1. PROFESSOR HIGGINS AS A MODERN PYGMALION
According to the myth Pygmalion was a King of Cyprus who fell in love with a statue of Galathea, which
he had made in ivory and at his prayer Aphrodite, the goddess of love gave it life. Pygmalion is often accepted
as a symbol of the power to breathe life and soul into inanimate things. The main character of the play,
Professor Higgins is presented as a kind of modern Pygmalion and Eliza Doolittle as his Galathea.
Higgins described by Bernard Shaw as robust, vital, appetizing sort of man of forty of whereabouts. He is of
the energetic, scientific type, heartily, even violently interested in everything that can be studied as a scientific
subject and careless about himself and other people including their feelings. He is in fact, but for his years and
size rather like a very impetuous baby taking notice eagerly and loudly and requiring almost as much watching
to keep him out of unintended mischief.
When Higgins first met Eliza, he didn’t feel any attachment to her, and indeed, she was disgusting. She was
not at all a romantic figure. Her clothes were much the worse for wear, she needed washing rather badly, and
despite the fact that her features were not so bad, she still was very dirty.
Furthermore, Higgins, being sophisticated, rich and famous person, also a phonetist, didn’t like her manner
of speaking. He said that she uttered such depressing and disgusting sounds that she had no right to be
anywhere, no right to live, and that her curbstone English would keep her in the gutter to the end of her days.
So, his first impression of Eliza was unpleasant. But then the situation changed radically.
Finally, Higgins made out of dirty, ignorant and ugly Eliza a real duchess, and he himself fell in love with
her. Besides, after several months with Eliza, he couldn’t do without her, she was very useful to him, because
she knew where his things were, remembered his appointments.
To put the whole thing in a nutshell, Higgins made an ideal wife out of Eliza. But unlikely to real
Pygmalion, Higgins’s Galathea refused to marry him.
2. THE STORY OF ELIZA DOOLITTLE
At the beginning of the play Eliza was a poor girl who lived by selling flowers near St. Paul’s Church. She
had no mother, only her father Alfred, who told her that she was big enough to earn her own living and turned
her out.
She was not at all a romantic figure. She was perhaps eighteen, perhaps twenty, hardly older. Her clothes
were much the worse for wear and had long been exposed to the dust and soot of London and were seldom if
ever been brushed. Her features were no worse than anybody’s else, but their condition left something to be
desired. Besides, her manner of speaking was awful, she had a cockney accent, was rather rude and had no
manners at all.
But when she came to Higgins and asked him to teach her to speak properly and stayed in his house the
situation changed radically. She was taught to speak and to behave, she was beautifully drressed and finally
being a bright student, she transformed into a real lady and with her help Higgins won his bet with Pickering.
But real re-making of Eliza Doolittle happened after the Ambassador’s party, when she decided to make a
statement for her dignity against Higgins’s insensitive treatment. This was when she became not a real duchess,
but an independent woman, and this explained why Higgins began to see Eliza not as a millstone around his
neck, but as a creature worthy of his admiration.
During her final conversation with Higgins, Eliza threatened him that she would work with the hairy-faced
Hungarian, Napommuck. And outraged Higgins couldn’t help but started to admire her. As Eliza was leaving
for her father’s wedding, Higgins shouted that she would return to him. And Eliza who had a lovelorn
sweetheart in Freddy, and enough money to live alone, never made it clear whether she would or not.
3. ALFRED DOOLITTLE AS ONE OF THE CHARACTERS OF THE PLAY
Alfred Doolittle was Eliza’s father an elderly but vigorous dustman, who had had at least six wives and who
seemed equally free from fear and conscience.
When he learned that his daughter had entered the house of Henry Higgins, he immediately rushed there to
see if he could get some money out of the circumstances.
His unique brand of rhetoric and his hot denunciation of middle class morality were amusing to Higgins.
Later through Higgins’s joking recommendation Doolittle became a richly endowed lecturer to a Moral Reform
Society, transforming him from lowly dustman to a picture of middle class morality. But he became miserable,
because when he was a dustman, he was happy and free and now he had to live for others and not for himself.
He said that he was unhappy, but he didn’t have the nerve to drop his allowance.
Although, Alfred was a scoundrel, who was willing to sell his daughter to make a few pounds, he is one of
the few unaffected characters of the play, unmasked by appearance or language.
4. THE ROLE OF CORRECT PRONUNCIATION IN THE ENGLISH WAY OF LIFE
Correct pronunciation plays a great role in the English way of life.
The way in which individuals speak is influenced by such things as social background, age, level of
education and whether they have moved away from their home area.
In Victorian England the presence or absence of an accent could suggest where a person came from. The
main character of “Pygmalion”, Professor Henry Higgins, said that men began in Kentish Town and ended in
Park Lane, wanted to drop Kentish Town, but they gave themselves away every time they opened their mouths.
Incorrect pronunciation could be seen as unsophisticated, and considered people, for instance, with cockney
accent to be less well-educated.
In modern Britain people may assume that somebody, speaking not properly has a lower-class background
and has little education.
It is considered to be impolite to emphasize one’s regional accents rather than trying to lose them. Besides,
for learners of English it is important to have a good pronunciation without any accent, at least, in order not to
be defined as a foreigner.