Shaw's Pigmalion : analysis against a social background

George Bernard Shaw was born in 1856, in Dublin, into a middle class family. After finishing school he started working as a clerk, a post he soon abandoned in order to join his mother and stepfather in London and pursuit his literary carrier. Given that his first novels were rejected he would not live on his writing and was not fully independent until he began working as an art critic. Parallel with his struggling to succeed in the literary world Shaw was, from early age, interested in politics, precisely Socialism, and was politically active. He became a member of the ‘Fabian Society’, a left wing oriented group established to promote fight for social justice by peaceful means. Trough this activity he met his wife, moved with her to Ayot St Lawrence, Hertfordshire where he continued his writing and passed the remainder of his days.

Shaw’s life, his literary work and political activities are tightly interwoven, cross-referenced and inseparable one from another. Many of ideas that he tried to present to the English society are current and soundly explicated in his work. Shaw himself insisted that his writings are, before all, didactic and socially engaged. His first novel (at the time rejected), Cashel Byron’s Profession, was about his disdain and contempt for English educational system. In many a detail it was an autobiographical novel of hardship and suffering in England’s public educational institutions of the time, where strictness and austerity did not compensate for poor and inadequate education. He was especially against corporal punishment, at the time still present and widely used in England’s schools. This particular attitude is visible in many of his works, notably Pygmalion, where the educational system had managed to produce exactly nothing out of Freddy Eynsfor-Hill and his sister Clara. The very opening of the play gives us playwright’s attitude towards academic prejudice and (what he saw as) hard shelled, impenetrable discrimination of the ‘Oxbridge’ circle.

As we have already mentioned, Shaw’s criticism and social engagement was conducted in a much larger scope than England’s educational system. In his writings, we are able to distinguish a vast number of different subjects placed under a piercing analysis: class struggle, social injustice, battle for women rights. He also stayed just to his attitude that art should be educative (when schools are apparently not) and impregnated his works with remarks on behavior, snobbery, even practical advices on how one should conduct himself in the society. We will take a closer inspection upon the social order he probed in his works and try to explicate on major points of his critic in one of his most well known plays, Pygmalion.    

This play was published in 1913, one year prior to First World War. This is the pinnacle of the ‘Edwardian era’ of the English society, although some consider it to be finished with the death of King Edward, which occurred in 1910, and others with the Titanic shipwreck that took place in 1912. Some, on the other hand, go as far to 1918 in order to proclaim an end to this particular époque while others claim that it was all in fact a part of Victorian period. If we take into consideration Europe in its entirety, of which United Kingdom is a significant part, this is the period of ‘Belle époque’ which ended with the First World War. Significant traits of these three periods are present and visible in Pygmalion. As much as they were chronologically overlapped or even existing in the same time, these periods have separate characters that vary in numerous aspects.

The Victorian era refers to a rule of Queen Victoria, which spanned from 1837 to 1901. It was the longest reign in history of the state. At the beginning of the period, England was rather undeveloped, agrarian country (although it was, even then, the most industrialized nation in the world). First years of the reign were marked by a series of epidemics (notably cholera and typhus) and some economic collapses and crop failures. During the reforms the Queen had performed, numerous improvements were made: the economy was vastly industrialized and the distant regions of the Kingdom were made accessible by a well developed system of railways. The economic emphasis placed on the industry rather than the agriculture made a considerable change in balance of wealth in the society. It gave rise to bourgeoisie or the middle class, while taking a certain part of influence out of nobility, whose incomes where mostly based in agriculture. Industrialization led to further development of the cities and middle classes were further more associated with the city way of life. With economic progress also came the advance in science and culture, and with those came the class awareness and first serious attempts of fight for women’s rights, most notably the Married Women’s Property Act. The ‘Victorian moral’ is still well known and today it stands as a symbol of seriousness, Puritanism, even austerity. It was closely connected to bourgeois’ strict, sometimes minimalist way of life. The second part of the reign is marked by emphasis on the imperial, colonial politics and conflicts it had led to, notably Anglo-Zanzibar War and the Boer War.

The country’s politics became more and more liberal and the classes got more distant, which would mark the beginning of the Edwardian era. While Victorian period sported rigid morals and modest lifestyle, King Edward, who himself was ‘a man of the world’, introduced a model of behavior influenced by European fashionable elite and ‘Belle époque’. This change in socially acceptable behavior had increased the spread between the classes further more. On one side there where middle class (that in richness often surpassed high class) and aristocracy and on the other there where lower classes, the proletariat. However, due to Victorian era investments in education and rise of general political awareness, further class segregation was followed by the fight for social justice. Socialism was gaining on popularity, politicians were paying more attention to problems of underprivileged and civil rights were developing, most notably issue of women’s suffrage and women’s right in general.

This is the exact moment in which Pygmalion took place, in the midst of the great social turmoil and the continued affirmation of the middle class in English society. It would be difficult to separate this work from its middle class background. It is written by a member of middle class, for the middle class audience. It is impregnated with problems and issues inherent to middle class. Even though Pygmalion is a play, not a novel, the plot corresponds in great detail to a bourgeois (middle class) genre par excellence, the bildungsroman.

The ‘formation novel’ or the ‘novel of self-cultivation’ (possible translations of bildungsroman) is a genre presented to the world by Goethe in 1795, by his novel Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre, which is the paragon of the genre. It was a part of Goethe’s widespread effort to establish and uphold middle class values and lifestyle in Germany. The main prejudice of aristocratic society is that a man, with certain qualities that are bestowed upon him by his birth (and by his birth only, therefore any change is quasi impossible), is born into a world of steady constants: bildungsroman, on the other hand, emphasizes the fact that a man can cultivate and change himself. In another words, the man can adapt himself to the world, which is, contrary to the previous belief, an ever changing place of constant motion. The hero needs to learn how to compromise, to overcome certain illusions nourished by his youth and naiveté and most important of all to accept guidance. Many a novelist of the nineteen century gave at least one example of the genre: Stendhal, Le rouge et noire, Balzac, Les illusions perdues, Flaubert, L’éducation sentimentale, and the one to present the genre to the British audience, Charles Dickens with pretty much every novel he ever wrote (we will take Great expectations for example). The genre lived well into the twentieth century with works of Joyce, James, even Proust and Mann, however more than often as a parody and tweak of the genre.

It might strike us as a certain oddity that the theme developed in late eighteenth century Germany and popular throughout the middle nineteen century Europe found its way into early twentieth century English society. However, we must bear in mind that the English culture has its own specifics. While being one of the most liberal and openly capitalistic societies in the world, it is one also of rare cultures that never had a revolution. England, even of today, is an extremely conservative society, where class issues are present in everyday life in a greater measure than arguably anywhere else in the world (except perhaps India). The differences between high, middle and low class are seemingly abysmal. That perspective is necessary to justly appreciate the subversive character of this play and what it may have represented a hundred years ago.       

As we have mentioned, even though it is a play, Pygmalion bares many traces of the bildungsroman genre. The principal character, a former flower girl, is a persona of great wits, talent and charm: yet she is of the modest of origins, not having anything in the world but herself. Still, thanks to her abilities and natural predispositions, as well as a careful tutorship, she manages to transform herself into a genuine lady, presenting a social grace (and beauty) to best one given by a born lady, Clara. Like Goethe’s Meister, Dickens’ Pip of Balzac’s Lucien, Eliza has tutors which guide her on her way to becoming a lady, in changing herself to better fit the world and changing, as much as she can, the world to be more suitable for her. Didactic dimension is ever present in this particular genre, so it is in Pygmalion: Shaw dedicates a good portion of dialogue and no less of prologue and epilogue to present us with his attitudes towards snobbery, behavior and class prejudice. One of principal traits of the genre is the irony[1], certain distance between the author and the principal character, where by no means he is presented as ideal: Shaw maintains this irony in regard to every character in the play. Even the wisest of man (Professor Higgins and Colonel Pickering) are sometimes presented as stubborn and confused as children are, even though they are the seemingly almighty tutors.

Just like every hero (or heroine) of the genre Eliza must also lose her illusions and support moments of great distress: she must have periods of moral downfall and problems with determination, which she will, of course, overcome. The key moment is every formation novel is certainly the one where principal character realizes a great truth about him and/or life in general: these epiphanies, so to say, naturally have their place in Pygmalion. The final dialogue between Eliza and Professor Higgins is such a moment, where both reveal their true feelings and thoughts, even to themselves: but we could say the same for the moment following successful dinner party, where Eliza throws slippers on Professor Higgins.

Even though the genre includes irony as one of his major characteristics, Shaw tries to be ironic even with the genre itself. In the standard set up of a formation novel characters romantic illusions and unreal expectations would be surmised to irony, as those are the features a character must change in order to succeed in life. Class issues, however, are not to be touched or placed under question, and they rarely are. For Goethe, who spent his entire life reaffirming middle class trough various works as the absolute and nearly ideal one, it would have been a blasphemy. One could debate whether Flaubert had intended to criticize society in France of the era, but his insight and criticism were more towards the emptiness of life and prevailing stupidity in people than towards a certain social solution. It was Dickens who first included the question of classes and critics of industrialized society in his interpretation of formation novel. Shaw tried to overcome this middle class boundary imposed to the genre and place the class problem and social adhesion as a principal question. In other words, Shaw very much politicized the principal features of a formation novel and used them as engaged art.

This leads us to the next principal attribute of Pygmalion, its subversivness. Although for today’s standards this play could hardly qualify as subversive, we must bring before our eyes the circumstances of that particular era and the very moment when this play appeared. As we have already mentioned, England is a class organized society with a strong right as political position. It is a monarchy based upon the economy of liberal capitalism. So, any socialist idea at the time of the zenith of English imperial power might have not been welcomed so gladly and open mindedly. Aristocracy, (no matter how great the ascent of the upper class may have been), was, and still is quite respected. Yet in this play we have attitudes openly denouncing the true nature (as it appeared to Shaw) of their class.

At a certain point, Eliza says that while she was a simple flower girl, she was self sufficient and depended on no one. She was of insufficient incomes for a decent existence and living rather uncomfortably, but was honest and made up her own income. After becoming an elegant woman, she is rendered incapable of taking care of herself. Only thing she can do is get married, that is sell herself: as she puts it rather bluntly ‘Before I sold flowers, now I have to sell myself’. It is not only the case with her person, rather with the entire class: ladies (and even gentlemen) of name and stature found it disgraceful to work, so, the only thing they could do, if they fall into financial trouble was to find a rich husband or wife. This was an economic problem as well as it was moral, for England had, in fact, an entire class of society effectively unable to take care of itself, always depending on the work of others, that is lower class.  

Those were the calamities of financially challenged nobility or middle class. On the other hand, even when means of existence appear to fall from the sky, (like they did for Eliza’s father) even that particular chain of events cannot bring anything but trouble. Mr. Doolittle[2], a former dustman, explains in a long monologue how great money brought him no happiness, on the contrary. Now he finds himself enchained by the various rules of etiquette inherent to higher classes: also, he is surrounded by an army of frauds who are trying to take some of his money away, while before he was one of those people who would ‘touch’ someone richer then he is. His wife to be, a former free spirited, independent woman finds herself crushed by the newly imposed regulations and even accepts to marry Mr. Doolittle in order to respect and uphold now obliging bourgeois moral. But the worst of all is that Eliza’s father finds himself completely incapable of departing from his new situation, now meter how unpleasant it may be: his spirits are also crushed by the weight of money, social stature and prestige. This particular attitude, that money and possession do not bring happiness but trouble, is highly disregarded in a capitalist, materialistic society which was founded on the excess of property. We see Shaw’s socialist ideas shining through these lines of dialogue: one needs not more than one can handle or even more than one can make. 

What Shaw is telling his audience in a quite obvious way is that the man is fully free only when he is capable to take care of himself. Furthermore, excess possession-wise oriented moral leads to a certain social model that does no good to personality. One becomes enchained and formed by various rules quite different from his own personality. We see another example for this attitude. Clara Eynsford-Hill, presented in the beginning of the play as a rather shallow snob, gladly accepts Eliza’s vulgarity thinking that those are the ‘new ways’. Her mother is more reluctant: but Clara takes anything she thinks comes from a certain social model, even if those are plain and simple bad manners and impolite talk. This scene is another subversive point of a play and a slap in the face of an upper class society. It demystifies their most sacred values: decency, distance, politeness and social grace. It goes to show how easy it is to bring down rules that have been around for a long time. Further than that, in a conclusion we see that not only the upper classes are easily changeable in values presented to them (and by them) as monolith and forever, they are completely incapable of surviving on themselves. Freddy has a hard time trying to make a living. His education proved to be pointless: in this aspect Shaw combined critics of educational system and class society: so he must reenter school, which proves to be completely useless, because school itself is good-for-nothing. It is thanks to Eliza’s abilities and a turn of good luck they are able to make a living. On the other hand, Clara, Freddy’s sister, founds herself rejected by society until she is able to leave her snobbishness behind and start being open minded. Mr. Doolittle, now a respectable gentleman, is more than welcome into the highest spheres of English society and he never stops accentuating the fact that he was born a commoner. This, as romantic as it may occur us, is actually quite subversive and difficult to imagine in reality, especially in the zenith of Edwardian era.

These are, however, not the only aspects of play that we might find subversive and morally challenging. Shaw’s attitude towards women is, for the time, quite advanced. Although throughout Edwardian period it was not uncommon to speak of women’s rights, Shaw did decide to go one step further. Women characters in Pygmalion are, with few exceptions, actually superior to man. Mr. Higgins’ mother must always apologize for the rudeness oh her son, further more she must act as a voice of reason and explain certain things in great detail so that he could understand them. Eliza is by far the strongest personality of them all, also the most sensible and gifted one: in numerous occasions it is stated that she is potentially better in phonetics than the Professor Higgins himself. Female characters are independent, stable and intelligent: even the little snob Clara becomes open minded and gains her intellectual autonomy at the end of the play. On the other hand, male characters are often lost, confused and not capable to fully understand what exactly is going on. The most interesting male character is by far Eliza’s father, Mr. Doolittle, but no matter how charming he may be he is still presented as irresponsible, moral-free nihilist who is ready to sell his daughter for five pounds (or fifty if it was for dishonest intentions). Colonel Pickering is a polite, genteel man, but rather bland, indecisive and inclined to easily support opinions of others. Freddy is a sympathetic young man but with no ability or faculty whatsoever. In their couple, it is up to Eliza to take all the decision and to keep them afloat. This particular attitude differs in more than one aspect from traditional role of women and man: it is also a little more than play engaged in obtaining women’s rights. It sports a certain attitude towards men as well. 

This particular aspect of the play can be attributed to Shaw’s left wing convictions. It is a wide spread fact that, in most communist countries, while having suffered from various forms of dictatorship women where equal to men – also up to the point where they were equally often executed and sent to concentration camps. The point is that the treatment of man and women did not differ. In Soviet Russia, during the Second World War both sexes could equally participate in the army, before and after the war they could have been the members of the Party etc. It is a left oriented attitude that upholds the equality of sexes. Perhaps making women more stable and intelligent then man was Shaw’s way to ‘put the scale into balance’, as social and racial injustice and prejudice were much visible and present all around. In the Edwardian period this attitude towards sexes must have provoked more surprise than it does today.              

In a certain fashion, Shaw’s social and political ideas that are so densely interwoven into his works became more and more present in England’s modern history. After the world wars one came to talk more often about a society of meritocracy, where it is possible (still very hard, but possible) by a personal effort to change class and gain access to quality education, better lifestyle and all other attributes of higher class. Women are socially and politically much better off than they were during his time and entirety of discrimination comes from individual cases rather than social structures. But Shaw’s work did not focus just on women’s position in society or on social, political problems. It was also preoccupied with human relations, which made it rich in fine humor, genuine situations and even authentic pathos.