Assignment: Pygmalion Name:
Click here to open a copy of Pygmalion. You may also find your own copy if you prefer.
Read through all of these questions so that you can gather the information as you read.
1. Who is the author of this version of Pygmalion?
2. Complete some research about this author and briefly describe the time period this author experienced. In your description be sure to include ideas about the culture and history of the time.
3. Create a list of 3 of the main characters. For each character give a brief description of who they are and their importance to the story.
4. Describe 2 conflicts that occur within the story.
5. As your read, think about what the author’s feelings are about his time? Explain with evidence from 1 part of the story.
6. What do you think the authors feelings are about the social classes? Explain with evidence from 1 part of the story.
7. What is the transformation that occurs (HINT: it’s much more than just her ‘learn’n to speak proper’.)
Assignment: Pygmalion Name:
Click here to open a copy of Pygmalion. You may also find your own copy if you prefer.
Read through all of these questions so that you can gather the information as you read.
1. Who is the author of this version of Pygmalion?
George Bernard Shaw
2. Complete some research about this author and briefly describe the time period this author experienced. In your description be sure to include ideas about the culture and history of the time.
Bernard Shaw experienced a time where the English Society was seeking to transform itself through culture. The transformation primarily ensured a spread of socialism through peaceful means. Shaw actually founded the Fabian Society that was a political organization that focussed on transforming Britain into a socialist state through systematic progressive legislation reinforced by persuasion and mass education.
3. Create a list of 3 of the main characters. For each character give a brief description of who they are and their importance to the story.
i) Professor Henry Higgins who was a Phonetics Professor that plays Pygmalion to Eliza Doolittle’s Galatea. Being the author of Higgins Universal alphabet, he believes in concepts such as visible speech and utilized all types of recording and photographic material for documenting the phonetic subjects and reducing people and their respective dialects into readily understandable units.
ii) Mrs Higgins is a gracious member of the upper class. She does have affection for Higgins but the feelings do not hinder her from being irritated by her lack of manners hence being adept to put him in his place. She is intelligent and perceptive to even discern the challenges that her son’s experiment will bring forth to Eliza and sympathizes with her.
iii) Eliza Doolittkle who is the uneducated uncouth “guttersnipe”: whom Higgins chooses to mold into a duchess. She undergoes the transformation to become an independent woman which explains why Higgins started to see Eliza as an individual that is worthy of admiration.
4. Describe 2 conflicts that occur within the story.
The first conflict explored is class conflict specifically between an ideology believing in class attributes that are in-born and Higgins believes that he can teach and nurture those attributes onto Eliza. Eliza did transform into a person that learned to speak and act like higher class women to demonstrate how one class is considered to be naturally higher than others.
The second conflict is on class values when Eliza’s father comes into money, he gets a shift in the expectations put on him. While he had adapted into the set of values that did not expect him to marry nor take responsibility for other people, the minute he had money he was not expected to marry his partner and help the poorer relatives while looking and behaving as per the middle class norms.
5. As you read, think about what the author’s feelings are about his time? Explain with evidence from 1 part of the story.
Shaw, the author, was a socialist who believed in society being made by the cooperative efforts of all people hence he worked with his socialist society to spread socialism in the community. Social hierarchy is an unavoidable reality in Britain as it plays out in this socialist playwright. The author included members of all social classes from lowest class such as Liza to the servant class such as Mrs Pearceto the middle class synch as Doolittle and the upper class including Pickering and the Higginses. This showed how class structures were inflexible and not tampered with.
6. What do you think the author’s feelings are about the social classes? Explain with evidence from 1 part of the story.
The author did feel that these social classes need not exist as they divided the society through language, education and wealth. He tried to bridge the gap between the social classes by trying to groom Eliza to fit into a higher class which is highly educated and speaks coherently. While he would want to remove these social classes, he finally understood that the society is not simply defined by either rich and poor but the existence of smaller less obvious distinctions that made a person to belong to a particular class.
7. What is the transformation that occurs (HINT: it’s much more than just her ‘learn’n to speak proper’.)
The understanding that societal change can and should start from an individual spiritual level such that change could be affected with words and not weapons. The playwright allowed an observation of the society in flux and the challenges that arise in an age of “upstarts’ ‘.
