NOTES:
PYGMALION
NOTE: There are 33 Questions for this play. Everyone must choose a different one to respond to, but for this play there's more choice. Three questions will remain unanswered.
1) Ovid was a Roman poet and story-teller. One of his most famous tales is the myth of Pygmalion and Galatea. Shaw uses Ovid's myth as the basis of his play. How does Shaw alter Ovid's tale to suit his social and dramtic aims?2) What is wrong with Eliza's life as a flower girl? What is wrong with her life as a lady?
3) Trace Eliza's moral and social growth.
4) Provide a psychological portrait of Higgins.
5) To what extent is Higgins the ultimate male chauvanist who exploits the easily manipulated Eliza in a sexist social structure over which Higgins and Pickering preside? To what extent does Eliza allow herself to be victimized? How does she fight back?
6) Shaw has sub-titled his play "a romance." In what ways does he satisfy our preconceptions of what a romance should be? In what ways does he thwart those expectations?
7) How does the inner action of the play -- Higgins/Eliza/Pickering ---complement the outer action ---Covent Garden, the Ball, tea at Mother Higgins', etc.?
8) Who is more free and independent at the end -- the pupil Eliza or the teacher/creator Higgins?
9) Identify all the ironic reversals which occur after the Ball? (See definition for IRONY in NOTES for Salesman.)
10) Show the relationship of the Doolittle rags-to-riches sub-plot to the flower-girl-to duchess Eliza of the main plot.
11) Identify the different social classes in the play. What is Shaw's criticism of each social class?
12) Is Higgins' crudity -- his lack of manners, his swearing, his inconsideration of others --- genuine or artificial? Re-stated: Is Higgins a snob, a bully, a vulgarian, an impish boor and a spoiled child OR a gentleman, a teacher with high standards, a creator and surrogate parent?
13) Is Doolittle an honest man or a rogue? Is a gentleman just a dustman with money? Re-stated: Compare and contrast Doolittle's character before and after he becomes wealthy. How is he to be condemned/admired before? Admired/condemned after?
14) Compare and contrast how Higgins sees himself as opposed to how others see him.
15) Defend Higgins' personality as well as his moral and social values.
16) Show how the play is a clash between an idealistic passion for improving human society morally and economically and the ordinary human desire for love, caring, home and hearth.
17) In what ways are Higgins and Eliza similar? In what ways are they totally incompatable?
18) How are Language/class/money related in the play?
19) How does the play reveal that only the comfortable can afford moral values.
20) Does anyone in the play measure up to Shaw's ideal of an authentic, independent, slf-sufficient human being?
21) What thematic function does Mrs. Higgins serve?
22) Doolittle and Higgins are two of Shaw's greatest comic creations. What is it about their personalities that still make them funny to contermporary audiences? What basic comic characterizations does each possess?
23) From this play what can we conclude about Shaw's definition of human nature?
24) Show how this play reveals how society primarily regards sex and marriage as varieties pf commercial exchange.
25) Why is Higgins such a misogynist? What is there about women that terrify him so?
26) Find fault with Eliza's character. No genuine heroine is perfect --- that would be silly and boring.
27) Show how Higgins' final (almost physical) assault on Eliza at the end can be construed as his last stroke of divine creation. (See Ovid's myth.)
28) What social and thematic functions do the Eynsford Hills serve?
29) Show how the play reveals that common sense and common decency are more vital to the health of the community than social convention -- or as Doolittle would say, "middle class morality."
30) In the Higgins/Eliza great debate at the end, summarize the arguments of each. In your opinion who wins?
31) At the end Eliza says, "I don't care for anyone who doesn't care for me." To which Higgins responds, "Commercial principles." How does this exchange in many ways summarize the heart of the play?
32) Higgins repeatedly says he doesn't need anybody.....nor should anyone else. He espouses self-sufficiency as the most sacred principle of his moral code. Yet at the very end of the play he says, "Independence. That's middle class blashpemy. We are all dependent on one another, every soul of us on earth." Isn't this a contradiction?
33) Defend the romantic ending (as in My Fair Lady) as the play's natural resolution OR defend the original anti-sentimental ending as the play's natural resolution .