Pygmalion

Dr. Jennifer Fletcher

HCOM 429

George Bernard Shaw

• Born in Dublin from Protestant Irish gentry

• Father was impractical, unsuccessful merchant with drinking problem

• Worked as clerk at 16; self-educated

• Moved to London with mother and sisters to London when parents’ marriage failed

• Leading member of Fabian Society, a middle-class socialist group

• 1898 married heiress Charlotte Payne-Townshend

• Won 1925 Nobel Prize in literature

Shaw’s Literary Career• Considered the most significant British dramatist since

Shakespeare

• Most insightful writer of political pamphlets since Jonathan Swift

• Most readable music critic and best theater critic of his generation

• Style is often anti-romantic and humorous

• Dramas combine moral passion and intellectual conflict

• Plays revive comedy of manners

• Themes express interest in love, class, and the exploutation of one human being by another

A Functional View

“Social roles are combinable, and the individual, as a member of society, occupies not just one role but many at a time, always through the medium of language […]”

--M.A.K. Halliday

Functional Linguistics and a Continuum of Selves

“Shaw’s work takes the concern of with the external sociological self, common to much nineteenth-century literature, and merges it with other elements of selfhood [e.g., psychological, linguistic, and philosophical], with the interior selves that concerned Modernists and the multiple selves emphasized in postmodern views”

--from “Pygmalion as Narrative Bridge Between the Centuries” by Vicki R. Kennell

Literature and the Social Order

Letter to Henry James dated 17 January 1909:

"I, as a Socialist, have had to preach, as much as anyone, the enormous power of the environment. We can change it; we must change it; there is absolutely no other sense in life than the task of changing it. What is the use of writing plays, what is the use of writing anything, if there is not a will which finally moulds chaos itself into a race of gods."

Pygmalion

• Critiques assumptions regarding linguistic and social stability

• Frustrates expectations of archetypal transformation stories– Ovid (male creator and supernatural power

produce ideal, compliant female)– Cinderella– The Taming of the Shrew

MRS. HIGGINS

[dismayed] Henry [scolding him]! What are you doing here to-day? It is my at-home day: you promised not to come. [As he bends to kiss her, she takes his hat off, and presents it to him].

HIGGINS

Oh bother! [He throws the hat down on the table].

MRS. HIGGINS

Go home at once.

HIGGINS

[kissing her] I know, mother. I came on purpose.

MRS. HIGGINS

But you mustnt. I'm serious, Henry. You offend all my friends: they stop coming whenever they meet you.

HIGGINS

Nonsense! I know I have no small talk; but people dont mind. [He sits on the settee].

MRS. HIGGINS

Oh! dont they? Small talk indeed! What about your large talk? Really, dear, you mustnt stay.

HIGGINS

Well, it's like this. Shes a common flower girl. I picked her off the kerbstone.

MRS. HIGGINS

And invited her to my at-home!

HIGGINS

[rising and coming to her to coax her] Oh, thatll be all right. Ive taught her to speak properly; and she has strict orders as to her behavior. Shes to keep to two subjects: the weather and everybody's health--Fine day and How do you do, you know--and not to let herself go on things in general. That will be safe.

MRS. HIGGINS

Safe! To talk about our health! about our insides! perhaps about our outsides! How could you be so silly, Henry?

HIGGINS

[impatiently] Well, she must talk about something. [He controls himself and sits down again]. Oh, she'll be all right: dont you fuss. Pickering is in it with me. Ive a sort of bet on that I'll pass her off as a duchess in six months. I started on her some months ago; and shes getting on like a house on fire. I shall win my bet. She has a quick ear; and shes been easier to teach than my middle-class pupils because shes had to learn a complete new language. She talks English almost as you talk French.