century.” Social History, .
vol.39, no. 4, 2014, pp. 489–508. JSTOR,
http://www.jstor.org/stable/24246556.
4) Shaw, George B. “Pygmalion”, 1912,
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/3825/3825- h/3825-h.htm#act1
5) “Striking Women.” 19th and Early 20th Century | Striking Women, www.strikingwomen.org/module/women-and-work/19th-and-early-20th-century.