Higgins And Eliza example essay topic

Bernard ShawPygmalionA Romance in Five Acts 1. Summary of the Play, page 22. Introduction and Short Analysis of the Main Character, page 43. Interpretation, page 54. Additional Information, page 75. Literature and Links, page 81.

Summary London at 11.15 a. m., on a rainy summer day. Everybody^aEURTMs running for shelter because of the torrential storm. A bunch of people ist gathering in St. Pauls church, looking outside and waiting for the rain to stop. Among the crowd, there is a young flower girl which grew up in the slums of London and therefore has a terribly bad language, although she is a good-natured, simple and pure being.

She is carrying a basket with flowers. As there is nothing else to do while waiting for the rain to end, she asks a gentleman next to her to buy a flower. The way she speaks attracts the attention of a bystander, who is constantly scribbling down something in his notebook. The flower girl first thinks that he is a police officer and begins to defend herself that she didn^aEURTMt do anything wrong, but it soon becomes clear that the bystander isn^aEURTMt a policeman at all, but a professor of didactics, an analyst of dialects, specialised in London^aEURTMs suburb al accents. He is so fascinated of the absolutely disgusting slang of the flower girl, that he has taken down all the expressions she used. He explains to the crowd, that he has no bad intention at all.

He is just a collector of dialects. Home again, Eliza (the flower girl) thinks about what this strange man just said, and she takes a decision. She looks around in her miserable room, and it^aEURTMs clear to her that something has to change. At the same time in the house of Henry Higgins, the phonetician. He is visited by Pickering, whom he met at St. Paul^aEURTMs church.

While they are talking, the maid is coming in, saying that a girl named Eliza Doolittle is waiting at the door. Not knowing the name of the flower girl, Higgins invites her in. When he recognizes the flower girl, he is very surprised. She confronts him with an offer: she wants to pay him (with nearly all she^aEURTMs got, and that^aEURTMs not much), and he in return should teach her how to speak like a lady. Her dream is to work in a flower shop, but at present she surely won^aEURTMt be accepted and employed because of her bad language. At first, Higgins rejects the offer.

He can see no use in it for him. But then, he and Pickering, who are both huge fans of didactical experiments, make up a bet: can he manage to turn Eliza into a real lady within 6 months, including her language, but also her manners and conversation skills, so she can be introduced to the public as a lady? So he lets Eliza live with him (he^aEURTMs quite rich, an he has a big house), and he buys her clothes. And the most important thing: he teaches her how to's peach proper English. As for the manners, it is Pickering who shows Eliza how to behave like a lady (as Higgins cannot).

For Eliza, this is very hard in the beginning, but after a while she^aEURTMs getting along pretty well, and she is improving fast. After some time, they are visited by Eliza^aEURTMs father, who is an unreliable, greedy alcoholic (and has never cared for her anyway). He is theoretically the only family Eliza would have, but she always had to look for herself. He insists on taking her with him, but it soon turns out, that he only wants money, having heard that the gentleman who me Eliza is living with at the time is quite rich.

Higgins freezes him out. A few months later Eliza faces her first test: Higgins introduces her to his mother. Unfortunately, his mother is already expecting visitors, and Eliza is getting more and more nervous because there are so many people. At the end, she rushes out, and Higgins must agree that she is not quite ready. At the end of the six months, he finally lets her accompany him to the ambassador^aEURTMs ball.

Everyone who passes her way looks at her in amazement, for she is now due to be a queen. She is not a flower girl any more, but a princess. She manages to impress everybody she meets this evening, including Freddy, a young man she met in the beginning of the book, but who hadn^aEURTMt taken any notice of her because she had been only a flower girl. Now he falls in love with her. Later, at Higgins^aeurtms house: Eliza has an argument with Higgins because he treats her very bad; he didn^aEURTMt even thank her for winning his bet for him, but acts as if he had done this transformation of Eliza on his own. They both get very angry, and finally Eliza rushes out of the room.

Trembling with fury, she leaves the house. Outside, she meets Freddy, who asks her to marry him. She doesn^aEURTMt take a decision yet, but she accompanies him, and they take a walk. The next day, she visits Mrs. Higgins, Henry^aEURTMs mother. She tells her about her problems with Higgins, and Mrs. Higgins, who knows her son^aEURTMs character only too well, let Eliza stay with her. Meanwhile, Higgins and Pickering are searching for Eliza, because they don^aEURTMt know where she could have gone.

Finally, Higgins visits his mother and meets Eliza there. They talk about what is going to become of Eliza, and they talk about their relationship. They both know that it wouldn^aEURTMt work out, and Eliza finally tells Higgins that she is going to marry Freddy. But the attentive reader has of course noticed that Higgins and Eliza are bound one to another by some sort of love-hate relationship, and that they will continue to spend their time together quarreling about no matter what. 2. Introduction and Short Analysis of the Main Character Henry Higgins He is a middle-aged professor of phonetics and a confirmed bachelor.

Besides his own research on language he teaches the newly rich to speak correctly so that they can increase their social prestige. As a scholar he is brilliant and can tell where people come from simply by the way they speak. He loves his work and lives for nothing else. Professor Higgins is seen throughout Pygmalion as a very rude man. While one may expect a well educated man, such as Higgins, to be a gentleman, he is far from it. Higgins believes that how you treat somebody is not important, as long as you treat everyone equally.

He is so self-centred that he always says what he thinks without considering other people^A's feelings. Furthermore, he cannot even understand why anyone should be offended. Nevertheless he is surprised at people^A's reaction and says that he never intended to hurt their feelings. Both Mrs Pearce and Mrs Higgins warn Higgins that he is behaving badly towards Eliza, but he is so insensitive that he doesn^aEUR~t even understand the problem. When he is asked what is to become of her after the experiment, he suggests that they can just throw her back into the gutter. When he is in 'one of those states' (as Mrs. Pearce, his house maid, would say) his manner is the same towards everyone; he is equally rude and disrespectful to everybody.

But when minding his manners, as he does at parties, he can be a gentleman. But he never treats Eliza properly. When she confronts him with his manners towards her, he replies: ^aEURzThe question is not whether I treat you rudely, but whether you ever heard me treat anyone else better. ^aEURoe Eliza doesn^aEURTMt answer, but it is clear that Higgins has treated others better than Eliza. Higgins can never see the 'new' Eliza.

He only sees the dirty flower girl that has become his experiment. Higgins can^aEUR~t imagine Eliza as a lady or duchess. For Higgins knows where she came from and it is difficult for him to throw away his first impression of her. Higgins only appears to be interested in other human beings if he can make use of them for his phonetics experiments. He does not want to help Eliza improve her life, he only wants to show off his own skills, to show how much he can do with such unpromising material. After he has won the bet his behaviour towards Eliza is shameful.

He not only fails to thank her, but completely ignores her and takes all the credits for himself. He doesn^aEUR~t realise how hard she has worked. This is clearly visible in this text extract: Eliza: ^aeuroe^aEURTMve won your bet for you, haven^aEURTMt I? That^aEURTMs enough for you. I don^aEURTMt matter, I suppose. ^ar triumphant society appearance at the Ambassador's ball, she has lost this element of ^aEURzcrudity^aEURoe.

She has benefited from Higgins's lessons and has acquired the ability to articulate her thoughts and feelings. She has begun to think for herself and is capable of manipulating any situation to her advantage. The play enters into the third phase of development in Act Four. Eliza now experiences the great moment of truth and reality of her situation. Her education has created in her an intense dissatisfaction with the old way of life and she is not pleased about the future which lays before her as a lady. She realizes that her social skills do not enable her to fulfill her dreams or even earn a living.

Now that she has been made a lady she isn't fit to sell anything. She has thrown away her mask and shows a new maturity. She throws Higgins's slippers at him and with this breaks free from a life of dependence. Eliza's society appearance has been a tremendous success and after the climatic argument between Higgins and Eliza in Act Four the dramatic tension disappears. Eliza runs away to Mrs. Higgins and the only issue left is the resolution of her relationship with Higgins.

Eliza has developed into a self-sufficient woman and has become a perfect match for Higgins. She has gained the strength of character and maturity of thought to face life. No longer afraid of Higgins, she treats him as an equal. She negates his role in her transformation and insists that it was the Colonel's generosity and courteous behaviour which truly made her a lady. She rejects Higgins' proposal that he, she and Pickering live together like old bachelor friends and surprises him by announcing that she will marry Freddy instead. Higgins is nevertheless happy that Eliza is no longer a whining helpless creature but a tower of strength and a woman at last.

The play concludes on an uncertain note which leaves the reader wondering. Shaw, realizing the importance of an ending, provides a possible resolution in the epilogue. In the epilogue, Shaw resolves the issue by making Eliza marry Freddy Hill. It is typical of Shaw to make up such an anti-romantic conclusion to the play. Many commentators accuse Shaw of changing the natural end of Pygmalion just to make the play unromantic. But the actual point of the ending is not the issue of Eliza's marriage but her achievement of liberty.

On the title page of Pygmalion, George Bernard Shaw describes the play as 'A Romance in Five Acts'. During the play, the reader might think (or hope) that the heroine and hero of Pygmalion will end up romantically together. In fact, a complaint about Shaw's play is that, though he calls it a romance, the protagonists do not fall in love during the course of the play. Shaw says to this: ^aEURzUnless Freddy is biologically repulsive to her, and Higgins biologically attractive to a degree that overwhelms all her other instincts, she will, if she marries eat her of them, marry Freddy. ^aEURoe After a closer look (and after consulting Shaw^aEURTMs own comments), it is plain to see why the main characters do not end up together. Henry Higgins is not only unfit to marry the poor flower girl he turned into a princess, he is unfit to marry anyone at all. A major reason why Higgins will never marry is that he does not have the need to marry.

Higgins finds his ideal of a perfect woman in his mother. Shaw gives the impression that she is a woman of good taste who manages to be in style. As an image of hostility, Mrs. Higgins is polite and charming. Mrs. Higgins is aware that her son is not perfect, and she is thoughtful about others. But perhaps the best reason why Higgins will not marry is that marriage (sharing one's soul with a life partner) goes against his personality and almost all that he stands for. His stubborn independence keeps him from wanting a partner for life.

His mother, his secretary, and Eliza assist him in anything that he needs and he does not have to take responsibilities, if he does not choose to. When Eliza argues with him that he never treated her well, he answers that her problem is not that he does not treat a flower girl as if she was a duchess, it is that he 'treat [s] a duchess as if she was a flower girl'. This is typical for Higgins' behaviour; he doesn^aEUR~t flatter and doesn^aEUR~t wish to be flattered; his idea of a gallant compliment is the plain truth. (It is doubtful how well Higgins would have survived in the Middle Age, the time of chivalry.) The particular complaint of most readers of Pygmalion is that Higgins did not marry Eliza.

Shaw explains this in his epilogue by taking a look at the personalities of both and the roles that they have to each other. Higgins and Eliza are both strong-willed independent people. Eliza's ideal man is one who shows his love for her and, in some way, worships her. The main reason why she is attracted to Freddy is that he is in love with her and he acts as though he could not live without her. Higgins seems to dislike this type of man. Even if he was attracted to Eliza, he would never adore her the way Freddy does.

This somehow hurts Eliza's pride. At first, she wrongly believes that if she does things for Higgins, such as carrying his slippers to him, he will love her. But when she finally stands up to him, he tells her that this is 'better than snivelling; better than fetching slippers and finding spectacles' and that he likes her more when she speaks her mind. 4. Additional Information Author^aEURTMs Biography George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) was born on the 26th of July, 1856, in Dublin.

His father, George Carr Shaw, had been a civil servant and retired before Bernard was born. He became a corn merchant but was unsuccessful. Shaw's mother, Lucinda Elizabeth Shaw, the daughter of an Irish landowner, was much younger than her husband. The Shaw were Protestants. Shaw had an unhappy childhood. By the time he was fifteen his parents' marriage broke up.

His mother left her husband and went off to England with her two daughters. Shaw's father appears to have been a weak man who drowned his sorrow in alcohol. Shaw left school and worked as a clerk and cashier for a firm of land agents for nearly four and a half years. During this period Shaw read and frequented the theatre. He saw every new play and was especially interested in Shakespeare. Shaw also loved music.

His father played the trombone and his mother was an excellent singer. His elder sister, Lucy, was an opera singer. In 1876, after the death of his sister Agnes, Shaw left Ireland and joined his mother and Lucy in London with the intention of becoming a musician or a painter. He did a variety of odd jobs in his early years in London. He wrote a series of articles as a music critic under the name of Lee in a weekly paper. He also worked for a couple of years in the Edison and Bell Telephone Company and left in 1880 when the company was absorbed by another.

He then gave up 'working for his living' and decided to establish himself as a writer. During these years Shaw was financially dependent on his mother. Shaw started writing articles on various subjects but they were rejected by the magazines and newspapers he sent them to. He then decided to become a novelist and wrote a novel but could not find a publisher for it... During these early years of his stay in London, Shaw became interested in socialism. He was immensely influenced by the alarming rise in unemployment and general social distress.

Shaw became a socialist in 1882. His plays often contained a political undertone or social criticism. The first decade of 20th century was Shaw's golden period as a dramatist. Pygmalion was published in 1916 and is one of Shaw's most popular plays. Although he was averse to writing for films, he agreed to prepare a script for the filming of Pygmalion which was completed in 1938 and had a successful reception.

A musical version of Pygmalion called ^aEURzMy Fair Lady^aEURoe was produced in 1956, starring Rex Harrison and Julie Andrews. It was later made into the well-known film by the same name that won an Academy Award. Shaw died at the age of ninety-five in the year 1950. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1925, which he first refused and afterwards accepted. Pygmalion ^aEUR" The Myth Pygmalion has its name from the famous story in Ovid's Metamorphoses, in which Pygmalion, who doesn^aEURTMt like women, decides to live alone and unmarried. He creates a beautiful statue more perfect than any living woman.

The more he looks upon her, the more he falls in love with her, until he wishes that she were more than a statue. This statue is Galatea. Lovesick, Pygmalion goes to the temple of the goddess Venus and prays that she brings the statue alive; Venus is touched by his love and brings Galatea to life. Personal Impression To me, it was a good book. I enjoyed reading it very much because of it^aEURTMs sarcastic wit.

It^aEURTMs also quite easy to read, and you never get bored. I read it at one go, it^aEURTMs not too long and very fluent. What I personally don^aEURTMt like about the play is that the transformation of Eliza works out a little bit too well. I simply can^aEURTMt imagine a person changing her whole character and thinking within six months. Dressing her up like a queen seems to be a rational aim, but changing her way of being, and in such a short time... in my opinion this is quite unrealistic.

But apart from that I really enjoyed the book. 5. Sources of Information Shaw, Bernard, Pygmalion, Philipp Re clam Jun. GmbH & Co., Stuttgart (1990) web, 05.06. 2005 web Literature / shaw /Pygmalion. html, 02.05. 2005 web 05.06.

2005.