Bernard Shaw

Bernard Shaw was a renowned, but controversial novelist, music critic, playwright, political theorist, educator, and essayist. However, his main focus was writing plays, which usually dealt with social issues of the day including: education, marriage, religion, government, health care, and social classes. One thing he felt very strongly about was the divisions of social classes and the abusive power of the upper class over the lower classes. He fully supported equal rights for all, which we see in his play, Pygmalion. His play was eventually turned into the well known and Oscar winning love story, My Fair Lady.  However, unknown to me before reading this original screenplay, is the fact that that was not Shaw’s original intention.

In the preface, Shaw begins, “The English have no respect for their language, and will not teach their children to speak it” (p. 1005). As we read in the Victorian Ladies and Gents section of our Anthology, the Victorian Era was categorized by a shifting in social classes in that one could pull him or herself up from the middle class to the upper class through hard work. However, Shaw understood the fact that even if someone worked hard, if one could not emulate the upper classes mannerisms including their language and rhetoric, one would never be accepted in the upper class society. Shaw fully understood the power of words and thus gives the protagonist of the play, Henry Higgins, the occupation of a phonetician.  At the end of the preface, Shaw states, “ But if the play makes the public aware that there are such people as phoneticians, and that they are among the most important people in England at present, it will serve its turn” (p. 1007). We therefore see that his purpose in writing Pygmalion was not to write an epic love story or romance, but to make a point about language and it’s importance in society.

Starting in the middle of Act 1 there is a comedic dialogue between Higgins and a group of people in a lobby where he is able to place each individual with their hometown simply by their accent.  He figures out that the bystander is from Selsey, the sarcastic bystander is from Hoxton, the gentlemen is from Cheltenham, Harrow, Cambridge, and India, and the flower girl is from Lisson Grove. The gentlemen, who we later find out is Pickering, asks Higgins how he does it and Higgins replies, “Simply phonetics. The science of speech. That’s my profession: also my hobby… You can spot an Irishman or a Yorkshireman by his brogue. I can place any man within six miles. I can place him within two miles in London. Sometimes within two streets” (p. 1012). Higgins then goes on to state, “This is an age of upstarts” meaning that people born into lower classes are working hard and are able to move up into the upper class, “but they give themselves away every time they open their mouths” (p. 1013). He is able to teach them how to pronounce their words properly and get rid of any dialect that could place them in to a certain social class.

Throughout the rest of the play, Higgins and Pickering come together through a project of teaching the flower girl how to speak properly and an attempt to pass her off as a Lady. Although they succeed in their endeavor, the ironic and intriguing issue of the play, is what Mrs. Higgins points out in Act 3, “No, you two infinitely stupid male creatures: the problem of what is to be done with her afterwards” (p. 1041). This points to gender issues in that maybe men can pull themselves up into upper class society, but women are different. In the Victorian Era, lower class women worked, but an upper class Lady was too delicate and precious to get her hands dirty. Mrs. Higgins tries to explain to the men that they took this poor woman and gave her the mannerisms of a Lady and with that, disqualify her from working; however, she comes from a poor background and is thus not marriageable. In an attempt to turn a poor girl into a Lady ironically makes her unable to support herself. It is a strange idea, but an ugly and valid point during the Victorian Era.