Item: Pygmalion
Author: Sarcasm Queen

Sarcasm Queen

24 Nisan 2020 15:48

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Pygmalion is a comedy about a phonetics expert who, as a kind of social experiment, attempts to make lady out of an uneducated cockney flowergirl. Pygmalion probes important questions about social class, human behavior, and relations between the sexes. Pygmalion is written by George Bernard Shaw and it is an example of comedy of manners. Shaw takes inspiration from Pygmalion myth. The myth of Pygmalion, from the Greek playwright Ovid’s Metamorphoses, encouraging audiences to think that Pygmalion is a classical play. In Ovid’s tale, Pygmalion is a man disgusted with real-life women who chooses celibacy and the pursuit of an ideal woman, whom he carves out of ivory. Wishing the statue were real, he makes a sacrifice to Venüs, the goddess of love, who brings the statue to life. The myth bases on a sculpter makes an ivory statue representing his ideal of womanhood and then falls in love with his own creation, the goddess Venüs brings the statue to life in answer to his prayer. At the same time, the myth of Pygmalion contains a metamorphosis. There is a changing story and reflections of this change. Actually, the role of the Pygmalion myth in this play is to show Liza’s metamorphosis because the myth of Pygmalion and the play of Pygmalion are similar and parallel. So, the myth of Pygmalion has an important place to express some themes about the transformation in the play. On the other hand, Pygmalion is a mythological story that takes its place at intersection of love and miracle, and the myth of Pygmalion has a great role that explain the subjects of metamorphosis, changing and class distinction. George Bernard Shaw utilizes satire in the play in order to ridicule the rigidity and hierarchy of British society that existed in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, and he is able to portray this by using the character of Eliza Dolittle. She is initially a poor girl that lives on the streets and she is a flowergirl. Shaw depicts the superficially of British society, which berotes Dolittle simply for her speech and grammar. However, the main development of Eliza is that she changes, transforming into what society perceives as a true lady, after she learns from Professor Henry Higgins. Just like the myth for which the play is named after, where Pygmalion sculpts a wife that fits his needs, Higgins virtually recreates Eliza, turning her into an upper-class member of society. The vanity and superficiality of British society is further depicted as Eliza is so easily accepted into the upper echelon of society, because she is considered upper class not for her character or personality, but rather for her apparance and manners of speech. Ultimately, Shaw’s goal of satirizing Pygmalion is to portray the shallowness of society, which based a person’s merit or worth simply based on their social graces, how they dressed or how they acted. Moreover, Pygmalion contains many examples comic elements, the play lampoons the rigid British class system of the Victorian era. Because this play satirizes the types that characters represent, the personage of Professor Henry Higgins is that of the intellectual who is impatient with society and prone to sarcasm. When Colonel Pickering proposes a wager that he can teach the flower girl they encounter to speak so well that she will fool the upper class at the ambassador’s garden party, Higgins looks at Liza and is tempted. This dialogue between Higgins and Pickering in act II demonstrates a comic element: "HIGGINS [tempted, looking at her] It's almost irresistible! She's so deliciously low—so horribly dirty— LIZA [protesting extremely] . . . I ain't dirty: I washed my face and hands afore I come, I did. PICKERING You're certainly not going to turn her head with flattery, Higgins. Professor Higgins grows excited at the prospect of molding "a guttersnipe" into a fake "duchess." He..." Pygmalion is considered a dramatic comedy in a realist style. While there is a great deal of wordplay and comedic situations, the action is not treated as light farce, with much emphasis on the way the lower classes are exploited and kept down by society. The play’s themes of social inequality and the changing place of women in twentieth century, particularly in the anguish of Eliza in her crisis of identity, also lend it dramatic weight. As well, there are some similarities and differences between Cinderella and Liza because they both handle a metamorphosis. Actually, Cinderella and Liza are the close characters, they experience a transformation and they move away from their own identity. However, Cinderella adapts to this change more easily because her life is not a low class life, before her mother died. And then, Cinderella already knows speaking properly but Liza does not. Liza is trained by Higgins, and it takes long time. In addition, Cinderella loves her transformation but Liza does not, she is not pleased her new version, she misses her old life. When Liza move away from her identity, she wish Higgins had left her where he had found her, because she suffers an identity disorder. Shaw investigates conflicts between differing perceptions of identity and portrays the end result of Higgins ‘ experiment as a crisis of identity for Liza. Liza’s transformation is magnificent but painful, as it leaves her displaced between her former social identity and a new one, which she has no income or other resources to support. Not clearly belonging to a particular class, Liza no longer knows who she is. In conclusion, Pygmalion is a play that focuses on metamorphosis and a big transformation and its reflections. In addition to this, it is a work that mirrors the social class distinction and social inequality of the period. Shaw does not hesitate to reflect his socialist ideas and criticizes the England of the period.

PygmalionBernard Shaw · Dover Publications · 1994311 okunma

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