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George Bernard Shaw

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Pygmalion: Introduction

Pygmalion: plot summary, pygmalion: detailed summary & analysis, pygmalion: themes, pygmalion: quotes, pygmalion: characters, pygmalion: symbols, pygmalion: literary devices, pygmalion: quizzes, pygmalion: theme wheel, brief biography of george bernard shaw.

Historical Context of Pygmalion

Other books related to pygmalion.

• Full Title: Pygmalion
• When Written: 1912
• Where Written: London
• When Published: 1912
• Literary Period: Victorian period
• Genre: Drama, comedy, comedy of manners
• Setting: London
• Climax: In act four, after winning the bet concerning Eliza, Higgins says he has been bored with his experiment, and treats Eliza poorly. Infuriated, Eliza throws Higgins' slippers at him and argues and fights with him.
• Antagonist: While Eliza and Higgins argue with each other, they both cooperate in order to fool London's high society. The rigid hierarchy of social classes in Victorian England can be seen as the antagonist against which all the characters struggle, as they deal with issues of class and wealth.

Extra Credit for Pygmalion

Double Threat. George Bernard Shaw is the only person to have ever won both the Nobel Prize in Literature and an Oscar. He won the Oscar for his work on a film adaptation of Pygmalion .

Thanks But No Thanks. At first, Shaw declined to accept the Nobel Prize. He later changed his mind, but still refused the prize money, wanting it instead to fund translations of Swedish literature into English.

A Summary and Analysis of the Pygmalion and Galatea Myth

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

The story of Pygmalion and Galatea is well-known: it’s a myth about art, about love, and about the relationship between the artist and his ‘muse’, in some respects. But there are also, as so often with classical myths, a few things we assume we know about this story but, it turns out, don’t really know. Or at any rate, we don’t know the full story.

So let’s delve deeper into the myth of Pygmalion and the statue he sculpted (did he?) and which came alive as the woman named Galatea (was she?) …

Pygmalion and Galatea: plot summary

There are actually two Pygmalions in classical mythology. The first one was a king of Tyre, the son of Mutto and the brother of Elissa. Elissa is better-known to us as Dido, of the Dido and Aeneas love story .

But that Pygmalion is not the famous one. The other Pygmalion was also a king, but a king of Cyprus. Famously, this Pygmalion fell in love with an ivory statue of a woman. In many versions of the myth, Pygmalion was the one who sculpted the statue (though this isn’t always the case in every single account).

Pygmalion went and asked Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love, to give him a woman who looked as beautiful as the ivory statue: a real flesh-and-blood woman who looked exactly like the statue he had fallen head over heels for.

When Pygmalion got home, he discovered the statue had come to life. He married the statue-woman and they had a daughter together.

That’s the shorter version of the myth. But such a plot summary can be fleshed out if we turn to Ovid’s Metamorphoses , written much later than the original Greek myths arose, during the heyday of ancient Rome.

In Book 10 of the Metamorphoses , Ovid fleshes out the backstory for Pygmalion: in his account, the king – who was also the sculptor of the statue – was a raging misogynist. But when he sculpted the perfect woman, his misogyny was quickly forgotten and he longed for his creation to become a living, breathing woman.

As in the summary above, Pygmalion went to make offerings to Aphrodite and asked for a woman just like his perfect statue, and when he went back and kissed the statue, it came alive, and the two of them have a child together, a daughter whom Ovid names as Paphos.

Pygmalion and Galatea: analysis

You’ll notice that at no point in the above summary is the name of the statue mentioned. This is because Ovid doesn’t give Pygmalion’s statue a name, nor does the informative and comprehensive The Penguin Dictionary of Classical Mythology (Penguin Dictionary) .

And yet in the popular imagination, Pygmalion gives the statue a name: Galatea. The name of Galatea is found in the earlier Greek myths, given to several different women, but none of them is the statue from the Pygmalion legend. One of them is a maiden who was loved by Polyphemus, the Cyclops from the stories of Odysseus; she didn’t return Polyphemus’ love and when the Cyclops saw Galatea with Acis, her lover, he threw a boulder which killed the hapless man. Galatea turned Acis into a stream which contained sparkling water.

Indeed, according to the twentieth-century classical scholar Meyer Reinhold, it was only in the eighteenth century when Jean-Jacques Rousseau wrote a play about the Pygmalion myth that the name Galatea began to be associated with the sculpture. The name is, however, entirely fitting for the ivory statue in the story, because it means ‘she who is milky white’ in ancient Greek (it’s related to words like lactic and galaxy and even, ultimately, latte , all of which mean ‘milk’).

And the myth of Pygmalion and Galatea (if we choose to call her that) is one that is laden with meaning and significance. Quite what that meaning and significance might be, however, is less easy to answer: we somehow feel that the story conveys something truthful about art, about inspiration, about masculine attitudes to femininity and womanhood (and, indeed, to their own desire for women), but reducing the various strands of the Pygmalion myth to a single line – as Aesop-like ‘moral’, if you will – is not at all straightforward.

Does the myth represent the triumph of love over hate, of male desire over male hatred of women? Does erotic desire and love trump misogyny in the case of Pygmalion, perhaps with a bit of help from Aphrodite? Perhaps love does conquer all here.

And yet it’s hardly representative of all male attitudes, given Pygmalion’s special status as a sculptor (at least in many retellings of the myth). Is the story, then, not about love but about art? Pygmalion hates women and can only love one that is, in a sense, a reflection of his own self: a ‘woman’ who is his own creation, and thus speaks, on some level, to his own inward-looking narcissism.

This is obviously a less positive interpretation of the Pygmalion myth, because it suggests that men can only like or love women who are made in the man’s own image, like ordering a bespoke tailor-made suit. Galatea (as she has become known, albeit only relatively recently) isn’t given any agency in the story, and is instead first a dumb statue and then, so far as the narrative goes, an equally dumb flesh-and-blood woman, voiceless and passive.

In this connection, it’s hardly surprising that Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale is one of Shakespeare’s most powerful explorations of misogyny. It’s a play in which Leontes’ wronged wife Hermione returns as a statue (the real Hermione being thought dead by Leontes) only to ‘come alive’ when it’s revealed this is the real Hermione who is not dead at all. The reconciliation of Leontes and the wife he had falsely accused can leave a bitter taste in many readers’ and spectators’ mouths.

Shaw’s play Pygmalion (1913) obviously takes its title from the myth, but Shaw inverts this love story: in Shaw’s Pygmalion a real woman is turned into a statue, a ‘mechanical doll who resembles a duchess’ in the words of the theatre critic Michael Billington. As Shaw makes clear in the epilogue to the play, Eliza makes a carefully considered decision not to marry Professor Higgins, the Pygmalion of the play.

Numerous poets have written about the Pygmalion myth: Robert Graves, who believed strongly in the idea of the female muse inspiring the male artist, wrote two poems about the story. Roy Fuller’s villanelle about Pygmalion and Galatea takes a less happy view: in the poem (not available online, sadly, but Fuller’s New and Collected Poems, 1934-84 is well worth picking up second-hand), Pygmalion voices his regret at making the wish that the statue would come alive.

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Introduction to Pygmalion

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Pygmalion review: George Bernard Shaw's classic is done a great disservice

Patsy Ferran as Eliza Dolittle in this revival of Pygmalion at the Old Vic

It might be the ultimate tale of transformation, but George Bernard Shaw’s great classic, Pygmalion looks a little misshapen in this new production at London’s Old Vic Theatre. The 1921 class-system satire, which follows flower girl Eliza Dolittle’s evolution from Covent Garden ‘cabbage leaf’ to a dress to impress a duchess, is weighted by a case of confused identity. Is Richard Jones’s revival an attempt to reinvent the vintage play? Or does he want to embrace its traditionalism? I’m not convinced he’s sure.

And what a pity this muddle is because the cast is made up of some of the greatest acting talent working onstage today. Patsy Ferran, who Tatler interviewed earlier this month, is quite the marvel as she contorts her vowels into cockney shapes and flails about the stage like elastic. Bertie Carvel as her teacher, Henry Higgins is reptilian, acid-tongued and irredeemably unpleasant. Bouncing on his heels with a cruel glee, he spits out foul language and taunts his new student eagerly. He is so desperate for Eliza to become a perfect reconstruction, he wastes no time being kind.

Patsy Ferran, an Olivier-award-winning ‘acting wizard’ according to former co-star Paul Mescal, is one of the greatest actors of her generation. Tatler ’s deputy features editor Annabel Sampson catches up with her on dialect lessons, impromptu – and unwelcome – fangirl moments on stage and following in the footsteps of Audrey Hepburn

Bertie Carvel is ‘reptilian’ as Henry Higgins in Pygmalion

But even with such flair, the pair get lost within Jones’s indecisive direction. The early London street scenes are played with excessive physical comedy, exaggerated dropped ‘aitches and noisy screams. It is unnatural and jarring – and perhaps intentional, but it makes Eliza and Higgins’ endless squabbles irksome.

This production is a blend of Shaw’s original 1912 script and his screenplay from 1938, but the setting is neither modern or historical. Stewart Laing’s design is almost scientific: made up of geometric structures, boards decorated with diagrams, and beige colours, it washes out the drama’s much needed fire. Everything is performed at an unnatural, heart-racing pace. Eliza’s elocution lessons are hurried through, and the struggle of her metamorphosis into a lady is never properly conveyed. Underscored with hectic and choppy piano music, the whole thing feels like a race to the finish line.

Bertie Carvel as Henry Higgins in Pygmalion

Robin Muir raises the curtain on fashion's greatest theatrics

Pygmalion should be a play of glitz, glamour and pizazz. After all, Eliza is stepping into the world of the aristocracy. But, Laing’s costumes are muted even in what should be the most dazzling of party scenes. Bizarrely, Higgins arrives at the Ambassador’s Ball in a scruffy brown suit he wears for the play’s entirety. There’s a lack of time specificity to the style too: Eliza is first seen in an anorak that looks present day and then, later, changes into 1930s inspired pinafores.

Other than Sylvestra Le Touzel as Henry’s decisively unimpressed mother, the rest of the supporting cast are shrunk to caricature. Taheen Modak looks nearly possessed as the love-struck Freddie, grinning from ear to ear. Lizzy Connolly as his sister, Clara, is shrill and one-note in her delivery. Jones’s direction does little to ham up the class divisions that are essential to Shaw’s text and instead, focuses his attention on drawing out the humour.

And yes, he might get the laughs. But, if Jones hoped to make any sort of astute commentary on today’s society, then he failed. At its core Pygmalion has things to say about the current moment – the coercive control present in Henry and Eliza's relationship is a power dynamic still dismally current. But here, the play has transitioned into something cartoonish and it makes for bizarre viewing. What a travesty for a revival that had so much promise.

by George Bernard Shaw

Pygmalion summary and analysis of act i.

It is raining in Covent Garden at 11:15 p.m. Clara complains that Freddy has not found a cab yet. Freddy returns to his mother and sister and explains that there are no cabs to be found. They chide him, and as he runs off to try again to find a cab, he knocks into Liza , a flower girl, spilling her flowers into the mud. Freddy's mother gives her sixpence when she complains that her flowers are ruined. Colonel Pickering comes onstage, and Liza tries to sell him a flower. He gives her three hapence. A bystander advises Liza to give Pickering a flower for it, because there is a man behind a pillar taking down every word that she says.

Liza becomes hysterical, claiming that she has done nothing wrong. She thinks that he is an informant for the police. The man, Higgins, shows Liza what he has written--which is not a record of possible misdeeds. When she complains that she cannot read it, he reads it out to her, reproducing what she has said in her exact accent.

Higgins amuses the small crowd that has gathered when he listens to what they say and guesses their hometowns with exactitude. Higgins whistles for a taxi for Clara and her mother, and they exit.

Liza picks her flowers out of the mud while Higgins explains to Pickering that he is able to guess where people are from because he studies phonetics. To make money, he gives lessons to millionaires to improve their English, which allows them to be accepted in higher social milieus. When Higgins finds out that Pickering has been in India and is the writer of [I]Spoken Sanskrit], he exclaims that he was planning to travel to India to meet the man. Pickering is equally excited when he realizes that he has happened upon the creator of "Higgins's Universal Alphabet"--for he has traveled from India to meet Higgins.

They arrange to have dinner together. Liza makes a last-ditch effort to sell Pickering some flowers, claiming that she is short for her rent. Having recorded what she was saying, Higgins points out that she cannot be short for her rent because she said she had change for half a crown. (His record traps her in her own words after all.) Liza flings her basket at him in desperation. Higgins hears a church bell tolling and generously fills her basket with money anyway, before leaving with Pickering.

Freddy arrives in a cab, looking for his mother and sister. He does not know what to do with the cab when he realizes that they have left already, but Liza wants to take the cab home. The cabman looks doubtful at her ragged appearance, but she shows him her money before she gets in.

Besides introducing the major characters of the play, this act introduces socioeconomic class as a central theme of Pygmalion . As a socialist, Shaw was particularly concerned with exploring and exposing the power divide between the poor and the rich. By setting the play in London, Shaw chooses to deal with a society that is particularly stratified. British class-consciousness is based not only on economic power, as it is in many other societies, but also on history (historic class differences). The play highlights British people's recognition of accents to differentiate among themselves not only geographically (a Welsh accent is distinct from a Scottish accent, which is distinct from a Surrey accent), but also to distinguish (on another but related dimension of accents) the various social classes.

Higgins's ability to pinpoint the location of origin of members of the crowd means not only that he can tell what part of England, or even what neighborhood of London, they are from, but also that he can probably guess fairly easily their socioeconomic status. In the early twentieth century, social mobility in Britain was slim to none, so the fact that Pickering's accent is audibly a Cambridge one (tying him to a very upper-class university) means that he is upper-class and likely to remain so. Conversely, Liza was born into Lisson Grove and, correspondingly, grew up speaking with what was considered a terrible accent. She is thus likely to remain poor not only because her family was poor, but also because everyone else can tell that she had a poor upbringing from the way that she speaks.

Nevertheless, Higgins's system of teaching better English serves to undermine the system in which his keen awareness of language so easily has allowed him to participate. Higgins, like Shaw, sees the strict hierarchy of British society as mutable after all. Higgins's alphabet is a new type of shorthand which more accurately conveys the exact sound of the speaker's voice. So, while normal shorthand conveys the content of a conversation, Higgins's form also records the intonation and accent of a speaker's voice. Even the name of his system of shorthand writing, "Higgins's Universal Alphabet," not only indicates that it reproduces all the sounds of language, but also implies that he believes that everyone should have access to elevated language.

Pygmalion Questions and Answers

The Question and Answer section for Pygmalion is a great resource to ask questions, find answers, and discuss the novel.

What tensions already show in the relations between the Mother (later named as Mrs. Eynsford Hill), the Daughter (later named as Clara), and the son, Freddy?

It is raining in Covent Garden at 11:15 p.m. Clara complains that Freddy has not found a cab yet. Freddy returns to his mother and sister and explains that there are no cabs to be found. They chide him, and as he runs off to try again to find a...

What does Higgins mean when he says, “teaching would be impossible unless pupils were sacred”?

Higgins is answering Pickering's charge that he cannot be involved in an experiment where the girl (Eliza) is not treated with the utmost respect. Higgins replies that his pupils are sacred, which means regarded with reverence and respect.

explain the myth of pygmalion in what significant ways and with what effect.has shaw transformed that myth into his plav?

This story is about a sculptor who sculpts the most beautiful woman in stone ever and then falls in love with her. The sculptor's name is Pygmalion; the goddess in the myth transforms the stone into a real woman and they live happily ever...

Study Guide for Pygmalion

Pygmalion study guide contains a biography of George Bernard Shaw, literature essays, a complete e-text, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis.

• About Pygmalion
• Pygmalion Summary
• Character List

Essays for Pygmalion

Pygmalion essays are academic essays for citation. These papers were written primarily by students and provide critical analysis of Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw.

• An Atypical Romance in Five Acts
• Nurture or Nature: The Gentleman Versus the Guttersnipe
• Pygmalion and Pretty Woman
• The Extent Contextual Attitudes and Values Regarding Gender and Class are Maintained or Altered in Pygmalion and Pretty Women
• The didactic purpose of Shaw's 'Pygmalion'

Lesson Plan for Pygmalion

• About the Author
• Study Objectives
• Common Core Standards
• Introduction to Pygmalion
• Relationship to Other Books
• Bringing in Technology
• Notes to the Teacher
• Related Links
• Pygmalion Bibliography

E-Text of Pygmalion

The Pygmalion e-text contains the full text of Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw.

• Preface to Pygmalion

Wikipedia Entries for Pygmalion

• Introduction
• Inspiration
• First productions
• Critical reception

64 pages • 2 hours read

A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.

Act Summaries & Analyses

Character Analysis

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Discussion Questions

Eliza Doolittle

Eliza Doolittle, the play’s protagonist , does not conform to the expected character arc of a female romantic hero. At the beginning, she is undignified, crude, and dirty. In his stage directions, Shaw states that she “is not at all a romantic figure” (Act I, Page 13). His insistence on this point supports a platonic reading of Eliza and Higgins’s relationship, suggesting that the play will not end with a romantic union. Eliza makes this reading explicitly when she states that she “wouldnt marry [Higgins] if [he] asked” (Act V, Page 128) and positions marriage as a transactional relationship. Rather than following the romantic arc that is traditional for a female character, she goes on a journey of self-discovery.

The play initially positions Eliza as Pygmalion’s statue being sculpted by Higgins, a Pygmalion figure. He reshapes her speech from animalistic sounds to elevated and sophisticated language. He has her cleaned of mud, burns her old clothes, and outfits her in fine things. It appears that Higgins turned the raw material of Eliza into a work of art.

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Home — Essay Samples — Literature — Pygmalion — Pygmalion Eliza’s Character Analysis

Pygmalion Eliza’s Character Analysis

• Categories: Pygmalion

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Words: 614 |

Published: Jan 30, 2024

Words: 614 | Page: 1 | 4 min read

Table of contents

Eliza's appearance and social status in the beginning, eliza's motivation for change, eliza's transformation through education and training, eliza's struggles and resilience during the transformation, eliza's gradual assertiveness and self-confidence, eliza's ultimate empowerment and independence, references:.

• Shaw, George Bernard. Pygmalion. Penguin Books, 2003.
• Hornby, Richard. The Social and Economic Context of Shaw's Pygmalion. The Modern Language Review, vol. 60, no. 2, 2015, pp. 215-230.
• SparkNotes. Pygmalion Study Guide. Spark Publishing, 2019.

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From Scorsese With Love: A Tribute to Powell-Pressburger Movies

“Made in England” is an essay film about the artists whose passion and cinematography deeply influenced the American director.

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By Alissa Wilkinson

What you can learn about movies from just reading about them is pretty limited — an ironic admission from a movie critic, I know. The best way to understand what makes a film or a filmmaker interesting is to submerge yourself in their work, to binge a whole catalog. But when that’s not possible, or if you want more context, a great guide and a well-crafted essay film can be invaluable.

Few such guides could outpace Martin Scorsese, whose narration (often delivered directly to camera) powers “ Made in England : The Films of Powell and Pressburger” (in theaters), directed by David Hinton. Scorsese’s Film Foundation World Cinema Project restores movies from underrepresented and forgotten filmmakers from around the world, works that might otherwise be lost to time. Among those were “The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp” and “The Red Shoes,” two seminal movies from the 1940s by the duo Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger . Scorsese has long counted the pair among his greatest influences; their movies pushed the boundaries of color, story and passion.

What makes “Made in England” so compelling is how effortlessly it swings from film analysis to cinema and cultural history to personal narrative. It’s a roughly chronological documentary about the filmmakers, but it’s also the story of personal obsession. For Scorsese, that story started in his own childhood, when he saw rough black-and-white transfers on TV that transfixed him. Later, he became obsessed with the filmmakers’ works, and Powell in particular eventually became a mentor and a friend. He and Scorsese’s longtime editor, Thelma Schoonmaker, were married until Powell died in 1990.

The film works through the history of both men, the origins of their collaboration and the ways their films evolved during and after World War II, particularly as commercial taste shifted. Their experimentations with sound, music and heightened realism are illuminated through “The Red Shoes,” “Colonel Blimp” and films like “Black Narcissus,” “The Tales of Hoffmann,” and the nearly career-killing “ Peeping Tom ,” all lovingly explored through Scorsese’s viewpoint.

Scorsese has narrated documentaries about film history before (including “A Personal Journey With Martin Scorsese Through American Movies” and “My Voyage to Italy”), always with a distinctive angle. And it’s easy to see why. The average viewer — that is to say, someone not quite as obsessed with movies as Scorsese is — pops open the queue on a streamer of choice and starts drowning. There are, quite literally, more movies now than there have ever been, and even a fairly sophisticated viewer can struggle to choose.

“Made in England” is remarkably engaging thanks to Scorsese’s animated commentary and some flourishes, like comparisons between shots from Powell and Pressburger’s films and Scorsese’s. But whether you are lucky enough to attend the summer of Powell and Pressburger in New York’s cinemas, enjoy streaming from home or are just curious about these fascinating filmmakers, the documentary is a personal, vibrant gift.

An earlier version of this article misstated the organization responsible for restoring “The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp” and “The Red Shoes.” It is Martin Scorsese’s Film Foundation, not the director’s World Cinema Project.

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Alissa Wilkinson is a Times movie critic. She’s been writing about movies since 2005. More about Alissa Wilkinson