Monday 28 July 2008

What are some archetypes/analogies in George Bernard Shaw's play Pygmalion?

Anis a
pattern or type that occurs over and over again in literature. Shaw's 
derives from the Galatea story recounted in
Ovid's Metamorphoses, and contains similar archetypes.


In Ovid's tale, the sculptor Pygmalion creates a beautiful statue of a woman. He falls
in love with it and prays to Venus, the goddess of love, that it be turned into a woman. Venus
grants his request and the statue becomes the human Galatea, who falls in love with her
creator. 

In Shaw's play, the linguist Henry Higgins "sculpts" the
lower class Eliza Doolittle into a lady, mostly by changing how she speaks, but also by teaching
her the manners and bearing of an upper-class woman. He succeeds in passing her off to the
highest echelons of society as a someone born to their class. 

Both tales use
the archetype of the Creator: in Ovid, Pygmalion creates a statue that comes to life and in
Shaw's play, Henry Higgins "creates" an upper-class woman out of the raw material of a
flower seller. Both stories also represent the Transformation archetype, a common motif in
literature. In both stories an important transformation takes place: a statue is transformed
into a woman in one and in the other a lower class woman is transformed into a lady. 


Shaw used the Galatea story because it would provide a recognizable frame to audiences
of his time period, but more importantly, to underscore how much Higgins thinks of Eliza not as
a person but as a "thing" that he can mold at his will. She might as well be a statue
to him. This can be seen throughout the play in his rude and dismissive treatment of her. Shaw
also uses the Galateain order to disrupt it: Eliza's transformation into something "fully
human" comes not when she becomes a lady, but when she is able to assert her own self-worth
by standing up to Higgins. Rather than show the fully human, transformed Eliza falling in love
with her creator, Shaw shows that when she comes into her humanity, Eliza walks away from
Higgins. Shaw thus uses the archetypes he does to create a commentary about gender: a woman who
becomes fully her own person is not necessarily going to fall into the arms of her creator,
though in another ironic twist, Shaw shows that by becoming a lady, Eliza is left with little
option (if she follows gender norms) but to find a husband--though it doesn't have to be
Higgins. 

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