The title of the play is an allusion to myth, described in Ovid’s Metamorphosis. The sculptor Pymalion lived on the island of Crete, an area that worshipped the goddess Venus. Pymalion did not approve of the behavior of the women of Crete, so he vowed never to marry. Instead, he directed his energy into his art and created a sculpture of a beautiful woman, which he named Galatea. Pygmalion fell in love with his creation and prayed that she would come alive. Venus granted his prayer. Galatea became a living woman, stepped off her pedestal, and married Pymalion.
Shaw says that comedy must be didactic: it must teach as well as entertain. Under the guise of comedy, Shaw is presenting a serious issue, one that is not easily resolved. Shaw lived in a society structured by class. For most, the class you were born into determined the rest of your life, and few people made significant changes in class. Shaw is suggesting that class barriers, marked by speech and accent, are false indicators of an individual’s worth and ability. The upper class is not superior by virtue of its birth. A flower girl can pass for a duchess and prove herself worthy of this status by virtue of her character and determination. In a democratic society, this is not a shocking assumption, but in Shaw’s society, England in the 19th and early 20th centuries, it would be.
The play has five acts. Act I serves as a sort of prologue. In Acts II and III, the flower girl becomes a duchess. In Acts IV and V, the duchess becomes a complete human being, unlike her creator, who never quite achieves this status.
1. In the first scene, we get a cross section of society in accent and action. What classes are represented by Liza, Pickering, Higgins, the Eynsford-Hills? What do we learn about the crowd’s attitude toward authority from their behavior toward the “notetaker,” whom they assume to be a plainclothes policeman? Why must the Eynsford-Hills want to take a cab and not the bus, even though they really can’t afford it?
2. Liza says, “My character is the same to me as any lady’s” (26) In fact, Liza has to care more about her character than any lady. What assumptions are made about Liza due to her accent and class? How does she show these assumptions to be false?
3. Higgins says, “This is an age of upstarts” (27). People are supposed to aspire towards middle-class respectability. But even when people make enough money, they could still be hampered by having the wrong accent or manner of dress. Why does Liza want to change the way she speaks? What else will she be changing?
4. In some ways, Higgins is more of a statue than his Galatea. How does he feel about people in general? Whom does he care about? (What would Freud say about this?) How does he treat Liza when she appears at his home? Why does Liza think it important that he know she came in a cab?
5. Swearing is part of Liza’s vocabulary because this is what she has always heard around her. Higgins also uses a particularly British form of invective, which Mrs. Pearce alludes to (51). Liza is low and common when she swears. What about Higgins?
6. What does Liza’s father assume about the relationship between Higgins and his daughter? Why does he want from Higgins?
7. Doolittle describes himself as one of the “the undeserving poor” (58). He says that he can’t afford having morals. What does Doolittle think of middle-class morality? Is Doolittle a moral man?
8. What is an “at-home day” (33)? Why do people participate in these kind of social occasions? When Liza is presented at Mrs. Higgin’s at-home day, how is she more like a doll or a statue than a human being? What does Liza choose to talk about?
9. At this point in the play, how do both Pickering and Higgins treat Liza?
10. Mrs. Higgins, like Mrs. Pearce in Act II, sees a problem about Liza. Mrs. Pearce was more concerned with appearances: Liza living with Higgins could be misconstrued. What does Mrs. Higgins understand that the men don’t see?
She says, “you’re certainly a pretty pair of babies, playing with your live doll,” which suggests that she understands how they view Liza: they take more credit for Liza’s transformations than they give to her. Pickering and Higgins are more interested in their own power of transformation; Liza, in their eyes, seems not to have any power. Mrs. Higgins also wonders what will happen to Liza when they are done with her: she is worried that Liza’s “manners and habits that disqualify a lady from earning her own living without giving her a fine lady’s income!” Mrs. Higgins sees that being a “lady” in and of itself isn’t enough without the economic support to go with it. Her perceptions about the realities of class structures are sharper than are those of her son or Colonel Pickering.
11. A climactic event of the play, when Liza successfully plays the duchess, occurs offstage. Why do you think that Shaw makes this choice? What is the true climax of the play?
The “climax” of the a play or a novel is its highest dramatic moment; the turning point of the play. At the end of Act III, Liza is presented as a duchess, and passes the test of Higgins’ former student Nepommuck, who thinks that she is Hungarian. Liza has successfully fooled everyone. Although it seems like being successful in society would be the turning point of the play, the real turning point occurs later, in Act IV, when Liza rebels against Henry Higgins. Shaw’s real point in this play has less to do with Liza’s transformation into a beautiful society lady and has more to do with her transformation into an independent woman who can think for herself; it is this transformation that is the real climax of the play. It is because Shaw’s play is more about the internal transformation that occurs within Liza that the scene about externals, at the Embassy ball, is less important. Look at the beginning of Act IV: notice that Higgins and Pickering talk about Liza as if she isn’t there, referring to her in the third person. Pickering at one point says to Higgins that the ball has been “a great occasion: a triumph for you.” But whose triumph is it, really? Shouldn’t Liza at least share in some of the credit? When she tells Higgins that she’s won his bet for him, he calls her a “presumptuous insect” and says that “I won” –he wants all the credit for her success.
12. In Act IV, Liza is asking the same question about her future that Mrs. Higgins asked. What are the options available to her? How is she in some ways more limited in her choices than when she lived “in the gutter”? What parallel does Liza draw between a lady and a prostitute?
She asks Higgins what she is “fit for” and Higgins doesn’t really want to answer that question. Look at the stage directions for Higgins’s behavior: he is “condescending” and doesn’t look at her while he talks, as if the whole subject makes him nervous. Remember that at the beginning of Act II we are told that Higgins is more interested in science experiments than he is in people; emotions (particularly women’s emotions) make him nervous. In response to her questions, the first option that Higgins can come up with is that she marry some nice young man, which makes Liza even angrier. She tells him that as a flower-seller she was “above that” and claims that now, as a lady, all she is fit to do is “sell herself.” The problem that Mrs. Higgins has predicted has come true: Liza now has all the attitudes of being lady and is used to a certain level of comfort in her life, but she cannot support herself without a man because she hasn’t been trained to do anything other than be pretty and nice to talk to. Running a flower shop, at this point, no longer interests her—and she doesn’t have the money to start such a business without Colonel Pickering’s help.
13. Liza has been essentially powerless throughout the play. What does she begin to understand about the power she holds over Higgins? Over her future? Over Freddy?
When Liza hears Higgins say that she has “wounded him to the heart” she is delighted; she begins to realize that men might find her attractive and desirable. She realizes the same thing about Freddy—when he hugs her, she is “hungry for comfort,” although it doesn’t sound like she loves him with the same passion that Freddy has for her. She also realizes that her actions have consequences, that she can have an impact on the world around her, which we see when she makes decisions for herself and Freddy: she has enough money for them to drive around for a while and then she will ask Mrs. Higgins for advice. She is starting to take charge of her own actions rather than being passive.
14. A joking comment by Higgins changes Doolittle’s life. What is Doolittle’s new job? Doolittle has achieved the middle-class respectability that everyone is supposed to aspire to. Why is Doolittle miserable? What does this suggest about middle-class respectability?
Higgins suggests as a joke to Ezra D. Wannafeller that the “most original moralist at present in England” is Doolittle, dustman. Wannafeller leaves Doolittle money in his will to travel around giving lectures for moral reform. As a result, Doolittle is suddenly wealthy (by his standards) and respectable, neither of which he likes very much. He says that everyone “touches him” for money and that he feels “tied neck and heels.” Despite not wanting to be middle-class, however, he won’t give up the money. He says “we’re all intimidated,” by which he means that he is afraid of ending up in the poorhouse in his old age, when he is too old to work. His misery illustrates that middle-class respectability may not be that worthy a goal. It also suggests that “respectability” may not have anything to do with virtue: is Doolittle a “good” man? Didn’t he essentially sell his daughter to Higgins for the price of a beer, after all? And yet now he is considered a respectable man because he has an income. Doolittle’s situation is another way that Shaw satirizes the middle-class in particular and class structures in general, particularly people’s belief that social class is something innate, something that you are born with. Shaw disagrees with this perspective. When Higgins says to Doolittle “either you are an honest man or a rogue,” Doolittle says “a little of both, Henry, like the rest of us.” Higgins doesn’t ever want to think of himself as a rogue, but Doolittle is right: Higgins is both an honest man and a dishonest man, as we can see by his treatment of Liza.
15. What did Liza learn from Pickering (her “real education”)? According to Liza, what is the difference between a lady and a flower girl?
From the first time that Pickering called her “Miss Doolittle,” Liza says that she began to learn self-respect, which is, in her mind, the first step towards her transformation. The real test between a lady and a flower girl, she says, is “not how she behaves but how she is treated.” So to Higgins, she says, she will always be a flower girl, but to Pickering, she will be a lady. She also describes herself as being similar to a child who is living in a foreign country: “I am a child in your country. I have forgotten my own language and can speak nothing but yours.” This speech suggests that she has definitely left behind her old world, but the fact that she calls herself a “child” suggests that she hasn’t really found a way to exist in her new world, either.
16. Higgins insists that “The great secret is not having bad manners or good manners or any other particular sort of manners, but having the same manner for all human souls: in short, behaving as if you were in Heaven, where there are no third-class carriages, and one soul is as good as another.” How does Shaw’s message contradict the structure of his society?
Do you believe Higgins’s speech? It does seem that he is equally rude to everyone, rich and poor, upper class and lower class; he does seem similar in a way to Liza’s father, who also has the same attitude towards everyone he meets. The fact that no one else in Shaw’s play seems to behave the same way that Higgins does suggests that in rigidly structured society, it isn’t considered “appropriate” to treat everyone equally. Higgins’s comment is one of the ways that Shaw uses this play to criticize his society.
17. Liza says that if she can’t have kindness from Higgins, she’ll have independence. The trick is to remain a free and independent soul in a close-knit social system, which can limit the independence of some of its members. (Higgins is independent, but has no emotional attachments other than his mother.) What form will Liza’s independence take?
The only independence that Liza can imagine is marrying Freddy or some other man, although she also says that she will be the one who supports Freddy. She uses Higgins’ weapons against him by saying that she will earn a living by teaching phonetics. Liza’s problem is that as a woman in her society, her ability to earn a living is made more difficult: there aren’t many economic opportunities for women available.
18. When does Liza rise in Higgins’ estimation? When does he admit that he likes her? What kind of domestic arrangements does Higgins suggest for Liza, Higgins, and Pickering?
Higgins likes it when Liza rebels—like when she threw his slippers at him, or when she tells him that she will teach people how to talk like duchesses. He says that her strong behavior is “better than sniveling; better than fetching slippers and finding spectacles, isn’t it?” He goes on to say that he has “made a woman” out of Eliza, which is why he likes her. Higgins also admits that Eliza has perhaps helped to transform him a bit, just as he has helped to transform her, which suggests that he is as interested in internal transformations as he is in external transformations. Higgins suggests that the three of them –Liza, Higgins, and Pickering—should live together as “three bachelors instead of two men and a silly girl.” He seems to want to deny that he is attracted to Liza; he seems also, despite his words of admiration and praise, to want still to control Liza and to have influence over her actions.
19. Romantic comedy has trained us to expect that Higgins and Eliza will marry, but they do not. According to Shaw in the afterward to the play, what are some of the reasons why these two cannot marry? Why is Eliza better off with Freddy? Do you agree with Shaw’s theories about marriage between weak people and strong people?
Shaw plays with our expectations about marriage at the end of this play: think about all the movies you’ve seen where the hero and heroine spend most of the movie quarreling and then, in the final scenes, fall in love (think about such movies as “You’ve Got Mail,” or “Ten Things I Hate About You,” or “When Harry Met Sally,” etc). The marriage is supposed to be the “happy ending” that we expect from comedy. (See the chart that I handed out last week in class.) Would you say that the marriage between Freddy and Eliza is a “happy ending”? If it is a happy ending, what sort of “happy” is it, exactly?
20. What do you think about the author’s telling us
what happens to the characters after the play ends?