TITLE of PYGMALION

The Story of Pygmalion is of an eminent professor who undertakes, for a bet with Colonel Pickering, a student of Indian dialects to tech a flower girl from Covent Garden the received pronunciation of Standard English and passes her off as a Duchess at an ambassador’s garden party. 

The title of the play however suggests that more is involved than winning of a wager. The story of Pygmalion is told as the 9^th story of the tenth Book of Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Shaw took his title from the ancient Greek legend of the famous sculptor named Pygmalion, who lived on the island of Cyprus noted for its worship of Venus, the goddess of love. He was disgusted by the behavior of the women of Amathus and as a result, resolved never to marry but to devote himself to his art. He became so proficient a sculptor that he made a statue of a woman so beautiful and fell in love with it. At his prayer, the goddess Venus transformed the statue into a live woman called Galatea, whom he then married. 

Shaw uses a classical title to remind his audience that he is a dramatist in the classical tradition and that he is investing into the parameters of a myth a “play of ideas”. Shaw proclaims in his Preface that – “I wish to boast that Pygmalion has been an extremely successful play all over Europe and North America as well as at home. It is so intensely and deliberately didactic, and its subject is esteemed so dry, that I delight in throwing it at the heads of the wiseacres who repeat the parrot cry that art should never be didactic…”

Shaw never ceased to be a dramatist even when writing his prefaces and essays. In this preface, he dramatically displays a practical truth – the play is didactic. But it also deals with an important question of human institution contained in class structures. The most visible and distinguishing marks in the England of the nineteenth century were speech and accent. 

The very first appearance of Higgins proves the audience that he is a true artist of phonetics, the Pygmalion of the play who is confident in his abilities. It is revealed when he declares to Pickering – “in three months I could pass that girl off as a duchess at an ambassador’s party.” Like Pygmalion, Higgins is a confirmed bachelor. He is condescending and patronizing in his attitude towards women. He seems incapable of a relationship with women and is quite content with stating that the only woman he could love was a woman as much like his mother possible – “Oh, I can’t be bothered with young women. My idea of a lovable woman is somebody as like you as possible. I shall never get into the way of seriously liking young woman: some habits lie too deep to be changed. Besides, they’re all idiots.”

Higgins also draws similarity with the Greek hero Pygmalion, who makes a statue of an ideally beautiful woman by training Eliza to the point where she talks and behaves like a beautiful automaton. Higgins like Pygmalion in his view of women cynical and derogatory says – “I find that the moment I let a woman make friends with me, she becomes jealous, exacting, suspicious, and a damned nuisance.” And where as in the myth, Pygmalion carved something beautiful out of raw stone and gave it life, Shaw’s Higgins takes a “guttersnipe”, a “squashed cabbage leaf” up out of the slums and makes her into an exquisite work of art. In the legend Pygmalion falls in love with his statue, pays court to it, showers it with gifts and dresses it in robes and jewels. On the other hand, Higgins cajoles Eliza with deceitful promises, gives her chocolates, buys her clothes, gives her a ring and hires jewels for her to wear. 

Soon after Eliza passes as a duchess in the London Embassy, Higgins makes it possible for the poor ignorant flower-girl after a few months to go among cultured and aristocratic people without anyone detecting or suspecting that she was born into a different social class. When Higgins first met the girl, her mind and emotions were so undeveloped that she was little more than a statue, but even though Higgins ignored her feelings, he nevertheless made the statue alive. However, the statue comes to life as Eliza becomes a real lady and asserts her independence of her teacher. Higgins rakes no interest in Eliza as a living woman but is concerned with her only as a human talking-machine. 

Although in the Greek story, Pygmalion marries his ideal beauty, Higgins evades marrying Eliza. This is no more than a professional experiment to Higgins, who takes no interest in Eliza as a living woman, which is revealed by Eliza herself – “I shall always be a flower girl to Professor Higgins, because he always treats me as a flower girl, and always will…” She knows, Higgins does not care a bit for her and thus claims her independence from his clutches – “I won’t care for anybody that doesn’t care for me”

In the popular film version and in the even more popular musical comedy version (My Fair Lady), the ending allows the audience to see a romantic love interest that blends in with the ancient myth. This, however, is a sentimentalized version of Shaw’s play. Shaw provided no such tender affection to blossom between professor and pupil.