Pygmalion: 100% Complete

I had a dream last night that I discovered I had been misspelling Pygmalion in all my blog posts and I woke up in a cold sweat.  But, rest assured, I have been spelling it correctly. 

 

In other news, I finished it! I've finished three books now, only ninety-seven to go!

 

I really liked this play.  It was short and easy to read and often funny but it also certainly had a deeper meaning.  The point I think Shaw was trying to make was that women are not objects to be treated as a possession, but they are people to care about and love and if you don't do that, you're a misogynistic jerk.  The philosophy of a woman as an object was voiced by both Henry Higgins and Eliza's father, Mr. Doolittle at various points throughout the play.  Neither Higgins nor Mr. Doolittle were sympathetic characters and thus their opinions are opposite the point that Shaw was trying to get across.

 

I have three quotes from the play that illustrate this attitude toward women.  The first is something Mr. Doolittle says to Henry Higgins at the beginning when Higgins first "adopts" Eliza.

 

"Take my advice, Governor: marry Eliza while she's young and don't know no better.  If you don't you'll be sorry for it after.  If you do, she'll be sorry for it after; but better you than her, because you're a man, and she's only a woman and don't know how to be happy anyhow."

 

The second quote is from Henry talking to Eliza during an argument they're having once she has transformed into a "duchess":

 

"You've had a thousand times as much out of me as I have out of you; and if you dare to set up your little dog's tricks of fetching and carrying slippers against my creation of a Duchess Eliza, I'll slam the door in your silly face."

 

And finally, the last line in the book, from Shaw's epilogue to the play.  To understand this, you have to know that Galatea was the name of the statue that Pygmalion created and subsequently fell in love with.

 

"Galatea never does quite like Pygmalion: his relation to her is too godlike to be altogether agreeable."

 

Next up? Barchester Towers by Anthony Trollope.

Pygmalion: 68% Complete

I'm just flying through this play; it's just so short! But I am enjoying it a lot.  It's very light reading but there's certainly a lot of deeper points being made about men "owning" women and women's right to be treated as something other than property.

 

The vocabulary word for today is "plinth" which is "a heavy base supporting a statue or vase or the lower square slab at the base of a column" (definition from The New Oxford American Dictionary)

 

I have two quotes for today, both of which relate to the English language.  I'm a lover of English myself, so I especially appreciated these two.  The first is from the preface.  Shaw writes:

 

"The English have no respect for their language, and will not teach their children to speak it.  They spell it so abominably that no man can teach himself what it sounds like.  It is impossible for an Englishman to open his mouth without making some other Englishman hate or despise him.  German and Spanish are accessible to foreigners: English is not accessible even to Englishmen."

 

The second quote comes from the mouth of Henry Higgins, who is railing against Eliza's pronunciation and usage of the language.

 

"A woman who utters such depressing and disgusting sounds has no right to be anywhere--no right to live.  Remember that you are a human being with a soul and the divine gift of articulate speech: that your native language is the language of Shakespear and Milton and The Bible; and don't sit there crooning like a bilious pigeon."

 

Although I'm pretty sure you can't say that English is the language of the Bible, he does have a point!

Pygmalion: Beginning

On Saturday I started reading Pygmalion (I'm a little behind on the blog entries) by George Bernard Shaw.  Before I start giving you delicious quotes and vocabulary words from this book, I thought I'd give you a little background.

 

Pygmalion is a play published in 1912 by George Bernard Shaw.  It's a short little thing, only around a hundred pages.  Most of you are probably more familiar with the Broadway musical and subsequent film version, both called My Fair Lady.  If you're not, the story goes something like this:

 

Henry Higgins is a diction coach and professor of phonetics in London.  After meeting a young flower girl on the streets named Eliza Doolittle, who has a cockney accent that he finds horrifying, he makes a bet with his friend Colonel Pickering that with six months of lessons, mostly speech lessons, he can pass her off as a duchess at a ball.

 

The title comes from the Greek myth of a sculptor named Pygmalion who falls in love with a statue he creates.  He entreats the goddess Venus to turn her into a living woman, a wish she grants, and then he marries her.  This, of course, is a reference to Henry Higgins "creating" Eliza.

 

This story is significant for a number of reasons.  First of all, from a pop culture perspective, it is entertaining and gave rise to a wonderful play and movie.  Secondly, it is without a doubt a social commentary on the role of women in society, an aspect which was somewhat lost in the adaptations, I feel.  You'll notice, if you're a history buff like me, that this piece was published right at the height of the women's suffrage movement in England. Thirdly, the play, although it is originally set in London and contains the London-specific idea of a cockney girl who learns to speak properly, has had remarkable success being adapted in a variety of languages and countries which proves that class structure and language as a function of that is a very culturally universal phenomenon and one that people can relate to all over the world.

 

I expect this will only take me a couple of days to read, as it is so short, but I'll try to fit in a couple more blog entries about it!