Transcript Pygmalion - Mount Vernon Nazarene University

Pygmalion
by
George Bernard
Shaw
About George Bernard Shaw
• George Bernard Shaw (18561950) was the third and youngest
child (and only son) of George
Carr Shaw and Lucinda Elizabeth
Gurly Shaw.
• Technically, he belonged to the
Protestant “ascendancy”—the
landed Irish gentry—but his
impractical father was first a
sinecured civil servant and then an
unsuccessful grain merchant, and
George Bernard grew up in an
atmosphere of genteel poverty,
which to him was more
humiliating than being merely
poor.
• Another historical point that
may have some importance
is that in 1872 his mother
left her husband and took
her two daughters to
London, following her
music teacher, George John
Vandeleur Lee, who from
1866 had shared households
in Dublin with the Shaws.
Whatever we may feel
about this, it shows him
close to an exceptionally
independent woman
• In 1876 Shaw resolved to
become a writer, and he
joined his mother and elder
sister (the younger one having
died) in London. Shaw in his
20s suffered continuous
frustration and poverty.
• He depended upon his
mother's pound a week from
her husband and her earnings
as a music teacher.
•
•
He spent his afternoons in the British Museum reading
room, writing novels and reading what he had missed at
school, and his evenings in search of additional selfeducation in the lectures and debates that characterized
contemporary middle-class London intellectual activities.
His fiction failed utterly. The semiautobiographical and
aptly titled Immaturity (1879; published 1930) repelled
every publisher in London.
• His next four novels were similarly
refused, as were most of the articles
he submitted to the press for a
decade.
• Shaw's initial literary work earned
him less than 10 shillings a year. A
fragment posthumously published
as An Unfinished Novel in 1958
(but written 1887–88) was his final
false start in fiction.
• Despite his failure as a novelist in
the 1880s, Shaw found himself
during this decade. He became a
vegetarian, a socialist, a
spellbinding orator, a polemicist,
and tentatively a playwright
• Before long, Shaw had become one
of the most sought-after public
speakers in England. He argued in
his pamphlets in favor of equality
of income and advocated the
equitable division of land and
capital. He believed that property
was "theft" and felt, like Karl Marx,
that capitalism was deeply flawed
and was unlikely to last.
• Unlike Marx, however, Shaw
favored gradual reform over
revolution. And there we see Alfred
Doolittle, common dustman.
In one pamphlet written in 1897, he predicted that socialism "will
come by prosaic installments of public regulation and public
administration enacted by ordinary parliaments, vestries,
municipalities, parish councils, school boards, etc."
• In 1892, Shaw wrote his first
play, Widowers' Houses,
about the evils of
slumlords. The play was
attacked savagely by people
who opposed his politics.
• It was then that Shaw knew he
was a good playwright--he
must have been to have upset
so many people with his
social commentary.
• He went on to revolutionize
the English theater by
concentrating his writing on
various social issues at a time
when most other playwrights
were writing "sentimental
pap."
The Myth Behind the Play
Anne-Louis Girodet-Trioson
Pygmalion et Galatée, 1819
• There is never any overt reference
in the play to Pygmalion; Shaw
assumes a classical understanding.
• According to the Mythology
Guide online “Pygmalion saw so
much to blame in women that he
came at last to abhor the sex, and
resolved to live unmarried. He was
a sculptor, and had made with
wonderful skill a statue of ivory,
so beautiful that no living woman
could be compared to it in beauty.
• It was indeed the perfect semblance of a maiden that seemed to
be alive, and only prevented from
moving by modesty. His art was
so perfect that it concealed itself,
and its product looked like the
workmanship of nature.
• Pygmalion admired his own work,
and at last fell in love with the
counter-feit creation. Oftentimes he
laid his hand upon it, as if to assure
himself whether it were living or
not, and could not even then
believe that it was only ivory.
• The festival of Venus was at hand,
a festival celebrated with
great pomp at Cyprus. Victims
were offered, the altars smoked,
and the odor of incense filled the
air. When Pygmalion had
performed his part in the
solemnities, he stood before the
altarand timidly said, "Ye gods,
who can do all things, give me, I
pray you, for my wife" he dared not
say "my ivory virgin," but
said instead "one like my ivory
virgin." Venus, who was
present at the festival, heard him
Burne-Jones, Edward “Pygmalion and the
Image Series: The Soul Attains” 1878
• While he stands astonished
and glad, though
doubting, and fears he may
be mistaken, again and
again with a lover's ardor
he touches the object of his
hopes. It was indeed
alive! The veins when
pressed yielded to the
finger and then
resumed their roundness.
Then at last the votary of
Venus found words to
thank the goddess, and
pressed his lips upon lips
as real as his own.
• Click here to read the
entire narrative.
The Play Itself
• One of the most
popular plays of
Bernard Shaw, first
performed in 1913 in
Vienna and published
and performed in
London in 1916.
Claire Danes and Jefferson Mays in George
Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion at the American
Airlines Theater.
Major Conflicts
• The nature of class structure
– Upper Class: Higgins, Col. Pickering, Mrs. Higgins, Mers.
Clair and Freddy Eynsford Hill.
– Middle Class: Mrs. Pierce She does not, however,
represent “middle-class morality” alone. In many ways
that is also a quality of Higgins’ and Col. Pickering’s class.
– Lower Working Class: Eliza, Alfred Doolittle and his
never seen but often heard about “wife.” and Eliza’s stepmother.
• The relationship between genders:
– “No, no, no, you two infinitely stupid male creatures!”
• Self Perception: Eliza’s sense of worth
– She is infected with the lie.
Person vs. Cultural Environment
• Class Structure: A vast gulf between the poor and
even the lower upper class.
– Higgins’ “cast-off” change is a fortune to Eliza who
assumes later that he must have been drunk.
– Eliza’s belief that riding in a taxi is the ultimate badge of
upper class quality of life.
• Eliza’s Struggle:
– To work at a flower-shop
– She is infected by social snobbery herself.
– Discovers that a rise in culture means a loss of
independence (as does her step-mother).
– Eventually achieves independence.
Probably the most Important conflict in the play: the class
system is Eliza’s primary antagonist
http://www.meghanwilliams.com/ugb.html
Meg Williams
“What we believe
influences how we
behave. Likewise,
how we behave
impacts what
people think
about us. In turn,
this affects how
others behave
towards us.
Ultimately, how
they behave
towards us
reinforces what
we believed about
ourselves in the
first place.”
Gender Differences
• Neither Col. Pickering nor Henry Higgins have
a clue about the situation they are putting Eliza
or themselves into.
• Mrs. Pierce recognizes that Higgins is
immorally using the power granted him by his
patriarchal culture to pressure Eliza, a presser
which if she gives in could lead her to a life of
wickedness.
• Eliza learns that women in the upper classes in
fact do not have the independence that women
of the lower classes do. They must be
connected to a man in some way to be
respectable within “middle-class morality.”
• Eliza rejects being a “gold-digger” and
Higgins rejects female “puppy-dog” tricks.
• Only a working skill frees Eliza.
Self Perception
• Eliza has a powerful sense of her value: “I’m a
good girl I am!” Therefore she will never
become a “kept woman.”
• She has ambition willing to give up two thirds
of her daily income to improve herself.
• But she is infected with class-prejudice
– Put the girls in their place just a bit
– You’re going to allow yourself to marry that low
born woman?
Is it a Romance?
• Shaw says “NO!”
• The Text says “Yes!”
Sites Cited
• "George Bernard Shaw" It Happened In History
http://amsaw.org/amsaw-ithappenedinhistory-072603shaw.html 8 July 2008
• Heilpern, John. “We’ve Grown Accustomed to the Musical:
Pygmalion, With the Shaw a Little Out of Whack” The New
York Observer http://www.observer.com/2007/we-ve-grownaccustomed-musical-pygmalion-shaw-little-out-whack 30
Oct. 2007.
• “Pygmalion” Mythology Guide. http://www.onlinemythology.com/pygmalion/ 8 July 2008.
• Weintraub, Stanley and John Stewart "Shaw, George
Bernard." Encyclopædia Britannica. 2006. Encyclopædia
Britannica Online. 11 Apr. 2006
http://search.eb.com/eb/article-6607
• Williams, Meg. “The Pygmalion Effect”
http://www.meghanwilliams.com/ugb.html 11 July 2008