Raïhanyat,
Moroccan
Writer
Mohamed
Saïd Raïhani’s Website
THE PROMETHEAN PASSION
(ESSAYS ON GEORGE BERNARD SHAW’S DRAMA & PHILOSOPHY)
PART V:
GEORGE
BERNARD SHAW
THE PROMETHEAN
PASSION FOR IMPROVING THE RACE
(A STUDY OF THE PROBLEM OF
EQUALITY IN SHAW'S MASTER-PIECE, "PYGMALION" )
INTRODUCTION
In 1913, Shaw published Pygmalion, a
satire on snobbery and a participation to educational theory (1). It is a play
about education, a subject with which Shaw was more than concerned (2). In
Pygmalion, Eliza, through whom Shaw’s conception of education is revealed,
learns not only upper-class sounds but also self-reliance and self-sufficiency.
Yet, the central theme of the play remains :“the contrast between the
Promethean passion for improving the race and the ordinary human desire for the
comforts and consolations of the domestic hearth” (4). It is a contrast between
the vital and the mechanical, between the living person and his artificial
social role (5).
In Pygmalion, Shaw dramatizes the whole
world in which “people play roles that have often been artificially, and
cruelly, forced upon them” (6). Hence, much of the play deals with
role-playing. Elisa is trained for a role of a lady in a flower shop, like an
actress; her father, Alfred Doolittle, becomes a performer and a lecturer for
Wannafeller Moral Reform World League; Henry Higgins lacks social manners and
is accordingly a bad actor in a play within a play... (7). The two major
characters through whose fates the message of the play is expressed are Alfred
Doolittle and his daughter, Eliza Doolittle. By the end of the play, both
achieve a new social role through two different means: Eliza through education
and Doolittle through money (8), as the following sketch of the events of the
play illustrates.
Tempted by Colonel Pickering’s financial
support, Henry Higgins, a celebrated phonetician, undertakes the responsibility
of changing Eliza Doolittle, a common flower girl, into a duchess within six
months in an ambassador’s party by teaching her proper English pronunciation.
Being interested only in his bet and in showing his talent to the world,
Higgins continually abuses Eliza while teaching her without taking into account
her feelings and future, in an attempt to get her ready to win the bet for him
in the ambassador’s party. In the same time, Higgins, for the sake of fun,
writes a letter to one American millionaire that Alfred Doolittle, Eliza’s
father, a poor dustman, is the most original moralist in
The first trying-out
of Eliza takes place at Mrs. Higgins’s at-home day, and it is successful
because nobody among the guests can identify her as Eliza the flower girl (9).
The real test, however, remains the one at the ambassador’s party. It is
similarly successful, and it is Eliza’s public debut in society (10). Though
she wins the bet for him, Higgins does not condescend to utter the slightest
word of congratulation to Eliza. On the contrary, he continues abusing her and
ordering her to fetch him his slippers, which will incite Eliza to revolt
against him as she makes sure that Higgins does not care for her.
In the same time,
Alfred Doolittle, who has inherited a bequest worth three thousand pounds a
year, comes to blame Higgins for having turned him into a gentleman, for he
likes his old status as a dustman, in which he was happy. In the same fashion,
Eliza reproaches Higgins for his having turned her into a good-for-nothing
lady, unable to earn even her living. The play ends with Eliza’s going to marry
Freddy. As for Doolittle, he is going to church to celebrate his wedding
ceremony as a middle-class man. Higgins, creator of all these transformations,
is quite satisfied with his achievement.
The end in Pygmalion echoes the one in
Ibsen’s A Doll’s House, with Nora slamming the door on Helmer. Like A Doll’s
House, Pygmalion, has no definite resolution (11). Maurice Valency sums up the
difference between the two plays in what follows:
“Ibsen framed his play along the lines of
conventional domestic drama, so that his final situation seemed both unusual
and shocking, Pygmalion, on the other hand, was based on a fairy tale... It is
difficult to imagine anything artistically more inept than a rationalistic
conclusion of the Cindrella story” (12).
Shaw, therefore, gives the most popular
fairy-tale story a quite rationalistic conclusion in order to emphasize the
invalidity of idle feelings and romantic thinking. In this fashion, Shaw brings
in the focus the inevitability and omnipresence of reason. For this reason,
Shaw reverses the Cindrella story and disappoints the audience’s expectation of
a happy marriage between Higgins and Eliza, and the reconciliation of the other
characters; by making Eliza refuse Higgins.
Such a reversal of happy ending of the
Cindrella story on the level of dramatic techniques is accompanied, on the
level of thought, by a reversal of the social conventions, beliefs, values and
ideals. This is best shown in Pygmalion through the continuous contrast between
the established order and the ideal order: Between the capitalist system
imposed on society with all its hypercritical, exploiting and class nature, and
the shavian order in which society, people, morality, social manners are
unified and seen as indivisible entities/realities.
In this respect, Bernard Shaw writes
that reality is the result of many factors that cannot be simplified but
considered as they are: Because simplification entails dividing facts into
positive and negative, deeds into right and wrong, people into heroes and
villains, society into high and low classes... (13). All such divisions aim at
stratifying society, and at giving authority to some class of people and
bestowing validity to their pretension to dignity (14), which will only
strenghthen the class reality.
By considering things as entities,
society will be classeless, not as a gathering of disparate classes; people
will be mere human beings, not as gentlemen and common men; women will be as
human as man; morality will be based on real humanity, not on right and wrong;
manners will be the same for all situations and with all people; speech will be
standardized and will no longer refer the speaker’s class or origin... It is in
such unification of social and moral concepts that the problem of “equality” in
Pygmalion finds his way towards solution.
Equality at the level
of social classes:
Shaw’s opening scene sets a group of
prolitarians -some timidly deferential, some sarcastically impolite- along with
an impoverished middle-class family with genteel pretensions, and two gentlemen
–all under a church portico (15). It is quite plain from such a class
distinction as it is revealed through Eliza’s actions that the society which
Bernard Shaw is dealing with is a class society. Eliza Doolittle is quite aware
of the class system and the class values and she exploits them to her own
interest by using flatters as a medium in order to win Pickreing’s and
Higgins’s favours and pity, and make them buy her flowers.
“... So cheer up,
Captain; and by a flower off a poor girl” (P.18).
“... By a flower, kind
gentlemen. I’m short for my lodging” (P.28).
Eliza avails herself of her low-class
situation and attracts customers and make them buy her flowers (16). She even
can make Mrs. Eynsford Hill pay for the flowers Freddy has spoilt, profitting
from the Eynsford Hills’ snobery and gentility.
Eliza is class-conscious. She
knows that lower-class girls talking with gentlemen are accused of
prostitution. That is the reason why Eliza reacts hysterically when she hears
that a police-informer is copying down her words (17).
“I’m a respectable girl: So help me, I never spoke to him except to ask
him to buy a flower off me” (PP. 19-20).
“... He’s no right to take away my character. My character is the same to me as
any lady’s” (P.26).
She reacts so because she
believes herself to belong to a class that cannot afford lawyers, and
–accordingly- she has to be loud and vigorous in her protestations of virtue
(18).
Louis Crompton considers vulgarity as, specifically, a class trait (19). Eliza
is vulgarly familiar with customers, vulgarly hysterical in fear of offence,
and vulgarly keen on calling people “gentlemen” and “lady” (20). Clara is
another example of vulgarity. She is even worse than Eliza (21). Clara is
suspicious and as quick to take offence as the flower-girl (22). She quickly
rebukes Higgins, who tries to localize her from her speech: “Don’t dare to
speak to me” (p.25). Vulgarity is a trait of the lower classes as opposed to
the formalities of the upper classes: Throughout the play, Mrs. Higgins, for
example, is shown to be self-controlled, phlegmatic, formal... etc.
The contrast between social
classes, however, is better revealed through Doollittle’s and Eliza’s journey
upward in the social hierarchy. In Mrs. Higgins’ at-home day, Eliza says:
“When
he [her father] was out of work (23), my mother used to give him four pence and
tell him to go out and not come back until he’d drunk himself cheerful and
loving-like. Theres lots of women has to make their husbands drunk to make them
fit to live with... If a man has a bit of conscience, it always takes him when
he is sober; and then it makes him low-spirited. A drop of booze just takes
that off and makes him happy” (P.77) (24).
Alfred Doolittle, in Act Two, comes for five-pound
note:
“I don’t eat less hearty than him [deserving man]; and I drink a lot
more. I want a bit of amusement... I want cheerfulness and a song and a band
when I feel low” (P.58).
He
continues:
“Don’t be afraid that I’ll save it and spare it [five-pound note] and live idle
on it. There wont be a penny of it left by Monday: I’ll have to work same as if
I never had it” (P.59).
Doolittle
refuses Higgins’s ten-pound note and takes only five pounds:
“Ten
pounds is a lot of money: It makes a man feel prudent-like; and then goodbye to
happiness” (P.59).
When Doolittle rises in the world, the values of the middle class are revealed
to us through his situation:
“I was happy. I was free. I touched pretty nigh everybody for money when
I wanted it, same as I touched you Enry Iggins. Now I am worrited... and
everybody thouches me for money... A year ago I hadnt a relative in the world
except two or three that wouldnt speak to me. Now Ive fifty... I have to live
for others not for myself” (P. 116).
He
continues:
“Happier men than me will call for my dust, and touch me for their tip:
and I’ll look on helpless, and envy them” (P.117).
As for Mrs. Doolittle, Eliza’s formerly-wicked step-mother, she has completely
changed with the rise of her social situation:
“She never comes to
words with any one now, poor woman! Respectability has broke all the spirit out
of her” (P.124).
From the contrast between these two
stages of Doolittle’s social status –first, as an undeserving poor; then, as a
middle-class man- society is disclosed as highly stratified to the extent that
Margery Morgan has been able to distinguish between two distinct values of two
disparate classes: The values of the under-privileged are characterized by
idleness, open-handedness, high spirits, festive eating and drinking,
happiness, freedom from care, hedonism and a form of serial polygamy; whereas
the values of capitalism are work, thrift, responsibility, abstinence,
respectability, prudence, puritanism and chaste monogamy (25).
Higgins himself is aware of the class system. Hence, when Eliza comes to his
laboratory to have lessons in phonetics, and offered to pay one shilling per
hour for learning English, Higgins accepts the cost as he draws a comparison
between the sum that Eliza offers to pay and that a millionaire can do:
“You
know, Pickering, if you consider a shilling, not as a simple shilling, but as a
percentage of this girl’s income, it works out as fully equivalent to sixty or
seventy guineas from a
millionaire” (P.39).
He continues:
“She
offers me two-fifths of her day’s income for a day would be somewhere about
£.60. It’s handsome. By George, it’s enormous! It’s the biggest offer I ever
had” (P.40).
By comparing Eliza’s offer to that of a
millionaire, Higgins alludes to the class nature of society. Yet, the most
important in that comparison is the fact the Higgins does not accept the offer
as Eliza offers it but as a millionaire would. The equation of Eliza to a
millionaire shows Higgins transcendence of the conventional thinking which
cannot grasp reality unless simplified. Higgins sees society as indivisible
whole, and need not divide it into classes. He believes that his job is
“filling the gap that separates class from class and soul from soul” (P.82).
Because “there are no third-class carriages, and one soul is as good as
another” (P.126).
Yet, out of the desire to unify
society, there grows a need to strike at poverty, being the heart of all social
splits and divisions. Shaw is influenced by Samuel Butler’s “poverty is the
worst of all crimes” (26). Following the same tradition, Shaw believes that
poverty is the source of all evils; and putting an end to evil means
abolishing, first and foremost, poverty. In this way, Bernard Shaw, by
presenting Alfred Doolittle as a blackmailer and as a man who sells his
daughter for the sake of drinking, aims as a socialist to abolish the poor as a
class from existence since such people are dangerous and contemptible (27).
Hence, the necessity of obliterating class distinctions for the sake of a
future class-less society.
For this purpose, Shaw believes
that individuals should take their proper places in the social hierarchy
regardless of the class into which they were born (28):
“For
Shaw caste is essentially a matter of character and ability, not of birth, so
that once the individual is cut free of the restrictions of class, he tends to
find his own level in the human hierarchy. Social mobility is indispensable to
the evolutionary process” (29)
In Pygmalion, in the light of
this citation, Eliza and her father are highly evolved individuals whose
potentialities would normally be stifled by the limitations of a rigidly social
environment (30). Eliza is emancipated by education, and Doolittle by money
(31). After her development, Eliza has given up her former vulgarity and
commonness and she has grown a typical petite bourgeoise (32) who is no longer
fit for “gutter” jobs, and who judges the world wholly in relation to herself
(33). That is, unlike Higgins’s interest in humanity and his scientific passion
for reform, Eliza Doolittle sees life and personal relations in commercial
terms, as Higgins observes (34). As for Doolittle, he joins the middle class
and is haunted with the care for respectability all the rest of his life (35).
Yet, Eliza and Doolittle show
disapproval of the change in their situation. Doolittle, in Act Five, comes to
blame Higgins : “It’s making a gentleman of me that I object to. Who asked him
to make a gentleman of me? I was happy. I was free” (P.116). In the same
fashion, Eliza rebukes Higgins for having changed her: “Why didnt you leave me
where you picked me out of? –in the gutter” (P.100). She continues lamenting:
“I sold flowers. I didnt sell myself. Now you’ve made a lady of me I’m not fit
to sell anything else. I wish you left me where you found me” (P103).
Eliza’s and Doolittle disapprobation
of the change of their situation shows that social mobility can be both
perilous and uncomfortable though it is indispensable to the evolution of
society (36). Yet, Shaw does not consider personal happiness as the end of
human existence (37). He believes that “we must not think about and concern
ourselves but lose ourselves in what is greater than and external to the self” (38).
This quotation is parroted by Higgins: “Eliza... think of other people’s
futures; but never think of your own” (P.45). Maurice Valency resumes this
philosophy as follows:
“The evolutionary principle involves
a constant displacement of individuals within the class structure. The result
is doubtless of benefit to the species, but it is not uniformly pleasant for
the individual” (39).
Evolution, therefore, is all that matters; and life continues its own
development indifferent to individual suffering (40). That is the reason why
Alfred Doolittle, who is ignorant of the “uiversal law ” feels “intimidated”
into evolution. Doolittle does not want to change his situation: “I’m
undeserving; and I mean to go on being undeserving. I like it; and thats the truth”
(P.58). In Pygmalion, Henry Higgins symbolizes Life (41): he identifies with
nobody; he is inhuman; and all his attention is focused on getting Eliza “out
of the gutter” and preparing her to win his “own” bet. Besides, Higgins is the
one who has changed both Eliza’s and Doolittle’s situation without checking
their consent.
Life, then, is aware of its purpose
and need not bother about the individual protests. It is perhaps for this
reason that Doolittle is dragged out of the lower classes. Doolittle as a
lower-class man, was spent-thrift, hedonist, drunkard, and he would beat his
wives. With the social mobility he has undergone, the slightest standards of
decency that Doolittle acquires is a positive gain (42) if we take into
consideration the immoral values he had.
By inserting Doolittle and Eliza
into the upper classes, the norms of social classes are violated and class
restrictions are shattered, and the classless society is clearer. It is on the
basis of this classless society that “equality” will be established. Shaw,
here, seems to have developed a gradualistic approach in advocating “equality”.
This is most evident in his stressing the importance of education and the
inevitability of establishing new social values as repudiation of the capitalist
values which are based on class distinctions.
EQUALITY AT THE LEVEL
OF SOCIAL VALUES:
In Pygmalion, George Bernard Shaw deals
with various aspects of the dominant social values under capitalism. His main
concern is to correct those values in such a fashion as to make them go with
the classless society and the “equality” he preaches in his philosophy. He
attacks the dominant capitalist values through exposing their conventional and
outdated role that reinforce the class system and the class restrictions laid
upon the individual. The first major theme which Shaw develops for this purpose
is the relationship between speech and class status (43).
Speech:
In the portico of
Eliza as native of
Lisson Grove,
Mrs. Eynsford Hill of Epson,
The bystander of Selsey,
The sarcastic bystander of Hoxton,
Alfred Doolittle as brought up in Hounslow...
Shaw even uses phonetic alphabet to
highlight this idea of “multi-accent”. In Act One, after Freddy throws her
flower-basket down when rushing out of the portico, Eliza shouts in her own
accent: “Nah then, Freddy: look wh’ y’ gowin, deah” (P.15). Shaw transcribes it
phonetically to clarify the idea of the relationship between speech and class
status though he is able to write Eliza’s words in normal spelling –probably as
the following: “Now then, Freddy; look where you are going, dear”.
Such an accent is likely to attract the attention of a phonetician in the size
of Henry Higgins, he remarks:
“A
woman who utters such depressing and disgusting sounds has no right to live.
Remember that you are a human being with a soul and the divine gift of
articulate speech: that your native language is the language of Shakespeare and
Milton and the Bible; and dont sit there crooning like a bilious pigeon”
(P.27).
Here, Higgins compares Eliza’s sounds with
those of Shakespeare and Milton in order to shock her into awareness of
“lower-class” accent. Later, Higgins even will undertake to teach Eliza proper
English pronunciation. It may sound queer that a low, common girl like Eliza
should talk like a lady; but Shaw’s aim is the estrangement of the girl from
class restrictions embodied here at the level of speech.
In this respect, Shaw, in his preface to
Pygmalion, applauds the new scientific approach to language by phoneticians
because it raises pronunciation above the intense self-consciousness and class
snobbery (44). Accordingly, Higgins teaches Eliza proper English pronunciation
in order to emancipate her of her class status. He tells his mother, Mrs.
Higgins: “she talks English almost as you talk French” (P.70). Even Nepommuck,
famous translator at the ambassador’s party, is cheated by Eliza’s speech owing
to the violation of the relationship between speech and class status. He
believes Eliza to be a Hungarian princess because she speaks English “too
perfectly. Can you show me any English woman who speaks English as it should be
spoken? Only foreigners who have been taught to speak it speak it well” (P.94).
By Eliza’s success in speaking in an
alien accent, the relationship between speech and class status is broken. The
main point here is that dialects have no intrinsic dramatic or social
significance and that the real basis of our reaction to anyone’s dialect is our
association of particular kind of speech with particular classes and particular
manners” (45). Shaw’s attempt to free the individual from class restrictions is
carried at the level of social manners.
Social manners:
In Pygmalion, manners are best
discussed and focused on at Mrs. Higgins’s at-home day, which starts with Mrs.
Higgins asking her son, Henry Higgins, out because he spoils her parties with
his lack of manners. This is Shown in action when the Hills have come: Higgins
does not shake hands with the guests or entertain them with a small talk.
Instead of answering Clara’s: “How do you do?”, he stares at her:
“Ive seen you before somewhere. I havent the ghost of a notionwhere; but
Ive heard your voice. [drearily] It doesnt matter. You better sit down” (P.70).
Higgins uses no form of politeness: no
“please”, no “would you mind setting down?”, nor any other form. He uses a
quasi-imperative word to show his lack of social manners and his inexperience
with societies. Higgins even leaves the guests and “goes to the central window,
through which, with his back to the company, he contemplates the river...”
(P.71).
Similarly, when Freddy comes in to
join the party, Higgins, instead of answering back Freddy’s greeting, says,
looking at Freddy “as if he were a pickpocket” (P.72): “I’ll take my oath Ive
met you before somewhere. Where was it?” (P.72). Then he “shakes Freddy’s hand
and almost slings him on to the ottoman” (P.72). Higgins comes from the window
and sits with the society and almost brutally says: “And now, what the devil
are we going to talk about until Eliza comes?” (P.72).
Having no small talks, he stars:
“You
see we’re all savages, more or less, we’re supposed to be civilized and
cultured –to know all about poetry and philosophy and art and science, and so
on; but how many of us know even the meaning of these names? [to Miss. Hill]
What do you know of poetry? [to Mrs. Hill] What do you know of science?
[indicating Freddy] What does he know of art or science or anything else? What
the devil do you imagine I know of philosophy” (P.73).
As the diction and the topic of the
citation indicate, Shaw’s Prometheus of phonetics is without manners (46).Yet,
he is neither a snob like Clara, nor a vulgar like Eliza, nor even a gentleman
like
As far as Eliza is concerned, when Mrs. Higgins asks her if it will rain, she
says:
“The shallow depression in the west of these islands is
likely to move slowly in an easterly direction. There are no indications of any
great change in the barometrical situation” (P.75).
Eliza is Higgins’s creation and
is, accordingly, his device to violate conventions, here, embodied in social
manners. So, in the quotation Eliza’s reciting the weather forecast gives two
scientific informations to be an answer for Mrs. Higgins’s conventional
question. Another instance of the violation of social manners is Eliza’s small
talk: she uses very formal language where the subject is quite low. That is,
she expresses gutter ideas in aristocratic diction (50). The third instance of
Eliza’s violation of social manners takes place when Freddy asks her if she
will walk across the park, to which she reacts instantly: “Walk! Not bloody
likely” (P.78). The violation here is due to Eliza’s use of a taboo word in so
decent a situation.
These instances of violation of
social manners cause some of the characters in Pygmalion to reconsider their
conception of social manners:
Clara
Hill:
It’s all a matter of habit. Theres no right or wrong in it. Nobody means
anything by it (P.79).
Manners, therefore, are in constant
change with habits, and there is no use judging them as good or bad, right or
wrong. Such a deduction is drawing nearer to Higgins’s motto in the play, which
forms the final definition of social manners. He tells Eliza in Act Five:
“The great secret,
Eliza, is not having bad 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” (P.126).
By unifying social manners and considering
them as reality, the relationship between manners and class status is already
dissolved. Yet, the issue of manners is continued at the level of social titles
and the care for appearance and behaviour like a lady or a gentleman. This
leads to a perusal of the concept of “lady” as a social title, in Pygmalion.
The concept of lady:
In Act Two, Mrs. Pearce introduces
Eliza to Higgins as “quite a common girl... Very common indeed” (P.36). Mrs.
Pearce very clearly judges common girls, as opposed to ladies, in terms of
clothes, speech and manners. Eliza agrees to this conception after her
transformation in Act Five:
“It was from you [Pickering] that I learnt really nice manners; and that
is what makes one a lady, isnt it?” (P.121)
Then, Eliza believes in the conventional
interpretation of “lady”, which stand for excelling in social manners. Yet, she
comes back to tell
“The difference between a lady and a flower girl is not how she behaves,
but how she is treated. I shall always be a flower girl to Professor Higgins,
because he always treats me as a flower girl, and always will; but I knew I can
be a lady to you, because you always treat me as a lady, and always will”
(P.122).
Here, Eliza shifts from the belief
that a lady equals her excellence at performing social manners to the belief
that a lady depends on the consideration which the others owe to her. This is a
positive turning-point in Eliza’s attitude towards the issue of “lady”, as a
social title.
On defending himself before Eliza’s
accusation of his ill-treatment of her as a lady, Higgins insists on the fact
that he treats duchess and flower- girl alike: “one soul is as good as an
other” (P.126), which is –as Martin Meisel observes- a radical attack on the
very concept of “lady”, on the social and economic structure it presupposes,
and is the dialectical destination of the play (50).
By introducing a common girl to the
upper-class society as a lady, Higgins violates the conventional distinction
between a lady and a flower girl. Hence, Eliza the lady speaks like a lady and
uses taboo words: “bloody”; comes from the lower classes: “the gutter”; loves a
low, common, foolish, young man: Freddy Hill; goes out to work for her living:
techer of phonetics.
Such a violation aims at abolishing the signs of class distinctions perpetuated
by the concept of “lady” or “gentleman”. Hence, the importance of looking at
people as they are (51), without any social connotation to load them with. The
relationship between man and woman is included here, and seriously emphasized.
* Gender relationship:
In Act Two, Doolittle comes to sell his daughter for the sake of “boozing”. He
even tries to convince Higgins to by Eliza from him: “I can see youre one of
the straight sort, Governor. Well, whats a five-pound note to you? And whats
Eliza to me?” (P.57). Eliza is as cheap to Doolittle as five-pound note is to
Higgins. Such a comparison clearly reveals the status of woman under the
patriarchal, hierarchical and capitalist society. Doolittle goes as far as to
advise
“Take my advice, Governor –marry Eliza while she is young and
dont know no better. If you dont youll sorry for it after. If you do, she’ll be
sorry for it after; but better her than you, because youre a man, and she is only
a woman and dont know to be happy anyhow” (P.60).
Doolittle is expressing his vision that
woman is inferior to man and, accordingly, her feelings and rights are
unimportant. He even tells Higgins: “If you want Eliza’s mind improved,
Governor, you do it yourself with a strap” (P.62). The inferiority of woman
here is reinforced with the Nietzscheistic logic –the logic of the strap.
Doolittle protests that he likes a little “ginger” in his life. For Doolittle,
“ginger” to his mind is the privilege of beating his female paramours and
changing them at will (52).
As for the relationship between
Higgins and Eliza, it supplies another model of gender relationship in the
play. It is a relationship between exploiter and exploited. Higgins takes
Eliza, tames her and teaches her proper English pronunciation just in order to
win his bet for him and show his talent to the world. To achieve his goal,
Higgins acts with the girl as if she were an object or a slave, careless of her
emotions and her future. Eliza wins him his bet, fetches him his slippers...
Yet, in reward, he abuses and insults her, calling her “Monkey Brand” (P.41)
“infamous creature” (P.104). “heartless guttersnipe” (P.105), “unfortunate
animal” (P.64).
The struggle between male and
female is highlighted in the play, with male characters like Doolittle and
Pickering siding with Higgins; and female characters like Mrs. Pearce and Mrs.
Higgins siding with Eliza. Accordingly, while Doolittle advises Higgins to
wallop Eliza in teaching her, and while Pickering supports Higgins financially
in order to prove his genius by transforming Eliza into a duchess, the females
in the persons of Mrs. Pearce and Mrs. Higgins reproach Pickering and Higgins
for playing with Eliza’s life. Mrs. Pearce tells Higgins: “... You cant take a
girl up like that as if you were picking up a pebble on the beach” (P.42). She
continues:
“Mr.
Higgins, I want to know on what terms the girl is to be here... And what is to
become of her when you have finished your teaching? You must look ahead a
little” (P.44).
Mrs. Pearce is urging Higgins to treat
Eliza as a human being, as an equal. Similarly, Mrs. Higgins wants Higgins to
tell her what will happen to Eliza after her education because Higgins is
teaching Eliza “the manners and habits that disqualify a fine lady from earning
her own living without giving her a fine lady’s income” (P.84). Mrs. Higgins
even shows her contempt of Henry and Pickering in their faces: “You have no
more sense, either of you, than two children” (P.113). Yet, the sex-antagonism
is better revealed when Higgins and Pickering leaves her flat by the end of Act
Three with Mrs. Higgins shouting: “Oh, men! men!! men!!!” (P.84).
Before all these gender conflicts,
Eliza finally throws slippers at her “master” as a revolt against Higgins’s
ill-treatment of her as well as against the patriarchal society which submits
Eliza to male authority, deprives her of her rights and wastes her potential
(53). She refuses the gender distinctions deepened in society. These
distinctions are shown in Pygmalion to be invalid. Hence, Freddy, as a man, is
shown to be incompetent and good-for-nothing (54). Even Eliza is shown to be
more practical and hard-working. She will marry Ferddy and work for him;
“Freddy loves me: that makes him king enough for me. I dont want him to work:
he wasnt brought up to it as I was. I’ll go and be a teacher” (P.131). She even
says: “Perhaps I could make something of him” (P.129), just like Higgins made a
lady of her.
In this way, man and woman are no
longer judged by their gender distinctions but as human beings. Throughout the
play, Eliza struggles to show Higgins that she is a human being, that she has
feelings, and that she needs kindness. She tells Higgins:
“I
want a little kindness... I’m not dirt under your feet” (P.130).
“I got my feelings same as anyone else” (P.45).
The
equality between man and woman advocated here is based on real humanity, not on
conventions, since it ignores the gender differences between the two sexes. It
is only through “equality” that the talents and energies of all people, of both
sexes, are utilized (55). Yet, conventional morality remains a wall before
evolution and “equality” , with its ready-made laws and good-evil
complications: a reinforcement of the dominant values.
Morality:
Morality in Pygmalion goes
hand-in-hand with the other issues concerned with Shaw’s social reform: speech,
manners, etc. Morality is shown to affect characters very much. Thus, in the portico,
in the opening scene, Eliza is afraid of the supposed police informer to charge
her with prostitution (56) because she is coaxing money out of a gentleman.
Accordingly, she reacts hysterically to save her honour: “I’m a respectable
girl: so help me, I never spoke to him except to ask him to buy a flower off
me” (PP.19-20).
Similarly, when Eliza goes to Higgins’ laboratory in Act One, she is determined
not to be cheated. She is suspicious of being drugged and seduced, as the
impetuous professor bullies and tempts her (57). She keeps saying: “I’m a good
girl, I am” in order to show Higgins that she is not a call-girl, but a
respectable one who comes on business: to have lessons and pay for them: “...
and if my money’s not good enough I can go else-where” (P.38). This is to show
that Eliza has honourable purposes, and that she cannot yield to -what she suspects- Higgins’s sexual
desire.
Alfred Doolittle first appears in
“All
I ask is my right as a father; and youre the last man alive to expect me to let
her go for nothing; for I can see youre one of the straight sort, Governor.
Well, whats a five-pound note to you? And whats Eliza to me?” (P.57).
Doolittle even continues that if he had
known Higgins’s intentions are not honourable , he would have asked Higgins for
fifty pounds.
After selling his daughter,
Doolittle does not only throw morality aside, but –what is more- he argues for
consideration as an undeserving poor man done out of his natural right to
happiness by the narrow-minded prejudices of middle-class morality (60).
Doolittle even clearly claims that he is victim of the morality that classifies
people into deserving and undeserving according to the moral value of their
deeds, and punishes Doolittle as undeserving because of his “immoral”
behaviour. Doolittle refuses such a distinction:
“My need is as great as
the most deserving widow’s... I dont need less than a deserving man: I need
more. I dont eat less hearty than him; and I drink a lot more” (P.58).
Doolittle even goes as far as to strike
at the foundation on which the dominant morality is based;
“Higgins: ... Doolittle: either youre an
honest man or a rogue.
Doolittle [tolerantly]: A little of both, Henry, like the rest of us; a little
of both” (P.117).
By being honest and dishonest at the same
time, Doolittle suggests the alternative morality and shatters away the
conventional duality (good/evil) on which ready-made moral judgements are
based. According to Shaw, morals cannot be simplified into right and wrong
deeds, but considered as one reality/entity (60). Thus, even in Shaw’s problem
plays, there is no conflict between good and evil, and the villain is as
conscientious as the hero; there are even no heroes or villains at all (61),
they are only human beings.
By dividing morals into good and
evil, hypocrits are given the life-time chance to enter public life pretending
dignity and virtue in order to win the consideration of the masses and exploit
them better (62). It is for this reason that Doolittle wonders: “What is
middle-class morality? Just an excuse for never giving me anything” (P.58).
Yet, through the process of evolution, Shaw predicts that the morality based on
virtue and evil will be repudiated by a morality based on real humanity (63). It
is only through such humanist morality that all mankind –men and women, rich
and poor- are considered as equal human being without the interference of any
moral prejudice to praise or despise them, for people are what they are.
CONCLUSION:
Pygmalion is a play about Class Society
and a class culture shown to be omnipresent in social values, human
relationships, language... The Shavian alternative has been to detach those
values and habits from their class connotations as a preliminary step towards
more individual freedom and wider prospects of social equality. In Pygmalion,
such a claim is echoed by the American millionaire Ezra D. Wannafeller’s desire
to found “Moral Reform Societies” all over the World and to have a “Universal”
language invented for him by Higgins, “author of Higgins’s Universal Alphabet”
(P.28). Therefore, reform for “equality” has not been only Shaw’s goal but also
his characters’.
It has in been made clear in this
present study that Shaw’s religion is Evolution,a will to which the individual
is a mere device to promote its own process of development. Yet, with that
individual rigidly succumbing under class restrictions, his talents and
capacities die down unprofitted. Only social equality can emancipate the
individual and set free his energies to contribute in furthering the process of
Evolution: his first and ultimate role in existence.
It is through Evolution that Equality
is achieved: Equality takes its shape through “gradualness”. Evolution and
Equality, in this study,are two faces of just one Shavian conception of
Existence: improving the human race.
END-NOTES:
1-
Samuel C. Chew and Richard D. Altick, “The Nineteenth Century and After”, In: Literary
History of England, ed. Albert C. Baugh (London: Routledge and kegan Paul, Vol.
IV, 1980), P.1522.
2-
Maurice Valency, Op. Cit., P.316.
3-
Ibid., P.317.
4-
Louis Crompton, Shaw the dramatist: A study of the Intellectual Background of
the Major Plays (London, George Allen and Unwin Ltd., 1971), P.148.
5-
Richard Hornby, Op. Cit., P.122.
6-
Ibid., P.126.
7-
Ibid., P.125.
8-
Maurice Valency, Op. Cit.,
P.324.
9-
Martin Meisel, Op. Cit., P.174.
10-
Ibid.
11-
Maurice Valency, Op. Cit., P.315.
12-
Ibid.
13-
George Bernard Shaw, “How to Become a Man of Genius”, P.346.
14-
Ibid.
15-
Louis Crompton, Op. Cit., P.142.
16-
Ibid.
17-
Ibid.
18-
Ibid.
19-
Ibid., P.143.
20-
Ibid., P.142.
21-
Ibid., P.143.
22-
Ibid.
23-
The Underlines used in this research are my own.
24-
All the quotes from the play are taken from Shaw’s Pygmalion (London: Penguin
Books Ltd., 1987).
25-
Margery Morgan, Op. Cit., P.60.
26- Samuel C. Chew, Op.
Cit., P.1522.
27- Louis Crompton, Op. Cit., P.146.
28-
Maurice Valency, Op. Cit., P.314.
29-
Ibid., P.318.
30-
Ibid., P.324.
31-
Ibid.
32-
Louis Crompton, Op. Cit., P.147.
33-
Ibid.
34-
Ibid.
35-
Maurice Valency, Op. Cit., P.324.
36-
Ibid.
37- Louis Crompton, Op.
Cit., P.146.
38-C.
E. M. Joad, Op. Cit., P.200.
39-
Maurice Valency, Op. Cit., P.324.
40-
Ibid.
41- Ibid.
42- Louis Crompton, Op.
Cit., P.146.
43- Maurice Valency, Op.
Cit., P.313.
44- Louis Crompton, Op. Cit., PP.141-142.
45-
Ibid., P.142.
46-
Ibid., P.144.
47-
Ibid.
48-
Ibid.
49-
Richard Hornby, Op. Cit., P.125.
50-
Martin Meisel, Op. Cit., P.176.
51-
Bernard Shaw, “How to Become a Man of Genius”, P.341.
52- Louis Crompton, Op.
Cit., PP.145-146.
53-
Harriet Kriegel, Op. Cit., PP.XXX-XXXI
54-
Margery Morgan, Op. Cit., P.72.
55-
Harriet Kriegel, Op. Cit., PP.XXX-XXXI
56- Louis Crompton, Op.
Cit., PP.142.
57-
Ibid., P.143.
58-
Ibid., P.145.
59-
Ibid.
60-
Bernard Shaw, “How to Become a Man of Genius”, P.346.
61-
Martin Meisel, Op. Cit., P.89.
62-
Bernard Shaw, “How to Become a Man of Genius”, P.344.
63-
Ibid., P.346
Primary Sources:
Shaw, George Bernard. Man &
Superman.
Shaw, George Bernard.Plays
Pleasant.
Shaw, George Bernard. Plays
Unpleasant.
Shaw, George Bernard.Major
Barbara
Shaw, George Bernard.Back To
Methusellah
Shaw, George Bernard.Androcles
& The Lion
Shaw, George Bernard. Pygmalion.
CONTENTS
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW: HIS CAREER
G.B.S, THEORIST OF CHANGE
SUPERMAN & THE
IDEAL ORDER
STYLISTICS OF SHAVIAN DRAMA
THE PROMETHEAN PASSION FOR IMPROVING THE RACE
(A STUDY OF THE PROBLEM OF
EQUALITY IN SHAW'S MASTER-PIECE, "PYGMALION" )
SHORT-STORY ANTHOLOGY WEBMASTER
CRITICISM CHRONICLES LINKS HOMEPAGE ONOMASTICS FRANCAIS ARABIC
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
e-mail: mohamed_said_raihani@yahoo.com
<title>http://raihani.free.fr/englishversion-criticism-index.htm</title>
<meta
name="description" content="said raihani’s web site, a free
space for free and serious research in fields of drama, literary criticism,
George Bernard Shaw, Shavian drama and arts">
<meta
name="keywords" content="plays, theatre, theater, drama,
criticism, George Bernard Shaw">