Pygmalion

The Play Itself

• One of the most popular plays of Bernard Shaw, first performed in 1913 in Vienna and published and performed in London in 1916.

• Claire Danes and Jefferson Mays in George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion at the American Airlines Theater.

Major Conflicts

• The nature of class structure
• Upper Class: Higgins, Col. Pickering, Mrs. Higgins, Mers. Clair and Freddy Eynsford Hill.
• Middle Class: Mrs. Pierce She does not, however, represent “middle-class morality” alone. In many ways that is also a quality of Higgins’ and Col. Pickering’s class.
• Lower Working Class: Eliza, Alfred Doolittle and his never seen but often heard about “wife.” and Eliza’s step-mother.
• The relationship between genders:
• “No, no, no, you two infinitely stupid male creatures!”
• Self Perception: Eliza’s sense of worth
• She is infected with the lie.

Person vs. Cultural Environment

• Class Structure: A vast gulf between the poor and even the lower upper class.
• Higgins’ “cast-off” change is a fortune to Eliza who assumes later that he must have been drunk.
• Eliza’s belief that riding in a taxi is the ultimate badge of upper class quality of life.
• Eliza’s Struggle:
• To work at a flower-shop
• She is infected by social snobbery herself.
• Discovers that a rise in culture means a loss of independence (as does her step-mother).
• Eventually achieves independence.

• Probably the most Important conflict in the play: the class system is Eliza’s primary antagonist

“What we believe influences how we behave. Likewise, how we behave impacts what people think about us. In turn, this affects how others behave towards us. Ultimately, how they behave towards us reinforces what we believed about ourselves in the first place.”

• http://www.meghanwilliams.com/ugb.html
• Meg Williams