“The most characteristic quality of Shaw’s plays is
the ability to make people think by compelling them
to laugh.” (Martin S. Day) How true do you find this
to be of Pygmalion?
Pygmalion can be classified as a comedy. The objects of the comedy
centralize around the people, the ideas and the attitudes. The first
humorous part of the play is with Mrs Eynsford-Hill and her daughter
Clara waiting for Clara’s brother Freddy to get them a taxi as it was pouring
with rain. They get annoyed so Clara asks, ‘do you expect us to go and get
one ourselves?’. The audience/reader of this play finds this humorous
because the Eynsford-Hills are stereotypical of middle class people who
stick rigidly to their position in society. They appear fussy and pathetic due
to their frustration at not being able to get a taxi. Therefore seeing how
people act in certain situations and their different attitudes creates the
humour. The next part of humour in this story line is when Eliza’s (the
flower girl) accent is introduced. It is the contrast between the EynsfordHills accent and Eliza’s accent that makes the reader laugh as in the time
when this play was first performs and written, around 1914, the audience
would have been more used to hearing the Eynsford-Hills accent and so
would have found Eliza’s ‘strange’ accent very strange. For example: The Flower Girl [Eliza]: Theres menners f’yer! Ta-oo banches o voylets trod into
the mad.
Mrs Higgins’ ‘At Home day’ causes the audience, once again to see the
Eynsford- Hills as humorous characters because of the way they stick
rigidly to the etiquette that matches their social class position. The
restricted topics of conversation such as health and weather makes the
audience laugh because of the ridiculous restrictively of the conversation.
The number of times ‘how do you?’ is said during the same scene is also
humorous because it sounds so pathetic and ridiculous. Henry Higgins is
also an object of humour due to the way in which he can’t understand
how to behave in polite middle class society and hence the mistakes he
makes also makes the audience see him as a comical character.
The central storyline of the play is based around Professor Higgins and
Colonel Pickering transforming Eliza, a common flower girl, into a graceful
lady such as “a duchess” by changing the way she speaks. In Pygmalion
Shaw criticizes the way in which we are judged on purely superficial
things, such as the way one speaks. Shaw uses Eliza’s change in speech to
depict this. Once Eliza has been giving speech lessons she is taken to a ball
where people are fooled by her appearance and speech into thinking that
she is “of royal blood”. Shaw criticises the way we judge people’s
appearances by .......
Pygmalion can be described as a satirical play as Shaw makes the
characters in the play, and their attitudes, laughable in order that
something is done to improve the situation; this can involve exaggerating
characteristics or creating an unbelievable situation. Shaw criticises
different aspects of society through satire, for example the different social
classes, the way that we are judged by the way we talk i.e. our accent and
the way that people judge others just on their appearance and change
their opinions accordingly. The existence of different social classes is
depicted by showing the reader how ridiculous and out of touch the world
the upper classes are. This is particularly evident in Act 3 at Mrs Higgins’s
‘at-home day’ in the way that the Eynsford-Hills behave. An example where
Shaw criticises different aspects of society through satire by showing that
people judge others just on their appearance and change their opinions
accordingly, is the difference between the way middle class people see
Eliza before, as a common flower girl, and after her ‘makeover’ during a
ball in London. The Eynsford-Hills, Clara in particular, look down on Eliza in
Act 1 because they see her as a common, badly dressed and spoken,
flower girl. When
Eliza is beautifully dressed and perfectly spoken,
however, the rich, upper class guests believe she is ‘of royal blood’ and
there so there is no question that she isn’t worthy of being at the
Embassy ball. It is the contrast between the way people treat Eliza in Act 1
compared to Act 3, after Eliza’s makeover that Shaw uses to highlight to
the reader how superficial we can be.
Pygmalion belongs to the genre called a ‘comedy of manners’. This is the
term used that makes the audience laugh at social behaviour. This is most
apparent in Act 3 in the ‘At Home’ scene at Mrs Higgins’. This queer
middle class activity is comical to today’s audience as the narrow
conversation and the attendee’s attitudes are so bizarre to today’s
audience. The narrow conversation is explained by Henry Higgins, “ She’s
[Eliza] to keep to two subjects: the weather and everybody’s health’. This
is amusing to today’s audience as today we talk about supposedly private
things to one another and therefore this narrow conversation is
incomprehensible.
Shaw is famous for his paradoxes and Pygmalion is no exception. A
paradox can be defined as where the reverse of an expected situation or
idea is presented, often humourlessly. Shaw uses Eliza’s father, Alfred
Doolittle, to make the reader think about unusual ideas by presenting
them as jokes.
Pygmalion was first performed to an audience in l9l2, in Germany and
then in London in l9l4. The audience’s reaction to the play and the
themes in the play would have been different in l9l2/4 compared to
nowadays, due to the ways in which ways of life have changed. Therefore
what modern day audiences would think of as humorous in the play, the
l9l2/4 audience wouldn’t have thought so, and vice versa. For example the
audience in l9l2/4 wouldn’t have found the restricted conversation at Mrs
Higgins’ ‘At Home day’ amusing, whilst we, as a modern day audience, do
find it amusing as we are not used to this way of life and the different sorts
of etiquette. Although the themes such as the social class system are not
as defined in modern day society however certain accents are still
discriminated against, in today’s society, and Received Pronunciation is still
seen as the preferred way and the educated way of speaking. I feel that
Pygmalion is still effective in presenting Shaw’s ideas even though it is
over 90 years old.