The Flower Girl [Eliza]: Theres menners f’yer! Ta-oo banches o voylets trod into the mad.
Mrs Higgins’ ‘At Home day’ causes the audience, once again to see the Eynsford-Hills as humorous characters because of the way they stick rigidly to the etiquette that matches their social class position. The restricted topics of conversation such as health and weather makes the audience laugh because of the ridiculous restrictively of the conversation. The number of times ‘how do you?’ is said during the same scene is also humorous because it sounds so pathetic and ridiculous. Henry Higgins is also an object of humour due to the way in which he can’t understand how to behave in polite middle class society and hence the mistakes he makes also makes the audience see him as a comical character.
The central storyline of the play is based around Professor Higgins and Colonel Pickering transforming Eliza, a common flower girl, into a graceful lady such as “a duchess” by changing the way she speaks. In Pygmalion Shaw criticizes the way in which we are judged on purely superficial things, such as the way one speaks. Shaw uses Eliza’s change in speech to depict this. Once Eliza has been giving speech lessons she is taken to a ball where people are fooled by her appearance and speech into thinking that she is “of royal blood”. Shaw criticises the way we judge people’s appearances by .......
Pygmalion can be described as a satirical play as Shaw makes the characters in the play, and their attitudes, laughable in order that something is done to improve the situation; this can involve exaggerating characteristics or creating an unbelievable situation. Shaw criticises different aspects of society through satire, for example the different social classes, the way that we are judged by the way we talk i.e. our accent and the way that people judge others just on their appearance and change their opinions accordingly. The existence of different social classes is depicted by showing the reader how ridiculous and out of touch the world the upper classes are. This is particularly evident in Act 3 at Mrs Higgins’s ‘at-home day’ in the way that the Eynsford-Hills behave. An example where Shaw criticises different aspects of society through satire by showing that people judge others just on their appearance and change their opinions accordingly, is the difference between the way middle class people see Eliza before, as a common flower girl, and after her ‘makeover’ during a ball in London. The Eynsford-Hills, Clara in particular, look down on Eliza in Act 1 because they see her as a common, badly dressed and spoken, flower girl. When Eliza is beautifully dressed and perfectly spoken, however, the rich, upper class guests believe she is ‘of royal blood’ and there so there is no question that she isn’t worthy of being at the Embassy ball. It is the contrast between the way people treat Eliza in Act 1 compared to Act 3, after Eliza’s makeover that Shaw uses to highlight to the reader how superficial we can be.
Pygmalion belongs to the genre called a ‘comedy of manners’. This is the term used that makes the audience laugh at social behaviour. This is most apparent in Act 3 in the ‘At Home’ scene at Mrs Higgins’. This queer middle class activity is comical to today’s audience as the narrow conversation and the attendee’s attitudes are so bizarre to today’s audience. The narrow conversation is explained by Henry Higgins, “ She’s [Eliza] to keep to two subjects: the weather and everybody’s health’. This is amusing to today’s audience as today we talk about supposedly private things to one another and therefore this narrow conversation is incomprehensible.
Shaw is famous for his paradoxes and Pygmalion is no exception. A paradox can be defined as where the reverse of an expected situation or idea is presented, often humourlessly. Shaw uses Eliza’s father, Alfred Doolittle, to make the reader think about unusual ideas by presenting them as jokes.
Pygmalion was first performed to an audience in 1912, in Germany and then in London in 1914. The audience’s reaction to the play and the themes in the play would have been different in 1912/4 compared to nowadays, due to the ways in which ways of life have changed. Therefore what modern day audiences would think of as humorous in the play, the 1912/4 audience wouldn’t have thought so, and vice versa. For example the audience in 1912/4 wouldn’t have found the restricted conversation at Mrs Higgins’ ‘At Home day’ amusing, whilst we, as a modern day audience, do find it amusing as we are not used to this way of life and the different sorts of etiquette. Although the themes such as the social class system are not as defined in modern day society however certain accents are still discriminated against, in today’s society, and Received Pronunciation is still seen as the preferred way and the educated way of speaking. I feel that Pygmalion is still effective in presenting Shaw’s ideas even though it is over 90 years old.
