i

CLASS STRUGGLE IN CAPITALIST SOCIETY

AS DEPICTED IN GEORGE BERNARD SHAW’S PYGMALION

A THESIS

Presented as a Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements

to obtain the Magister Humaniora (M.Hum) Degree
in English Language Studies

by
Yohanes Tuaderu
Student Number: 066332012

THE GRADUATE PROGRAM IN ENGLISH LANGUAGE STUDIES

SANATA DHARMA UNIVERSITY
YOGYAKARTA
2008

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STATEMENT OF ORIGINALITY

This is to certify that all ideas, phrases, and sentences, unless otherwise

stated, are the ideas, phrases, and sentences of the thesis writer. The writer

understands the full consequences including degree cancellation if he takes

somebody else’s ideas, phrases, or sentences without proper references.

Yogyakarta, October 15, 2008

Yohanes Tuaderu

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LEMBAR PERNYATAAN PERSETUJUAN

PUBLIKASI KARYA ILMIAH UNTUK KEPERLUAN AKADEMIS

Yang bertanda tangan di bawah ini, saya mahasiswa Universitas Sanata Dharma:

Nama : Yohanes Tuaderu

Nomor Mahasiswa : 066332012

Demi pengembangan ilmu pengetahuan, saya memberikan kepada Perpustakaan

Universitas Sanata Dharma karya ilmiah saya yang berjudul:

Class Struggle in Capitalist Society as Depicted in George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion

Beserta perangkat yang diperlukan (bila ada). Dengan demikian saya memberikan
kepada Perpustakaan Universitas Sanata Dharma hak untuk menyimpan, mengalihkan
dalam bentuk media lain, mengelolanya dalam bentuk pangkalan data, mendistribusikan
secara terbatas, dan mempublikasikan di Internet atau media lain untuk keperluan
akademis tanpa perlu meminta ijin dari saya maupun memberikan royalti kepada saya
selama tetap mencantumkan nama saya sebagai penulis.

Demikian pernyataan ini yang saya buat dengan sebenarnya.

Di buat di Yogyakarta

Pada tanggal: 23 Januari 2009

Yang menyatakan

(Yohanes Tuaderu)

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Praise the Lord for all of His blessings. It is solely His grace that I can get

this very special opportunity to pursue my education to the graduate program. It is

only with His companion and guidance that I eventually finish this thesis. Deo

gratias.

Great gratitude is sincerely addressed to my supervisor, Bapak Prof. Dr. C.

Bakdi Soemanto, SU., for his critical guidance and his patience that allow me to go

deep down into the essence of the analysis of the thesis. I am very impressed to his

welcome invitation to me to come to his house in Podang 2 Demangan Baru anytime

I need his help. Honestly, his friendly and familiar attention has become a very

helpful factor that encourages me to finish the thesis.

A special thanks goes to Ibu Dr. Novita Dewi, M.S., M.A., who gives so

many inputs through her careful reading on this thesis. She is also very friendly and

welcoming as well. My thankfulness should also be addressed to Ibu Sri Mulyani,

M.A and Bapak Paulus Sarwoto, M.A who taught and guided me in literature

classes in very interesting teaching and approaches. I will not forget the special

meeting held on June, 26, 2008 when Bapak Dr. B.B. Dwi Jatmoko (the Head of

English Language Studies Program), Bapak Dr. J. Bismoko, Bapak F.X. Mukarto,

Ph.D., and Ibu Dr. Novita Dewi, M.S., M.A. encourage all students of ELS to finish

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their thesis as soon as possible. This meeting is very important for me since it makes

me aware again to continue compiling this thesis. Thank you for your warm

attention and powerful motivation.

I dedicate this thesis especially to my beloved wife, Ika Situmorang, and my

lovely and smart children I left, Febby and Nuel, for more than two years to finish

this study. They are the greatest inspiration and the strongest motivation when I

encounter hard and boring times in my period of study. For them, I will give

whatever I have for I love them very much till the end of my life.

Last but not least, I thank all my friends of KBI 2006 batch for their warm

friendship I may enjoy for more than two years. I need to mention some names:

Mbak Endang, Mas Suryo, Mas Widya, Mbak Ari, Mbak Ully, Mbak Zaki, Mas

Tigor, Mbak Santi, Mas Davy, Mbak Ruth, Thomas, Dian, Kapris, Yuni and Venty.

When I remember and imagine their faces, I remember the unforgettable

togetherness I experienced with them in Yogyakarta. Good luck, Friends. God bless

you all!

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page
TITLE PAGE ………………………………………………………………....... i
APPROVAL PAGE …………………………………………………………….. ii
BOARD OF EXAMINERS …………………………………………………….. iii
STATEMENT OF ORIGINALITY ……………………………………………. iv
LEMBAR PERNYATAAN PERSETUJUAN PUBLIKASI KARYA
ILMIAH UNTUK KEPERLUAN AKADEMIS ............................................ v
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ……………………………………………………. vi
TABLE OF CONTENTS ………………………………………………………. viii
LIST OF TABLES ……………………………………………………………... x
ABSTRACT ……………………………………………………………………. xi
ABSTRAK ……………………………………………………………………... xiii
I. INTRODUCTION …………………………………………………….. 1
A. Background of the Study …………………………………………. 1
B. Problem Limitation ………………………………………………. 9
C. Problem Formulation ……………………………………………... 10
D. The Objectives of the Study ……………………………………… 11
E. Research Method …………………………………………………. 12
F. The Significance of the Study …………………………………….. 14
II. LITERATURE REVIEW …………………………………………….. 16
A. Review on Related Studies ……………………………………….. 16
B. Review of Related Theories ……………………………………… 23
1. Theory of Homology ………………………………………… 23
a. Class Distinction ………………………………………… 27
b. Human Exploitation …………………………………….. 28
2. Marxist Criticism …………………………………………….. 33
C. Theoretical Framework …………………………………………… 40
III. SOCIAL CONDITION IN CAPITALIST SOCIETY AS
42
PORTRAYED IN PYGMALION ………………………………...………...
A. Class Distinction ………………………………………………….. 43
1. Physical Appearance …………………………………………. 43
2. Names of Characters …………………………………………. 56
3. Way of Behaving and Speaking ……………………………... 58
B. Human Exploitation ………………………………………………. 67
C. Social Implication of Class Distinction and Human Exploitation .. 83
1. Dehumanization ……………………………………………… 83
2 Poverty ……………………………………………………….. 93

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IV. MAIN CHARACTER’S REACTION TO THE SOCIAL CONDI- 100

TIONS AS THE PORTRAIT OF THE WORKING CLASS
STRUGGLE IN CAPITALIST SOCIETY …………………………...
A. Class Struggle to Oppose the Capitalist Oppression ……………… 101
B. Class Struggle to Abolish Class Distinction ……………………… 125
V. CONCLUSION ………………………………………………………… 140
BIBLIOGRAPHY ……………………………………………………………… 146
APPENDICES ………………………………………………………………….. 150
1. Biography of George Bernard Shaw ……………………………………. 150
2. Synopsis of Pygmalion ………………………………………………….. 161

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LIST OF TABLES
Table 1. Description of Physical Appearance and Clothes ……………….. 44

Table 2. The Comparison of Room Items …………………………………. 54

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ABSTRACT
Tuaderu, Yohanes. 2008. Class Struggle in Capitalist Society as Depicted in George
Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion. Yogyakarta: The Graduate Program in English Language
Studies. Sanata Dharma University.

Class struggle is a collective reaction of the workers toward the inhumane

treatments of the capitalists. The bad treatments manifest in low wages, long working
hours (12 to 19 hours per day), and the imposition of bad discipline and fine system.
The capitalists’ avarice to accumulate the surplus value as high as possible is believed
as the main causal factor of the treatment.

By employing sociological approach of literature, Pygmalion – a play of five

acts written by George Bernard Shaw – is considered as one of the literary pieces of the
early twentieth century that portrays the social condition of British society at the era
when capitalism reached its height. Shaw himself is a socialist who supports the
working class struggle through his propaganda, public lectures, critical essays, and
literary works that attack the human exploitation in industrial sphere.
The objectives of this research are: 1) to reveal the social conditions in capitalist
society in England in the end of nineteenth century and the early twentieth century as
reflected in Pygmalion, 2) to present the class struggle which is done by the main
character of Pygmalion as the reaction toward the social condition in capitalist society.
These two objectives are formulated in their inseparable relationship with the practices
in capitalist society where human relation is always related to the economic affair
between the capitalist and the workers. The capitalist has a big economic power since
the capital, production machinery, and raw materials are fully in his hands. Meanwhile
the workers do not have anything except their labor power that they sell in a very low
price to earn their living and to stay survive.
This is a qualitative research using two main theories i.e., 1) Theory of
Homology postulated by Lucien Goldmann which is used to prove the interdependent
relationship between the society which is told in Shaw’s Pygmalion and the real society
in England at the time when Pygmalion was written, 2) Marxist criticism which is
theorized by some scholars to analyze class struggle done by the main character of
Pygmalion which is assumed as the portrait of the unstopped struggle of the proletariat
to achieve their rights which are ignored by the bourgeoisie for hundred of years. These
two theories are considered as the most appropriate instruments to analyze one of
Shaw’s masterpieces, Pygmalion, since Shaw himself was a genuine socialist who
strived for the social reform of British society which is signed by the presence of
democracy, the admission of human rights, the just distribution of social welfare, and
the reasonable respect to the individual freedom.
The data which are used in the analysis consist of the main data and the
supporting data. The main data are gathered from the text of Pygmalion in forms of

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dialogue and stage direction. Meanwhile, the supporting data are collected from various
references such as books, articles, and magazines which are available both in the
university library as well as on-line sources about the social condition in England in the
early twentieth century and critiques of Shaw’s literary works.
The result of the study shows that the social condition in England in the end of
nineteenth century to the early twentieth century is mostly affected by the practice of
class distinction and human exploitation in industry sphere. Meanwhile, the class
struggle which is done by the main character of Pygmalion is the portrait of the struggle
of the working class to free themselves from poverty, to release them from the
capitalist’ oppression, and to gain the admission from the society that they have equal
dignity as other human beings in society.
This thesis intends to indicate to the readers that by employing the sociological
approach of literature, a play – prose and poetry as well – can reveal the social condition
of a group of people of certain place and time. It may happen since literary works are
one of the social documents which reflect social phenomena and human interrelation
aesthetically. In addition, the writer of this thesis also wants to underline the truth that
has been trusted for a long time that literary pieces can be utilized as educational means
to teach the society by using their moral messages that exist beyond the works.

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ABSTRAK
Tuaderu, Yohanes. 2008. Class Struggle in Capitalist Society as Depicted in George
Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion. Yogyakarta: The Graduate Program in English Language
Studies. Sanata Dharma University.

Class struggle merupakan reaksi kolektif dari kaum buruh terhadap perlakuan
yang tidak manusiawi dari kaum kapitalis. Perlakuan itu menjelma dalam bentuk
rendahnya upah kerja, jam kerja yang sangat panjang (12-19 jam sehari), dan
pemberlakuan disiplin dan system denda/hukuman yang sangat berat. Keserakahan
kaum kapitalis untuk mengumpulkan surplus value sebesar-besarnya dianggap sebagai
penyebab utama dari perlakuan yang buruk itu.
Dengan menggunakan pendekatan sosiologi sastra, Pygmalion – sebuah drama 5
babak karangan George Bernard Shaw – diyakini sebagai karya sastra awal abad ke-20
yang memotret situasi sosial masyarakat Inggris ketika sistem kapitalis mencapai
puncak kejayaannya. Shaw sendiri adalah seorang sosialist yang mendukung class
struggle kaum buruh melalui propaganda-propaganda, kuliah umum, essai-essai berisi
kritikan pedas terhadap eksploitasi manusia di lingkungan industri, dan yang paling
banyak adalah melalui karya-karya sastranya.
Tujuan penelitian dari tesis ini adalah untuk: 1) mengungkapkan kondisi sosial
dalam masyarakat kapitalis di Inggris pada akhir abad ke-19 sampai awal abad ke-20
sebagaimana direfleksikan dalam Pygmalion, 2) melihat class struggle yang dilakukan
oleh pelaku utama dalam Pygmalion sebagai reaksi terhadap kondisi sosial dalam
masyarakat kapitalis saat itu. Kedua tujuan ini dirumuskan dalam kaitan yang erat
dengan pengaruh dari kehidupan dalam masyarakat kapitalis di mana hubungan
antarmanusia (baca Gary Day) dilihat sebagai hubungan ekonomi antara pemilik
perusahaan dengan kaum pekerja. Pemilik perusahaan memiliki kekuatan ekonomi yang
besar karena modal, mesin produksi, dan bahan baku sepenuhnya berada dalam
kekuasaannya. Sedangkan kaum pekerja tidak memiliki apa-apa selain tenaga fisik
(labor power) yang terpaksa mereka jual murah supaya bisa tetap bertahan hidup.
Penelitian ini adalah penelitian kualitatif dengan menggunakan 2 (dua) teori
utama yaitu: 1) Teori Homologi dari Lucien Goldmann untuk membuktikan hubungan
resiprokal antara masyarakat yang diceritakan oleh Shaw dalam Pygmalion dengan
masyarakat dalam realita di Inggris pada saat Pygmalion ditulis, 2) Teori Marxisme dari
berbagai ahli yang dipakai untuk menganalisis class struggle si pelaku utama dalam
Pygmalion yang merupakan potret dari perjuangan tanpa henti dari kaum proletariat
untuk mendapatkan hak-hak mereka yang selama sekian ratus tahun tidak mereka
dapatkan dari kaum borjuis. Kedua teori ini dianggap sebagai alat yang paling tepat
untuk menganalisis karya besar Shaw, Pygmalion, sejalan dengan perjuangan Shaw
sendiri dalam melakukan reformasi sosial yang ditandai dengan hadirnya demokrasi,
pengakuan hak-hak asasi manusia, pemerataan kesejahteraan, dan penghargaan terhadap
kebebasan individu.

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Data yang dipakai dalam analisis terdiri dari data utama dan data pendukung.
Data utama diperoleh dari teks drama Pygmalion berupa dialog antarpelaku dan stage
direction. Sedangkan data pendukung diperoleh dari berbagai referensi seperti buku-
buku, artikel-artikel, dan majalah baik yang tersedia di perpustakaan universitas
maupun yang diakses dari situs-situs internet yang memberi masukan tentang situasi
sosial di Inggris pada awal abad ke-20 maupun kajian sastra dari para kritikus terkenal
terhadap karya-karya Shaw.
Hasil penelitian menunjukkan bahwa kondisi sosial di Inggris pada akhir abad
ke-19 sampai awal abad ke-20 sangat dipengaruhi oleh praktek pembedaan manusia
menurut kelas-kelas sosial dan eksploitasi manusia dalam lingkungan industri.
Pembedaan manusia menurut kelas dan praktek ekploitasi manusia oleh manusia lain
berdampak pada dehumanisasi dan kemiskinan berkepanjangan yang dialami oleh kaum
pekerja. Sedangkan perjuangan kelas yang dilakukan oleh pelaku utama dari Pygmalion
ternyata merupakan potret dari perjuangan kaum pekerja untuk membebaskan dirinya
dari kemiskinan, untuk lepas dari penindasan pemilik modal, dan untuk mendapatkan
pengakuan sebagai manusia yang memiliki harkat, derajat dan martabat yang sama
dengan manusia lain dalam masyarakat.
Tesis ini ingin menunjukkan kepada para pembaca bahwa dengan menggunakan
pendekatan sosiologi sastra, sebuah drama – sebagaimana juga prosa dan puisi – dapat
mengungkapkan situasi kemasyarakatan di suatu tempat pada zaman tertentu. Hal itu
terjadi karena karya sastra merupakan salah satu dokumen masyarakat yang
merefleksikan persoalan-persoalan sosial dan hubungan antarmanusia secara estetik.
Selain itu, penulis tesis ini ingin juga menggaris-bawahi apa yang telah diyakini benar
bahwa karya sastra dapat pula menjadi sarana untuk mendidik masyarakat melalui
pesan-pesan moral yang dikemas secara metaforik dalam dialog, monolog, dan arahan
lakon yang menyertai karya tersebut.

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CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

A. Background of the Study

Literature does not stand in isolation. It arises in its strong connection with other

elements outside the text. One of the most obvious elements is social context. This is to

say that literature never exists without any reciprocal relationship with social condition,

political issue, and economic situation at the time when a literary work is written. Wolff

(1989:12) asserts,

So far I have argued that art is not necessarily produced in isolation and in
opposition to any social group. I now want to examine the actual nature of
artistic production, and compare this with other forms of production.

Most sociologists of art and Marxist proponents believe that literature is the expression

of society. Every society has its own artistic production to portray its social

phenomenon, human intercourse, and political or economic problems. Louis Althusser,

for example, through his production theory, argues that literature is influenced by

dominant hegemony or prevailing ideology of a society that shape the authors’

worldview in producing arts (Bressler, 1999:217). The authors’ imagination is grasped

as the main strength to employ certain social phenomenon or event to be an aesthetic

product in forms of plays, poems, and novels to reflect and mirror certain ideas and

values underpinned by a particular social community. These works flourish from and

root in certain social condition and therefore become a social production. The authors,
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who represent society of a given period, produce literary works based on certain social

context. As members of society, they interact with many people. They witness what

people experience and feel as the implication of poverty, social and economic injustice,

political instability, wars, technological invention in new industrial era, and the

emergence of new way of thinking about many aspects of life. Generated by all those

facts they then write their poems or plays or novels. Here, authors play roles as

spokesmen and women who voice the actual social situation through their writings.

From this perspective, the ultimate source of the writings is not the individual author

but rather the social situation from which the authors emerge and of which they role as

the midwives who assist the birth of literary pieces. In fact, they do not write from their

own intelligences but from the momentum they catch from the society where they live.

In accordance with this concept, Barry (1995,158) states that instead of seeing authors

as primarily autonomous ‘inspired’ individuals whose ‘genius’ and creative imagination

enables them to bring forth original and timeless works of art, the Marxist sees them as

constantly formed by their social context.

The material object of this thesis is Pygmalion – a play written by George

Bernard Shaw; an art critic, a social reformer, and a socialist lecturer. His meeting with

Henry George in 1884 who proposed that national revenue should be collected by a

single tax on land rather than by a numerous taxes on several things – and his new

acquaintance to the works of Karl Marx introduced by H.M. Hyndman was considered

as a turning point in Shaw’s life that directed him to be an activist in Fabian Society and

Social Democratic Federation (see Appendix 1).

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Written in England between 1913 and 1916, Pygmalion is a comedy about a

phonetics expert, Professor Henry Higgins, who attempts to make a lady out of an

uneducated flower girl for his linguistic and social experiment. The comic nuance is

found in the vision of the folly, the lack understanding and the stupidity of the professor

who thinks that social reconstruction can be simply conducted by teaching English

people to speak proper language. In this sense, Pygmalion is a satirical comedy that not

only stimulates its audience to laugh but also satires certain social ignorance and

injustice. In fact, class distinction is not simply the matter of different way of speaking

but a reality of the presence of capital holding class and the working class as the

consequence of the concept and the practice of capitalist system.

Shaw points out how language creates divisions in society based on the fact that

the way ones speak a language indicates their social class. The scene in the portico of St

Paul's Church is a brilliant introduction to the play because in that small area and within

a short space of time Shaw has exposed to his audience a small cross-section of English

society. Eliza and the bystanders occupy the lower class in society. Colonel Pickering

represents the force and authority of that society used with some charity and humanity

sense. Freddy and his mother and sister are the representatives of ineffectual gentility,

while Higgins himself is the power of the intellectual and the social engineer, as he

himself proceeds to boast,

HIGGINS: You see this creature with her kerbstone English: the English that
will keep her in the gutter to the end of her days. Well, sir, in three
months I could pass that girl off as a duchess at an ambassador's garden
party. I could even get her a place as lady's maid or shop assistant, which
requires better English.
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(Chin, 2000:897)

Shaw shows explicitly the different way of speaking among people who are

seeking for shelter during a heavy rain under the portico of St. Paul’s Church, Covent

Garden. The chaotic way of uttering words shown by Eliza and the bystanders indicates

that they are from lower class supported by their ill-mannered, uncouth, coarse and

grimy performance. While the subtle way of speaking performed by Colonel Pickering,

the Eynsford Hills, and Higgins shows that they are from higher social class who are

characterized by well-mannered, well-spoken, socially refined, having civilized benefits

supported by wealth and education. Pygmalion probes important issue about social class

division based on the way people speak their language and Shaw is the midwife who

helps the birth of this famous play.

Actually, long time before the industrial revolution, there had been social class

divisions in England regarding to the feudal society’s policy on land-tenure. There

were, as informed by Gregg (1957, 20), five classes connected with the land. They were

the lord of manor who was the largest landowner in the village and the legal owner of

wasteland, the freeholders who had been noted from the Tudor times for their sturdy

independence and were considered as the backbone of England, people who held their

land by varying tenures (but who all paid rent for it), the squatters and cottagers who

had no land but may build cottages on the wasteland to feed pigs or to pasture cows or

to gather firewood from the woodland and cut turf from the waste, and the farm servants

and laborers who worked for the farmers. When the industrial revolution occurred – in
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the period of the late 18th and early 19th centuries – the notion of class changed. Kuper

(1996, 90) asserts,

In the course of the first decades of the nineteenth century the term class
gradually replaced estates, ranks and orders as the major word used to denote
divisions within society. The change of vocabulary reflected the diminishing
significance of rank and ascribed or inherited qualities in general, and the
growing importance of possessions and income among the determinants of the
social position.

Since this period of time, class no longer refers merely to the existing social

groups but also to the new characteristics of social classes in industrial society. It is the

new social divisions created by a new way of interactions and behavior among people

based on the possession of capital – the capital owner and the waged workers. Class,

here, has an economic meaning located in the economic process of production,

distribution, and consumption. In this economic process and relation, each ‘class’ gives

their special contribution and receives in different amount the labor wage depend on

their position in the factory. This notion makes a clear cut difference between the

owners of the manufacture (the capitalists) whose livelihood depends on the profits of

the company and the labourers (the working class) who work in the manufactures by

selling their labour power.

As a social reformer, Shaw was so concerned with that new atmosphere of

human interaction and behavior in society. All dialogues between Higgins and Eliza in

Pygmalion, for instance, are deliberately created to portray how the upper class treats

the lower class. Eliza represents the lower class people in England who strive for better

life because of the poverty they face. Shaw satirizes the social norms of his time
 6

through a comedy about Eliza who wants to improve her life by learning a proper way

of speaking in Higgins’ laboratory. Purdom (1964:9) states,

In the early eighteen ‘eighties there was constant and increasing unemployment
in London and much social distress of a kind altogether unfamiliar today. Shaw
was deeply impressed by the widespread poverty, and being not far from
poverty himself.

This quotation informs that by the end of nineteenth century, caused by the great effect

of industrial revolution lasting for more or less one century, poverty had become a

problem in more complicated dimensions. Occurring at a time when the influence of the

mechanical system in industry for mass product and the ignoring of human manual

system in home industry for individual product, the poverty constituted a serious threat

to national stability. Industrialization had brought a demographic shift causing many

more unskilled laborers to seek work in the city. So, humanity and public interest was

directed to the problem of the poor. Purdom (1964, 99) has this to say,

Shaw’s socialism was the outcome of his passion for order. His constant charge
against the existing social order was that it was inefficient, wasteful, cruel,
stupid, and shameful. Highly individualistic as he was, he was opposed to any
form of anarchy, which he considered the existing order to be.

With his strong background in economics and politics, Shaw’s socialist

viewpoint reacts toward the problem through his writings – one of them is Pygmalion –

with a hope for human improvement. His political feeling encouraged him to found The

Fabian Society in 1884, a socialist political organization dedicated to transforming

England into a socialist state, not by revolution but by systematic progressive

legislation, supported by persuasion and mass education. Through this organization he

started to make socialism a practical, constitutional and respectable belief. He took part
 7

in all controversies of the age and became a famous speaker, although always unpaid.

At the general election of 1892, the Fabians induced the Liberal Party to adopt their

‘New Castle programme’ of social reform. Having won the election on it, the Liberals

quickly dropped it; and the Fabians determined to form their own political group. The

result of their hard efforts is the appearance of Labour Party in parliament in 1906

(Arnstein, 1988:195).

In 1914, World War I or the Great War began with the assassination of

Archduke Ferdinand of Austria in Sarajevo, Bosnia (Galens, 1998). Personally, Shaw’s

interest in education preventing the tragic destruction of human life due to wars was

demonstrated in Pygmalion also. Great Britain was still a colonial power with colonies

in the Pacific, Atlantic, Africa and the Caribbean. Queen Victoria characterized the

times with a set of values called Victorianism which revolved around social high-

mindedness, domesticity, and a confidence based on the expansion of knowledge and

the power of reasoned argument to change society.

In 1956, Pygmalion was adapted into a musical play entitled My Fair Lady by

American song writers: Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe. It became one of the

most commercially successful plays in the history of international musical theatre that

attracts millions of spectators in more than 21 countries (especially in the two most

influential and famous theatres: New York’s Broadway and London’s West End),

translated into 11 languages, played in thousands performances, and takes great

financial profit from the ticket selling. Shepard’s article in The New York Times

(October 21, 1964:56), claims that,

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The musical adaptation of George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion, by Alan Jay

Lerner and Frederick Loewe, has been jingling tunefully at box offices ever sing
the first curtain was raised on Broadway on March 15, 1956. Since that date, the
show has smashed records blithely. A six-and-a half-year Broadway run was
seen by 3,750,000 persons (60,000 of them standees), who paid $20,233,918 to
see 2,717 performances.

In other page, Shepard adds,

The show has played in 21 countries from Iceland to Japan, where 15 million
playgoers have paid more than $30 million in pounds, marks, yen and pesos to
enjoy, in 11 languages. In England, it had a record run of five and a half years-
2,281 performances.

In 1964, supported by its great success as a musical play, My Fair Lady was produced

as a film directed by George Cukor under the same title. It won several awards such as

Oscar Award, Tony Award, Olivier Award, Drama Desk Award, and Theatre World

Award in various categories such as the best musical, the best actor and actress in

musical, the best scenic design, the best choreography, the best costume design, the best

conductor and musical director, the outstanding featured actor in musical, and the

outstanding musical production (Shepard, 1964).

The facts that Pygmalion is written by a very prominent playwright who is also a

social reformer, that Pygmalion has a great entertaining quality when it is adapted into a

musical play entitled My Fair Lady, and that Pygmalion reflects the social distinction

and human exploitation in industrial environment in England has encouraged the writer

of this thesis to choose it as the material object of his analysis. Focusing on the issue

about class struggle as the reaction of the main character, the writer of this thesis

decides to entitle his thesis CLASS STRUGGLE IN CAPITALIST SOCIETY AS

DEPICTED IN GEORGE BERNARD SHAW’S PYGMALION. The analysis will be

 9

employed by using sociological approach as the most suitable way to answer the

research questions deal with the social conditions that motivates the main character to

do class struggle.

There are many modes of class struggle practiced by people of lower class to

reach higher social class. The most common ways we know through human history are

class struggle through violence, proletarian revolution, and the dictatorship of the

proletariat (Wilczynski, 1984:343). In this analysis, class struggle is understood as an

extreme effort of a certain member of society to have better life not through violence or

revolution but through education and self-awareness as free and independent social

beings. The decision to struggle for a better and happier life is an independent choice

made in free atmosphere and full consciousness as dignified human being. It means that

one should act as subject of his own life not as the object exploited by others. The writer

believes that individual fulfillment and liberty are of prime importance.

B. Problem Limitation

The close reading on Pygmalion reveals the play’s social contexts symbolized

by the characters’ behaviors, dialogues, and way of thinking. Their behaviors picture

how they perceive the social world. The dialogues in every act show how they develop

a social interaction as the representation of human interaction and social intercourse in

real life. Their attitudes reflect how human beings act individually and collectively to

build up their relationship in society.

In this thesis, the researcher focuses his analysis primarily on the social aspects
 10

of the class struggle represented by Eliza’s desire to attain better life and higher status

than a flower girl in society. Since there are so many plays written by Shaw (see

Appendix 1), the writer only chooses Pygmalion as single selected play to be his

material object of study. It is assumed that this play contains the message on class

struggle in capitalist society to convey to the audience. Since Shaw is a socialist and

one of the key figures in the establishment of the Fabian Society – a middle-class

socialist group who believed that social reform should come through the gradual

education of the people and through changes in intellectual and political life, not

through revolution – the theories used are socialist perspectives based on Marxist

teaching. The elaboration in the analytical chapters focuses on the social condition that

encourages the main character of Pygmalion struggle for a better social status.

C. Problem Formulation

Based on the information in the background of the study, there are two main

questions to be answered through this thesis,

1. What social conditions in capitalist society are portrayed by Pygmalion?

2. What is the main character’s reaction to the social conditions that portrays

the working class struggle in capitalist society?

The first question deals with the social condition that is portrayed in Pygmalion.

To answer this question the writer uses sociological approach to see the relationship

between the society in the play and the real society in the end of nineteenth century and

the early of twentieth century. The description of the society both in the play and in real
 11

life at the given time helps the writer to answer the second question and understand why

the main character in the play decides to do class struggle. This second question is

analyzed by using Marxist criticism since class struggle which usually leads to class

conflict – that performed by Shaw in Pygmalion satirically - is one of the main concerns

in Marxism.

D. The Objectives of the Study

Since the analysis of this thesis deals with the social condition and the

character’s class struggle depicted in Pygmalion, so the objectives of the study are:

1. The presentation of social condition in capitalist society in England in the

end of nineteenth century and the early twentieth century that become the

background of the production of Pygmalion.

2. The presentation of the main character’s reactions to the social conditions as

the portrait of the working class struggle in capitalist society.

The first objective is elaborated in Chapter III with the main investigation on

social conditions in capital society in England. This assumption emerges from the belief

that Pygmalion is a social document that reflects the society at the time when it was

written and therefore can be used to portray the social condition as well. While the

second objective is analyzed in Chapter IV to verify a hypothesis that certain social

condition of society establishes in its members a special reaction whether to remain

survive under any life oppression or – more than to be survived – to struggle to attain

higher social and economic status. The analysis used to achieve these two objectives
 12

will be based on the characters’ statements, judgments or comments stated explicitly in

the play that show their behaviors, feelings, and thoughts on both the social condition

they are engaging and the reaction toward the social conditions.

E. Research Method

The object of this thesis is the text of Pygmalion written by George Bernard

Shaw. The discussion focuses on the plot of the play. The analysis on the plot shows the

relationships between sequences and acts. It is assumed that the relationships between

those elements can be elaborated with the use of sociological approach and Marxist

criticism to find the answers of the research problems.

Sociological approach is used to find the answer of social condition based on the

theory of sociology of literature that considers literary work as social product of certain

identifiable social group in certain historical period and as social document that reflects

social reality. In line with this consideration, the writer of this thesis also tries to show

the interdependent relationship between the society in the play and the society in real

life based on the theory of homology. It is assumed that in writing a literary work an

author is influenced by his or her society structurally. The result is the social structure in

literary work is similar to that in real life.

As this is a qualitative research, the data collection is done through a library

research. There is no interview with certain people or questionnaires distributed to

particular group of respondents. The collection of data is conducted by finding and

reading references that relate to and support the discussion on the theories used in the
 13

analysis. This is done by reading books in the university library or books that are

available in internet website.

There are two types of data used in this research; the primary data and the

secondary data. The primary data are taken from the play script. Secondary data are

collected from Shaw’s biography and prominent critics’ writings on Pygmalion.

Further more, since the play tells about life in the early of twentieth century, the writer

also collects the data on the British history related to the setting of time and place of the

play. This historical data is used to grasp the sociopolitical contexts that backgrounds

the production of Pygmalion.

There are three steps taken in the research, i.e. explication, interpretation, and

description. In the explication step, the researcher attempts to master and to understand

the primary data in details as the material object of the research. In this step the

researcher gets the surface meaning of the story. The second step is developed to find

the hidden meaning of the primary data. It is done by finding out the meaning from the

written text or from things which are not stated literarily in the play. The availability of

the secondary data is very crucial in this step. The study needs to dig the author’s

hidden message by the help of available books and references. In this sense, the

availability of information talking about the sociopolitical context of Pygmalion is very

helpful. The understanding of the sociopolitical background provides important clues

to make more accurate and qualified interpretation since interpretation demands

adequate historical information to correlate the research finding and the Zeitgeist of the
 14

play. And the third step deals with the effort to formulate the interpretation in forms of

description or explanation sequenced in logic sentences and paragraphs.

F. The Significance of the Study

Regarding to the objectives of this study, the first contribution this thesis may offer is

that the readers may know the social condition in capitalist society in England in the era

of more or less one century ago and how the spirit of class struggle has influenced the

labor movements at that time. In this sense, this study helps the readers in Indonesia in

this era – including the students of English and even my institution in Padang – to

understand the reason why labor movement was so popular in capitalist society as the

way to strive for working class’ rights and freedom. Labor movement arises from the

fact that most laborers are exploited, dehumanized, and therefore pauperized by the

capitalist system.

The second contribution is the understanding the readers may get in accordance

with Marxist teaching. The breaking up of the USSR in the late 1980s and other states

in the Balkan region till the early years of the 21st century lead many people to draw a

conclusion that Marxism has come to its end at the same seconds with the death of those

communist and socialist countries. But it is, of course, not a right conclusion at all.

Marxist concept is still and will always be one of the most influential alternatives when

the sociopolitical struggles deal with the working class fate and welfare. Marxism, as

stated by Bressler (1999:211), details a plan for changing the world from a place of

bigotry, hatred, and conflict due to class struggle to a classless society where wealth,
 15

opportunity, and education are accessible for all people. Perhaps this is the answer why

Marxist concepts will never disappear from human’s mind.

Inspired by this study, hopefully, this thesis can motivate other researchers to do

studies on other topic deals with the struggle for human development in other Shaw’s

works. Furthermore, as far as the situation is possible, this study also encourages the

readers to support everyone who struggles for better life.

 16

CHAPTER II

LITERATURE REVIEW

This chapter discusses the theoretical bases of this research. The first sub-

chapter will focus on the related studies that review the existing scholars’ criticisms on

Pygmalion to show how this research has a relationship to previous criticisms and how

the analysis can be related to literature in general. The second sub-chapter deals with the

theories which are assumed as the most appropriate instruments to use in answering the

research questions stated in the previous chapter. There are two main theories used in

this thesis analysis. The first theory is homology which is utilized to bridge the

relationship between the society in Pygmalion and the society in real life. The second

theory is Marxist criticism which deals with the idea of class struggle. These two

theories are chosen since the objectives of this research are the presentation of the social

conditions in capitalist society as portrayed in Pygmalion and the presentation of the

main character’s reaction to the social conditions that reflects the working class struggle

in capitalist society. The third sub-chapter is the theoretical framework that describes

how each theory is employed to answer the research questions presented in chapter I.

A. Reviews on Related Studies

There have been many critics who write literary criticisms of Pygmalion as one of the

most important plays of Shaw. All these studies help the writer of this thesis to relate

his analysis on the problem he is working on, to provide a context for his research, to
 17

enable him to learn from previous theories on the subject, and to ensure the readers that

the research has not been done before.

Pygmalion was written in the age, when the romantic spirit was replaced by the

spirit of realism. Shaw frequently repeated that observed life is the subject of his plays

that fit most obviously under the rubric of realism – chiefly, perhaps, because of their

subjects are slum life condition, landlordism, prostitution, and cockney peculiar

language. Shaw points real life as the original source of his drama by stating, “I ... have

collected slum rents weekly with these hands, and for four and a half years have been

behind the scenes of the middle class landowner.” After triumphantly quoting several

military authorities to authenticate the verisimilitude of Bluntschli’s words and actions

in Arms and the Man, he rhetorically admitted, “I created nothing; I invented nothing; I

imagined nothing; I perverted nothing; I simply discovered drama in real life.” Even the

mythic and almost fairy-tale transformation of the flower-girl ‘Galatea’ by the

phonetician ‘Pygmalion’, says Shaw in his Preface to Pygmalion, "is neither impossible

nor uncommon” (Dukore, 1973:7-9).

Pygmalion highlights the complexity inherent in human relationships and

reflects how the problems should be overcome. From sociological perspective,

Pygmalion parodies and satirizes the capitalist society in the early twentieth century. It

is used as the medium of mass education since it contains didactic values as one of the

strongest voice to influence the public opinion to reform their life. By considering

Shaw’s Pygmalion as ‘a natural history’, Bentley (1988, 14) underlines the role of

Pygmalion in criticizing the society. He states,

 18

Pygmalion is a serious parody, a translation into the language of "natural

history." The primary inversion is that of Pygmalion's character. The Pygmalion
of Romance turns a statue into a human being. The Pygmalion of "natural
history" tries to turn a human being into a statue, tries to make of Eliza Doolittle
a mechanical doll in the role of a duchess.

It is tangible for Bentley that Shaw’s Pygmalion is a parody of the social situation. The

inversion that is intentionally designed by Shaw is considered as the way to criticize the

powerful influence held by the ruling class to treat other people as they wish. The

problem that is portrayed by Pygmalion according to Bentley is a system that exists in

society where the exploitation of human beings is practiced; even more than the

exploitation of mankind there also exists the practice of dehumanization. Men are

treated as statue or mechanical doll as can be clearly seen that Higgins cannot treat Eliza

and others humanely. He sees them as only the object to achieve his experimental goals.

While the use of ‘natural history’ in Pygmalion shows how Shaw holds the naturalism

he gets from Ibsen mostly to replace romance with the story that pictures the real social

situation in England.

It seems that Shaw is obviously ignoring the entertaining content of the play by

his insistence on didacticism. He brings into the public’s perception that a play can be

used to teach the society how to improve human life. A play might not be merely

romantic but must be also didactic. In the Preface of Pygmalion (Chin, 2000:890), he

states,

It (Pygmalion) is so intensely and deliberately didactic, and its subject is

esteemed so dry, that I delight in throwing it at the head of wiseacres who repeat
the parrot cry that art should never be didactic. It goes to prove my contention
that art should never be anything else.
 19

Pygmalion is addressed to the audience who considers the activity of watching a play as

an intellectual activity, not merely an entertaining activity that needs only emotional

involvement. The audiences are asked to use not only their emotion to enjoy the play

but also their thought to grasp the message. Consequently, Pygmalion was not really

attractive when it was first produced on April 11, 1914, with Mrs. Patrick Campbell

playing Eliza and Beerbohm Tree playing the part of Higgins. It arises in the audience’s

mind many questions especially the question about the end of the play; a question that

was answered by Shaw one year after the first performance by writing the Sequel or

Epilogue (Chin, 2000:952-960).

In line with Shaw’s statement about the didactic aspect of Pygmalion, Berst

(1988, 59) underlines that,

The didacticism of Pygmalion is thus important primarily as it informs the

action, providing a ballast of social observation and giving further dimension to
the characters. By themselves, the didactic message regarding phonetics may be
interesting and the social didacticism may be true, but the phonetic lesson is
scarcely world-shaking and the social implications are rather obvious.

Through Pygmalion, Shaw offers to his audience not a fairy and mythic story as the

audience gets from the Greek Pygmalion but a number of questions about education of

the human soul and conscience. When the audience listens to the dialogues and

observes every character’s word, it might happen that the audience understands a little

more about human life and the surrounding world. The audience, as if, gets new

knowledge input to widen their perspective. However, since the human soul can be

educated in an infinite variety of ways, there is no definite message that can be

 20

extracted from Pygmalion and offered to the world as the essential goals of Shaw’s

movement. Shaw offers his audience a variety of entertaining dramatic pictures in

which a number of serious human problems are presented in a dramatic form. To expect

Shaw, and other playwrights, to unlock the secret of life is to expect from him more

than he can give. Shaw offers to his audience the same experience as Eliza—the

emotional and intellectual independence of a free spirit. Related to the quotation above,

Crompton (1988, 46) states,

For the issue about phonology, it is possible with a little analysis to see that it is
really manners and not speech patterns that provide the clue to character
contrasts in Pygmalion, accents being, so to speak, merely their outer clothing.

Berst and Crompton reconfirm Shaw’s expectation to the audience of the play to realize

that the issue of phonetics is not the focal point of his play. By presenting such a man as

phonetician, and it is to say that the phonetician himself is among the important people

in England at that time, Shaw wants to say that one can improve his/her life by speaking

proper language and accent but the importance of phonetics is not the most vital. In this

sense, Pygmalion can be called as a play that expresses a very accurate idea about the

study of the English language in its relation with the nature of English society. It asks a

number of questions about the relations that exist between individuals in society. The

issue about phonetics is only a stepping stone to ask other questions about human

beings and the social implication the audience face in their daily real life. In line with

this, Alexander (1988, 20) asserts,

The play (Pygmalion) is didactic: but what does it teach? It is clear that the play
deals with an important social question and, as Shaw himself said: social
 21

questions are produced by the conflict of human institutions with human feeling.
In this case the human institution is the class structure of society, one of the
most visible and distinguishing mark in England in nineteenth and early
twentieth century.

The conflict of human institutions with human feeling becomes the main issue

that is criticized by Shaw as he reflects in the conflict between characters in Pygmalion.

The characters represent some classes in society. Society becomes something important

in Pygmalion because only society that constructs class structure. And class structure

according to Shaw is something related to human attitudes and manners, not to one’s

accent or way of speaking. The real reaction to anyone's dialect is the association of

particular kinds of speech with particular classes and particular manners. Shaw uses this

kind of perspective to make his Pygmalion a comedy because his concept about

manners is opposed to the social perception about way of speaking. Crompton (1988:

47) argues,

He seems even to have harbored some limited admiration for the dignified code
of manners of the Victorian period, though he found its artificialities cramping.
He gives Mrs. Hill, Mrs. Higgins, and the Colonel exquisite manners to contrast
with the Eliza's lack of them

Pygmalion contains the comic genus of drama since it arises from the vision of the

folly, the lack understanding and the stupidity in society or in a particular man. It shows

the imperfections in human nature as the subject matter of amusement. This amusement

brings so many satirical aspects focused in the relationship between Higgins and Eliza.

Comic genus in drama, as stated by Purdom (1964, 83), is the power to perceive the

general predicament of mankind, or a particular predicament of an individual, as absurd

 22

and laughter making. The true comedian does not set out to cause men to forget who

they are or to cover up their failures, but by arousing laughter to heighten their

sensibilities and enlarge their equipment for life. The attack may be sharp and stinging,

there may be bruises and shocks, but the aim is transformation. Shaw was a comic

genus in this sense. Shaw contrasts the aim of mastering proper English as the way to

get better job and as the effort to acquire the Standard English as demanded by the

English social structure. The first is an economic objective, while the second is a social-

cultural purpose. As a practical and efficient comic genus he believes that the difference

between the flower girl and the duchess was a matter of human manners and behaviors

achieved through good and qualified education. He also believes that social status can

be improved and that the social class division is not solely something related genetic

inheritance.

The writer of this thesis is very sure that Pygmalion is not written without any

special purpose. It is written in a situation when British people faced many social

problems which were no longer simply that of the poor but of the working class – a

class that is exploited and oppressed by the capitalist in industry. So, it is presented to

the audiences to direct and educate them (as Alexander asserts above, “Pygmalion is

didactic”) to have social awareness regarding to the labour movement based on the class

conflict between the capitalist and the workers. It portrays the class conflict that leads

the oppressed class to a class struggle to free themselves from human exploitation,

dehumanization, and poverty. It is very interesting to notice that the way Shaw uses to

teach his audience is by presenting many contradictions that logically absurd but reveal
 23

a kind of truth. He presents that it is absurd, for instance, that a Professor of Phonetics –

who masters his field so perfect and boasted that he can place any man within two miles

in London based on their way of speaking – still thinks that one’s social class can be

simply changed by learning new speech in 6 months. Yet, this kind of paradox and also

the reverse of the Greek myth arouse a new awareness in the audience’s mind that

mankind may not be objectified for whatever objectives.

B. Review of Related Theories

This sub-chapter provides theories relevant to support the analysis on the topic

raised in this thesis. There are two main theories. Firstly, the theory of homology in

genetic structuralism postulated by Lucien Goldmann; and secondly, Marxist criticism

which talks about the theory of class struggle. The theory of homology and Marxist

criticism are elaborated with those of George Bernard Shaw’s view points about society

which he conveys through Pygmalion as the medium to promote his socialist teaching.

1. Theory of Homology

To answer the first research question about the social condition in capitalist society

reflected in Pygmalion, homology is the suitable theory to relate the society in real life

and the society in literary work in an interdependent relationship. Theory of homology

is one of the many theories used in sociological approach that examines literature in the

social, economic and political context in which it is written or received. Sociological

approach is used in analyzing literary pieces as instrument to emphasize the nature and
 24

the effect of the social forces that shape power relationships between groups or classes

of people. In this sense, as Gary Day cites from Goldmann, literature is considered as

the representation of the world-view of a particular group or classes in society (Day,

2001:2). It is to say that literary works represent and reflect the way of thinking – and

even the way of life – of certain human community of a particular era and place.

Influenced by this assumption, the authors of literary works put the social structure of

his or her time into plays, novels, or poems. Consequently, the society which is told in

the literary works has homolog characteristics with the society in real life. Quoting

Wilbur Scott’s statement, Kennedy and Gioia (1999, 1955) writes,

Art is not created in a vacuum. It is the work not simply of a person but of an
author fixed in time and space, answering a community of which he is an
important because he articulates its part.

This perspective has totally applied against traditional criticism and considers that art is

not for art’s sake but for the sake of human instead. This approach does not analyze

literary texts in isolation but together with its social elements. Thus, such literary texts

are depicted to reflect the active relationship between characters and society in real

human situations. In Higgins-Eliza relationship in Pygmalion, for instance, the audience

gets a portrait of the capitalist-labor relationship that really existed in British society of

early twentieth century. Shaw is strongly affected by his society that his writings

promote the social, economic and political values through his characters, plot and

setting.
 25

In line with Kennedy’s and Gioia’s view about the relationship between society

and literature, Janet Wolff, one of the most prominent and respectable sociologists of

literature who writes The Social Production of Art (1989, 49), states,

Works of art are not closed, self-contained and transcendent entities, but are the
product of specific historical practices on the part of identifiable social groups in
given conditions, and therefore bear the imprint of the ideas, values and
conditions of existence of those groups, and their representatives in particular
artists.

It is very tangible here that Wolff views works of art, including literature, in a tight

relationship with their social and historical practices from where they are created, and

therefore they are called as social products of identifiable social groups. Wolff

underlines that works of art do not stand in isolation, but always be interdependent with

other aspects outside the aesthetic sphere. This assumption allows critics and students of

literature to approach a literary work sociologically, in terms, that a literary study may

investigate the main determining factors of literary creation in the institutional life of

human beings – in economic, social and political conditions.

The theory of homology, which is postulated by Lucien Goldmann, underlines

the interdependent correlation between the content of a literary work and its social,

historical and cultural context. Therefore, literary analysis should involve a sociological

approach to reveal all those contexts from which an author gives birth to a literary work.

With homology, it is not simply to say that a literary work is an imitation of society or

even a report of what happens in society. A literary work does not provide a note of real

events in details to let the readers know about what really happens in society,
 26

conversely it is an artificial and aesthetic text written by an author to reflect the society.

Boelhower, in his introduction to Goldmanns’ lectures collection (Goldman, 1981: 29)

argues,

By homology, Goldmann does not mean that the literary work is reduced to the
level of imitation. … It is not a matter of relating directly the content of a
literary work to the historical fact outside it. Instead, it is a question of relating
the collective consciousness of a social class or classes to the imaginary
structure of a literary work.

If homology functions to relate the consciousness of a social class to the imaginary

structure of literary work, it can be now understood that there are so many authors who

compose their novels and plays with certain structural plot to create imaginative society

in those works as the representation of certain existing classes. Since Goldmann is a

sociologist, he, then, explains homology in the structure and function of both literary

work and society in their relation to the human facts. He asserts that historical reality is

linked to a number of habits, activities, and mental structures. And whenever human

beings are dealing with historical and social phenomena, they can only make those

phenomena sufficiently intelligible on a large scale and in their wholeness by relating

them to collective subjects (Goldmann, 1981:86).

Regarding to Pygmalion, what facts are employed in the framework of

homology? As it will be developed in the first analytical chapter about the social

conditions in capitalist society (Chapter III), there are two issues which are analyzed

using the theory of homology to reveal the human relations between classes in capitalist

society that is between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. They are the issues of class

distinction and human exploitation. These two social phenomena are reflected in
 27

Pygmalion and are considered as the ultimate causes of many social problems in

society.

a. Class Distinction

Talking about class distinction, it is important to know the context of the term

‘class’ and its implication in social life regarding human relations in capitalist society.

Day (2001, 2-11) explains that ‘class’, in very broad terms, refers to divisions in

society. Formerly, in medieval society, class is based on heredity as the only factor to

divide people into social groups. Therefore, there are the nobility, clergy and

commoners. Yet, as the transition from feudalist to capitalist system takes place, social

class is no longer dependent on birth. The ascendancy of the bourgeoisie proves that

hard work can change one’s social class. Even the hard effort run by the bourgeoisie has

yielded in a certain point that is an exclusive class in capitalist society to oppose to

another class called the proletariat. Marx and Engels assert in Swingewood (1975,

115),

Our epoch, the epoch of the bourgeoisie, possesses … this distinctive feature: it
has simplified the class antagonism. Society as a whole is more and more
splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing
each other: Bourgeoisie and Proletariat.

With regard to this fact, the members of capitalist society are then divided into two

main classes: the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. Pygmalion reflects class distinction in

a very realistic way as if a report of what really happens in British society. It tells about

class considerations such as dress, house, attitude and behavior, and way of speaking
 28

that distinguish an individual from others or a group of people from other groups. In this

sense, the theory of homology plays its strength since the analysis will deal with the

juxtaposition of the society depicted in Pygmalion with that of the real life. Yet the

problem is not as simple as distinguishing an individual from others or grouping

individuals into a same social class based on their clothes or houses or behavior. It is

assumed that the main problem portrayed by Shaw is the domination of one class to the

other as Day (2001, 13) asserts that the major paradigm of the class distinction is a view

of the social formation where dominant class exploits the subordinate groups to get

economic benefits.

b. Human Exploitation

The term exploitation – which has been used in England since the early

nineteenth century as a borrowed word from French – may carry two different

meanings. The first meaning is related to the act of utilizing something for any purpose.

In this case, to exploit is a synonym for to use. The second meaning refers to the act of

utilizing other people in an unjust or cruel manner (Williams, 1985:130).

In political economy, exploitation involves a long-term social-economic

relationship in which the working class are mistreated or unfairly used for the benefit of

the capitalists. The workers, in this case, are exploited by working in the 24-hour

process of production to produce goods (known as mass product) from which the

capitalists get surplus value that is the value added to the capital accumulation which its

ultimate source is the unpaid surplus labor performed by the worker for the capitalist.

Precisely, the concept of surplus is as explained by Day (2001, 12),

 29

The calculation of labour in terms of time rather than kind brings us to Marx’s
theory of surplus value. At its most basic level, this states that the capitalist sells
his or her product for more than he or she pays the workers who produce it.
More specifically, the capitalist pays the worker for the time it takes for him or
her to earn the minimum amount of money he or she needs in order to survive. If
this time amounts to three hours a day, and the workers is employed for eight
hours a day that means the capitalist obtains five hours of free labour from the
worker and this is the source of profit. The worker is therefore exploited by the
capitalist since he or she does not receive the full remuneration for his or her
labour.

With the unpaid surplus labor Marx points the practice that the capitalists apply

in their factories by forcing the laborers to work in long working hours to increase the

productivity of goods without any sufficient compensation such as what described by

Tucker (1978, 535) in the following quotation,

The whole capitalist system of production turns on the increase of the gratis
labour by extending the working day or by developing the productivity, that is,
increasing the intensity of labor power, etc; that consequently, the system of
wage labour is a system of slavery, and indeed of a slavery which becomes more
severe in proportion as the social productive forces of labour develop, whether
the worker receives better or worse payment.

This revolting practice of forcing other people to work in the factory leads the workers

become the slaves of the capitalists since they are asked to work all day long like

machines for the profit accumulation of the capitalists. Day and night work using the

relay system, which is described by Tucker (1978:372) as the alternation to shift the

workers to work one week on day-work and the next week on night-work, does not give

any influence to reduce the practice of worker exploitation. In fact, there are still many

workers who are forced to work more than twelve hours without any extra-time

payment. Relay system is only applied to overcome the fact that it is physically
 30

impossible to exploit the same individual labour-power continuously during the night as

well as the day. The workers are not treated as human beings who can be exhausted or

hungry or thirsty after working for certain span of time; they are punished whenever

they break the factory discipline which is made without their agreement and knowledge.

Instead of receiving extra-payment for the long working hours, they, even, have to pay

certain amount of money as the capitalists impose a very strict fine system, and

therefore the salary becomes much smaller that cannot support their daily life. The

capitalists take this kind of exploitation for granted to keep the process of production on

the track of the accumulation of big economic profits.

The following description, written by Pauline Gregg (1957:120-121), shows

how the capitalists apply the exploitation to an entire segment of society that is the

working class showing the practice of treating the workers as slaves whose duties are

merely working and working for the capitalists’ benefits:

Children and adults of both sexes were employed in the factories, six or seven
being the admitted age of starting work, though children sometimes began at
three or four years old. Parents were frequently compelled by economic pressure
to send their children to the mill; in some cases they were unemployed
themselves, and were refused parish relief if they had children who could work;
sometimes adults were refused work unless they brought their children with
them. The consequences were reflected not only on the unfortunate child
labourers but on the parents, whose wages were forced down by their own
children. … (Working) hours ranged from twelve a day to as many as nineteen
in busy periods. Discipline was in the hands of overseers who were bound to
exact a full quota of work or be penalized themselves. Brutality, including
whipping and beating, was said to be necessary to keep the children awake, who
otherwise, from sheer fatigue, sometimes fell into the moving machinery, to be
killed or maimed. … A rigid discipline was enforced on adults and children
alike. Beating and loss of wages were the penalties for arriving late at work. For
opening a window (the temperature was 80 – 84 degrees) the penalty was a fine
of 1s.; for keeping the gas burning too long into the morning the operative was
 31

fined 2s.; for washing himself 1s.; if he was able to raise his spirits so far as to
whistle while at work he was fined 1s. In one mill near Manchester operatives
were not allowed a drink of water, and even the rainwater was locked up.

Shaw witnesses this practice of human exploitation happening everywhere in the

factories all around England. As a social reformist, he finds that the practice of waged

slavery in industry – the use of man by man – is the main reason of all human problems

in society including poverty, unemployment and crimes. He fights the capitalist’s mind

set that considers capital as the most important determining factor in the process of

production and treats the workers as the objects in process of production. Therefore he

struggles through his propaganda and lectures to promote that the process of production

will not run unless there are workers who cannot be positioned in the same degree as

raw materials and machines. The workers must be treated as human beings who innately

have right, feeling, desire, ideals, and freedom. In Pygmalion, Shaw portrays so many

things around this concern and together with Fabian Society he voices the struggle

against the social and political power of the oppressor that gives wide opportunity to the

growth of human exploitation. For him, it is inhumane to force the workers to work in

twelve to nineteen hours a day. It is sadistic to whip and beat the workers only because

they come late at work. It is also very irrational that children of 4 years old are forced to

work in the factory like adults.

By employing the main character, Eliza Doolittle, in a conflict along the play with

Higgins, Shaw highlights the spirit of struggle to abolish the practices of treating other

people as objects and means to collect economic benefit, of seizing other people’s right

and freedom without their agreement and knowledge, and of forcing other people to
 32

work without adequate compensation. These issues become the focal points of the

discussion in this section.

Treating other people as means or objects to take from them economic benefits

is one of the main characteristics of human exploitation. Shaw gives strong stressing on

this issue in Pygmalion as his objection to the fact in industrial society in which the

inability of non-property-owners (the workers) to survive without selling their labor-

power is ‘used’ by the property owners (the capitalists) as the opportunity to objectify

them. In this sense, the workers are considered as undifferentiated and passive objects

in the production process and therefore are treated merely as economic factors. The

workers are placed in the same position with other production factors such as capital,

raw materials and machines. Considering the workers as passive objects leads the

capitalists to treat the workers inhumanely, force them to work all day long, give them

no adequate wage, impose on them strict and inhumane work discipline, and – in certain

notion – do not admit that workers are independent creatures who have rights and

freedom to determine their own life.

Shaw satirically places Eliza and Higgins as the focus of his play since Higgins

represents the capitalist and Eliza is the portrait of the working class. Eliza’s inability in

speaking properly is used by Higgins to exploit her as object of a language experiment.

Thus, Higgins’ exploitation on Eliza in the language laboratory both as the object of his

scientific experiment and as the object for his economic profits – if he wins the betting

with Pickering as he can pass Eliza as a duchess in the ambassador’s garden party – is

considered as the portrait of the social reality in industrial society picturing the
 33

relationship between the factory owner and the workers.

2. Marxist Criticism

The use of Marxist criticism departs from a strong conviction that it is

appropriate to analyze social problems depicted in literary works, especially those

dealing with the social changes occurred in industrial society in which the struggle of

the oppressed working class to be free from the capitalist oppression becomes the focal

point of a literary analysis. Abcarian, et al. (1998, 1373), writes,

The Marxist critic analyzes literary works to show how, wittingly or unwittingly,
they support the dominant social class, or how they, in some way, contribute to
the struggle against oppression and exploitation. And since Marxist critic views
literature as just one among the variety of human activities that reflect power
relations and class divisions, he or she is likely to be more interested in what a
work says than in its formal structure.

Based largely on Karl Marx’s writings, it claims that literary works are

essentially political because they either challenge or support economic oppression of the

dominant social class. On the other hands, literary works also mostly criticize the

practice of human exploitation in the mode of production, distribution and exchange

that in turn give big inspiration to the working class to struggle against the exploitation.

Due to its strong emphasis on the political aspects of the texts, Marxist criticism focuses

more on the content and themes of literature than on its form. Nonetheless, as concluded

by Kennedy (1999: 48), such approach to literary texts “can illuminate political and

economic dimensions of literature other approaches overlook”.

Class struggle is one of the many theories postulated by Karl Marx. It arises

originally from Marx’s concept of classless society – a concept that is based on the
 34

common ownership of the means of production, distribution, and exchange. Since Marx

sees the progress in society as coming about through the struggle for power between

different social classes, class struggle then becomes a class conflict which is caused by

the exploitation of one class by another especially in capitalist society (Barry,

1995:156-157). It occurs when the members of society are segregated into classes

related to their functions in industry and therefore occupy different position in the

industrial organization to utilize the technical and industrial equipments. Despite

changes which have taken place in the industrial society, the divisions into classes and

the struggle between these classes have persisted in industrial environment. Therefore

the history of mankind has been a continuous struggle of classes as Karl Marx and

Friederich Engels wrote, “The written history of all hitherto existing society is the

history of class struggle” (Berberoglu, 1994:21).

There are two main classes in capitalist society that relate to one another in the

production sphere: the capitalists (the possessing class) and the waged labor (the

proletarian/the working class). The first class possesses the means of production and

accumulates capital through the exploitation of labor. This class includes anyone who

gets their income from the surplus value they get from the workers who create wealth.

The income of the capitalists, therefore, is based on their exploitation of the workers.

The second class, the working class does not possess the means of production but

instead uses their labor power to generate value for the capitalist as a condition for its

survival. This class includes anyone who earns their livelihood by selling their labor

power and being paid a wage or salary for their labor time. They have little choice;
 35

instead they have to work for capitalist since they typically have no independent way to

survive. The capitalist society is mainly divided into these two groups: the class of

modern capitalists – the owners of the means of production and the employers of wage-

labor; and the class of modern wage-laborers – who have no means of production of

their own and reduced to sell their labor-power in the process of production. The clear-

cut segregation between the possessing class and the working class represent one and

the same human alienation but brings different impacts to the two classes. The

possessing class feels satisfied and affirmed in this self-alienation, experiences the

alienation as a sign of its own power, and possesses in it the appearance of a human

existence. Conversely, the working class feels destroyed and isolated in this alienation

or as Hegel describes that this class is indignation against the depravity, an indignation

necessarily aroused in this class by the contradiction between its human nature and its

life-situation, which is blatant, outright and all-embracing denial of that very nature

(Tucker, 1978:133-134).

In the age of capitalism, Marx describes an economic class where membership

of a class is defined by one’s relationship to the means of production, i.e., one’s position

in the social structure that characterizes capitalism. Marx talks mainly about two classes

that include the vast majority of the population – the working class – and the capitalist.

In accordance with this understanding, class struggle is a conflict arisen in this

capitalist-laborer/ exploiter-exploited/ oppressor-oppressed relationship because each of

the two main classes has their own interests in common. The collective interests are in

conflict with those of the other class as a whole. This in turn leads to conflict between
 36

individual members of different classes.

Providing an analysis of class struggle based on the exploitation of labor,

Berberoglu (1994:19) writes,

Marx and Engels stressed that such an analysis must be placed within the
framework of the dynamics of social change in the world historical process and
that in this context the crucial task is to identify and examine the primary motive
force of social transformation that defines the parameters of societal
development: class struggle.

This quotation underlines the existing framework of the shifting of one type of

society to another (from primitive to feudal, from feudal to capitalist, and then capitalist

to socialist) as a process occurred in the history of human being society. Every type of

society brings with it special characteristics reflected in the relationship among and the

behavior of its members. It also questions the primary motive force of social

transformation that encourages the society members to do class struggle. Quoting

Marx’s letter of March 5, 1852, to his friend Joseph Weydemeyer, Tucker (1978, 220)

explains that the class struggle is mainly generated by the vision of the dictatorship of

the proletariat and the very strong conviction that the dictatorship itself can constitute

the transition to the abolition of all classes and to a classless society.

Marx and Engels then suggest a new type of society (later on also becomes the

concern of Shaw and his Fabian Society) where the dictatorship of the proletariat can

win the struggle of social, political, and economic domination, i.e., socialist society.

Marx says (Tucker, 1978:220),

And now as to myself, no credit is due to me for discovering the existence of

classes in modern society or the struggle between them. Long before me
 37

bourgeois historians had described the historical development of this class

struggle and bourgeois economists the economic anatomy of the classes. What I
did that was new was to prove: 1) the existence of classes is only bound up with
particular historical phases in the development of production, 2) that the class
struggle necessarily leads to the dictatorship of the proletariat, 3) that this
dictatorship itself only constitutes the transition to the abolition of all classes and
to a classless society

Based on this idea, the society should be ruled by the working class and the

laboring masses in its ideals to establish a workers’ state. The cornerstone of a workers'

state is the abolition of private property in the major means of production and an end to

the exploitation of labor for private profit. The establishment of a revolutionary

democratic society ruled by the working class (as against the rule of capital) is what

distinguishes a socialist society from its capitalist counterpart. In socialist society the

state protects the interests of the working class against capital and all other remains of

reactionary exploitative classes.

The breaking down of the bourgeoisie – as the goal of class struggle –can be

achieved, Berberoglu, (1994: 46-48) argues, only by the proletariat becoming the ruling

class, capable of crushing the inevitable and desperate resistance of the bourgeoisie, and

of organizing all the working and exploited people for the new economic system. In this

context, then, the proletarian state has a dual role to play: to break the resistance of its

class enemies (the capitalists), and to protect the revolution and begin the process of

socialist construction. The class character of the new state under socialism takes on a

new form and content. This situation directs the capitalists in a crisis of power, and this
 38

crisis is not just understood as a breakdown of capitalism but is seen rather as the

moment of class struggle when working class self activity undermines capitalist control.

As one of the most respected and prolific figures in the socialism movement, Shaw

basically supports the idea of class struggle taught by Marx and Engels, but there is a

principle difference between Marx’s class struggle with that of Shaw. Marx allows a

revolutionary struggle through two arms of class struggle as asserted by Draper (1978,

125) that in the language of the labour movement, it became standard to speak of the

trade unions as the economic arm of the working class, the proletarian party as the

political arm. In opposing to the way of Marx’s class struggle, Shaw chooses an

evolutionary way that he promotes with other important early members of Fabian

Society such as Sidney and Beatrice Webb. If the people’s souls are to be saved, Shaw

argues, the only way is to raise the standard of mass-education to a degree at which its

recipients will be rendered immune against the grosser forms of exploitation. Together

with other Fabians, Shaw persuades that if society has insured for man the opportunity

for satisfying his primary needs and his advance in the refinements of social morality

the sole way to follow is mass education. What Shaw means with mass education are

public meetings, lectures, journals, social intercourse, drama, and opera (Simon,

1958:10).

It is clear to see here the difference between the struggles to the same vision –

social and economic reform – between Shaw and Marx. While Marx and Engels suggest

revolutionary means as the way to break down the domination of capitalists, Shaw and

the Fabians accepted a program of socialism by evolutionary ways. They promote such
 39

way of reforms as necessary to the establishment of a socialist state, the final result of a

long series of struggle. For them socialism is a new organization of society in which the

means of production would be owned by the state. This principle encourages Shaw and

the Fabians to help the founding of a separate party that became the Labor Party in 1906

where most of its members in Parliament are the Fabians (Chambers’s Encylopaedia,

1973:465).

Of all means to educate people mentioned above, it is interesting to notice that

for Shaw the theater is a means of education. Shaw frequently, as stated by Simon

(1958:16), admits that he is a teacher whose aim is the making of better men and

women. He believes that art, particularly dramatic art, is able to improve morals and

behavior by destroying stereotyped concepts of life. It is no wonder that he writes so

many plays to teach people how to struggle against any dehumanized power in society.

C. Theoretical Framework

The theories elaborated above are utilized to help the analysis in the analytical

chapters due to the two research questions in chapter I. There are two main theories

used to do the analyses: the theory of homology and Marxist criticism. The theory of

homology postulated by Lucien Goldmann is employed with other sociological

criticisms of Janet Wolff and X.J. Kennedy and Gioia to investigate the social

conditions and the characteristics of the capitalist society portrayed in Pygmalion that

becomes the topic of discussion in Chapter III. Sociologists of art believe that every

work of art is a social product and every literary work is a social document. It is said so
 40

because literature portrays society and reflects the life of human beings of certain time

and place. This belief has deeply influenced the writer of this thesis to use the theory of

homology since he is eager to know what kind of society criticized by Shaw in

Pygmalion.

To support the theory of homology, the writer of this thesis also provides the

sociopolitical context of the era when Pygmalion was written. It is important to notice

that to show his concern to the social conditions, George Bernard Shaw, the writer of

Pygmalion, not only writes novels and plays to reflect the society of his lifetime but also

involves very actively and militantly in the socialist movements to reconstruct the

British society through his lectures, public speech, and propaganda. This fact becomes

an interesting aspect to underline since it creates certain nuance in every literary text

written by Shaw. Therefore, the presentation of the sociopolitical context of British

society in the era when Pygmalion was written will be very helpful and useful in doing

this research.

Marxist criticism, on the other hand, is used in chapter IV to analyze the reason

and the background of the reaction shown by the main character of Pygmalion to fight

the existing social conditions which are marked by class distinction, human

exploitation, dehumanization, and poverty. These social problems are assumed as the

consequences of the practice of capitalist system in which human nature and human

value are ignored. The struggle of the main character, then, is the portrait of the working

class struggle to abolish the class distinction in capitalist society and to be free from the

capitalist oppression. To analyze these issues, the writer of this thesis employs the
 41

theory of class struggle as the main instrument of Marxist criticism to get an adequate

understanding of the main character’s reaction to fight the social problems she faces.

The analysis will be mostly based on the dialogues and the stage directions of

the play which show how the characters interact each other. From that interaction

among characters the writer of this thesis draws his interpretation and description on the

social conditions and the class struggle of the main character supported by the relevant

theories mentioned above.

 42

CHAPTER III

SOCIAL CONDITIONS IN CAPITALIST SOCIETY

AS PORTRAYED IN PYGMALION

Dealing with the first research question of this thesis, this chapter analyzes the

social conditions reflected in Pygmalion in accordance with the action, thought, and

attitude of the characters. The discussion is based on the dialogues among the

characters and the technical stage directions which describe the performance and the

movements of the characters on the stage. The analysis departs from the perception that

considers literary text as a social document from which the readers can study its social,

political and economic conditions of a society in a given time and place.

Since Pygmalion was written in the early twentieth century and was

deliberately utilized by Shaw to criticize the practice of human relationship in the

process of goods production, the analysis in this chapter focuses on the social

conditions in capitalist society. Capitalist society meant by this thesis is a society

characterized by the principles of production relationship between wage labor and the

owners of the means of production in capitalist system (Berberoglu, 1999:44). This

society establishes capitalism as an economic system in which property is owned by

private individuals or corporation. Individual or corporate ownership of capital and

means of production has created the distinction between the capital owners (the

bourgeoisie) and the workers (the proletariat). This distinction gives the chance to the

capital owners to practice human exploitation on the workers by forcing the workers to
 43

work in long working hours with very low wage to gain big economic profits. In turn,

class distinction and human exploitation result in dehumanization and poverty as the

most visible and concrete consequences.

A. Class Distinction

Influenced by the late Victorian age that views social class as one of the most

important issue to consider, in Pygmalion, Shaw shows that class structure of society is

the most visible and distinguishing marks in England in the nineteenth and early

twentieth century. He writes about a situation in society where everything is constructed

and understood in class dimension: physical appearance (such as personal appearance

and clothes, ornaments, furniture, and homes), the names of the characters, and the way

of speaking and behaving. As a socialist, Shaw maintains that the difference between a

flower girl and a lady is a matter of education that sharpens one’s brilliance, good

attitude and right moral behavior. This notion causes him to object an unscientific, but

common, assumption that the upper classes are superior by virtue of their birth. Thus,

Pygmalion echoes a new way of thinking that in a class society it is possible for an

individual to change his/her membership to a social class which is usually ascribed at

birth and is considered as something hereditary.

1. Physical Appearance

This aspect is so obvious to show class distinction since personal appearance

and clothes, ornaments (pictures, photographs, etc), furniture and place of living owned

by the characters are closely related to the social status. Shaw develops this aspect
 44

interestingly by providing detailed stage directions composed in novel-like style.

Conveying a social message to a variety of decoders, clothes or accessories or human

physical appearances have become reliable ways to denote social status, profession, and

economic situation. In fact, it really happens in society that clothes have become one of

the most crucial parts of a person’s social class. Shaw knows about this fact, and

therefore he catches the phenomenon, arranges it aesthetically in his literary works as a

play, and uses it to clarify the social distinction that exists in British society by using the

issue of different clothes worn by the characters.

There are some descriptions of clothes and personal appearance in the beginning

of an act or somewhere in the middle of the play to show what kind of clothes the

characters wear and how they look like. These clothes and physical appearance are

considered as indicators of one’s social class and they give strong influence in daily

human relation in society. The table shows this aspect.

Table 1. Description of Physical Appearance and Clothes

Page
Name of
Description of Act number
the Description of Clothes
Physical appearance in Chin
characters
(2000)
Mrs. She wears evening dress.
Eynsford 1 891
Hill
Miss She is in her evening
Eynsford dress. 1 891
Hill
He wears evening dress. A young man of
Freddy 1 891
twenty
The She wears a little sailor A girl of perhaps 1 891
 45

Flower hat of black straw that eighteen or twenty

Girl has long been exposed to with hair that needs
the dust and soot of washing rather badly:
London and has seldom its mousy color can
if ever been brushed, a hardly be natural. She
shoddy black coat that is no doubt as clean as
reaches nearly to her she can afford to be;
knees and is shaped to but compared to the
her waist, a brown skirt ladies she is very
with a coarse apron, and dirty. She needs the
boots which are much the services of a dentist.
worse for wear.

Page
Name of
Description of Act number
the Description of Clothes
Physical appearance in Chin
characters
(2000)
He is in evening dress, An elderly gentleman
Colonel
with a light overcoat. of the amiable military 1 893
Pickering
type.
Dressed in a A man of around
professional-looking forty, energetic,
black frock-coat with a scientific type,
white linen collar and heartily, even
Professor black silk tie. violently interested in
Henry everything that can be 2 900
Higgins studied as a scientific
subject, careless about
himself and other
people, including their
feelings.
She wears a hat with
three ostrich feathers,
orange, sky-blue, and
red.
Liza (She is the flower girl 2 901
Doolittle She has a nearly clean in act 1).
apron, and the shoddy
coat has been tidied a
little.
 46

Clad in the costume of

his profession, including
Alfred An elderly but
a hat with a back brim 2 910
Doolittle vigorous dustman
covering his neck and
shoulders.

From the table above, the characters can be divided into two social classes. They are

Mrs. Eynsford Hill, Miss Eynsford Hill, Colonel Pickering, and Professor Henry

Higgins in one group, and Eliza Doolittle and Alfred Doolittle in another group. The

first group represents the bourgeoisie or the capitalists and the second one represents the

proletariat or the working class. These two classes are contrasted to each other by Shaw

not only by their behavior and mannerism related to their inner aspects of human nature

but also by their clothes and appearance.

The story in Act 1 begins at a quarter past eleven at night in London during a

heavy downpour of summer rain. A group of people are seeking for shelter under the

portico of St. Paul's Church, Covent Garden. Among them are Mrs. and Miss Eynsford

Hill, Colonel Pickering and Professor Henry Higgins who is preoccupied while taking

notes. Freddy, the son of Mrs. Eynsford Hill, who is looking for a cab for his mother

and sister to ride back home is also from this class. They wear evening dress to show

that they have special attires to wear in the evening. This kind of dress shows that they

are not common people. They must be people of middle or upper class because, like in

many other societies, people of that class reserve special kinds of clothes for special

occasions as symbols of their social status. Wearing an evening dress here is not just to

protect the human body from extreme weather and other features of the environment. It
 47

is not only worn for safety and comfort due to the cold weather at night, but to convey a

social class message of the wearers. In this sense, clothes has a social meaning

understood socially and culturally by all members of a society since clothes maintain in

their models, basic materials, ornaments, and functions the social classes of the people

who wear them.

When the audiences turn their attention to the flower girl (Eliza), they find other

kinds of clothes. Instead of wearing a luxurious evening dress, the flower girl just wears

a little sailor hat of black straw that has long been exposed to the dust and soot of

London, a shoddy black coat, a brown skirt with a coarse apron, and old boots which

are much the worse for wear. Perhaps she has only two or three pairs of dresses which

make her having no choice to change clothes everyday so that the clothes “have seldom

if ever been brushed.” Her limited income of selling flowers is not enough to buy new

clothes to make her appearance more interesting as to add and polish her natural beauty.

Furthermore, it is because of the matter of clothes that Eliza experiences a bad

treatment from Higgins who extremely dislikes seeing the clothes she is wearing when

she comes to his laboratory at the first time. She is very surprised when Higgins orders

Mrs. Pearce (Higgins’ housekeeper) to put all her clothes off and throw them away into

the dustbin. While waiting for the arrival of the new clothes, Eliza is wrapped in brown

paper just like an object. It is to say that Higgins cannot bear to see her ‘ugly’ clothes

and prefers to witness her wrapped in paper. How disgusted are the clothes that Higgins

treats them like garbage as he asks his housekeeper to throw the clothes away into the

dustbin. How low the social status of a flower girl is that her clothes must be stripped
 48

down and replaced by a brown paper. Of course, clothes are more precious and decent

to wear by civilized human beings than a piece of paper, but the point is the fact that the

upper class people have no respect at all to the lower class. They tend to force the lower

class to wear particular kind of clothes they wish, including the imposition of the

uniform policy in industrial environment to distinguish the common workers with the

higher officers and the owner of the factory as well. In industrial environment, the

owners of manufactures also have no respect to the workers and treat them as if they

have no right and freedom. The manufacturers ask the overlookers to wallop the

workers to force them to work harder and to be more disciplined. They give inadequate

wages that the workers cannot use to fulfill their basic needs. They give no rest time to

the workers and prohibit them to eat and drink during the working time.

It is interesting to give special attention on the brown paper used to wrap Eliza. The

problem of using paper as cloth is its endurance. It is only a short-time ‘cloth’ that has

no ability to protect the body for a long time from bad weather, for instance. It gives a

very minimal guarantee of comfort since it is easy to tear. Related to the social

condition in capitalist society, this metaphorical paper refers to everything given by the

manufacture owners that provides slightest guarantee to the laborers for their barest

necessities of life. This condition leads most of the laborers to a serious poverty.

When Eliza knows that Mrs. Pearce is ordering new clothes for her, she says to

Higgins,

“Mrs. Pearce says you’re going to give me some to wear in bed at night different
to what I wear in the daytime; but it do seem a waste of money when you could
get something to shew. Besides, I never could fancy changing into cold things
 49

on a winter night”

(Chin, 2000: 914).

This quotation shows Eliza’s disagreement of the replacement of her old clothes with

new garments ordered by Mrs. Pearce. She is not familiar with the habit of wearing

clothes different in the day time and at night. For Eliza, the clothes she usually wears

when she sells flowers in the curb of Tottenham Court Road are also the same clothes

she wears when she goes to bed at night. But who cares to her objection and

disagreement. She must accept whatever order of his ‘master’. This is one of the typical

social conditions in capitalist society where laborers’ voice is usually ignored by their

masters. They have no other choice except to follow what the masters have decided.

The same situation of wearing simple clothes is found in Alfred Doolittle,

Eliza’s father. He wears the costume of his profession, including a hat with a back brim

covering his neck and shoulders. Since he is a dustman, the readers can imagine what is

meant by “the costume of his profession”. A dustman never wears a suit or a light coat

as that of Colonel Pickering. Instead, he might wear a long-sleeve shirt, coarse and

grimy trousers, and boots on his feet merely to protect his body of the heat of the

sunlight and the dust that fly everywhere whenever he sweeps the road and collects the

waste disposals. When people meet a man who wears this kind of clothes, it is not

difficult for them to guess the profession of the man, even when he is not working with

his broom, dustpan, or garbage barrow.

To understand how house, furniture, and room decoration give effects to and

influenced by one’s social class, Mrs. Higgins’ home in Act 3 is a wonderful text to
 50

begin this discussion.

… Her drawing-room, in a flat on Chelsea embankment, has three windows

looking on the river; and the ceiling is not as lofty as it would be in an older
house of the same pretension. The windows are open, giving access to a balcony
with flowers in pots. If you stand with your face to the windows, you have the
fireplace on your left and the door in the right-hand wall close to the corner
nearest the windows. Mrs. Higgins was brought up on Morris and Burne Jones;
and her room, which is very unlike her son's room in Wimpole Street, is not
crowded with furniture and little tables and nicknacks. In the middle of the room
there is a big ottoman; and this, with the carpet, the Morris wall-papers, and the
Morris chintz window curtains and brocade covers of the ottoman and its
cushions, supply all the ornament, and are much too handsome to be hidden by
odds and ends of useless things. A few good oil-paintings from the exhibitions
in the Grosvenor Gallery thirty years ago (the Burne Jones, not the Whistler side
of them) are on the walls. The only landscape is a Cecil Lawson on the scale of a
Rubens. There is a portrait of Mrs. Higgins as she was when she defied fashion
in her youth in one of the beautiful Rossettian costumes which, when caricatured
by people who did not understand, led to the absurdities of popular estheticism
in the eighteen-seventies.
In the corner diagonally opposite the door Mrs. Higgins, now over sixty and
long past taking the trouble to dress out of the fashion, sits writing at an
elegantly simple writing-table with a bell button within reach of her hand. There
is a Chippendale chair further back in the room between her and the window
nearest her side. At the other side of the room, further forward, is an Elizabethan
chair roughly carved in the taste of Inigo Jones. On the same side a piano in a
decorated case. The corner between the fireplace and the window is occupied by
a divan cushioned in Morris chintz. …
(Chin, 2000:918)

As the issue of clothes has been used to bring to light the fact of class distinction, Shaw

also elaborates the description of place for living in his plays to inform to the audience

about the social status of the owner of the home. He writes every detail of the room like

a magazine-reporter tells to the readers what he/she catches through his/her eyes. All

those details are deliberately presented to bring the focus to the understanding of home

as symbols of capitalist values and social stability as corner-stones of class distinction.

Living in an exclusive and luxurious environment supported by high income as the

 51

result of labor exploitation in manufactures is one of the value maintained by the

capitalists in their life. Every ornament and furniture as if speak about that value and

Shaw is the skillful writer who voices the phenomenon by describing home and its

interiors to reflect the economic prosperity possessed by the upper class people.

Mrs. Higgins’ home is very luxurious fulfilled with expensive and elegant

furniture and paintings. It is contrast to Eliza’s dormitory which she considers, “It

wasn’t fit for a pig to live in; and I had to pay four-and-six a week” (Chin, 2000:894).

Shaw reveals the contradiction of situation of possessing and not-possessing a home and

of living in the comfortable central town and living in the slums. He criticizes the fact

of no possessed home-space encountered by the lower class (the working class) because

the capitalists have no good will to provide homes for the laborers. Through the

description of Mrs. Higgins’ home above, the readers are exposed to the issue of social

class difference between the wealthy bourgeois Mrs. Higgins against the poor but

struggling Eliza. The fact that the home of bourgeois has balcony, for instance, indicates

that the home must be consisted of more than one floor. Only upper class people have

the home like that. The balcony is usually located on the higher floor as a special place

to be relaxed while viewing what happens outside the home. From a balcony people

interact with the external world of a home and broaden their perspective of seeing

things. Balcony brings into the viewer a new intellectual and emotional activity since it

stimulates the individual mind to consider home-outside aspects as things to ponder

regarding to every effort of human improvement. Shaw includes balcony of home in

some of his plays – the balcony in front of Raina’s bedchamber in Arms and the Man,
 52

for instance – to represent his desire to provoke in the audience’s mind to think that

capitalists should not only focus on the economic matters of accumulating profits and

bank interests. Instead, they must broaden their perspective to the socio-economic

problems encountered by their labors due to the minimum wage, the long working

hours, and the working contract system. Through a balcony as the symbol of high

position in decision-making process, the capitalists relate themselves to the concepts of

the relationship between the external world and the workings of the individual mind,

particularly as they apply to moral responsibility toward labors’ daily and future life.

Other facts to underline that the home belongs to the upper class people are the

presence of the expensive furniture such as a big ottoman, Chippendale chair,

Elizabethan chair carved in the taste of Inigo Jones1, a decorated case, elegant writing-

table, a divan cushioned in Morris chintz; beautiful portrait and paintings of Morris and

Burne Jones2, good oil-paintings from the exhibitions in the Grosvenor Gallery3, the

Morris wall-papers, Cecil Lawson on the scale of a Rubens, a portrait of Mrs. Higgins

in one of her beautiful Rossettian costumes when she attended a fashion contest; and

other ‘accessories’ such as the fireplace, carpet, the Morris chintz window curtains,

brocade covers of the ottoman and its cushions. In Pygmalion, St. Paul’s Cathedral and

1
Inigo Jones is a very famous architect in England in seventeenth century, who, between 1625 -1640, was concerned
principally with the work on two major London sites: the repair and remodel of St. Paul's Cathedral, and the design of
Covent Garden (Sharp, 1991:84).
2
William Morris and Burne Jones are the most prominent painters in England in the end of nineteenth century. Their
famous paintings such as Pelicans symbolic of Sacrifice, Baptism of Christ, Crucifixion, Annunciation to the
shepherds, Nativity, Star of Bethlehem, Cophetua, and Love among the Ruins are among their best works of art
displayed and sold in Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery (http://www.birmingham.gov.uk/burnejones).
3
The Grosvenor Gallery is also a famous art gallery founded in Bond Street, London, by Sir Coutts Lindsay and his
wife Blanche Lindsay in 1877. It holds annual paintings fair every year where the wealthy people of London usually
visit to enjoy the classical and decorative paintings of many prestigious painters from all over the world
(http://www.victorianweb.org/decadence/grosvenor.html).
 53

Covent Garden are mentioned in the first act and become important places from where

Eliza’s life journey gets its start. Instead of showing his well-knowledge about the

famous artists of his time and their prominent works of art, Shaw deliberately presents

situation of a home of upper class people by mentioning all those prestigious paintings

and furniture to underline that with the money they collect from their manufacture

business they are able to buy such expensive paintings and furniture.

All those furniture and paintings create a very comfortable feeling when one

sits in Mrs. Higgins’ drawing room. Regarding to this comfort, Shaw offends the upper

class way of thinking that considers wealth and prosperity as the objective of life. And

for that objective, they allow whatever ways including exploiting their fellowmen. The

situation aroused by that way of thinking is that the upper class people tend to live for

themselves. In other part of Pygmalion, Shaw, using Alfred Doolittle as his mouthpiece,

criticizes the middle class morality run by the upper class people who live in full of

hypocrisy (remember Higgins throws a handful of coins into Eliza’s flower basket right

after the sound of church bell to show his Christian charity), who do not live for others

but for themselves, who rob whatever they wish from the poor because of their avarice.

Eliza’s house is very different from Mrs. Higgins’ home. It is not a home but

only a hiring room, as described in the following interesting passage.

… Her lodging: a small room with very old wall-paper hanging loose in the
damp places. A broken pane in the window is mended with paper. A portrait of a
popular actor and a fashion plate of ladies’ dresses, all wildly beyond poor
Eliza’s means, both torn from newspapers, are pinned up on the wall. A birdcage
hangs in the window; but its tenant died long ago: it remains as a memorial only.
These are the only visible luxurious: the rest is the irreducible minimum of
poverty’s needs: a wretched bed heaped with all sorts of coverings that have any
 54

warmth in them, a draped packing case with a basin and jug on it and a little
looking-glass over it, a chair and table, the refuse of some suburban kitchen, and
an American alarm clock on the shelf above the unused fireplace: the whole
lighted with a gas lamp with a penny in the slot meter. Rent: four shillings a
week. …
(Chin, 2000: 898)
In contrast to Mrs. Higgins’ home - which is fulfilled with expensive and elegant

furniture and paintings – Eliza’s dormitory is considered as “wasn’t fit for a pig to live

in” (Chin, 2000:894). These two homes are really far different. One is so luxurious and

comfortable, but the other is so dirty and unfit for human to live. The reasons of all

those differences are the social status. Whenever the descriptions in that stage direction

are read, every item in Mrs. Higgins’ room is as if directly compared with those in

Eliza’s bedroom. Therefore it will be easy to see the difference by putting the room

items in a table. The table below shows the comparison.

Table 2. The comparison of Room Items

No Room items in Eliza’s bedroom Room items in Mrs. Higgins’ home

the Morris wall-papers

1 very old wall-paper
three windows looking on the river
2 A broken pane in the window
Morris and Burne Jones
oil-paintings from the exhibitions in the
3 A portrait of a popular actor
Grosvenor Gallery

a wretched bed heaped with all a divan cushioned in Morris chintz

4
sorts of coverings
a big ottoman, Chippendale chair and
5 a chair and table
Elizabethan chair
Mrs. Higgins’ own home
6 Rent: four shillings a week
 55

In line with what Shaw describes above, Engels (1979, 61) informs,

The houses are occupied from cellar to garret, filthy within and without, and
their appearance is such that no human being could possibly wish to live in
them. … Scarcely a whole window-pane can be found, the walls are crumbling,
doorposts and window frames loose and broken, doors of old boards nailed
together, or altogether wanting in this thieves’ quarter, where no doors are
needed, there being nothing to steal. Here live the poorest of the poor, the worst
paid workers with thieves and the victims of prostitution indiscriminately
huddled together, the majority Irish, or of Irish extraction, and those who have
not yet sunk in the whirlpool of moral ruin which surrounds them, sinking daily
deeper, losing daily more and more of their power to resist the demoralizing
influence of want, filth, and evil surroundings.

It seems that the descriptions of the place for living which are reflected by Shaw in

Pygmalion and written by Engels in The Condition of The Working Class in England

voices the same reality in details about the real conditions of houses where thousands of

the workers live in. Engels reports that in the most extensive working-people’s district

lies east of the Tower in Whitechapel and Bethnal Green, for example, there exists

1,400 houses, inhabited by 2,795 families, or about 12,000 persons where it is nothing

unusual to find a man, his wife, his four or five children, and sometimes both

grandparents, all live in one single room of ten to twelve square feet, where they eat,

sleep, and work (Engels, 1979:62). It can be imagined how crowded and uncomfortable

the houses are. While their masters are enjoying the comfort of luxurious ‘palaces’, the

workers have no other choices instead of living in those slums. It is clear here that

Pygmalion is so homolog with the situation in real life by exposing Eliza’s dorm to

show the similar situation of the workers’ houses in Whitechapel and Bethnal Green.

Different from Mrs. Higgins’ home, there is another home which is used as a

language laboratory in Wimpole Street. It is Higgins’ Laboratory. Shaw describes that

 56

laboratory as follows,

It is a room on the first floor, looking on the street, and was meant for the
drawing-room. The double doors are in the middle of the back wall; and persons
entering find in the corner to their right two tall file cabinets at right angles to
one another against the walls. In this corner stands a flat writing-table, on which
are a phonograph, a laryngoscope, a row of tiny organ pipes with a bellows, a set
of lamp chimneys for singing flames with burners attached to a gas plug in the
wall by an India rubber tube, several tuning-forks of different sizes, a life-size
image of half a human head, showing in section the vocal organs, and a box
containing a supply of wax cylinders for the phonograph.
Further down the room, on the same side, is a fireplace, with a comfortable
leather-covered easy-chair at the side of the hearth nearest the door, and a coal-
scuttle. There is a clock on the mantelpiece. Between the fireplace and the
phonograph table is a stand for newspapers.
On the other side of the central door, to the left of the visitor, is a cabinet of
shallow drawers. On it is a telephone and the telephone directory. The corner
beyond, and most of the side wall, is occupied by a grand piano, with the
keyboard at the end furthest from the door, and a bench for the player extending
the full length of the keyboard. On the piano is a dessert dish heaped with fruit
and sweets, mostly chocolates.
The middle of the room is clear. Besides the easy-chair, the piano bench, and
two chairs at the phonograph table, there is one stray chair. It stands near the
fireplace. On the walls, engravings; mostly Piranesis and mezzotint portraits. No
paintings.

(Chin, 2000:900)

Higgins’ house contains every object that supports his phonetic experiment. The

description in the quotation leads the readers to grasp that it is not a common room.

Instead of considering it as a living room, they may guess it is a studio or music room

because there are piano and other instruments used to measure human voice such as

phonograph, laryngoscope, a box containing a supply of wax cylinders for the

phonograph, and a row of tiny organ pipes with a bellows. Others perhaps consider the

room as an office because there are file cabinets with documentation of Higgins’ work

and a flat writing-table. And the rest may also think it is a laboratory since there stands
 57

a life-size image of half a human head, India rubber tube, and a set of lamp chimneys.

Yet when the readers follow the story in Act two, then, they are aware that it is a

laboratory of a professor of phonetics; it is a room for a scientific research and

experiment that usually belongs to an educated person.

The description of the devices needed to conduct an experiment due to the effort

to record particular language sounds proves Shaw’s expertise in evoking in the readers’

mind an imagination of a phonetic laboratory. It indicates Shaw’s wide knowledge on

the characteristics and functions of a laboratory. His acquaintanceship and good

communication with Henry Sweet, a professor of Phonetics whose name he mentions in

the Preface of Pygmalion as the best phonetician he has ever known might be able to

explain the reason why he knows so many details related to a linguistic laboratory and

the teaching-learning process held in such laboratory to change or to improve the

pupils’ language ability (Chin, 2000:887). Nevertheless, the focal point is not the

laboratory and the activities held in it. It is presented in Pygmalion to voice a social

critique in industry.

Shaw’s understanding on the facilities and the activities in the laboratory helps

him to criticize the malpractices in industrial environment. He metaphorically uses the

laboratory as the symbol of industry where goods are produced. In line with this, the

role of Higgins’ laboratory in the plot of Pygmalion as a whole is very central. It is the

place where Eliza is transformed from a cockney flower girl with a chaotic way of

speaking to a lady with well-spoken ability. Shaw presents Eliza as the object of a

language experiment to show his socialist objection to the capitalists’ treatment to the
 58

workers as objects just like capital, machines, and raw materials.

In contrast to Mrs. Higgins’ home which is so comfortable and luxurious,

Higgins’ laboratory is not an appropriate place for living. It is not caused by the absence

of any beautiful decoration or expensive furniture but by the way Higgins treats his

pupils, especially Eliza. Higgins’ rude remarks addressed to Eliza, his inconsiderateness

of others, and his petulance to everything that does not fit to his desires have made the

‘home’ becomes an unsafe and uncomfortable place to develop good relationship

among people who live in it. Thus, it is undoubtedly to underline that this laboratory has

correctly represented the situation in industry where the workers also feel unsafe and

uncomfortable.

2. Names of Characters

In Act 1, all characters are identified not by name, except Freddy. They are

called as the Mother or the Lady, the Daughter, the Bystanders, the Flower girl, the

Gentleman, the Note-taker, and the Taximan. In this case, Pygmalion is different from

Arms and the Man, for example, which mentions all its characters’ name from the

beginning of the play. It is not without any intention that Shaw ‘hides’ the characters’

name in act one. He wants to highlight the characters’ social status by calling them the

lady, the gentleman, the note-taker in one group and the flower girl, the bystanders, and

the taximan in another group. The first group refers to the upper class people, and the

second one affiliates to the lower class.

 59

The Lady, her daughter, and Freddy must be from a rich family who are able to

buy evening dress, who can hire a taxi, and who have much money to buy expensive

tickets to watch interesting performances in an opera house. They have economic

capability not only to suffice their basic needs (food, clothes, and home) but also to

enjoy entertainments and live luxuriously with other comfortable life facilities. The

Gentleman and the Note-taker live in more or less the same situation. In the end of act

1, the Gentleman introduces himself to the Note-taker as Colonel Pickering, the author

of Spoken Sanskrit and the Note-taker introduces himself as Henry Higgins, author of

Higgins’s Universal Alphabet. This is to say that they are not common people; they are

scholars and experts of Linguistics. They live from their professional job and from their

expertise on the subject matter they master very well.

How about the flower girl, the bystanders, and the taximan? They are

‘unfortunate’ people who have less access to enjoy worldly happiness due to their

poverty. The flower girl should wait for hours in the curb of Tottenham Court Road to

get one penny. The bystanders must be patient to look for job by walking from one

place to another as job-lookers. The taximan must drive around the city to look for

passengers till midnight. They all represent the proletariat who struggle for their daily

needs as workers in industries both permanent workers and casual workers based on the

temporary contract of employment. They are the majority of British Isles citizens who

earn daily wage only for one-day consumption.

The flower girl’s name starts to be mentioned in the middle of Act two. When

she introduces herself as Liza Doolittle, Higgins sneers her by mentioning some other
 60

names as Eliza, Elizabeth, Betsy and Bess and then continued by a mockery, “They

went to the woods to get a bird nests” (Chin, 2000:902). It shows as if the nama “Eliza”

is not a human name, while the name “Doolittle” implies something negative regarding

to class distinction. Since “Doolittle” represents the working class, perhaps this name

brings with it a perception that generally exists in capitalist society that laborers are less

important among other means of production; that the workers don’t contribute

something special in the process of production; or that the labor force can DO so

LITTLE in capitalist system since it cannot do anything without capital, machines, and

raw materials.

3. Way of Behaving and Speaking

The opening act operates on the principle of contrast both the way of behaving

and the way of speaking of all characters. For instance, it explicitly contrasts the

characters of Higgins and Colonel Pickering as well as Eliza and Clara. There is a subtle

contrast between the socially refined Clara and the uncouth Eliza. Compared to Eliza,

Clara appears to be ill-mannered. She has evidently had the civilizing benefits

supported by wealth and education but shows bad manners. She represents the worst

traits of the middle-class. She is quickly bothered by Eliza's presence and wants to

avoid any interaction with her, when she asks her mother, “Do nothing of the sort,

Mother. The idea” (Chin, 2000:893). She speaks imperatively to strangers and rebukes

Higgins for his audacity to speak to her; "Don't dare to speak to me" (Chin, 2000: 896).

Yet later when she discovers who Higgins is, she becomes respectable towards him.
 61

While Eliza, she is a strong and independent young woman, self-sufficient through her

business of selling flowers on the street, and with a highly developed moral sense and

self-respect.

The well-spoken mother and daughter are opposed to the chaotic-spoken

bystander, for instance, as can be read in following conversation,

A BYSTANDER [on the lady's right] He wont get no cab not until half-past
eleven, missus, when they come back after dropping their theatre fares.
THE MOTHER. But we must have a cab. We can’t stand here until half-past
eleven. It's too bad.
THE BYSTANDER. Well, it aint my fault, missus.
(Chin, 2000:891)

The daughter and her mother speak Standard English as most of other people of

their class. Comparing with these two women, the bystander’s sentence is

grammatically incorrect. He uses negative forms more than once in the same sentence

and mispronounces ‘Mrs.’ as ‘missus’ in the sentence “He wont get no cab not until

half-past eleven, missus, when they come back after dropping their theatre fares.”

Other example to explore the dynamics of manners in a society that assumes that

speech patterns determine social class can be taken from the conversation between The

Mother and The Flower Girl.

THE MOTHER. How do you know that my son's name is Freddy, pray?
THE FLOWER GIRL. Ow, eez ye-ooa san, is e? Wal, fewd dan y' de-ooty
bawmz a mather should, eed now bettern to spawl a pore gel's flahrzn
than ran awy athaht pyin. Will ye-oo py me f'them? [Here, with
apologies, this desperate attempt to represent her dialect without a
phonetic alphabet must be abandoned as unintelligible outside London.]
THE DAUGHTER. Do nothing of the sort, mother. The idea!
THE MOTHER. Please allow me, Clara. Have you any pennies?
THE DAUGHTER. No. I've nothing smaller than sixpence.
 62

THE FLOWER GIRL [hopefully] I can give you change for a tanner, kind lady.
THE MOTHER [to Clara] Give it to me. [Clara parts reluctantly]. Now [to the
girl] This is for your flowers.
THE FLOWER GIRL. Thank you kindly, lady.
THE DAUGHTER. Make her give you the change. These things are only a
penny a bunch.
THE MOTHER. Do hold your tongue, Clara. [To the girl]. You can keep the
change.
THE FLOWER GIRL. Oh, thank you, lady.
THE MOTHER. Now tell me how you know that young gentleman's name.
THE FLOWER GIRL. I didn’t.
THE MOTHER. I heard you call him by it. Don’t try to deceive me.
THE FLOWER GIRL [protesting] Who’s trying to deceive you? I called him
Freddy or Charlie same as you might yourself if you was talking to a
stranger and wished to be pleasant. [She sits down beside her basket].
(Chin, 2000:891-893)

The conversation indicates that the flower girl’s answer, in her peculiar dialect

and way of uttering words, is something special that shows her cockney background.

She says, “Ow, eez ye-ooa san, is e? Wal, fewd dan y' de-ooty bawmz a mather should,

eed now bettern to spawl a pore gel's flahrzn than ran awy athaht pyin. Will ye-oo py

me f'them?” Annoying with the strange sound getting out of the girl’s mouth, the

daughter interrupts and asks her mother not to continue the conversation. Yet generated

by her eagerness, after giving the girl some money, the mother asks the girl for the

second time, “Now tell me how you know that young gentleman’s name?” The answer

of this same question is rather funny. The flower girl shows that it is not important to

call a stranger as Freddy or Charlie. Not as simply as the flower girl thinks, for the

mother, it is a sort of indication that the girl is not a good woman. The girl might have

an affair with her son. So, she asks the flower girl to explain what happens between her

and the son. In this sense, the flower girl is actually being suspected of soliciting as a
 63

prostitute simply because she belongs to a class that often relied on prostitution as a

way to earn money.

Shaw smartly composes the dialogue to point out how language – including

dialect – creates distinction in society. He regards phonetics and the proper

pronunciation of the English language as a serious instrument of social change. Shaw,

that is to say, has serious and important views about this question and makes use of

them in his play. The idea that speech and accent is one of the great class barriers is

certainly one of the important ideas of this play. It would, however, be a mistake to

suppose that it is necessary to read and understand Shaw’s views on phonetics in order

to understand Pygmalion. The study of language and the science of phonetics is an

extremely complex subject. Nor is it clear that a phonetic alphabet is the solution to the

problems of the English language. A student who really wishes to understand these

questions would not learn very much about them by reading Pygmalion. A complex

academic subject of this kind can hardly be grasped immediately by an audience in a

theatre, and Shaw provides them only with a minimum of easily assimilated

information. In his preface Shaw writes:

But if the play makes the public aware that there are such people as
phoneticians, and that they are among the most important people in England at
present, it will serve its turn.

(Chin, 2000:890)

The importance of phonetics is only the most obvious, not the most vital, idea in

the play. Pygmalion can hardly be called a play that expresses very accurate or

particularly profound ideas about the study of the English language. It does, however,
 64

make use of some fairly simple ideas about the English language in order to make some

very accurate observations about the nature of English society, and it asks a number of

questions about the relations that exist between individuals in such a society which are

both important and profound. Shaw can be seen making use of simple ideas about

language in order to ask difficult questions about human beings.

Shaw indicates that Pickering is a military gentleman while Higgins is only a

note-taker. Right from the beginning Shaw emphasizes the gentlemanly behavior of the

Colonel which serves to highlight Higgins’ more boorish behavior. Obsessed by his

interest in changing Eliza through language, he has no idea that his behavior might be

unusual. His manners are boorish. But at the same time it is significant that it is Higgins

and not the Colonel who performs an act of Christian charity by giving Eliza, whom he

had mercilessly humiliated earlier, a handful of money. Eliza’s vulgar need of money

from prospective customers is motivated by her poverty circumstances, as shown in the

following conversation,

THE FLOWER GIRL [to Pickering, as he passes her] Buy a flower, kind
gentleman. I'm short for my lodging.
PICKERING. I really haven’t any change. I'm sorry [he goes away].
HIGGINS [shocked at girl's mendacity] Liar. You said you could change half-a-
crown.
THE FLOWER GIRL [rising in desperation] You ought to be stuffed with nails,
you ought. [Flinging the basket at his feet] Take the whole blooming
basket for sixpence.
The church clock strikes the second quarter.
HIGGINS [hearing in it the voice of God, rebuking him for his Pharisaic want
of charity to the poor girl] A reminder. [He raises his hat solemnly; then
throws a handful of money into the basket and follows Pickering].
THE FLOWER GIRL [picking up a half-crown] Ah-ow-ooh! [Picking up a
couple of florins] Aaah-ow-ooh! [Picking up several coins] Aaaaaah-ow-
ooh! [Picking up a half-sovereign] Aaaaaaaaaaaah-ow-ooh!!!
 65

(Chin, 2000:897)

In this conversation, a note of social conscience enters the play. Higgins flings a

handful of coins into Eliza’s basket when he is reminded by the striking of the church

clock which he considers as a rebuke for his lack of Christian charity. This again reveals

the hypocrisy of the middle class. Here he is not so much doing it out of a genuine act

of generosity but in order to realize a higher order and guarantee his salvation. The

background elements of the church bells that remind Higgins of Christian charity,

symbolically introduce the element of the medieval morality play in the opening act.

According to Abrams (1993, 118), a morality play, popular during the Elizabethan Age,

depicted the fierce battle between the forces of good and evil for the possession of the

soul of the individual character. The medieval world picture believed in a chain of being

which determined each individual’s position in the scale of social hierarchy. There is a

conflict in Higgins’ mind whether to buy or not the flowers offered by Eliza till the

church bell reminds him to show his charity. Using the money given by Higgins, at the

end of act one Eliza is shown as challenging and disturbing that rigid social hierarchy

by hiring a cab. She dares to challenge the common perception that poor flower girls

cannot hire cabs.

All acts introduce the idea of what defines being a gentleman and lady. For

instance, a bystander says of Higgins, “E’s a gentleman: look at his boots” (Chin,

2000:894), while Eliza says of him, “He's no gentleman, he aint, to interfere with a poor

girl” (Chin, 2000:895). For the bystander clothing and general appearance is the

distinguishing mark of a gentleman while for Eliza behaviors and manners are the
 66

essential criteria of gentility. This idea about what constitutes a lady and a gentleman

continues throughout the play. It also provides the background to Eliza’s speech in Act

Five about ladies and gentlemen when she distinguishes Higgins from Pickering by

saying,

(to Pickering) You see, really and truly, apart from the things anyone can pick
up (the dressing and the proper way of speaking, and so on), the difference
between a lady and a flower girl is not how she behaves, but how she’s treated. I
shall always be a flower girl to Professor Higgins, because he always treats me
as a flower girl, and always will; but I know I can be a lady to you, because you
always treat me as a lady, and always will.
(Chin, 2000:945)
It is very interesting to reflect that a flower girl has a very deep and rigid notion of the

difference between a lady and a flower girl when she asserts that “the difference

between a lady and a flower girl is not how she behaves, but how she’s treated.” This

statement comes after another dialogue between Eliza and Pickering in which Eliza

praises Pickering’s gentility and good examples of treating others. Eliza says to

Pickering,

… But it was from you that I learnt really nice manners; and that is what makes
one a lady, isn’t it? You see it was so difficult for me with the example of
Professor Higgins always before me. … And I should never have known that
ladies and gentleman didn’t behave like that if you hadn’t been there.
(Chin, 2000:944)

The question is what actually Pickering has done that makes Eliza becomes so

impressed of him. Eliza admits that from Pickering she gets real education. And when

Pickering asks her what real education he has given, Eliza points out his calling to her

as “Miss Doolitle” at the day when she first came to Wimpole Street. Eliza mentions

that event as the beginning of self-respect for her. In Act three, most of the characters –
 67

the Parlor Maid, Mrs. Eynsford Hill, Mrs. Higgins, Pickering, and Freddy – call Eliza

by “Miss Doolittle”, except Higgins and Clara. Instead of calling her Miss Doolittle,

Higgins calls her using objects name that sounds very sarcastic such as “baggage”

(Chin, 2000:902), “draggled-tailed guttersnipe” (Chin, 2000:903), “creature picked

from the mud” (Chin, 2000:943), “thing out of the squashed cabbage leaves” (Chin,

2000:944), and “common idiot” (Chin, 2000:949).

B. Human Exploitation

Most of the dialogues in Pygmalion tell about human relation established among

the characters that leads them to involve in a linguistic experiment using Eliza as ‘the

main object’. The experiment happens in one single setting of place that is Higgins’

laboratory. Pickering comes to the laboratory due to Higgins’ invitation. In the previous

meeting, in Covent Garden, Pickering introduces himself as the author of spoken

Sanskrit, while Higgins tells Pickering that he is the author of Higgins’ Universal

Alphabet. This same concern in exploring language scientifically unifies Higgins and

Pickering into an experimental cooperation in Wimpole Street to ‘repair’ Eliza’s way of

speaking. For Higgins, a woman should have a well-spoken ability unless she will not

be recognized as an existence. Higgins says to Eliza,

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 Shakespeare and Milton and the Bible: and don’t sit there crooning like a
bilious pigeon.
(Chin, 2000:897)
 68

It is actually a very extreme statement to say that Eliza has no right to exist and

to live as human being only because of her improper way of speaking. What does Shaw

want to say to his audience through this statement? It is assumed that instead of

underlining that language can become the benchmark to distinguish one’s social status

from others, Shaw also wants to utilize the statement to trigger the lower class people to

think about their existence in society. Shaw encourages the lower class to contemplate

about their own future which is designed freely as independent human beings who have

“souls and the divine gift” to improve their life day by day. He opens their eyes to strive

for their rights to live as respectable people, not as slaves of the capitalists along their

life time. He hates the proletariat who lead their life of servant-hood only to fulfill the

demands of the bourgeoisie as if they were born to be exploited by that class. In his

ideals, the proletariat must revolt and seize the mode of production in the capitalist

society and become the subjects who determine their own life.

Eliza leads herself to be the object of the experiment by visiting the laboratory

on the day after her meeting with Higgins and Pickering in the portico of St. Paul’s

Church Covent Garden. She is very interested in Higgins’ statement that he could pass

her off as a duchess in six months. She is very convinced if Higgins’ statement can be

realized her life will be better compared with the life of a cockney flower girl. The

following dialogue tells about her coming to the laboratory.

MRS. PEARCE [hesitating, evidently perplexed] A young woman wants to see

you, sir.
HIGGINS. A young woman! What does she want?
MRS. PEARCE. Well, sir, she says you’ll be glad to see her when you know
 69

what she’s come about. She’s quite a common girl, sir. Very common
indeed. I should have sent her away, only I thought perhaps you wanted
her to talk into your machines. I hope I’ve not done wrong; but really you
see such queer people sometimes—you’ll excuse me, I'm sure, sir—
HIGGINS. Oh, that’s all right, Mrs. Pearce. Has she an interesting accent?
MRS. PEARCE. Oh, something dreadful, sir, really. I don’t know how you can
take an interest in it.
HIGGINS [to Pickering] Lets have her up. Shew her up, Mrs. Pearce [he rushes
across to his working table and picks out a cylinder to use on the
phonograph].
MRS. PEARCE [only half resigned to it] Very well, sir. It's for you to say. [She
goes downstairs].
(Chin, 2000:900-901)

This conversation shows the first seconds of Eliza’s coming to the laboratory. It tells to

the audience that firstly Eliza comes to the laboratory voluntarily encouraged by her

own desire to improve her English. Yet, what happen after she becomes the student of

Professor Higgins is the despotic treatments she gets since the Professor’s hegemony

dominates her freedom and rights. This hegemony pictures the great domination of the

capitalist on the workers practiced everywhere in England in the industrial revolution

era.

Other interesting reflection from the dialogue above is how Mrs. Pearce views

Eliza. She introduces Eliza to Higgins as a young woman, a quite common girl, very

common indeed. This introduction shows how Mrs. Pearce treats other people based on

their social class. She differentiates privileged and common people, lower class and

upper class, and – regarding to the capitalist society portrayed in this play she also

distinguishes – the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. It is not her fault since it is usual in

England at that time to relate people to their social class.

Moreover, Mrs. Pearce also underestimates Eliza as a girl who has nothing to
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contribute to the experiment in the laboratory, even for whatever social relationship.

What can a young-inexperienced woman contribute to the laboratory? Can a “common

girl” give something special to a scientific experiment? As most of common people are

uneducated, what does an uneducated-common girl know about phonetics? It seems that

through Mrs. Pearce, Shaw wants to criticize human relationship based on the binary

opposition distinction: common – special/privileged; educated – uneducated;

experienced – inexperienced; and scholar – laymen. Although Eliza says that Higgins

will be glad to see her, Mrs. Pearce remains confused and thinks what Higgins can get

from that common girl. Mrs. Pearce bases her consideration on the advantage Higgins

may take from Eliza as she knows that Higgins is so concerned to his scientific business

and takes in charge with others only for his linguistic ‘business’. The sentence “I should

have sent her away, only I thought perhaps you wanted her to talk into your machines”

proves Mrs. Pearce’s basic thought of the advantage.

Another reflection goes to how Higgins responds to Eliza’s arrival. In contrast to

Mrs. Pearce, Higgins does not care on how Eliza looks like. Instead of commenting

Mrs. Pearce’s eye-catching report, Higgins raises a new question, “Has she an

interesting accent?” This is to show that Higgins does not care whether Eliza is a

common girl or not. His concern is solely on something regarded to the accent or

language sounds, one of the objects of his experiment. That is why the subject of the

scene is not the hundred and thirty vowel-sounds distinguished by Professor Higgins but

the entry of Eliza which is encouraged by her own imagination that is caught by

Higgins’ boast that he could teach her to speak properly and she has now come to learn.
 71

The point here is Higgins’ perception on his relation with other people that as a

prominent phonetician his concern is not on the humanistic aspect but on the linguistic

aspect that is the language sounds one produces. Since every one who comes to his

laboratory is always bound to his experiment, there occurs in his mind that the most

important thing related to his expertise is the process of production of language sounds

and the final product of his experiment. While the pupils and all machines in the

laboratory are the objects to support his ‘process of production’.

Actually, it is ambiguous to interpret what Higgins means with ‘interesting

accent’. Does he really mean a nice accent Eliza has? Or he means a unique language

sound Eliza produces which becomes something ‘interesting’ to observe in the

laboratory? It is assumed that Higgins is interested in the uniqueness rather than the

niceness of the accent since Eliza’s accent is very unique and therefore it is interesting

to be explored. This notion of uniqueness is not well grasped by Mrs. Pearce. She has

misunderstood what Higgins means with ‘interesting accent’ when she replies the

question by saying, “Oh, something dreadful, sir, really. I don’t know how you can take

an interest in it.” Eliza’s ideals to be a lady of a florist shop that meets with Higgins’

boast to polish Eliza’s language in six months is of course out of Mrs. Pearce’s

understanding. Mrs. Pearce’s intends to ask Eliza to go away since Eliza is just a

common girl and probably useless for Higgins. But she delays her intention since she

assumes that Higgins may need Eliza to speak to his machines. Higgins is, then, very

interested in the ‘dreadful accent’ Eliza has and starts to arrange a schedule of six-

month language course for Eliza. He says,

 72

HIGGINS: Eliza, you are to live here for the next six months, learning how to
speak beautifully, like a lady in a florist's shop. If you’re good and do
whatever you’re told, you shall sleep in a proper bedroom, and have lots to
eat, and money to buy chocolates and take rides in taxis. If you’re naughty
and idle you will sleep in the back kitchen among the black beetles, and be
walloped by Mrs. Pearce with a broomstick. At the end of six months you
shall go to Buckingham Palace in a carriage, beautifully dressed. If the
King finds out you’re not a lady, you will be taken by the police to the
Tower of London, where your head will be cut off as a warning to other
presumptuous flower girls. If you are not found out, you shall have a
present of seven-and-sixpence to start life with as a lady in a shop. If you
refuse this offer you will be a most ungrateful and wicked girl; and the
angels will weep for you. [To Pickering] Now are you satisfied, Pickering?
[To Mrs. Pearce] Can I put it more plainly and fairly, Mrs. Pearce?
(Chin, 2000:906)

This is the beginning of a six-month contract that creates a new cooperative

relationship between Higgins and Eliza regarding to the language experiment to

produce well-spoken manner for Eliza and economic benefits for Higgins. It is Eliza’s

chaotic manner of uttering words that is considered by Higgins as a qualified raw

material to be refined in his “language factory” due to her original and unique way of

speaking. Without that qualification, Eliza may not get the permission from Higgins to

come into the laboratory when Higgins says, “Lets have her up. Shew her up, Mrs.

Pearce!” But at the same time this is also the beginning of a new bad human

relationship Eliza encounters.

Since the beginning of the meeting, Higgins has explained the rule of balance

that is usually known as ‘award and punishment’. He says, “If you’re good and do

whatever you’re told, you shall sleep in a proper bedroom, and have lots to eat, and

money to buy chocolates and take rides in taxis. If you’re naughty and idle you will

sleep in the back kitchen among the black beetles, and be walloped by Mrs. Pearce with
 73

a broomstick.” What Higgins says to Eliza pictures the contract of work that usually

exists in a factory environment which made by the first party as the work provider to be

obeyed by the second party as the work seeker. In that kind of contract the two parties

agree to tie each other in a relationship that normally provides mutual understanding.

But in Eliza – Higgins relationship, the contract is very unfair. It states only things

related to Eliza: her duties, her behavior, the award she may enjoy, and the punishment

she may face.

People come from countryside and villages to the town, to the centre of

industrial complex seeking for jobs. As people who seek for work to earn for living by

selling their labor power – the only property they have – the workers are warned not to

break any rules made by the job provider. They should obey rules in the factory or they

will be punished by the overseers who get the power from the factory owner to keep the

discipline in the factory. For this purpose, every factory owner has arranged a strict

discipline. The most famous rule due to the working system in the factory is the Factory

Act (imposed since 1834) that regulates the length of the working day in mills in which

wool, silk, cotton, and flax are spun or woven by means of water or steam-power. This

law also reduces the working hours to an average of twelve to thirteen, and forbids the

employment of children less than nine years of age (Engels, 1978: 199).

“Sleeping in the proper bedroom” is not more than the picture of living in some

houses provided by the factory owner for the staffs of the factory who are considered as

loyal men and women who dedicated their life for the survival of the company. It is a
 74

kind of award for those who behave well and give bigger contribution to the

accumulation of the surplus value. On the other hand, for those who are naughty and

idle and give less contribution in the production of goods should live in the houses

which are mentioned by Eliza as “wasn’t fit for a pig to live in” or as described by

Engels as places “that no human being could possibly wish to live in them”(1979, 61).

As Higgins has less attention to Eliza’s daily needs, it seems that the factory owners

also do not have good will to give good income to fulfill the workers’ daily needs such

as proper houses, enough food and clothes. The capitalists think that giving high salary

to the workers may decrease the profit and reduce the surplus value which they get by

exploiting the workers. Therefore, since a factory may have thousands of workers, it is

easier and cheaper for the capitalists to provide a kind of boarding house than a proper

house for each family of the workers. It proves that the factory owners give more

attention on the profit they may get from the process of production than the workers’

welfare. They merely exploit the labor power of the workers without gives to the

workers a balanced compensation such as adequate wage, proper houses, good health

service, and good condition of work. Instead of receiving good compensation, the

workers are often punished and fined whenever they break the discipline of the factory.

Even, the workers who involve in factory strikes or labor movements will be put in jail

without any fair court process as illustrated by Shaw as “sleeping in the back kitchen

among the black beetles, and be walloped by Mrs. Pearce with a broomstick.”

By exposing Mrs. Pearce as the figure who controls Eliza, Shaw reminds his

audience about the role of the factory overseers who observe and command the workers
 75

to work in the name of the capitalists. About the existence of the supervision

mechanism in the factory, Tucker (1978, 385-386) explains,

An industrial army of workmen, under the command of a capitalist, requires,

like a real army, officers (managers), and sergeants (foremen, overlookers), who,
while the work is being done, command in the name of the capitalist. The work
of supervision becomes their established and exclusive function.

As the number of labourers increase to a large scale of working army, the capitalists

need to have a kind of supervising staffs in order to create and to secure the harmonious

team-work for their factory. If the supervision of the capitalists through their

overlookers is to maintain the smoothness of the process of production, people may

have no comment and objection on it. The problem is that the supervision and the

control which is applied by the capitalists in the factory tend to be very despotic. “To be

walloped by Mrs. Pearce with a broomstick” shows that brutality, including whipping,

beating, and loss of wages have become a usual despotism that deliberately penetrated

by the capitalists.

The fact that the workers are treated as the object and the commodity of industry

is reflected in Pygmalion by exposing Eliza as the object and the commodity of

Higgins’ phonetic experiments. Higgins treats Eliza as if she has no other potentials as

human being except her capability as a producer of language sounds. And for Higgins,

the language sounds are more important than Eliza, the producer of sounds. From the

opening of the play it is emphasized that Higgins knows more and cares more about

sounds than about people. In this sense, Shaw criticizes the perception of the capitalists

who consider goods or the products of their factory as the ultimate things, more than the
 76

workers, the producers of the goods.

Compared with Pygmalion in Greek legend, the audience will find some

inversions in Shaw’s Pygmalion. The primary inversion is that of Pygmalion’s

character. The Pygmalion in Greek legend turns a statue into a human being, while

Shaw’s Pygmalion (read: Higgins) tries to turn a human being into a statue – or a ‘live

doll’ according to Mrs. Higgins – as Higgins tries to make of Eliza a mechanical doll in

the role of a duchess. It is Mrs. Higgins who becomes rather upset when Higgins and

Pickering ‘report’ the language experiment on Eliza. Mrs. Higgins objects the way her

son and Pickering treat Eliza. She judges that those two scholars as a pretty pair of

babies who have treated Eliza not more than a live doll, a passive figure with whom

other people can do whatever they wish. The following dialogue illustrates the dispute

between Higgins and Pickering in one side and Mrs. Higgins about the way of treating

Eliza.

HIGGINS. As if I ever stop thinking about the girl and her confounded vowels
and consonants. I'm worn out, thinking about her, and watching her lips and
her teeth and her tongue, not to mention her soul, which is the quaintest of
the lot.
MRS. HIGGINS. You certainly are a pretty pair of babies, playing with your
live doll.
HIGGINS. Playing! The hardest job I ever tackled: make no mistake about that,
mother. But you have no idea how frightfully interesting it is to take a
human being and change her into a quite different human being by creating
a new speech for her. It's filling up the deepest gulf that separates class from
class and soul from soul.
PICKERING [drawing his chair closer to Mrs. Higgins and bending over to her
eagerly] Yes: it's enormously interesting. I assure you, Mrs. Higgins, we
take Eliza very seriously. Every week—every day almost—there is some
new change. [Closer again] We keep records of every stage—dozens of
gramophone disks and phonographs—
HIGGINS [assailing her at the other ear] Yes, by George: it's the most
 77

absorbing experiment I ever tackled. She regularly fills our lives up; doesn’t
she, Pick?
PICKERING. We’re always talking Eliza.
HIGGINS. Teaching Eliza.
PICKERING. Dressing Eliza.
MRS. HIGGINS. What?
HIGGINS. Inventing new Elizas
(Chin, 2000:925-926)

This objectification of Eliza reduces her humanity. Higgins does not think Eliza has any

feelings to bother about and dehumanizes her as an object of experiment. However

Higgins defends himself by saying that by teaching Eliza a new speech he is actually

“filling up the deepest gulf that separates class from class and soul from soul.” Then in

an extreme state of excitement Higgins and Pickering declare that they both take Eliza

very seriously and that they are always “talking Eliza,” “teaching Eliza,” “dressing

Eliza” and “inventing new Elizas.” All these statements make Mrs. Higgins surprised,

but for her, Higgins is still not aware that he has treated Eliza like a doll that can be

played with to make him joyful. Higgins only concerns to his joyfulness. He ignores the

humanity aspect that Eliza has had since she was born into this world. In fact, he is

really joyful playing with ‘the doll’ since ‘the doll’ has confounded vowels and

consonants; things that he loves so much as the objects of his phonetic experiment. He

is also very absorbed to watch Eliza’s lips, teeth, and tongue – the sounds articulators –

to explore how every vowel and consonant is produced. He records the sounds into

various machines, studies them with the help of Pickering, and uses them as the bases to

repair Eliza’s way of speaking. Eliza’s vowels and consonants are considered as raw

materials which should be processed mechanically in the laboratory before the

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gramophone disks and phonographs; the language labor machines.

Shaw deliberately put in details all the machines – phonograph, laryngoscope,

tiny organ, tuning forks, gramophone disks, wax cylinder box, and a set of lamp

chimneys (Chin, 2000: 900) – as a metaphor to the factory machines that change raw

materials to fabricating material goods or finished goods which are ready to be sold in

the market. It seems that these metaphorical machines play the same role as the

machines in the factory in the sense of forming raw materials become valuable-finished

materials. However, Eliza is not ‘a material’. She is a human being. She must be treated

as a respectable woman regardless to what social class she belongs. Without doing all

these processes, Higgins thinks that Eliza cannot be sold to the ‘market’. During the six-

month experiment, Eliza is exposed twice in two different ‘markets’. The first ‘market’

is in Mrs. Higgins’ at-home day when Eliza makes her fault regarding to her ‘blindness’

of what should be told in high class intercourse. In this upper-class company she

behaves like an imperfectly functioning mechanical doll before Mrs. Higgins’ friends.

The second market is the ambassador’s garden party when she appears in triumph at the

ball. But what happens after the ball is not expected by both Higgins and Pickering?

Eliza’s feelings are wounded because, after the reception, Higgins does not treat her

kindly, but talks of her as a guinea pig.

All those bad treatments are the evidences of cruel practice of human

exploitation in capitalist society in England portrayed by Pygmalion where the surplus-

value – and all processes for creating it – is considered more important and higher than

humanity value of the workers. The workers in the capitalists’ eyes are not more than
 79

one of the factors of production. They are objects and commodities that work together

with other factors of production to accumulate money in form of bank interest and

surplus-value. It is Higgins who represents the nature of the capitalist – the target of

Shaw’s critique – who allows every effort on behalf of money. He measures Eliza

regarding to her possession of money and laughs at her when she bargains to pay one

shilling for the language lesson. Eliza’s imagination has been caught by Higgins’ boast

that he could teach her to speak properly and she has now come to learn and to pay for

her instructor. It is, of course absurd that in her ignorance, she imagines that she can pay

a shilling for her lessons by saying,

A lady friend of mine gets French lessons for eighteen pence an hour from a
real French gentleman. Well, you wouldn’t have the face to ask me the same for
teaching me my own language as you would for French; so I won’t give more
than a shilling. Take it or leave it.
(Chin, 2000: 902-903)

The audience will naturally consider this as a joke. They will be reminded by Higgins

that it is not really a joke but regarded as a percentage of Eliza’s income, a serious

business proposition. Fortunately, Pickering - the gentleman, to whom Eliza gives her

respect so much – challenges Higgins to pay all the expenses of the lessons if Higgins

can create a new way of speaking for Eliza in six months. As Higgins decides to

respond the challenge, Eliza is freed of paying any money and takes the language

lessons free of charge. The following dialogue illustrates the challenge and response

conversation.

PICKERING. Higgins: I'm interested. What about the ambassador's garden

party? I'll say you’re the greatest teacher alive if you make that good. I'll
bet you all the expenses of the experiment you cant do it. And I'll pay for
 80

the lessons.
LIZA. Oh, you are real good. Thank you, Captain.
HIGGINS [tempted, looking at her] It's almost irresistible. She’s so deliciously
low—so horribly dirty—
LIZA [protesting extremely] Ah-ah-ah-ah-ow-ow-oo-oo!!! I aint dirty: I washed
my face and hands afore I come, I did.
PICKERING. You’re certainly not going to turn her head with flattery, Higgins.
MRS. PEARCE [uneasy] Oh, don’t say that, sir: there’s more ways than one of
turning a girl's head; and nobody can do it better than Mr. Higgins, though
he may not always mean it. I do hope, sir, you wont encourage him to do
anything foolish.
HIGGINS [becoming excited as the idea grows on him] What is life but a series
of inspired follies? The difficulty is to find them to do. Never lose a
chance: it doesn’t come every day. I shall make a duchess of this draggle-
tailed guttersnipe.
LIZA [strongly deprecating this view of her] Ah-ah-ah-ow-ow-oo!
HIGGINS [carried away] Yes: in six months—in three if she has a good ear and
a quick tongue—I'll take her anywhere and pass her off as anything. We'll
start today: now! this moment! Take her away and clean her, Mrs. Pearce.
Monkey Brand, if it wont come off any other way. Is there a good fire in
the kitchen?

(Chin, 2000:903-904)

It is interesting here to pay attention on how the two scholars and Mrs. Pearce

treat and view Eliza. To Higgins, Eliza is “so deliciously low and so horribly dirty”. By

saying so (and so many other sarcastic remarks like, “Take all her clothes off and burn

them...”, “Wrap her in brown paper till the new clothes come,” ”Put her in the

dustbin”), the audience of Pygmalion learns that Higgins is a man who really lacks of

any understanding of his own behavior and has no empathy to the lower class people.

To Colonel Pickering, on the other hand, Eliza is a young girl, poor young girl and he

sponsors her lessons with which he shows to the audience that he is really a generous

man who care for the ‘fate’ of the poor. His concerns are more gentlemanly. He always

has positive consideration on Eliza as Eliza herself thinks that she is a virtuous woman
 81

by saying repeatedly along the play, “I'm a good girl, I am.” To Mrs. Pearce, Higgins’

housekeeper, Eliza is only a poor common girl. At first, she treats her as being beneath

her but eventually she becomes so care to the poor girl and concerned about what

Higgins will do to her. She does not dehumanize Eliza and in fact becomes protective of

her. These differing perspectives about the same individual contribute to the complexity

of Eliza’s characterization.

Pickering now offers the famous betting that if Eliza can be passed off as a

member of the upper classes at the ambassador’s garden party he will pay both for the

lessons and for the expenses of the experiment and will ‘promotes’ Higgins as the

greatest teacher alive. For Higgins, this betting will bring to him two advantages.

Firstly, it is a certain amount of money that Pickering will pay to him if he wins the

betting. And secondly, the promotion that will be done by Pickering as a kind of

announcement to the public that Higgins is really a great teacher of phonetics.

Economically, with the money and the fame he gets from Pickering’s promotion,

Higgins can secure his economic and social status as an expert of phonetics who usually

belongs to the upper class of society. That is why, generated by his own excitement,

Higgins catches this chance (that he considers “doesn’t come every day”) and repeats

his boast in the first act that he can pass off Eliza as a duchess in six month – “even in

three months if Eliza has a good ear and a quick tongue” (Chin, 2000:904). Higgins is

too enthusiastic that he does not want to postpone the ‘project’ any longer. Instead, he

wants to start the experiment as soon as possible.

Dealing with human exploitation, consciously or unconsciously, Pickering’s

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challenge directs Eliza to a worse situation. It happens since Higgins’ passion of money

and fame has pushed him to work very hard and has forced Eliza into an inhumane

condition of work. Higgins oppresses Eliza as if she is an unexhausted creature who can

work day and night without any time to rest, who can be treated like an animal, who

does not mind to accept sarcastic remarks, who has no feelings, who has no rights and

freedom to voice her desires and complaints. Pickering, in this sense, plays two roles:

he is the donator who funds the experiment, and simultaneously he is also the customer

who orders certain ‘product’ to be provided by Higgins. When a factory accepts an

order from its customer, the owner will push all workers to work hard day and night to

fulfill the demand of the customer. The oppression from the capitalist usually happens

in this kind of situation. The working hours become longer and the supervision becomes

much stricter since the process of production must be finished on the time wished by the

customer. The quality of the product must be also in the level desired by the order giver

unless the product can be rejected and it means the loss for the factory. This picture of

the life in capitalist society makes Pygmalion fit most obviously under the rubric of

realism. It proves that the use of homology to show that an author is influenced by

his/her society in writing literary works also bases on this rubric of realism. Shaw

asserts (Dukore, 1973:8),

I created nothing; I invented nothing; I imagined nothing; I perverted nothing; I

simply discovered drama in real life.
 83

C. Social Implications of Class Distinction and Human Exploitation

Class distinction and human exploitation bring with them two social

implications in society i.e., dehumanization and poverty. Dehumanization occurs since

class distinction and human exploitation constitute gap between the capitalist and the

workers which consequently lead the capitalist to give low respect to the workers and

consider them as human beings of different level or objects of certain interest. While

poverty is the consequence of the unfair treatment and the despotic policy in capitalist

society in which the labor power of the workers are compensated so low. Poverty is also

caused by the great unemployment since man-power loses in its competition against the

machinery-power in industry, as Engels (1979, 163-164) asserts,

Every improvement in machinery throws workers out of employment, and the

greater the advance, the more numerous the unemployed.

1. Dehumanization

Dehumanization is the deliberate removal of sympathetic human traits when

referring to members of an opposing ideology, race, political party, or other source of

conflict (http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-dehumanization.htm). It often begins with

the removal of personal right and the treatment to other people as of lower dignity level

– even in the same level of animals – as the impact of the class distinction in society.

Bad treatments of the capitalist to the workers can be obviously seen in the form of rude

remarks, brutal physical punishment, inhumane fine system, etc. In this case, the

workers are not considered by the capitalists as their fellowmen or business partners,
 84

but as ‘creature’ from lower level who can be exploited for the benefits of the

capitalists.

It is, then, so tangible that dehumanization in capitalist system is related to the

ignorance of human value and human nature as the capitalist imposes long working

hours and low wage system that lead the factory owners to force the laborers to work

like slaves. This practice shows the capitalists’ denial of the workers’ feelings,

creativity, unique characters, talents and potentialities only because they are so greedy

for the surplus value. This is contradicted to Marx’s theory of economic mode of

production, as underlined by Berberoglu (1994, 19), that human beings are the prime

agents of material production – a process that forms the basis of production and

reproduction of human existence. Therefore, human beings must be placed as the centre

of every economic activity and that all process of production, distribution and exchange

should be dedicated to human needs.

The most obvious phenomenal practices of dehumanization in Pygmalion are

shown by Shaw in the relationship between Higgins and Eliza which assumed as the

reflection of the relationship between the capitalist and the workers. It is obvious since

this play performs, in all acts, Higgins inhumane treatments to Eliza by calling her with

so many sarcastic remarks, ignoring her feelings, considering her as foolish girl, and

using her as far as she is needed. These are the focus of attention of the following

discussion.

Talking about the sarcastic language used in the daily conversation between the

capitalist and the laborers, Engels informs that the language used in the factories is
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characterized by many witnesses as ‘indecent’, ‘bad’, and ‘filthy’ (1979, 176). This

happens since the capitalist considers that hard work to gain big profit and surplus value

can only be run well if he imposes strict method of control, rude instruction and

sarcastic remarks. The capitalist – who knows that the workers rely their lives fully on

the wage they receive from the factory – views the unfortunate class as lower and are

not able to live without his ‘help’. This perception leads the capitalist to contempt the

workers and shows his lack of respect to them in daily interaction.

Pygmalion shows almost in all acts how Higgins dehumanizes Eliza by calling

her with some inhumane remarks. This indicates not only his low respect to the cockney

flower girl but also his arrogant attitude to other people as if they have nothing to

parallelize with his scientific property that is his brilliance as the professor of phonetics.

In the preface to the play, Shaw writes that one of his models for Henry Higgins is

Henry Sweet, a distinguished phonetician whom Shaw knew. Sweet’s arrogance and his

lack of sweetness of character lead him to regard all scholars who are not rabid

phoneticians as fools. Rather than contributing anything to scholarship on phonetics it is

a libelous attack on another professor of language and literature whom Sweet considers

incompetent to hold his position. All these characteristics are then adopted by Shaw ‘to

create’ Higgins, the expert of phonetics in Pygmalion.

Higgins calls Eliza as “guttersnipe”, “creature picked from the mud”, or “a thing

out the squashed cabbage leaf”. “Guttersnipe” is a special term which is usually used

for beggars who live on the curb. This term is opposed to a noble predicate – ‘duchess’

– when Higgins says,

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HIGGINS [becoming excited as the idea grows on him] What is life but a series
of inspired follies? The difficulty is to find them to do. Never lose a
chance: it doesnt (sic) come every day. I shall make a duchess of this
draggle-tailed guttersnipe.
(Chin, 2000:903)

According to Cambridge Advanced Learner’s Dictionary (2003), guttersnipe is

a child from a poor area of a town who is dirty and dressed badly. Actually it is a proper

term for Eliza since she is a poor girl living in slum and now she is wearing – according

to Higgins’ perspective – dirty and ugly clothes. The problem is not whether the term

proper or not to the actual situation related to who Eliza is and what she is wearing.

“Guttersnipe”, here, is used by Higgins in the conversation with Pickering talking about

their betting.

By using this term, Higgins deliberately reminds Eliza of her lowest social status

(guttersnipe) and boasting that – if he wishes – he can transform the girl to the stratum

she dreams (a duchess). Since this is a difficult project of transforming human’s social

status – and simultaneously a very profitable experiment – Higgins shows that it is

reasonable for him to receive from this rare opportunity a big amount of money from

Pickering who generously pays for Eliza’s language lessons. And beyond this economic

issue related to Higgins’ greed to take profit from his experiment, another concern is the

objectification of Eliza. Eliza becomes the object of the betting between Higgins and

Pickering and at the same time the object of a language experiment. This reflects the

phenomena that exist in most of the capitalists’ perception. Firstly, the capitalist always

regards the workers as people from the lowest class in society. They are the have-not.

They rely their lives upon the wage they earn from the capitalist. It is the capitalist’s
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wish to determine the amount of their wage and the length of their working time.

Secondly, based on the first perception, the capitalist objectifies the workers and

exploits them to raise the productivity in order to collect as much money as possible.

In other occasion, Higgins calls Eliza as “creature picked from the mud” or a

“thing out the squashed cabbage leaf”. He wants to make other people sure that six

months ago Eliza was a flower girl with chaotic way of speaking. She lived in the slum

and sold flowers by sitting all day on the curb of Tottenham Court road. Yet, now she

has been transformed “by the help of a professor of phonetics” to be a lady. Without

that help, Eliza is nothing. Higgins is so proud and arrogant to see that many witness his

success and thinks that those people admire him due to the success. The two following

quotations show this situation.

HIGGINS. Oh, all right. Very well. Pick: you behave yourself. Let us put on our
best Sunday manners for this creature that we picked out of the mud. [He
flings himself sulkily into the Elizabethan chair].
(Chin, 2000:943)

Or in another part of the play, Higgins says to his mother,

You let her alone, mother. Let her speak for herself. You will jolly soon
see whether she has an idea that I haven’t put into her head or a word that I
haven’t put into her mouth. I tell you I have created this thing out of the
squashed cabbage leaves of Covent Garden; and now she pretends to play
the fine lady with me.

(Chin, 2000:944)

For Higgins, Eliza is like his masterpiece that proves to the world that he is – as

Pickering says in the beginning of their betting – the greatest teacher alive. He ignores
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the human nature in general that man qua man has his/her own ideals, desires, talents,

and potentialities. For Higgins, Eliza is like a blank sheet of paper on whom he ‘writes’

the new way of speaking to promote her social status through his language experiment

in Wimpole Street laboratory. Higgins as if only believes in the concept that human –

who is born like tabularasa – should be modified by teaching him/her knowledge and

skills to survive in his/her life. The ignorance of the human nature in general that

manifested in the possession of ideals, talents, and freedom is considered as the

dehumanization of the potentialities and the values of humanity of human beings,

including human feelings.

Feeling is something inherently exists in human beings and becomes one of the

most essential faculties that distinguish human beings from animals and other living

creatures. Whenever one’s feeling is ignored or considered nothing, consciously or

unconsciously, the essence and the dignity of human beings is dehumanized. When the

audience of Pygmalion watches the play, the impression that Higgins does not care of

Eliza’s feeling is so strong. Many critics then conclude that there is dehumanization

portrayed by the play to criticize the practice of the ignorance of feelings in daily human

relation through attitudes, words, and action (Bentley 1988, 14). Observe the following

conversation.

HIGGINS [storming on] Take all her clothes off and burn them. Ring up
Whiteley or somebody for new ones. Wrap her up in brown paper till they
come.
LIZA. You’re no gentleman, you’re not, to talk of such things. I'm a good girl, I
am; and I know what the like of you are, I do.
HIGGINS. We want none of your Lisson Grove prudery here, young woman.
Youve got to learn to behave like a duchess. Take her away, Mrs. Pearce.
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If she gives you any trouble wallop her.

LIZA [springing up and running between Pickering and Mrs. Pearce for
protection] No! I'll call the police, I will.
MRS. PEARCE. But I’ve no place to put her.
HIGGINS. Put her in the dustbin.
LIZA. Ah-ah-ah-ow-ow-oo!
PICKERING. Oh come, Higgins! be reasonable.
MRS. PEARCE [resolutely] You must be reasonable, Mr. Higgins: really you
must. You cant walk over everybody like this.
(Chin, 2000:904)
To start his project of transforming Eliza from a flower girl to a duchess,

Higgins gives orders which are susceptible of more than one interpretation. Eliza hears

the phrase, “Take all her clothes off,” and, assuming that Higgins considers her as a

prostitute. Therefore she protests by saying that she is a good girl and in contrast to

Higgins’ remarks she suspects Higgins as not a gentleman. The whole action of the

second act depends upon this doubt about whether Higgins’ intentions are sexual or

intellectual. Eliza assumes that they are sexual, and Pickering advises Higgins to be

reasonable. Alfred Doolittle, Eliza’s father, also arrives to investigate this dubious

situation and extract what economic profit he can get for himself.

Audiences and readers, therefore, are right to wonder about the relationship

between Higgins and Eliza. She is right to be alarmed since Higgins does make it

appear that he considers her something which he may use for his pleasure. She naturally

interprets her role as that of a prostitute. The irony is that nothing could be further from

Higgins’ intentions. He is interested in her mind as the object of an experiment and does

not really regard her as having any feelings that go with her. As a critique to every

policy in industry that neglects the aspect of emotion/feeling and gives more respect to
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reason as the typical of rationalism, Shaw performs Colonel Pickering who objects what

Higgins practices on Eliza.

PICKERING [in good-humored remonstrance] Does it occur to you, Higgins,

that the girl has some feelings?
HIGGINS [looking critically at her] Oh no, I don’t think so. Not any feelings
that we need bother about. [Cheerily] Have you, Eliza?
LIZA. I got my feelings same as anyone else.
(Chin, 2000:905)

Pickering’s question whether Higgins is aware or not that Eliza has some

feelings is answered smartly by Higgins that his project does not deal with the feelings

but with the scientific effort to teach Eliza how to speak properly in. Anyhow, for Eliza,

the experiment should not only touch the intellectual aspect but also the emotional one.

Therefore, she strictly underlines that she has feelings as other human beings and

highlights her will to be treated as other mankind.

Dehumanization also goes with the consideration that other people have no

capabilities to understand things and to determine their own future, that other people

cannot be involved (or invited to involve) in the decision making process, and that other

people must follow whatever ordered by the decision maker whether they agree or not.

This consideration degrades the potentialities every human has and denies the equality

of dignity among human beings. On the other hand, the perception has led certain

person or group of people to treat others as foolish, incapable, unskilled, uneducated, or

even savage as reflected in the following dialogue.

HIGGINS. How can she? She’s incapable of understanding anything. Besides,

do any of us understand what we are doing? If we did, would we ever do
it?
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PICKERING. Very clever, Higgins; but not sound sense. [To Eliza] Miss
Doolittle—
LIZA [overwhelmed] Ah-ah-ow-oo!
HIGGINS. There! That’s all you get out of Eliza. Ah-ah-ow-oo! No use
explaining. As a military man you ought to know that. Give her orders:
that’s what she wants.
(Chin, 2000:906)

To criticize this malpractice of ignoring human potentialities in capitalist

society, Shaw presents Higgins as a figure who always views Eliza as an idiot, a poor

stupid girl, and a foolish guttersnipe who cannot make any better effort to survive and to

live in more reasonable ways. This is a critique that Shaw conveys upon what he

witnesses in manufacture sphere where the workers are regarded as stupid laborers who

can only work by orders. The quotation reflects the fact how the workers are treated as

if they have no creativity, no imagination, and no desires. The capitalists ignore the fact

that workers can express who they are through the activities which shows what they

produce and how they produce. Through working, the workers actually can express

their creativity or desires and at the same time they fulfill their daily needs. Yet, from

the capitalists’ view point, the workers must work based on the capitalists’ design and

desires. The workers are considered as ‘idiot’ people who must work under the

command and instructions from the capitalist. As Eliza’s objection to Higgins’ less

appreciation to every human’s feelings arouse a serious conflict between Higgins and

her, in fact, the situation where the workers’ potentialities are neglected by the factory

owners also often arouse conflict between the capitalist and the laborers.

It is common, whenever an instruction is given in very strict and detailed steps;

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there is a big possibility for the workers to do any mistake. When this happens, the

factory owner will brutally punishes the workers and fines them. This condition causes

many workers feel uncomfortable to keep working in a factory. Yet it is hard for them

to choose whether to quit from the job which leads them to be unemployed or remain

working in the factory while experiencing those bad treatments. The capitalists, who is

very tricky in keeping the workers to be their employees, are usually persuade – and

simultaneously intimidate – the workers not to leave the work. They try to convince the

workers that the strict discipline, the sarcastic remarks, and the despotic treatment upon

them are needed to keep the factory run well. In turn, with the profit that the factory

gains and collects, the factory owner can pay their wage to make them survived. The

workers, who in fact rely their life mostly on the wage they receive from the factory,

then, decide to stay working. Pygmalion reflects the persuasion made by the capitalists

through Henry Higgins who tries to make Eliza convinced that his sarcastic manners is

something natural as far as it dedicates for Eliza’s transformation. Higgins says to Eliza,

It's all you’ll get until you stop being a common idiot. If you’re going to be a
lady, you’ll have to give up feeling neglected if the men you know don’t spend
half their time snivelling over you and the other half giving you black eyes. If
you can’t stand the coldness of my sort of life, and the strain of it, go back to the
gutter. Work till you are more a brute than a human being; and then cuddle and
squabble and drink till you fall asleep. Oh, it's a fine life, the life of the gutter.
It's real: it's warm: it's violent: you can feel it through the thickest skin: you can
taste it and smell it without any training or any work. Not like Science and
Literature and Classical Music and Philosophy and Art. You find me cold,
unfeeling, selfish, don’t you? Very well: be off with you to the sort of people
you like. Marry some sentimental hog or other with lots of money, and a thick
pair of lips to kiss you with and a thick pair of boots to kick you with. If you
can’t appreciate what you’ve got, you’d better get what you can appreciate.
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(Chin, 2000:949)

When Higgins accuses that Eliza’s admirer, Freddy, cannot make something of

her, Eliza replies that “I never thought of us making anything of one another; and you

never think of anything else. I only want to be natural.” Being natural is something that

Higgins cannot comprehend. Being so focused on and thinking merely about the

scientific experiment in his language laboratory leads Higgins to neglect some of human

social and psychological needs. He ignores the fact that human needs to be honored and

to have affection and respect. Instead of giving attention on Eliza’s feeling, he accuses

her of wanting to marry “some sentimental hog or other with lots of money, and a thick

pair of lips to kiss you with and a thick pair of boots to kick you with.” It is interesting

to reflect that Higgins is aware of his lack of attention to other people’s feeling but this

awareness does not give any influence to change his manner in treating other people.

Relating this reflection to the reality, it is tangible that the capitalists are actually aware

that the system they impose in the factory has dehumanized the workers due to the long

working hours with low wage and the brutal punishment to the workers but the

awareness does not contribute any change to the way they treat the workers.

2. Poverty

As the factories started to be the center of economic activities in England from

which the laborers earned their living, there was a vast wave of urbanization that led

many people moved to the industrial cities which continued to grow in numbers and

extent. Morgan (1988, 481) informs,

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The urbanization of the mass of the population and the decline of rural areas not
surprisingly had profound social consequences for all classes of the population.
The greatest fear of the propertied class in the first decade of the century had
been of a revolutionary working classes: that no such class emerged is perhaps
the most striking feature of the second decade of the century.

The migration of people to the cities in the early twentieth century to work in the central

areas of industry is considered as the most striking feature of urbanization compared

with the people mobility from the rural areas to the cities in other eras. It means that

most of the industrial labourers were from the villages outside the towns who were

bound themselves to the manufactures as the waged workers. Yet, since the wages they

earned are so low, their coming to the cities causes new social problems regarded to

housing, health and education services, unemployment, crime, and above of those all is

the poverty itself. Many children do not go to school because their parents have no

money to support their education. Instead of going to school, the children are brought to

the factory to work as child-labors or asked to sell things like flowers, cigarettes,

candies on the curb as portrayed through the Pygmalion’s main character, Eliza, the

flower girl. Robert Blatchford, a Socialist journalist, who makes so many reports about

the revolting life situation of the poor, asks his readers to be aware of the children future

and asks them to think about certain concrete effort to help the children. He writes,

… Suppose that a child is born in a poor hovel, in a poor slum. Suppose its
home surroundings are such that cleanliness and modesty are well-nigh
impossible. Suppose the gutter is its playground; the gin shop its nursery; the
factory its college; the drunkard its exemplar; the ruffian and the thief its
instructors! Suppose bad nursing, bad air, bad water, bad food, dirt, hunger, ill-
usage, foul language, and hard work are its daily portion. Suppose it has
inherited poor blood, dull spirits, enfeebled wit, and a stunted stature, from its
ill-fed, untaught, overworked, miserable, ignorant, and unhealthy parents, can
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you expect that child to be clever, and moral, and thrifty, and clean, and sober?
(Ausubel, 1955:33)

For Shaw, the main factor that causes all social problems is poverty. He

witnesses how poverty marginalizes so many working class people, including children,

and leaving them beyond the support of civilization. In his perception, there are no evil

people but evil circumstances which must be identified, attacked and eliminated. In his

opinion, the children of poor family become uneducated not because they are foolish

but because their circumstance does not give to them sufficient support for schooling;

prostitution is not seen as a moral sin but as a product of social environment; and crime

must be viewed not as the action of criminal people but of the depressed situation of

poverty. Showing his concern on the less improvement in political legislation to relieve

the social problem that creates extreme contrasts of wealth and poverty, in his letter to

H.G. Wells (Wodd, http://us. penguinclassics. com/ static/ html/

essays/bernardshaw.html), Shaw writes,

Poverty is the greatest of our evils and the worst of our crimes and humanity
cannot realistically advance until poverty is eliminated. We must reform society
before we can reform ourselves since personal righteousness is impossible in an
unrighteous environment.

Employing Alfred Doolittle as his mouth piece, Shaw attacks the welfare

legislation that is rooted in the concept of the deserving and undeserving poor

introduced by the 19th century Poor Laws (Batty, 2003), which provides substantial

assistance only for old people and widows. According to this law, the working class

people who earn low wages are not deserved to get such assistance. Shaw objects this
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law since it treats poor widows and poor old people different from poor laborers. In this

sense, he does not agree to distinguish poor people as the law instructs. Instead, he

suggests an equal treatment and distribution of social donation from the government to

all paupers including the poor laborers who are described by Engels as people who

“consume today what they earned yesterday” and “the subjects who do not have the

slightest guarantee for being able to earn the barest necessities of life” (Engels,

1979:146). In the ‘discussion’ about the depressed situation caused by the poverty he

encounters, Alfred Doolittle says to Mrs. Higgins,

DOOLITTLE: [softening his manner in deference to her sex] That’s the tragedy
of it, maam. It's easy to say chuck it; but I haven’t the nerve. Which of us
has? We're all intimidated. Intimidated, maam: that’s what we are. What
is there for me if I chuck it but the workhouse in my old age? I have to
dye my hair already to keep my job as a dustman. If I was one of the
deserving poor, and had put by a bit, I could chuck it; but then why
should I, cause the deserving poor might as well be millionaires for all
the happiness they ever has. They don’t know what happiness is. But I, as
one of the undeserving poor, have nothing between me and the pauper's
uniform but this here blasted three thousand a year that shoves me into
the middle class. (Excuse the expression, maam: you’d use it yourself if
you had my provocation). They’ve got you every way you turn: it's a
choice between the Skilly of the workhouse and the Char Bydis of the
middle class; and I haven’t the nerve for the workhouse. Intimidated:
that’s what I am. Broke. Bought up. Happier men than me will call for
my dust, and touch me for their tip; and I'll look on helpless, and envy
them. And that’s what your son has brought me to. [He is overcome by
emotion].
(Chin, 2000:942)

Besides describing the unjust treatment that Doolittle experiences as an

undeserving poor, this quotation also reflects the intimidation felt by poor laborers who

live in workhouse. The intimidation is so strong that Doolittle has no audacity to leave

his job as a dustman as he says, “but I haven’t the nerve”, which also means that he is
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afraid of losing his place for living. Since most laborers do not have any capability to

buy private houses, they have to live in the houses provided by their employers. In

certain extent, this system keeps the laborers to stay working in the same factory unless

they will lose the house. Doolittle wishes to be the deserving poor in order being able to

leave the workhouse, many laborers also dream to have their own house to free

themselves from the employers’ bound. Instead of the small amount of workhouses,

most houses are located in slums. Shaw witnesses many people live in that kinds of

houses which do not fit to live. He puts his testimony about the condition of the houses

of poor people in his fictional character’s mouth, Eliza, who says that her own dorm in

Lisson Grove is “wasn’t fit for a pig to live in” (Chin, 2000: 894). Since the local

authorities are trying to clean up the city from many wild settlements of the new

comers, these unfortunate people can be removed any time the local officials wish. But

some of them are luckier that they may live in workhouses built by the local

government though they have to work for certain public services with very low wages.

These people live in an intimidated situation of slum clearance, lose of jobs, and

epidemic diseases caused by bad sanitation.

Poverty is affected by many factors including income, health, education, access

to fulfill daily basic needs, family circumstances and the socio-political system a society

has. Actually, it is difficult to measure poverty, but income and expenditure are

commonly used to measure poverty. When someone or a family cannot afford the basic

needs for daily life, they are categorized as poor. In this sense the fulfillment of the

basic needs becomes the measurement to evaluate the minimum standard of living of
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someone or family or group of people. The satisfaction of basic needs means meeting

the minimum requirements of a family for personal consumption: food, shelter, and

clothing. In Pygmalion, Shaw underlines that the paupers need the same basic

necessities as the wealthy people require. Again, through Alfred Doolittle he voices the

idea and tells the audience if there is no difference between the poor and the rich in the

need of food, clothes, and shelter.

DOOLITTLE. … But my needs is as great as the most deserving widow's that

ever got money out of six different charities in one week for the death of
the same husband. I don’t need less than a deserving man: I need more. I
don’t eat less hearty than him; and I drink a lot more. I want a bit of
amusement, cause I'm a thinking man. I want cheerfulness and a song
and a band when I feel low. Well, they charge me just the same for
everything as they charge the deserving.
(Chin, 2000:912)

Yet unfortunately, as the hand-work is superseded by machine-work, many

workers are thrown out of employment. Thus, unemployment, then, becomes the new

cause of poverty since the low purchasing power that has existed among the poor

laborers decreased to zero or even to minus. What can a poor family buy if there is no

money in their cash? In fact, the greater the advance in the new invention of machines

the more numerous the unemployed, and in turn, makes the economic condition of the

laborers becomes worse. This revolting condition is faced by the working class without

any capability to release themselves from the oppression the capitalists apply on them.

Conversely, they even rely their life upon the capitalists’ ‘policy’. The capitalists know

about this dependence and utilize it to exploit the workers further.

LIZA. … Last night, when I was wandering about, a girl spoke to me; and I tried
to get back into the old way with her; but it was no use. You told me, you
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know, that when a child is brought to a foreign country, it picks up the

language in a few weeks, and forgets its own. Well, I am a child in your
country. I have forgotten my own language, and can speak nothing but
yours. That’s the real break-off with the corner of Tottenham Court Road.
Leaving Wimpole Street finishes it.
PICKERING [much alarmed] Oh! but you’re coming back to Wimpole Street,
aren’t you? You’ll forgive Higgins?
HIGGINS [rising] Forgive! Will she, by George! Let her go. Let her find out
how she can get on without us. She will relapse into the gutter in three
weeks without me at her elbow.
(Chin, 2000:946)

Using irony, Higgins mocks Eliza that she cannot live without depending on his

help along her life. He says, “Let her find out how she can get on without us. She will

relapse into the gutter in three weeks without me at her elbow.” He convincingly says

that because he assumes that Eliza has lost all of her relationship with her previous

customers and her former livelihood. It is impossible for Eliza to live without Higgins.

This is the portrait of the capitalists’ perception that once a laborer works with them he

will not go away from them. This dependence on the ‘policy’ of the capitalists leads

many workers to stay working in the same factory although their wages are so low,

although they are treated very badly, and although they remain living as poor people

along their life time.

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CHAPTER IV

MAIN CHARACTER’S REACTION TO THE SOCIAL

CONDITIONS AS THE PORTRAIT OF THE WORKING CLASS

STRUGGLE IN CAPITALIST SOCIETY

To answer the second research question of this thesis, this chapter will discuss

the reaction of the main character of Pygmalion, Eliza Doolittle, to fight for better life

with regard to the social conditions she faces. It is assumed that Eliza’s reaction to the

exploitation and the despotic treatment of Higgins is the portrait of working class

struggle in capitalist society due to the class antagonistic conflict between the capitalist

(the dominant and the oppressor) and the labourers (the subordinate and the oppressed).

The capitalist-labourer antagonism on which Karl Marx bases the modern class struggle

is considered by many socialists as the main casual factor of the many conflicts

occurred in society in the end of nineteenth and the early twentieth century in England.

Capital, according to Marx, is created with the purchase of commodities for the

purpose of creating new commodities with an exchange value higher than the amount of

money in the original purchases. The use of labor power had itself become a commodity

under capitalism since the exchange value of labor power, as reflected in the wage, is

less than the value it produces for the capitalist. This difference in values, he argues,

constitutes surplus value, which the capitalists extract and accumulate. In his book

Capital, Marx argues that the capitalist mode of production is distinguished by how the
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owners of capital extract this surplus from workers in its comparison with the sale-value

of produced commodities. For Marx, this cycle of the extraction of the surplus value by

the owners of capital or the bourgeoisie becomes the basis of class struggle (Tucker,

1978:444-445).

Pygmalion pictures the class conflict between the capitalist vs. the workers and

satirizes the social ignorance in which the labour regulations made by the ruling class

and the political economy practiced by the capitalist do not meet with the needs and the

aspirations of the working class. Shaw criticizes the effort that is meant to help the

workers, yet even, in fact, creates a new sort of exploitation. The writer of this thesis

finds that class struggle reflected in Pygmalion is closely related to the collective efforts

of the labourers to oppose the capitalist oppression, and to abolish the class distinction.

It is obvious that the conflict in that play is between Eliza and Higgins.

Basically, it is a kind of domestic conflict between the professor and his student but

since the conflict is brought to light due to human exploitation practiced by a man of a

higher social class to a girl of lower social class, the writer of this thesis strongly insists

that the conflict symbolizes the class antagonism between the capital holding class and

the working class. Eliza voices the struggle that is usually strived by the labourers; that

is the struggle to oppose the capitalist oppression and the struggle to be treated equally

as human beings.

A. Class Struggle to Oppose the Capitalist Oppression

As stated in chapter III, the conflict occuring in capitalist society is caused by

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class antagonism, human exploitation, dehumanization, and poverty. This conditions

lead the struggle of the working class becomes a class conflict with the capital holding

class (Barry, 1995:156-157). It is the conflict between the oppressed class who

experiences the exploitation and the oppressor class who practices the exploitation and

exercises power. The oppressed class does the struggle to be free from the social and

economic evils (class distinction, human exploitation, dehumanization and poverty),

while the oppressor class struggles is to achieve the highest profit and to accumulate as

much surplus values as they can.

Draper (1978, 42) states,

The working class moves toward class struggle insofar as capitalism fails to
satisfy its economic and social needs and aspirations. There is no evidence that
workers like to struggle anymore than anyone else; the evidence is that
capitalism compels and accustoms them to do so.

This quotation shows that it is the capitalists who cause the working class to do

class struggle since they do not have any concern to treat the workers humanely and to

satisfy the workers’ economic and social needs. As far as the capitalism exists, it is

assumed that the implementation of low wage and long working hours will remain at

the station that gives economic benefits mostly to the capital holding class. Thus, class

struggle is effort to enforce the capitalists to impose the average rate of wage to support

the workers to live sufficiently. Citing Engels’ statement, Draper (1978, 95) writes,

The average rate of wages is equal to the sum of necessaries sufficient to keep
up the race of workmen in a certain country according to the standard of life
habitual in that country. That standard of life may be very different for different
classes of workmen. The great merit of Trade Unions, in their struggle to keep
up the rate of wages and to reduce working hours, is that they tend to keep up
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and to raise the standard of life … The law of wages, then, is not one which
draws a hard and fast line. It is not inexorable with certain limits. There is at
every time for every trade a certain latitude within which the rate of wages may
be modified by the results of the struggle between the two contending parties.

Eric Hobsbawm, in the introduction chapter for Frederick Engels’ book entitled The

Condition of the Working Class in England (Engels, 1979:12-13), shows that not all

workers are concerned to the struggle to get better conditions of life. Regarding to the

ways of facing the bad situations in the factory, Hobsbawm divides the workers into

three main groups. The first group succumbs to the bad treatment of the factory owner –

allowing themselves to be dehumanized. The second group submits passively to their

fate and exists as best they can as respectable law-abiding citizens, take no interest in

public affairs and thus actually help the middle class to tighten their chains which bind

the workers. Finally, the third group is the workers who have real and strong concern to

humanity and dignity, who are to be found in the fight against the bourgeoisie in the

labour movement.

Dealing with those three groups of workers according to Hobsbawm, there are

three characters presented by Pygmalion who have different way of thinking about the

social condition they encounter. The first character is Alfred Doolittle – Eliza’s father –

who accepts himself as a dustman without any comment and complaint. He does his job

as garbage collector and road sweeper as one of the duties of people who live in the

workhouse – a government’s facility for poor people. He is the representation of the

first group of workers described by Hobsbawm who has given up to the bad condition

of life and thinks that he was born to be an undeserving poor along his life as he himself
 104

says,

…Undeserving poverty is my line. Taking one station in society with another,

it’s – it’s – well, it’s the only one that has any ginger in it, to my taste. (Chin,
2000:913).

The second character to represent the second group of workers is Mrs. Pearce –

Higgins’ housekeeper. She has enough audacity to object her master regarding to the

rude remarks or bad treatment her master applies to other people but she is so receptive

to the station of life she has without striving to change it. She protests that Higgins

“can’t take a girl up like that as if (he) were picking up a pebble on the beach” (Chin,

2000:904). She expresses her concern over Eliza’s future and insists that Eliza has a

right to know what she is doing if she will entrust herself to Higgins for six months. She

does not dehumanize Eliza and in fact becomes protective of her. The union and the

solidarity of Mrs. Pearce and Eliza are then interpreted as new strengths and

consciousness to arouse the workers’ collectiveness feeling in their class struggle. The

third character who deals with the third group of workers stated by Hobsbawm is Eliza

Doolittle. While Alfred Doolittle is satisfied to be part of the undeserving poor and

rejects the hypocrisy of middle class morality; and while Mrs. Pearce receives her

position as a housekeeper as a final station of her life; Eliza wants to escape from her

class and willing to become a member of the middle class. “I want to be a lady in a

flower shop ‘stead of selling at the corner of Tottenham Court Road”, she says (Chin,

2000:902). In fact this is exactly the reason she has come to Higgins’ laboratory; this is

also the real expression showing her life ideals that must be struggled. All the plot of
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Pygmalion indicates her consistent struggle to fight her poverty and to oppose every

human exploitation and dehumanization addressed to her. The analysis in this chapter

will focus on Eliza’s struggle.

Eliza’s struggle is supported by some other characters. She gets positive support

from Mrs. Pearce (Higgins’ house keeper) – who, in some senses, is very concerned and

protective to her; from Pickering (Higgins’ colleague) – who pays for Eliza’s language

lesson and who gives high respect to Eliza’s humanity and feelings; and from Mrs.

Higgins (Higgins’ mother) – who always pleads Eliza of his son’s rudeness, questions

and criticizes the importance of the language project in Wimpole Street laboratory

for Eliza’s future and protests the way her son treats Eliza as a live-doll. By presenting

all these supports from other characters, Shaw underlines that class struggle should be

done in togetherness.

Mrs. Pearce’s is from, more or less, the same class with Eliza. Thus, her support

to Eliza’s struggle reflects the support and the solidarity among the workers that later on

emerges in the form of labour movements. The workers have experienced hard times

together, and can therefore feel for those in trouble. It is the experience of exploitation

which leads them to feel as one group of people who encounter the same suffering due

to the oppression of the factory owner. In Marxist terminology, this feeling has aroused

in every worker a class consciousness which is described by Drapper (1978, 97) as a

consciousness that come through practical experience of oppression. This class

consciousness unifies the workers structurally as one social class in opposition to the

capitalist who exploit them in industry. It makes the workers so solider each others and
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considers every person as human being although they are less than human beings to the

capitalist. They are more approachable, friendlier, and less greedy for money, though

they need it far more than the capital holding class. It is assumed that this class

consciousness has encouraged Mrs. Pearce to show her objection when Higgins asks her

to take all Eliza’s clothes and put her in the dustbin.

HIGGINS [carried away] Yes: in six months—in three if she has a good ear and
a quick tongue—I'll take her anywhere and pass her off as anything. We'll
start today: now! this moment! Take her away and clean her, Mrs. Pearce.
Monkey Brand, if it wont come off any other way. Is there a good fire in
the kitchen?
MRS. PEARCE [protesting]. Yes; but—
HIGGINS [storming on] Take all her clothes off and burn them. Ring up
Whiteley or somebody for new ones. Wrap her up in brown paper till they
come.
LIZA. You’re no gentleman, you’re not, to talk of such things. I'm a good girl, I
am; and I know what the like of you are, I do.
HIGGINS. We want none of your Lisson Grove prudery here, young woman.
Youve got to learn to behave like a duchess. Take her away, Mrs. Pearce.
If she gives you any trouble wallop her.
LIZA [springing up and running between Pickering and Mrs. Pearce for
protection] No! I'll call the police, I will.
MRS. PEARCE. But I’ve no place to put her.
HIGGINS. Put her in the dustbin.
LIZA. Ah-ah-ah-ow-ow-oo!
PICKERING. Oh come, Higgins! be reasonable.
MRS. PEARCE [resolutely] You must be reasonable, Mr. Higgins: really you
must. You cant walk over everybody like this.
Higgins, thus scolded, subsides. The hurricane is succeeded by a zephyr of
amiable surprise.
HIGGINS [with professional exquisiteness of modulation] I walk over
everybody! My dear Mrs. Pearce, my dear Pickering, I never had the
slightest intention of walking over anyone. All I propose is that we should
be kind to this poor girl. We must help her to prepare and fit herself for her
new station in life. If I did not express myself clearly it was because I did
not wish to hurt her delicacy, or yours. (Liza, reassured, steals back to her
chair).
MRS. PEARCE [to Pickering] Well, did you ever hear anything like that, sir?
PICKERING [laughing heartily] Never, Mrs. Pearce: never.
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HIGGINS [patiently] What’s the matter?

MRS. PEARCE. Well, the matter is, sir, that you can’t take a girl up like that as
if you were picking up a pebble on the beach.
HIGGINS. Why not?
MRS. PEARCE. Why not! But you don’t know anything about her. What about
her parents? She may be married.
LIZA. Garn!
HIGGINS. There! As the girl very properly says, Garn! Married indeed! Don’t
you know that a woman of that class looks a worn out drudge of fifty a
year after she’s married.
LIZA. Whood marry me?
HIGGINS [suddenly resorting to the most thrillingly beautiful low tones in his
best elocutionary style] By George, Eliza, the streets will be strewn with
the bodies of men shooting themselves for your sake before I’ve done with
you.
MRS. PEARCE. Nonsense, sir. You mustn’t talk like that to her.
LIZA [rising and squaring herself determinedly] I'm going away. He's off his
chump, he is. I don’t want no balmies teaching me.
HIGGINS [wounded in his tenderest point by her insensibility to his elocution]
Oh, indeed! I'm mad, am I? Very well, Mrs. Pearce: you needn’t order the
new clothes for her. Throw her out.
LIZA [whimpering] Nah-ow. You got no right to touch me.
MRS. PEARCE. You see now what comes of being saucy. [Indicating the door]
This way, please.
LIZA [almost in tears] I didn’t want no clothes. I wouldn’t have taken them [she
throws away the handkerchief]. I can buy my own clothes.
HIGGINS [deftly retrieving the handkerchief and intercepting her on her
reluctant way to the door] You’re an ungrateful wicked girl. This is my
return for offering to take you out of the gutter and dress you beautifully
and make a lady of you.
MRS. PEARCE. Stop, Mr. Higgins. I wont allow it. It's you that are wicked. Go
home to your parents, girl; and tell them to take better care of you.
LIZA. I aint got no parents. They told me I was big enough to earn my own
living and turned me out.
(Chin, 2000: 904)

Mrs. Pearce gives her support to Eliza’s struggle by protesting to bad things

regarding to the way Higgins treats ‘the new student’. Higgins’s order to take all Eliza’s

clothes off and burn them on fire is the first matter that arouses Mrs. Pearce’s protest.

As to make someone nude is a humiliated matter, Mrs. Pearce humanist feeling is

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disturbed by the instruction. She objects, “You must be reasonable, Mr. Higgins: really

you must. You cant walk over everybody like this” when Higgins ask her to put Eliza in

the dustbin. Dustbin is a place into which the garbage is thrown away. By putting Eliza

into the dustbin, Higgins as if treats her as garbage, not as human beings. For Mrs.

Pearce, Eliza is a human being. She should be treated in reasonable ways as other

human beings regardless her social status, gender, appearance, education, etc. By

assuming that Mrs. Pearce is also sometimes treated badly in the same way as Higgins

treats Eliza, her objection emerges from class consciousness as Goldmann (1981,86)

describes,

Men living under similar conditions constitute social groups which elaborate a
complex of habits and mental structures to resolve their problems. With these
elaborations they are able to act in the world, but such habits and mental
structures not only govern their behavior but also their intelligence, thought, and
emotions.

The similar condition which is experienced by Eliza and Mrs. Pearce reflects the

condition that is faced by most workers in England in early twentieth century. It is the

condition due to the practice of dehumanization in industrial sphere which constitutes

two main social classes – the working class and the capital holding class. The condition

constitutes not only those classes but also the antagonism between them in accordance

with their totally different interest in industry. From the workers’ side, the antagonism

is related to the inhumane treatment they encounter. Shaw views the inhumane

treatment that is applied by the capitalist on the workers as a phenomenon that arises

from the concept of man in the capitalist’s mind. Pygmalion highlights the oppression
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to the lower class as the effect of the misconception of the upper class about human

being.

If man qua man is a recognizable and ascertainable entity; that man can be

defined as human not only biologically and anatomically but also psychologically – as

defined by Karl Marx in Fromm (1963:24) – so, Mrs. Pearce’s plead toward Eliza

represents the struggle of the working class to regain their dignity as human beings.

Physically, people wear clothes in order to protect their bodies from natural conditions:

heat, extreme cold weather, humidity, and strong sunlight. But psychologically, wearing

clothes is meant to wrap some certain parts of human body that may not be exposed to

other people based on certain cultural, social and religious beliefs. Thus, putting off

Eliza’s clothes and burning them means denuding Eliza physically and humiliating her

or hurting her feelings psychologically. This metaphoric action is deliberately presented

by Shaw to reveal an inhumane treatment of the capitalists who have “put all the rights

of the workers off” and considered them not as human beings but as waged slaves. The

instruction to denude Eliza – that comes from a professor of phonetics – is really

absurd, inhumane, and rarely happens in normal situation whenever people give their

respect to each other in good ways. When Mrs. Pearce asks Pickering, “Did you ever

hear anything like that, sir?” – Pickering answers, “Never, Mrs. Pearce: never.” This is

an irony presented by Shaw to criticize the lack of human sense of the capitalist who

usually has better education level; who knows much about what good things they

should perform based on their religion moral teaching; who is considered as savage,

civilized, and cultured, who knows much about poetry, philosophy, art, and science (as
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boasted by Higgins in Chin, 2000:921) – but has no good will to practice all those

excellences in their factory.

To counter Mrs. Pearce’s objection, Higgins’ defends, “I never had the slightest

intention of walking over anyone. All I propose is that we should be kind to this poor

girl. We must help her to prepare and fit herself for her new station in life.” Higgins

utters the sentence innocently as if he does not do anything wrong. He as if ignores the

inhumane instruction to denude Eliza. He intends to make a clarification by uttering that

sentence, but he also says the more or less same answers which usually come out from

the capitalists’ mouth to counter every protest of the workers regarding to the

exploitation and dehumanization they practice. Although Mrs. Pearce and Pickering

have protested Higgins’ ignorance to human feelings and dignity and justify it as

unreasonable, Higgins remains in his mannerism, and Eliza still receives rude treatment

from him.

The conflict between master and workers that is metaphorically shown in

Pygmalion through the confrontation between Higgins and Eliza does not occur

coincidentally. It happens as the consequence of the way of treatment to the workers

who are considered as sub-ordinate class to the capitalist. The treatment that is based on

the capitalist system is the main cause of the conflict especially the policies related to

wages, working hour, and work discipline. The working class struggle is, in fact, the

struggle to experience a better treatment and condition of work related to wages,

working hour, and work discipline. In its history, the struggle faces many obstacles

from the capitalists who insist to maintain the system on behalf of the high economic
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benefits they may get. Pygmalion reflects this insistence through Higgins who also

insists to behave in the same way to everyone in every occasion as he says, “I can’t

change my nature; and I don’t intend to change my manners” (Chin, 2000:947).The

capitalists defend that every practice is still on the track according to the law or the

regulation related to the workers’ rights. They base their wage system and working

hour, for instance, on the Factory Act which allows the children of nine years old to

work in the factory and applies twelve to sixteen hours of a day as official length of

working hours (Gregg, 1957:127). Yet, this Act has raised many protests from the

working class, but the protests do not change the bad conditions of work in the factory.

The situation even becomes worse and worse since many labour leaders who become

parliament members are bribed by some influential capitalists to support the regulations

that make the practice of human exploitation in industry imperishable. This fact has

decayed the labour movement in England and gives less contribution to the working

class struggle. Karl Marx in 1878, as cited by Draper (1978, 131), criticizes this

corrupted parliament members,

The English working class has been gradually becoming more and more deeply
demoralized by the period of corruption since 1848 and had at last got to the
point when it was nothing more than the tail of the Great Liberal Party, i.e., of
its oppressors, the capitalists. Its direction had passed completely into the hands
of the venal trade-union leaders and professional agitators. These fellows
shouted and howled behind the Gladstones, Brights, Mundellas, Morleys and the
whole gang of factory owners, etc., in majorem gloriam (to the greater glory) of
the Tsar as the emancipator of nations, while they never raised a finger for their
own brother in South Wales, condemned by the mine-owners to die of
starvation.

Marx’s wife, Jenny, says (Draper, 1978: 131) more rudely,

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About the English workers’ (leaders) á la Mottershead, Eccarius, Hales, Jung,

etc., let me say nothing. They are all arch-rascals, up for sale and bought and
sold and chasing after an honest shilling by hook and by crook. A really pitiful
crew.

The practice of bribery which places money as an effective tool to influence the

decision making process in parliament has weakened one of the arms in class struggle,

i.e., political arm. Shaw, who becomes one of the midwives in giving birth to the

Labour Party in 1906 (Gregg, 1957:391-402), is very disappointed of the practice. He,

then, satirizes it by presenting Alfred Doolittle as a father who ‘sells’ his daughter for

only £5 (five pound sterling). Doolittle, who should be a responsible father for Eliza and

who should protect her from any practice of human exploitation, even involves in

creating another exploitation on his own daughter. He is really “do little” in pleading his

daughter. By giving such name to Eliza’s father, Shaw criticizes the role of the workers’

leaders in parliament who represent the Labor Party but contribute nothing to the

workers’ aspirations. They are elected by the workers to plead the workers’ rights but in

fact they also “do so little” to plead their ‘brothers’ from the capitalists’ exploitation and

fails in bringing their fellows to a better work condition in industry as Doolittle also

fails in preparing her daughter to have a better future.

DOOLITTLE [to Pickering] I thank you, Governor. [To Higgins, who takes
refuge on the piano bench, a little overwhelmed by the proximity of his
visitor; for Doolittle has a professional flavor of dust about him]. Well, the
truth is, I’ve taken a sort of fancy to you, Governor; and if you want the
girl, I'm not so set on having her back home again but what I might be
open to an arrangement. Regarded in the light of a young woman, she’s a
fine handsome girl. As a daughter she’s not worth her keep; and so I tell
you straight. All I ask is my rights as a father; and you’re the last man
alive to expect me to let her go for nothing; for I can see you’re one of the
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straight sort, Governor. Well, what’s a five pound note to you? And what’s
Eliza to me? [He returns to his chair and sits down judicially].
PICKERING. I think you ought to know, Doolittle, that Mr. Higgins's intentions
are entirely honorable.
DOOLITTLE. Course they are, Governor. If I thought they weren’t, Id ask fifty.
HIGGINS [revolted] Do you mean to say, you callous rascal, that you would sell
your daughter for £50?
DOOLITTLE. Not in a general way I wouldn’t; but to oblige a gentleman like
you I'd do a good deal, I do assure you.
PICKERING. Have you no morals, man?
DOOLITTLE [unabashed] Cant afford them, Governor. Neither could you if
you was as poor as me. Not that I mean any harm, you know. But if Liza is
going to have a bit out of this, why not me too?
HIGGINS [troubled] I don’t know what to do, Pickering. There can be no
question that as a matter of morals it's a positive crime to give this chap a
farthing. And yet I feel a sort of rough justice in his claim.
DOOLITTLE, That’s it, Governor. That’s all I say. A father's heart, as it were.
PICKERING. Well, I know the feeling; but really it seems hardly right—
DOOLITTLE. Don’t say that, Governor. Don’t look at it that way. What am I,
Governors both? I ask you, what am I? I'm one of the undeserving poor:
that’s what I am. Think of what that means to a man. It means that he’s up
agen middle class morality all the time. If there’s anything going, and I put
in for a bit of it, it's always the same story: "You’re undeserving; so you
cant have it." But my needs is as great as the most deserving widow's that
ever got money out of six different charities in one week for the death of
the same husband. I don’t need less than a deserving man: I need more. I
don’t eat less hearty than him; and I drink a lot more. I want a bit of
amusement, cause I'm a thinking man. I want cheerfulness and a song and
a band when I feel low. Well, they charge me just the same for everything
as they charge the deserving. What is middle class morality? Just an
excuse for never giving me anything. Therefore, I ask you, as two
gentlemen, not to play that game on me. I'm playing straight with you. I
aint pretending to be deserving. I'm undeserving; and I mean to go on
being undeserving. I like it; and that’s the truth. Will you take advantage
of a man's nature to do him out of the price of his own daughter what he’s
brought up and fed and clothed by the sweat of his brow until she’s grown
big enough to be interesting to you two gentlemen? Is five pounds
unreasonable? I put it to you; and I leave it to you.
HIGGINS [rising, and going over to Pickering] Pickering: if we were to take
this man in hand for three months, he could choose between a seat in the
Cabinet and a popular pulpit in Wales.
PICKERING. What do you say to that, Doolittle?
DOOLITTLE. Not me, Governor, thank you kindly. I’ve heard all the preachers
 114

and all the prime ministers—for I'm a thinking man and game for politics
or religion or social reform same as all the other amusements—and I tell
you it's a dog's life anyway you look at it. Undeserving poverty is my line.
Taking one station in society with another, it's—it's—well, it's the only
one that has any ginger in it, to my taste.
HIGGINS. I suppose we must give him a fiver.
PICKERING. He'll make a bad use of it, I'm afraid.
DOOLITTLE. Not me, Governor, so help me I wont. Don’t you be afraid that I'll
save it and spare it and live idle on it. There wont be a penny of it left by
Monday: I'll have to go to work same as if I'd never had it. It wont
pauperize me, you bet. Just one good spree for myself and the missus,
giving pleasure to ourselves and employment to others, and satisfaction to
you to think it's not been throwed away. You couldn’t spend it better.
HIGGINS [taking out his pocket book and coming between Doolittle and the
piano] This is irresistible. Lets give him ten. [He offers two notes to the
dustman].
DOOLITTLE. No, Governor. She wouldn’t have the heart to spend ten; and
perhaps I shouldn’t neither. Ten pounds is a lot of money: it makes a man
feel prudent like; and then goodbye to happiness. You give me what I ask
you, Governor: not a penny more, and not a penny less.
(Chin, 2000:912)

This quotation, instead of showing the role of money and what one may do with

money, indicates another kind of exploitation conducted by people who are liable for

the fate of their fellows. Shaw ironically presents Doolittle as a father who can be

bribed for only £5 to satire the fact that there are so many politicians who come from

the working class background now become the new oppressors of the workers. No

wonder, if Jenny, Marx’s wife, calls them as “arch-rascal” or as it is ‘imitated’ by

Higgins who calls Doolittle as “callous rascal”. This fact leads the workers to lay less

expectation to the political arm as the alternative to do their class struggle since in the

capitalist society of the early twentieth century, politics is subordinated to business, and

economic elite of merchants, financiers, and manufacturers dominated the policy

making. With money they collect from the profits of doing their business in the factory
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by exploiting the labourers, they bribe the parliament members to plead their interest,

including the parliament members from the party called Labor Party. Chirot (1977, 18-

27) describes that by 1900 the capitalist world system reigned supreme. Its economic

and political power had spread throughout the world. Its influence had changed social,

economic, and cultural life as well as political forces within and between countries.

How capitalism achieved such supremacy is of great interest to pay attention, which

takes for granted the strength of the West at the start of the twentieth century. Among

all the benefits contributed by capitalism to the progress of human development, the

historical records – especially those made by Marxist followers – always portrays the

dark sides of its practice. It is caused by the way the capitalists treat their workers in

industries and their greed on the surplus values they get by exploiting the labor power.

They are mostly attacked by many labor movements for the long hour of working time,

the low wage they pay to the workers, and their inhumane treatment to the workers

including women and children labor.

The application of capitalist system in industrial environment has inevitably

‘produced’ – instead of material goods – the new poor slaves and put them into a social

hell in which they are beaten, fined, underpaid, starved, left to live in slums, and

neglected by the capitalists who regard them as object and not as man, as labor or hands

and not as human beings. Capitalists, supported by bourgeois law, impose their factory

discipline, fine the workers and cause them to be imprisoned. Very often, the conflict

between the capitalist and the workers due to the discipline imposed by the capitalist is

brought to the court. But unfortunately, the court always stands is the capitalist’s side
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and says to the worker who breaks the discipline, as asserted by Engels (1979, 206),

You were your own master, no one forced you to agree to such a contract if you
did not wish to; but now , when you have freely entered onto it, you must be
bound by it.
All these facts turn the attention of the working class into another arm of class struggles,

i.e., economic arm. This arm suggests the establishment of trade unions and labour

strikes as the means of the working class struggle. It is amazing that the unions of the

workers who have the same fate emerge everywhere in England and become strong

organizations of workers to struggle for their aspirations. Pygmalion reflects the

organizations by showing the unions between Eliza and Mrs. Pearce (as women of the

same class), the support of Pickering to Eliza’s struggle, and the sympathetic care from

Mrs. Higgins who always reminds his son, Professor Higgins, not to treat Eliza as

object of his experiment.

Pickering’s involvement in Eliza’s struggle is grasped as the representation of

the sympathetic attention from the upper class to the labourers’ struggle. His advice to

Higgins to treat Eliza in reasonable way reflects the upper class concern to the fate of

the working class who encounter inhumane treatment from the capitalists. As the

practice of capitalist system becomes much more revolting, there appear many scholars,

politicians, parliament members, journalists, and even individuals from the capitalist

circle to plead the rights of the working class. They are, for examples, Frederick Engels,

Robert Blatchford, William Cobbett, and Robert Owen. Engels – who comes from a

wealthy family of cotton manufacturers (Ermen and Engels) in Manchester – was

surrounded by the horrors of early industrial capitalism that encouraged him to react
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against the narrow and self-righteous pietism of his home and then involved in the great

movements of the British proletariat struggle as the crucial revolutionary force in the

modern world (Engels, 1979:7). His acquaintance with Karl Marx brings him to be one

of the most prolific Marxist proponents who struggle for society reconstruction. Robert

Blatchford is a journalist from Manchester who condemns capitalism as a curse,

commercial competition as wasteful, cruel and wrong, and the factory system as ugly,

disagreeable, mechanical, injurious to health, unnecessary, and dangerous to national

existence. He argues that as far as the capitalism exists the country will suffer from low

wages, long working hours, unemployment, insecurity, low standards of public health

and morality, pauperism, crime, and false ideals (Ausubel, 1955:69). William Cobbett –

a journalist, a politician and a socialist – is very concerned to the struggle of the

proletariat. Through his writings and speeches, he criticizes the British government who

gives less attention to the fate of the working class. He says, as cited by William (1961,

33),

A laboring man, in England, with a wife and only three children, though he
never lose a day’s work, though he and his family be economical, frugal and
industrious in the most extensive sense of these words, is not now able to
procure himself by his labour a single meal of meat from one end of the year
unto the other. Is this a state in which the laboring man ought to be?

Cobbett contrasts an actual poverty encountered by the working class who even cannot

afford for sufficient meals and an apparent prosperity of the capitalists who live in

abundant materials. Robert Owen is a successful manufacturer and one of the nineteenth

socialists who has different vision and perception of transforming England. William
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(1961:43) gives this information,

The real originality that gives value to Owen’s work is that he begins from an
acceptance of the vastly increased power which the Industrial Revolution had
brought, and sees in just this increase of power the opportunity for the new
moral world. He is the successful manufacturer, and not the scholar or poet; in
temperament and personality he is at one with the new industrialists who were
transforming England, but his vision of transformation is human as well as
material. As the new generation of manufacturers would organize their places of
work for production, or for profit, so he would organize England for happiness.

This quotation shows how Robert Owen gives his attention to the increased power

brought by the Industrial Revolution to build a new moral world. This new world must

be created by an active and just government underpinned by a national system of

education to develop science and technology based on human values. He attacks the

manufacturers’ policy that regards the employers as mere instruments of gaining

economic benefits (William, 1961:44) and strongly criticizes the practice of workers

alienation in ‘enjoying’ the products they make.

Owen’s famous objection to the alienation of workers in industry is voiced by

Frank Owen – the central character in a novel entitled The Ragged Trousered

Philanthropists written by Robert Tressel in 1910, who says,

Everything is produced by the working class. In return for their labour they are
given money, and the things they have made become the property of the people
who do nothing. Then, as the money is of no use, the workers go to the shops
and give it away in exchange for the thing they themselves have made. They
spend – or give back – all their wages; but as the money they got as wages is not
equal in value to the things they produced, they find that they are only able to
buy back a very small part. So you see that these little discs of metal – this
money – is a device for enabling those who do not work to rob the worksers of
the greater part of the fruits of their toil
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(Day, 2001:160).

Alienation is another sort of oppression from the capitalist to the workers. It is

the workers who produce all the products but in fact they cannot enjoy the profits as the

result of the goods sale. The capitalists share the profits in a very small amount of

money which the workers receive as wage. In this case, they are alienated by their

masters in enjoying the results of their own work. Shaw indicates this alienation in

Pygmalion by plotting the ignorance to Eliza’s brilliant achievement in the

Ambassador’s garden party by Higgins. It is told that on returning home after Eliza’s

successful appearance both in speaking and in dancing, rather than congratulate her on

her achievement, Higgins and Pickering congratulate themselves and ignore Eliza while

Eliza is there with them. They thank God for the success at the gala as if it is their own

achievement or their own hard work. They forget Eliza who realizes all their dreams.

This action reflects the reality in the factory whenever the factory owner is very

satisfied with the quality and the perfection of the products and moreover if the products

can be sold in high price. In this situation he usually forgets the makers of the products.

Eliza escapes from the laboratory at the same night when she is ignored by

Higgins and Pickering and hides at Mrs. Higgins’ house. She decides to end her

relationship with those two old bachelors and determines to seek an independent course

for herself. Eliza’s escape from the laboratory and her decision to stop her attendance in

the language experiment reflect the labor strikes that usually happen in industrial sphere

when the workers are frustrated with the capitalists’ ignorance of their needs and

aspirations. Her struggle is supported by Mrs. Higgins who appears in the play to plead
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Eliza’s rights. It is interesting here to scrutinize what Mrs. Higgins preaches to the two

men about the bad things they have done but they are not aware of. Shaw uses the

‘sermon’ to remind the capitalists to be aware of the practice of alienation they apply on

the workers.

MRS. HIGGINS. Just so. She had become attached to you both. She worked
very hard for you, Henry! I don’t think you quite realize what anything in
the nature of brain work means to a girl like that. Well, it seems that when
the great day of trial came, and she did this wonderful thing for you
without making a single mistake, you two sat there and never said a word
to her, but talked together of how glad you were that it was all over and
how you had been bored with the whole thing. And then you were
surprised because she threw your slippers at you! I should have thrown the
fire-irons at you.
HIGGINS. We said nothing except that we were tired and wanted to go to bed.
Did we, Pick?
PICKERING [shrugging his shoulders] That was all.
MRS. HIGGINS [ironically] Quite sure?
PICKERING. Absolutely. Really, that was all.
MRS. HIGGINS. You didn't thank her, or pet her, or admire her, or tell her how
splendid she'd been.
HIGGINS [impatiently] But she knew all about that. We didn’t make speeches
to her, if that’s what you mean.
PICKERING [conscience stricken] Perhaps we were a little inconsiderate. Is she
very angry?
MRS. HIGGINS [returning to her place at the writing-table] Well, I'm afraid
she won’t go back to Wimpole Street, especially now that Mr. Doolittle is
able to keep up the position you have thrust on her; but she says she is
quite willing to meet you on friendly terms and to let bygones be bygones
(Chin, 2000:943)

Mrs. Higgins reminds her son – Higgins – and Pickering to realize that they

should thank not only to God but also to Eliza since she has worked very hard and

performs her speech and dance successfully. She blames those two bachelors that they

do not “thank her, or pet her, or admire her, or tell her how splendid she’d been”. She

protests, on behalf of Eliza, the ignorance of one’s hard work from which great benefits
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are accumulated. It is the fact that Eliza’s success gives great benefits to Higgins’

prospect as language teacher in terms that he will become a prominent expert who can

change his student’s speaking manner in only some couples of months; he will have

many students who come from all around the world to learn proper English from him;

and he will receive much money from Pickering due to the betting he wins.

Yet, what does Higgins do with Eliza’s brilliant achievement? He neglects Eliza

and thinks as if Eliza’s role is nothing for him. He considers the success merely as the

‘product’ of his experiment, places Eliza as the ‘instrument’ to display the new manner

of speaking, and uses the garden party as ‘the market’ to sell his product. This way of

thinking has led Eliza to feel so alienated and estranged. What she does, then, is

escaping from Higgins’ laboratory at the same night to show her protest to the unfair

treatment. Her son’s bad attitude to Eliza has also made Mrs. Higgins very upset as she

says, “I should have thrown the fire-irons at you” – more than the slippers thrown by

Eliza on Higgins’ face for the same reason.

Shaw’s sense of humanity is triggered by the practice of alienation in industry.

He criticizes the practice of ignoring the workers’ role in the process of production and

condemns the alienation of the workers. For Shaw, the workers are the producers of the

products. They have rights to receive appropriate wages from the profits of selling the

products. But in fact, as Eliza is neglected by Higgins after the garden party, Shaw

witnesses many workers in factories in England who live in revolting poverty because

of that alienation. Living in that kind of situation leads the workers to the labour

movement to protest the ignorance. As Eliza ‘goes on strike’ by bolting from the
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laboratory, there are also labour strikes conducted everywhere in England. It is assumed

that Shaw underlines the labor strike as one of the many ways the labourers may use to

win their struggles. Labour strikes and trade unions are believed as the economic arm of

working class struggle that go together with proletarian party as the political arm to

force the capitalists to fulfill the workers’ demands (Draper, 1978: 125).

Seeing that Higgins will not change his manner, Eliza leaves him after

announcing that she will marry Freddy who loves her, and will teaches phonetics to

support him. Higgins tells Eliza that he cares “for life, for humanity” (Chin, 2000:948)

but her objection is that he does not care personally for her. When the capitalists states

that they care for the fate of the workers by imposing the wage system and the working

hours according to the Factory Act, the objection of the workers is not whether their

master imposes the regulation or not but the inadequate wage that cannot support their

basic needs and the sixteen to nineteen hours of working as if they cannot be exhausted.

On hearing that Eliza is going to marry Freddy, Clara’s amiable but brainless brother,

Higgins objects, “Can he make anything of you?” He is disappointed at seeing his

duchess, so to speak, thrown away fruitlessly. Eliza in her turn finds such a question

unintelligible, “I never thought of us making anything of one another, and you never

think of anything else. I only want to be natural“ (Chin, 2000:949). Starting from this

time, Higgins’ role to determine Eliza’s future has no power anymore. Higgins

persuasion to Eliza to ask her returns to the two men to be one of “three old bachelors

together,” is refused by Eliza. Here, she wins her struggle of Higgins’s oppression by

leaving him as “a cruel tyrant” (Chin, 2000: 949-950) and cut off her relationship with
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her oppressor. This is interpreted as the symbol of the breaking down of capitalism by

the labour movement through the two arms of working class struggle: economic and

political struggle.

The role of education in class struggle is another issue that is highlighted by

Shaw. The language lesson attended by Eliza in Higgins’ laboratory for 6 months

symbolizes the contribution that education may offer make someone to live better.

Shaw insists that education should be conducted for the labour as he shows it in

Pygmalion that to be free of upper class’ oppression Eliza has learnt phonetics which

later on leads her to be a phonetics teacher. The image as a street girl of original Eliza

as the audience meets in Covent Garden has been changed after a process of education

in Wimpole Street laboratory. This education has formed a new Eliza with new dignity

and independence. Eliza has now mastered more than the pronunciation of the educated

classes and, therefore, has also an audacity to begin a new life as a teacher of phonetics,

not as a flower girl anymore. The transformation from a flower girl to a phonetics

teacher is done through education. In this respect she becomes a new petty bourgeoise4

who has the capability to live independently by utilizing her new expertise in phonetics.

Pygmalion is a play that attempts to place education at the centre of class

struggle and social change. For Shaw, there is a close relationship between class

struggle and education. Education enlightens the workers’ perception and ideals to gain

their aspirations through apparent ways and objectives of class struggle. Education is

petty bourgeoisie — are people who make their own living primarily by the exercise of their own own labor with
their self-owned means of production (tools) or other property (like a shop). They are, typically self-employed small
producers or trades people: carpenters working on their own shops, tailors working for their own customers, small
merchants, and so on; in short , largely self-employed artisans and shopkeepers (Draper, 1978:288)
 124

viewed as the way through which the workers broaden their perspectives to judge the

cruel and bad treatment they encounter critically and, simultaneously, prepare their

future independently. Shaw underlines education as one of the most effective ways for

class struggle but he criticizes every inhumane ways applied in education that gives less

respect to humanity aspect. In Pygmalion, he presents the incorrigible and rude teacher

– Professor Higgins – as the paradox of what the audience expects of a teacher in real

life. He employs the action by showing Eliza as the object of teaching – learning

activity that arouses many objections from Mrs. Pearce, Colonel Pickering, and Mrs.

Higgins. Instead of admitting Higgins’ service in teaching her phonetics, Eliza asserts

the she gets the real-education not from Higgins but from Pickering.

In line with Owen’s concept of new moral world (Williams, 1961:46) which

underlines education as the means to build new society, Shaw maintains that the

struggle of lower class to obtain better life should be supported by the standard of mass-

education to a degree at which its recipients will be rendered immune against the

grosser forms of exploitation. What Shaw means with mass education are public

meetings, lectures, journals, social intercourse, drama, and opera (Simon, 1958:10). Yet,

he satirized the way in educating human beings. He argues that the students are not

objects of education who have nothing to be developed. Educational sphere is

something different from industrial environment. And then, being educated, civilized

and cultured is a matter of process in which the students are considered as the subjects

of learning-teaching activity. This process cannot be conducted mechanically where the

students are considered as the raw materials that after passing certain mechanical
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processes become the ‘products’ expected by the factory owner.

B. Class Struggle to Abolish Class Distinction

The struggle to abolish class distinction that the writer of this thesis means is the

struggle to be treated equally. It is the struggle to win the basic equalities for all society

members due to the opportunity and rights to live in humane social and economic

standards, to get a just and fair treatment before the law, and to live as independent

beings regardless of their abilities and capacities. Yet, the practice of capitalist system

that develops private property and labor alienation has destroyed the spirit of equality

since that kind of system places human beings into different classes based on their

relation to the process of production. Private property has distinguishes society

members into “the property owners” (the bourgeoisie) and “the propertyless workers”

(the proletariat). Meanwhile, the practice of alienation has sunk the workers into the

level of commodity, and thus places them in unequal hierarchical class as subordinate to

the capital holding class.

Karl Marx in Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts – translated by T.B.

Bottomore – (Fromm, 1963:95) states,

We shall begin from a contemporary economic fact. The worker becomes poorer
the more wealth he produces and the more his production increases in power and
extent. The worker becomes an ever cheaper commodity the more good he
creates. The devaluation of the human world increases in direct relation with the
increase in value of the world of things. Labor does not only create goods; it also
produces itself and the worker as a commodity and indeed in the same
proportion as it produces goods. This fact simply implies that the object
produced by the labor, its product, now stands opposed to it as an alien being, as
a power independent of the producer.
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This quotation apparently indicates that alienation does not only devaluate the workers

to the ‘rank’ of commodity but also estranges them from the commodity they produce.

It is said so because when the products are finished created by their hands, the products

do not belong to them but to the hands of the capitalists who have the power to

determine the value and the price of the new products before they enter the market. The

profit that the products ‘produce’ also belongs to the capitalists, not to the workers.

Even, when the workers need the products, they have no capability to buy them because

the money they receive as wages is not enough to purchase the products. The principle

of buying cheap (for the raw materials and the labour power) and selling expensive (for

the finished product) in the market/exchange system has impoverished the workers. By

conducting this principle, the capitalists get high profit and maximum surplus value but

at the same time it causes great poverty in the workers’ side and put them into a very

distinctive life condition with their masters. No wonder if the class distinction in

capitalist society has caused revolting poverty in the workers’ life rather than the good

prosperity. Marx in Fromm (1963:97) asserts,

Political economy conceals the alienation in the nature of labour insofar as it

does not examine the direct relationship between the worker (work) and the
production. Labor certainly produces marvels for the rich but it produces
privation for the worker. It produces palaces, but hovels for the worker. It
replaces labor by machinery, but it casts some of the workers back into a
barbarous kind of work and turns the others into machines. It produces
intelligence, but also stupidity and cretinism for the workers.

The bad condition of the workers’ life that is created by class distinction in

capitalist system has encouraged many scholars to think about better alternatives of

social-economic system to safe the workers from that situation. One of the alternatives
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to pull the workers out of their privation is the abolition of class distinction in society as

proposed by many socialists. It is applied by replacing the capitalist system with the

socialist system or socialism. Socialism arises as a reaction to the economic and social

changes associated with the bad economic conditions in society as the direct effect of

the capitalist system. While rapid wealth comes to the factory owners, the workers

become increasingly impoverished. As this capitalist industrial system spread, reactions

in the form of socialist thought increased proportionately. Citing Schumpeter’s stance

about the characterization of this system, Kilcullen (1996) describes,

… Socialism could adopt the market as the planning mechanism. Suppose the
publicly-owned means of production are managed by managers who are
instructed to aim at making a profit for their enterprise (the profit would of
course belong not to them or to private owners or shareholders, but to the
community); then the central board managing the allocation of productive
factors will auction them off to factories etc. according to what they bid,
factories etc. will produce what consumers will buy, consumer income will be
wages from employment, employees will seek good wages, firms will offer
wages according to prospective profitability.

This quotation shows that in socialist society the ownership of property does not lay on

the hands of a private-individual but on the hands of community (or the state) for

greatly the welfare of all citizens. It stands in opposition to the private ownership of

means of production in capitalist system which manages the economic profits from the

market activity merely to fulfill the capitalist’s avarice and in fact it ignores the welfare

of the workers.

According to Shaw, human beings are equal in value and dignity. They are not

objects and sub-ordinates of others. On the other hand, they are the prime agents of
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material production. Therefore, all kinds of class distinction that leads to human

exploitation and dehumanization must be demolished. He hates the way the rich

accumulate their wealth by exploiting the workers, and pities the poor who lives under

certain living standard as the impact of human exploitation in factory environments. He

shows his concern to encourage the working class struggle to gain equality in society

through many speeches. One of his speech is cited by William (1961, 182) in the

following quotation,

We have to confess it: Capitalist mankind in the lump is detestable … Both rich
and poor are really hateful in themselves. For my part I hate the poor and look
forward eagerly to their extermination. I pity the rich a little, but am equally bent
on their extermination. The working classes, the business classes, the
professional classes, the propertied classes, and the ruling classes are each more
odious than the other: they have no right to live: I should despair if I did not
know that they will all die presently, and that there is no need on earth why they
should be replaced by people like themselves. … And yet I am not in the least a
misanthrope. I am a person of normal affections.

Shaw hates ‘the existence’ of the poor and pities the rich of their ‘no-care

attitudes’ to the poor’s suffering, looking forward, to the extermination of both groups.

Taking great pains to deny that he is a misanthrope, Shaw insists, as described by

Simon (1958:65), that there is nothing that can be changed more completely than human

nature when the job is taken in hand early enough. If a civilized state is the aim, then

humans are not to be picked up in the slums: they have to be cultivated very carefully

and expensively. The goal of society should be that of increasing the percentage of

individuals who are carefully bred and nurtured, even to finally making the most of

every man and woman born.

 129

What Shaw has done as his contribution to Fabian Society for forty years by

providing so many essays and lectures talking about human improvement is the

evidence of his struggle for egalitarianism against the existing class structure especially

the capitalist and aristocrat. As a response to the question on the meaning of

egalitarianism, Erik Olin Wright – a senior professor at Harvard and at Berkeley

University – explains that egalitarianism is a commitment to end the social-structured

forms of economic inequality rooted in the social positions people occupy within the

social division of labor. It is a commitment to an egalitarian vision of just and good

society regarding to two things of economic inequality: 1) there is a very deep form of

equality of opportunity for material well-being in which a person’s social location and

natural talents have no effects on their access to the resources and processes for

acquiring the material means of life; 2) everyone, regardless of the choices they make,

is assured a decent standard of living (“Reflections on Marxism, Class and Politics”,

February 2001).

In Shaw’s mind, the distribution of economic product, status and privileges

should be egalitarian in order to minimize the social gaps, to secure justice between

individuals, and to equalize opportunities. With other Fabians, he struggles for

weakening the existing established social class divisions which divide society members

into classes based on their relationship with the means of productions, the process of

producing goods, and the possessing of production factors. Shaw says

(Simon,1958:249),
 130

I want to be a cultured human being; I want to live in the fullest sense; I require
a generous subsistence for that; and I expect my country to organize itself in
such a way as to secure me. In return for that I am willing to give my country the
best service of which I am capable. . . . My ideal shall be also that, no matter
how much I have demanded from my country, or how much my country has
given to me, I hope . . . to give to my country in return more than it has given to
me; so that when I die my country shall be the richer for my life.

This quotation indicates Shaw’s socialist view point on the role of state. It is the state’s

obligation to organize and to manage all economic modes for social welfare. Every

citizen has the equal right to be secured (protected) by his/her state from poverty that is

caused by class distinction and human exploitation.

As a media to educate the society, Pygmalion contains a very influential

message in accordance with the struggle to realize the vision of egalitarian society that

is a community of people which maintains the equality for all of its members to access

their basic needs to live in a good standard of living. This equality ignores the

difference of social status, religion, educational background, and political affiliation.

Shaw underlines this belief in social equality as the most characteristic feature of

socialist thought and supports the struggle for egalitarian society by employing Eliza

who encounters rude, inhumane, sarcastic, and despotic treatment from Higgins only

because she is a flower girl. Generated by so many miserable things, Eliza hard fights

for the acknowledgement of equality and wins it when she is successfully achieved her

ideals as phonetics teacher, the same profession as her professor. Shaw employs this

action to encourage the workers that by their hard working they are also able to be

independent as ‘businessman’, separated from their master and therefore release

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themselves from the vicious circle of human exploitation and dehumanization.

Shaw puts in contrast the way of building human relations of Higgins and that of

Pickering to show how these two language experts understand and apply the concept of

egalitarianism in the play. Higgins is, in many ways, a paradoxical being. He is at once

a tyrannical bully, a scientist with a wildly extravagant imagination and a man so blind

to the nature of his own personality that he thinks of himself as timid, modest, and

diffident. Obsessed by his interest in changing Eliza through language, he has no idea

that his behavior might be unusual. His manners are boorish. Although his

pronunciation and grammar are perfect, his rough language is inappropriate to the

profession. Meanwhile, Pickering is a gentleman who pays for Eliza’s language course

and all the expenses needed to conduct the experiments. He does so not only to bet on

Higgins’ expertise in teaching new speech but also to help Eliza to overcome her

financial problem in paying the course. Along the play, he appears as a very kind

gentleman who pleads Eliza from Higgins’ oppression and crudeness. Eliza states that it

is not Pickering’s generosity in funding the course that makes her so grateful to him but

his good treatment and life example to her.

LIZA [continuing quietly]—but I owe so much to you that I should be very

unhappy if you forgot me.
PICKERING. It's very kind of you to say so, Miss Doolittle.
LIZA. It's not because you paid for my dresses. I know you are generous to
everybody with money. But it was from you that I learnt really nice
manners; and that is what makes one a lady, isn’t it? You see it was so very
difficult for me with the example of Professor Higgins always before me. I
was brought up to be just like him, unable to control myself, and using bad
language on the slightest provocation. And I should never have known that
ladies and gentlemen didn’t behave like that if you hadn’t been there.
(Chin, 2000: 944)
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This conversation shows a new notion of social class. In the principle of

egalitarian society, one’s social class is not determined by his/her wealth, education

level, or social status but by his/her ‘nice manner’ and behavior. Shaw intentionally

presents Higgins as an educated and wealthy man but while one may expect a well

educated man, like him, to be a gentleman with nice manner, he is far from it. Shaw

criticizes the arrogance of the capitalists who deify money and wealth as the only

determiners of social class. In fact, it is the money and the material wealth that trap

them to fall deeper and deeper into the hole of avarice. It is their greed of wealth that

leads them to exploit the workers and devaluate them into the level of object. They

ignore the humanity aspects of the workers as they think that the workers may be

treated brutally and inhumanely.

In contrast to Higgins, Shaw employs Pickering as ‘a generous to every body

with money’. In this extent, Shaw opposes the capitalists who are so busy to enrich

themselves and centralize all the production activities only for their interest without any

spirit of sharing and helping others. This lack in spirit of sharing is considered as one of

the causes of poverty and privation. Reflecting the socialists’ voice, Shaw underlines

that money is but facility to make life easier and better. He puts this voice in Eliza’s

mouth, “It’s not because you paid for my dresses. I know you are generous to

everybody with money. But it was from you that I learnt really nice manners; and that is

what makes one a lady, isn’t it?” Eliza admits that money is important, but nice manner

is more important than money. Money cannot arouse in one’s heart the what so-called

‘self-respect’ but nice manner can. Shaw indicates, here, his perspective about money
 133

by subordinate it under human psychological needs i.e., self respect. By presenting this

action, he satirizes the capitalist’s greed of money as the new god that can safe them

from all human problems. But if capital is money used to make money how can money

be used to create self-respect? In fact, money can even be only used to create artificial

and temporary self-respect as ironically cited by Marx from Goethe in Fromm (1963,

165-166),

What I am and can do is, therefore, not at all determined by my individuality. I

am ugly, but I can buy the most beautiful woman for myself. Consequently, I am
not ugly, for the effect of ugliness, its power to repel, is annulled by money. As
an individual I am lame, but money provides me with twenty-four legs.
Therefore, I am not lame. I am a detestable, dishonorable, unscrupulous and
stupid man but money is honored and so also is its possessor.

Higgins is influenced by this kind of perspective that he defends Eliza so hard when he

remembers that he has bought Eliza from her father of £5.

MRS. HIGGINS. Well, I'm very glad you’re not going to do anything foolish,
Mr. Doolittle. For this solves the problem of Eliza’s future. You can
provide for her now.
DOOLITTLE [with melancholy resignation] Yes, maam: I’m expected to
provide for everyone now, out of three thousand a year.
HIGGINS [jumping up] Nonsense! he cant provide for her. He shan’t provide
for her. She doesn’t belong to him. I paid him five pounds for her.
Doolittle: either you’re an honest man or a rogue.
DOOLITTLE [tolerantly] A little of both, Henry, like the rest of us: a little of
both.
HIGGINS. Well, you took that money for the girl; and you have no right to take
her as well.
(Chin, 2000:942)

This dialogue presents the portrait of the capitalists’ perspective on the workers. As

Higgins insists that Eliza does not belong to her father any more because he has bought

her with the price of £5 – a very unreasonable price of a human beings’ girl, the
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capitalists also insist that since they have bought the workers by giving them wages,

then, the workers are their possessions – even though the wage is not in the reasonable

comparison with the economic value of the final products produced by the workers.

This is a revolting reality happens in capitalist society that man can be bought by others

with certain amount of money. It is only things or objects that can be purchased by

using money as its means of exchange. But how can it be applied to human beings?

This happens since the capitalists view the workers as lower ‘creatures’ than

themselves. But lower in what sense – ask the socialists and the humanists. The workers

are only more unfortunate in sense that they have nothing to be survived except their

labour power – but this cannot be used as the reason to dehumanize them as objects or

commodities or things. They are still human beings with equal dignity, rights, freedom,

and opportunity to access to better life. Therefore the struggle to build a new egalitarian

society means the struggle to end the capitalist system in human beings’ life.

In the conversation about who really gives the education to Eliza, there is a

debate conducted by cross-cutting the retrospective viewpoints of Eliza and Higgins on

the concept of equal treatment one may address to others. The conversation is stormy

when Higgins begins by repeating the boast which started the whole complicated action

and which he has repeated in the second and the fourth acts. Each time it is repeated, it

has been slightly more a weapon of insult designed to hurt Eliza for what he considers

her ingratitude.

HIGGINS: You let her alone, mother. Let her speak for herself. You will jolly
soon see whether she has an idea that I havnt put into her head or a word
that I havnt put into her mouth. I tell you I have created this thing out of
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the squashed cabbage leaves of Covent Garden; and now she pretends to
play the fine lady with me.
(Chin, 2000: 944)

Higgins again shows the tendency, common throughout the play, to refer to

people as things – and Eliza is “a thing out of the cabbage leaves”. There is, however, a

surprise when Eliza starts to answer him not by falling in with his bullying and boorish

manner, but by addressing herself quietly to Pickering. And it suddenly becomes very

clear that she has a great ideas that Higgins puts less good and positive things into her

head since he does not himself possess the things or even quite understand them.

Instead, she admits that it is from Pickering she begins the real education. Pickering’s

respectful and honorable attitudes to her have more contribution to her personality

development. This is what Eliza considers as real-education.

LIZA: But do you know what began my real education?

PICKERING: What?
LIZA [stopping her work for a moment]: Your calling me Miss Doolittle that
day when I first came to Wimpole Street. That was the beginning of self-
respect for me. [She resumes her stitching.] And there were a hundred little
things you never noticed, because they came naturally to you. Things about
standing up and taking off your hat and opening doors—
PICKERING: Oh, that was nothing.
LIZA: Yes: things that shewed you thought and felt about me as if I were
something better than a scullery-maid5; though of course I know you would
have been just the same to a scullery-maid if she had been let into the
drawing room. You never took off your boots in the dining room when I
was there.
PICKERING: You mustnt mind that. Higgins takes off his boots all over the
place.
LIZA: I know. I am not blaming him. It is his way, isn't it? But it made such a
difference to me that you didnt do it. You see, really and truly, apart from
the things anyone can pick up (the dressing and the proper way of speaking,
and so on), the difference between a lady and a flower girl is not how she
5
Scullery maid refers to a girl who washed dishes and who was in the very bottom of the hierarchy of servants.
 136

behaves, but how she's treated. I shall always be a flower girl to Professor
Higgins, because he always treats me as a flower girl, and always will; but I
know I can be a lady to you, because you always treat me as a lady, and
always will.
(Chin, 2000: 944)

Eliza insists that the real education she accepts is not the language lesson in

which she learns new speech, but the way Pickering treats her and the good examples he

displays before her. Real education according to Eliza does not only deal with every

scientific matter but also with simple and natural and good examples the teachers show

to their students. The first deals with the intellectual development and the latter deals

with the mental or behavioral aspects of human education. Since human beings are

naturally equipped not only by the cognitive but also the affective capability; so, those

two aspects should be developed proportionally in the educational service. Using the

language laboratory in Wimpole Street to metaphorically criticize the practice of

dehumanization in factory sphere in England, Shaw brings to light the ignorance of the

capitalists to the psychological needs of the workers that is the needs to be treated

respectfully as human beings; and to be considered as having equal role in producing

the surplus value and therefore having equal rights to ‘enjoy’ a reasonable living

standard supported by adequate wages.

To treat members of all classes alike is to recognize no essential class

distinctions. Pickering treats a flower girl the same way he treats a lady. In this matter—

the elimination of class distinctions through treatment that does not take such

distinctions into account—Higgins and Doolittle resemble Pickering. “The same to

everybody,” Eliza tells Higgins, “like father.” Higgins treats Eliza as rudely and as
 137

inconsiderately as he treats every other character in the play, including his mother and

Mrs. Pearce. As Eliza sometimes is aware of his social class in the same position with

the scullery maid, Pickering never considers it as a significant factor to alter his view

points on treating other people equally. It makes Eliza sure that Pickering is really a

gentleman to whom she should address her thankfulness. Before Pickering she feels as a

lady since he treats her like a lady. In this matter, Eliza contrasts the notion of ‘how one

behaves’ and ‘how one is treated’. Regarding to behavior, people may behave

hypocritically to hide their weakness or badness. Shaw criticizes this morality of the

capitalists who pretend to be good to the workers as if they are really concerned with

the fate of the workers by paying their wages based on the labour regulations. Yet,

people of England know that the regulations are made by the corrupted parliament

members who are bribed by the capitalists for their necessity. Meanwhile, the way one

is treated reflects the view points of other people as respectful or not. Eliza has been

treated in respectful ways by Pickering but not by Higgins. Since Higgins represents the

capitalist, then, the judgments of the capitalists’ treatment to the workers become so

tangible. For the Higgins views Eliza as thing and exploits her for his benefits, it

portrays the same practice the capitalists apply to the workers.

The phonetic lesson is actually merely a stepping stone to a more fundamental

message beyond the action – although Shaw believes that phonetics and proper

pronunciation is a serious instrument of social change and, at his death, left money to

finance research into phonetics and for the development of a proper phonetic alphabet
 138

for English6. The major didactic achievement of the play is its pointed objectification of

the hollowness of social distinctions, and its assertion of the importance of the

individual personality which such distinctions ignore.

The concept of classless society is, then, considered as the ultimate alternative

which can be realized by breaking down the capitalist system as the way class struggle

may follow to abolish class distinction. Classless society is a concept that is based on

the common ownership of the means of production to oppose the private ownership

system in capitalist society. In such society, all factors of production for public welfare

are owned or controlled by the state and are operated for profit in which investments,

distribution, income, production, pricing of goods and services are determined through

the operation of a market economy. This society is built under the dictatorship of the

proletariat that win the struggle of social, political, and economic domination by

breaking down the capitalist system. This concept comes firstly from Marx and Engels

but later on also becomes the concern of Shaw and his Fabian Society. In Pygmalion,

this victory is symbolized by the triumph of Eliza to free herself from Higgins’

oppression and independently live as a new phonetics teacher, like her professor. Shaw

6
Shaw regarded phonetics and the proper pronunciation of the English language as a serious instrument of social
change and, at his death, left money to finance research into phonetics and for the development of a proper phonetic
alphabet for English. Shaw, that is to say, had serious and important views about this question and made use of them
in his play. The idea that speech and accent is one of the great class barriers is certainly one of the important ideas of
this play. It would, however, be a mistake to suppose that it is necessary to read and understand Shaw’s views on
phonetics in order to understand Pygmalion. The study of language and the science of phonetics is an extremely
complex subject. Nor is it clear that a phonetic alphabet is the solution to the problems of the English language. A
student who really wished to understand these questions would not learn very much about them by reading
Pygmalion. A complex academic subject of this kind can hardly be grasped immediately by an audience in a theatre,
and Shaw provides them only with a minimum of easily assimilated information. (Alexander, 1988:26)
 139

indicates here that hard work generated by high idealism to live better time by time may

bring whoever to be equal with others economically and socially.

 140

CHAPTER V

CONCLUSION

Class Struggle, which is chosen by the writer of this thesis as his topic to

discuss, emerges from the class conflict between the capital holding class and the

working class in industrial sphere. The conflict occurs whenever the interests of the two

classes do not fit each other i.e., when the greed of the capitalist to accumulate surplus

value ignores the welfare of the working class and neglects the human aspects of the

workers. In practice, the working class is, even, exploited, dehumanized, and objectified

or devaluated into the level of economic commodity.

The long-term of social and economic conflict in capitalist system manifests

itself in more and more revolting bad treatments from the capitalist to the workers. In

line with this situation, class struggle is the way taken by the workers to fight every

capitalist policy that causes the bad working conditions in industry regarding mostly to

the low wage and the long working hour system and other inhumane treatments

implemented in strict disciplines and terrible punishments. It is to prove that the

labourers are not powerless. They have become the victims of the capitalist system, but

since the treatment of the capitalist is so despotic they then rise and fight the system

through the labour movement. Class struggle, thus, is conducted to free the workers

from the evils of capitalism and simultaneously to bring them toward better future

marked by the existence of the respect to human rights and other humanity values such
 141

as freedom, just, equality, and brotherhood. According to many socialists, this better

situation can only be realized in a new egalitarian society called socialist society.

Pygmalion portrays the social conditions in England in the end of nineteenth

century and the early twentieth century and reflects class struggle as the reaction to the

conditions. As it is told briefly in Appendix 2 of this thesis, Pygmalion employs Eliza

Doolittle, a flower girl, who wishes to be a duchess to free herself from the poverty and

the stupidity she encounters. Eliza, then, attends a speech lesson in language laboratory

in Wimpole Street possessed by Professor Henry Higgins as the way she should take to

realize her dream. Yet, instead of treating Eliza as the subject of the lesson, Higgins

exploits her as the object of his phonetic experiment and the object of his economic

benefit. Pygmalion can be considered as a play that expresses any accurate and

comprehensive ideas about the study of the English language but Shaw does not mean

to offer to his audience to use the play as the medium to study phonetics. It does,

however, make use of some ideas about the English language to make a sort of

observation about the nature of capitalist society, and it asks a number of questions

about the relations that exist between individuals in such a society.

Conducting close reading on Pygmalion leads the writer of this thesis to the

understanding of how George Bernard Shaw has utilized this play to convey his

socialist view points. He symbolizes the power exercise of Higgins to Eliza as the

power relation applied by the capitalist on the workers, and reflects the support of

Pickering and Mrs. Higgins to Eliza’s struggle as the support of many socialists to the
 142

labour movements. Moreover, he encourages every labour movement to win the

struggle for better life condition as Eliza has done it in Pygmalion.

Sociological approach of literature demands the writer of this thesis to use the

theory of homology since he grasps that there is a kind of reciprocal relationship

between the social conditions portrayed in Pygmalion and those in reality at the given

time. The use of such theory assumes that Shaw was influenced structurally by his

society when he wrote Pygmalion. The result is, then, the plot of Pygmalion homolog

with the real situation in society.

From the dialogue and the behavior of certain characters, the writer of this thesis

assumes that Pygmalion reflects the situation in capitalist society. There is Henry

Higgins who is so despotic exploiting Eliza for his interest. There is Mrs. Pearce and

Alfred Doolittle who are suffered from a social system that makes them so difficult to

be free from their poverty. And there is Eliza who struggles for better life by attending a

language lesson. All these facts lead the writer to focus his attention mostly on class

struggle in capitalist society. And since the analysis due to the portrait of class struggle

in capitalist society, there is no other theory to employ except utilizing Marxist criticism

as the most suitable instrument – including for this era.

Although the audiences of Pygmalion are mostly from the middle class level

who have money to buy tickets to watch the play performance, this play is still effective

to convey the social reform message. Shaw, for instance, deliberately performs Colonel

Pickering and Mrs. Higgins – the representation of the middle class people – who plead

Eliza in many occasions of Higgins’ despotism. For Shaw, the middle class people have
 143

the biggest responsibility to reform the society since they are the people who have

caused the most revolting social problems: dehumanization and poverty. Social

reformation can only be conducted by persuading the middle class to involve; and the

way Shaw uses to ‘invite’ the middle class to take part in the social reconstruction is

through his plays performing. So, besides as critique medium, Pygmalion is also a

persuasive performance for the middle class. Play is chosen as the medium to convey

his socialist viewpoint since William Archer asked him to collaborate in writing a play

(see Appendix 1 page 146-147) that made him prefer using plays to novels in his career

as literary writer.

The argument about manners is extremely important in Pygmalion. Shaw

criticizes his society that gives more respect to people from higher social class although

their manners are so bad. If Eliza admits that the real education she gets from Pickering,

it is merely because Pickering’ good manner has become a good example to be imitated.

Teaching by giving more good examples, instead of giving ‘dry’ scientific lesson

without any respect to human feelings and rights, is considered more effective in

nourishing human values. Eliza’s point is that it does not matter that Higgins treats

everyone alike, if the way in which Higgins actually treats them implies that they do not

really exist and that their opinions and feelings may be ignored.

For Shaw, education as the instrument to develop human values and human

nature is a central issue in his propaganda. He views education linked with

craftsmanship, nature, and religion as an aid in breaking down class distinctions. He

argues that even a child must be taught, that men must reform themselves before they
 144

reform society, and that the process of education is the most effective way of bettering

human nature. Viewing art as the means of educating people, he writes some novels and

so many plays telling about the evils of capitalism, war, selfishness, money-getters, the

future, the family, marriage, sex, the will to grow, etc. Shaw frequently admits that, as

Simon (1958:16 ) informs, he is a teacher whose aim is the making of better men and

women. Deliberately pedagogic and propagandistic, Shaw believed that art, particularly

dramatic art, must improve morals and behavior by destroying stereotyped concepts of

life. Here, he accepts the existence of human nature and believes that the nature must be

nurtured continuously along human life. The place to ‘nurture’ the nature is the society

with all of its phenomena. That’s why instead of accepting the existence of human

nature, Shaw also admits that the development of the nature is the product of existing

social, political, economic, and moral institutions.

It is interesting to know here that Shaw underlines the growth of the nature of

man and the development of noble faculties as the benchmark of the progress of human

civilization. His stance on the human development, as the objective of his movement as

a socialist, is so rigid that he objects all forms of human exploitation due to the

invention of new technology in industrial society that dehumanize human values.

Since Marxist critics see their duty – indeed, the duty of all responsible and

humane people – as not merely to describe the world but to change it, Pygmalion has

brought about new way of thinking or, in some ways, enlightened its audience of all

eras and places about the oppression and the necessity of class struggle to achieve better

future which is marked not by the advance of science and technology which gives to
 145

mankind materialistic comforts and conveniences, but the growth of the spirit of human

and the development of nobler faculties. In this sense, Pygmalion brings to the audience

not only a new inspiration to conduct his/her own class struggle regarding to any

oppression he/she faces as an individual but also encourages the audience to scrutinize

every injustice in labour phenomena and then support every labour movement to help

the workers succeed in struggling their aspirations. As Eliza has succeeded in winning

her struggle to be free from the upper class oppression and wins it as the new

opportunity to develop her nature as human beings who lives not only for herself but

also for others, the writer of this thesis is convinced that the workers who work in bad

conditions, wherever in this globe, are also able to attain better life as far as they

succeed conducting the struggle in the way more or less as Eliza has done – unless

Pygmalion is fruitless.
 146

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 150

Appendix 1

BIOGRAPHY OF GEORGE BERNARD SHAW

George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) was born on the 26th of July, 1856 in

Dublin, in a lower-middle class family of Scottish-Protestant ancestry. His father,

George Carr Shaw, son of a failed Dublin stockbroker, had been a civil servant and

retired on a pension of £60 before Bernard was born. He became a corn merchant but

was unsuccessful in this venture due to a drinking problem and a squint (which Oscar

Wilde's father, a leading Dublin surgeon, tried unsuccessfully to correct). Shaw’s

mother, Lucinda Elizabeth Shaw, the daughter of an Irish landowner, was a professional

singer, the sole disciple of George Vandeleur Lee, a voice teacher claiming to have a

unique and original approach to singing. Lee lived with the Shaws and caused a great

deal of gossip.

Bernard went to a series of schools starting with the Wesleyan Connexional

School and ending his fifteenth year at the Dublin English Scientific and Commercial

Day School. He claimed to hate all the schools he attended. By the time Shaw was

fifteen his parents' marriage had broken up. His mother deserted her husband and went

off to England along with her two daughters. Shaw's father appears to have been a weak

and ineffectual man, prone to drowning his sorrow in alcohol. Shaw left school and

worked as a clerk and cashier for a firm of land agents for nearly four and a half years.

During this period Shaw read voraciously and frequented the theatre. He saw every new

play and was especially interested in Shakespeare. His deep and profound knowledge of
 151

Shakespeare may be traced to these early theatre visits. Shaw also loved music. His

father played the trombone and his mother was an excellent singer. His elder sister,

Lucy, was an opera singer.

In 1876 following the tragic death of his sister Agnes from consumption (at the

age of nineteen), Shaw left Ireland and joined his mother and Lucy in London with the

intention of becoming a musician or a painter. Shaw was an acutely shy young man and

took considerable time to adjust to the liberal London atmosphere. He undertook a

variety of odd jobs in his early years in London. He wrote a series of articles as a music

critic under the name of Lee in a weekly paper The Hornet, from November 1876 to

July 1878. He also worked for a couple of years in the Edison and Bell Telephone

Company and left in 1880 when the company was absorbed by another. He then gave up

as he puts it, “working for his living” and decided to establish himself as a writer.

During these years Shaw was financially dependent on his mother. Shaw was candid

enough about this decision and remarked, “I did not throw myself into the struggle for

life: I threw my mother into it.” (Preface to The Irrational Knot, 1931). Shaw started

writing articles on various subjects but they were rejected by the magazines and

newspapers he sent them to. He then decided to become a novelist and wrote a novel

(entitled Immaturity) but could not find a publisher for it. During 1880 to 1883 he wrote

four more novels which were also rejected. He read voraciously, in public libraries and

in the British Museum reading room. And he became involved in progressive politics.
 152

Standing on soapboxes, at Speaker’s Corner in Hyde Park and at socialist rallies, he

learned to overcome his stage fright and his stammer. And, to hold the attention of the

crowd, he developed an energetic and aggressive speaking style that is evident in all of

his writing.

During these early years of his stay in London, Shaw became interested in

socialism. He was immensely influenced by the alarming rise in unemployment and

general social distress. Shaw became a socialist in 1882 and then in 1884, with Beatrice

and Sidney Webb, Shaw founded the Fabian Society that would later be instrumental in

founding the London School of Economics and the Labour Party. Shaw lectured for the

Fabian Society, and wrote pamphlets on the progressive arts, including The Perfect

Wagnerite, an interpretation of Richard Wagner's Ring cycle, and The Quintessence of

Ibsenism, based on a series of lectures about the progressive Norwegian playwright,

Henrik Ibsen. Meanwhile, as a journalist, Shaw worked as an art critic, then as a music

critic (writing under the pseudonym “Corno di Bassetto”), and finally, from 1895 to

1898, as Theatre Critic for the Saturday Review, where his reviews appeared over the

infamous initials ‘GBS.’ The Fabians aimed to bring about a gradual change from

capitalism to socialism and were a powerful influence on British political thought. Shaw

served on The Executive Committee of the Fabian Society for many years.

In a letter to Henry James dated 17 January, 1909 Shaw said: “I, as a Socialist,

have had to preach, as much as anyone, the enormous power of the environment. We

can change it; we must change it; there is absolutely no other sense in life than the task

of changing it. What is the use of writing plays, what is the use of writing anything, if
 153

there is not a will which finally moulds chaos itself into a race of gods.” Shaw

maintained that each social class worked to serve its own ends, and that those in the

upper echelons had won the struggle. He believed the working class had failed to

promote its interests effectively, which made him highly critical of the democratic

system of his time. Shaw's writing, as evinced in plays like Major Barbara and

Pygmalion, has class struggle as an underlying theme. Notwithstanding that, Shaw was

not a Marxist in the traditional sense, and abhorred the aggressiveness of Trade

Unionism.

In 1884 Shaw attended a lecture delivered by Henry George. Here it was

proposed that national revenue should be collected by a single tax on land rather than by

numerous taxes on several things. This lecture proved to be a turning point in Shaw’s

life and shaped his political thought. Henry George’s views on land nationalization gave

depth and direction to Shaw’s political convictions. Shortly thereafter he applied to join

the Social Democratic Federation led by H. M. Hyndman who introduced him to the

works of Karl Marx. However, the newly-formed Fabian Society conformed more

closely to his views, so he joined it instead, in 1884. He was an active Fabian, writing a

number of their pamphlets, and supplying money to set up the independent socialist

journal The New Age. He argued that owning property was a form of theft and

campaigned for an equitable distribution of land and capital. He was involved with the

formation of the Labour Party. A clear statement of his position can be found in The

Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Socialism, Capitalism, Sovietism, and Fascism, also

known as The Intelligent Woman's Guide to Socialism and Capitalism. Having visited
 154

the USSR in 1930s and met Stalin, Shaw became an ardent supporter of the Stalinist

USSR. He declared that all the stories of a famine were slander after a carefully

managed short tour of the country (Stalin privately disparaged him). Having been asked

why he didn't want to stay permanently in the Soviet ‘earthly paradise’, Shaw ironically

remarked that England was a but of course he was a small devil himself. He wrote a

somewhat ironic defense of Stalin’s espousal of Lysenkoism, in a letter to the 1946

Labour Monthly. He also “simply did not believe” that the Holocaust had happened.

Shaw obtained work as a journalist with the help of the drama critic and Ibsen

translator, William Archer, with whom he shared an interest in Ibsen. Shaw wrote as a

music critic under the name of “Corno di Bassetto” in The Star (1888-90), an evening

paper of London. Shaw also wrote as a drama critic for The Saturday Review (1895-98),

a weekly periodical. His insightful articles on the contemporary theatre scene are

collected in Our Theatre in the Nineties. It is in three volumes and was published in

1932.

Shaw's first published works were novels, Cashel Byron’s Profession (1886) and

An Unsocial Socialist (1887). Cashel Byron’s Profession was extremely popular but

Shaw came to dislike it. His career as a novelist came to an end even though he returned

to the form many times, for example, in the socio-political parable, The Adventures of

the Black Girl in Her Search for God (1932).

At one point during their association, William Archer suggested to Shaw that

they collaborate in writing a play. Although this never occurred, their discussions on
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Ibsen resulted in Shaw's The Quintessence of Ibsenism (1891). This was the first

English book on Ibsen whose work had only recently been translated. While this book

was undoubtedly a proclamation of Ibsen's genius it was also a manifesto for Shaw’s

own later dramatic work. Both Ibsen and Shaw shared a concern for the welfare of

common people and critiqued social mores of the day in their plays. Shaw thus initiated

his own unique brand of the play of ‘ideas’. He had made an attempt to write a play

with William Archer in 1885 but had abandoned the project midway. He now

completed it and the play The Widowers’ Houses was performed in London on

December 9th, 1892 at the Royalty Theatre. It was produced by J. T. Grein for the

Independent Theatre Club. The play is both ‘didactic’ and ‘realistic’ and constitutes a

savage attack on slum landlords who made money by exploiting the poor. Shaw

declared its theme to be “middle class respectability fattening on the poverty of slums as

flies fatten on filth.” This play spurred Shaw’s interest in drama. But the play’s subject

was considered too radical for its time and the play had no success. Shaw went on to

write serious plays of ‘ideas’ like Mrs. Warren’s Profession (written in 1893) which

explores the subject of prostitution due to the “underpayment and ill treatment of

women who try to earn an honest living.” Another such play was The Philanderer

(written in 1893 and produced in 1905) which dealt with the subject of women and

marriage. Mrs. Warren’s Profession was denied performance by the Examiner of Plays

who considered it immoral. It was given a private performance by the Independent

Theatre Club in 1902 and its first public performance was later in 1925.

Shaw’s next play Arms and the Man (1894) a bitter attack on the romanticism of
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war enjoyed great popularity. Shaw presents an anti-hero as the protagonist in the play.

This was followed by Candida (1897), The Devil’s Disciple (1897) The Man of Destiny

(1897), You Never Can Tell (1899) and Captain Brassbound's Conversion (1900).

Shaw’s plays acquired popularity during the seasons organized by Harley Granville-

Barker and J.E. Vedrenne at the Royal Court Theatre in 1904-1907. John Bulls' Other

Island (1904) which tackled the Irish question was the first play to become popular. In it

Shaw depicts the old Ireland. The age-old conflict between the English and the Irish is

the source of the play’s humor. In the Preface Shaw passionately pleads for Home Rule.

The play was written when Ireland was still under British rule.

This was followed by How He Lied to Her Husband (1904) an anti-romantic

treatment of the familiar triangular situation of husband, wife and lover. Shaw’s first

great play was Man and Superman (1905). He called the play “a comedy and a

philosophy.” Shaw’s ideas about the “life force” are embodied in the characters of the

battling lovers Ann Whitefield and John Tanner. As dictated by her father’s will, Ann

has two guardians, the dignified Roebuck Ramsden and the radical John Tanner. She

decides to marry Tanner. This decision, how much ever Tanner struggles to evade it,

proves irresistible. Shaw’s next play Major Barbara was also produced in 1905 and

dealt as Shaw states in the preface with “the tragi-comic irony of the conflict between

real life and the romantic imagination.” The Doctor’s Dilemma (1906) contained an

expose of the medical profession. Although it is subtitled a “tragedy”, it deals with its

subject in a light-hearted manner.

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The first decade of this century was Shaw’s golden period as a dramatist. Caesar

and Cleopatra, written in 1898, was performed in 1907. It was Shaw's interpretation of

history in contemporary terms. This was followed by Getting Married (1908) which is a

single conversation from the beginning to the end. The subject, as is apparent from the

title, is marriage and Shaw discusses several points of view about it. The Shewing - up

of Blanco Posnet (1909), a one-act “religious tract in dramatic form” was censored for

blasphemy. Misalliance (1910) is a long debate about the relationship between parents

and children. Fanny’s First Play (1911) is in Shaw’s own terms a “potboiler.”

Androcles and the Lion (1911-12) depicts Shaw’s religious views and his belief that a

religious aim is essential for human existence. Pygmalion followed in 1913 and is one

of Shaw’s most popular plays.

It is beyond the scope of this guide to list the entire canon, but it must be

mentioned that Shaw contributed four of his most serious and intellectual plays to the

new theatre movement of the 1920s: Heartbreak House (1920), Back to Methuselah

(1922), Saint Joan (1923) and The Apple Cart (1929). Heartbreak House is subtitled "A

Fantasia in the Russian Manner on English Themes” and the main theme is Shaw’s

condemnation of the “cultured, leisured Europe before the War." Back to Methuselah is

preoccupied with the theme of Creative Evolution. It is an extremely long play in five

parts. Shaw was anti-Darwinian. In Darwin’s scheme of things, the fittest of the species

survive while the weak are killed by the strong. Shaw believed instead that the fittest

survive by use of their superior intelligence and will power. Shaw held that one could

consciously will oneself to become a superman. The play was a failure, possibly due to
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the lack of a protagonist, which rendered the impersonal for the audience. The action of

Saint Joan follows Joan of Arc’s career from her first encounter with Robert de

Baudricourt, to her meeting with the Dauphin at Chinon, and her fortunes after she lead

the assault on the English and raised the siege of Orleans. In his last important play, The

Apple Cart, Shaw exposes democracy and royalty as forms of government. He

desperately wishes for dictatorship but realizes its limitations. The only solution seems

to be the building of “a political system for rapid positive work instead of slow nugatory

work, made to fit into the twentieth century instead of the sixteenth.”

Shaw’s social, political and religious opinions cannot only be gleaned from the

Prefaces to his plays which were collected in a single volume in 1934, but also in his

provocative works like Common Sense about the War (1914), How to Settle the Irish

Question (1917), The Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Socialism and Capitalism (1928),

and Everybody’s Political What’s What (1944). Shaw’s later plays include Too True to

be Good (1932), The Millionaires (1936) and In Good King Charles’s Golden Days

(1939). Although he was averse to writing for film, he did agree to prepare a script for

the filming of Pygmalion which was completed in 1938 and had a successful reception.

A musical version of Pygmalion called My Fair Lady was produced in New Haven,

Connecticut in 1956, starring Rex Harrison and Julie Andrews. It was later made into

the well-known film by the same name that won an Academy Award for Best Picture in

1964.

Shaw lived the rest of his life as an international celebrity, travelling the world,
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continually involved in local and international politics. (He visited the Soviet Union at

the invitation of Stalin; and he came briefly to the United States at the invitation of

William Randolph Hearst, stepping on shore only twice, for a lecture at the

Metropolitan Opera House in New York, and for lunch at Hearst’s castle in San Simeon

in California). And he continued to write thousands of letters and over a dozen more

plays.

In 1950, Shaw fell off a ladder while trimming a tree on his property at Ayot, St.

Lawrence, in Hertfordshire, outside of London, and died a few days later of

complications from the injury. Shaw died at the age of ninety-five in the year 1950. He

was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1925, which he first refused and

afterwards accepted. He had been at work on yet another play (Why She Would Not). In

his will, he left a large part of his estate to a project to revamp the English alphabet.

Only one volume was published with the new “Shaw Alphabet”: a parallel text edition

of Shaw's Androcles and the Lion. After that project failed, the estate was divided

among the other beneficiaries in his will: the National Gallery of Ireland, the British

Museum, and the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. Royalties from Shaw’s plays (and

from the musical My Fair Lady, based on Shaw’s Pygmalion) have helped to balance

the budgets of these institutions ever since.

Adapted from:
1. Henderson, Archibald. (1956). George Bernard Shaw: Man of the Century. New
York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, Inc.
2. Huneker, Ames (1990), The Quintessence of Shaw, retrieved from
<http://www.questia.com/read/102674255?title=George%20Bernard%20Shaw's%20
Pygmalion> on: April, 26, 2008
3. Purdom, G.B. (1964). A Guide to the Plays of
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George Bernard Shaw. London: Methuen and Co Ltd.

4. <http://www.quotes-of-wisdom.eu/en/authors/detail/author-3155> retrieved on 24
Apr 2007.
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Appendix 2
THE SYNOPSIS OF G.B. SHAW’S PYGMALION

Act one opens with a group of people seeking for shelter from a heavy

downpour of summer rain under the portico of St. Paul’s Church, Covent Garden.

Among them, there are a lady (Mrs. Eynsford Hill), her daughter (Clara) and her son

(Freddy), a note taker (Professor Henry Higgins), a military gentleman (Colonel

Pickering) and a flower girl (Eliza). While they are waiting for the rain to stop, Higgins

takes note of the interesting Cockney accent of the flower girl who coaxes some money

out of the Colonel. A bystander who sees Higgins takes notes suspects him as police

informant and warns the flower girl to give the Colonel some flowers in return. This

alarms the flower girl who begins to loudly protest her innocence. The crowd is

sympathetic enough to take the side of the flower girl. Higgins claims that he is able to

place any man within two miles in London solely by virtue of his speech patterns.

Higgins displays his phonetic expertise and correctly guesses the origins of several

people.

When the rain stops the crowd disperses and Higgins is left alone with the

Colonel and the flower girl. Higgins explains to the Colonel that his profession is a

phonetician and asserts that he can teach anybody any dialect, including how to speak

correctly. The flower girl is still hysterical about the imagined harm to her respectability

and Higgins loses his temper. He declares that he can transform her into a duchess and

even get her a place as a shop assistant. As they leave together Higgins throws some
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money into the flower girl’s basket. Delighted by this unexpected fortune the flower girl

calls a cab to take her home.

The second act opens the next day at Higgins’ Wimpole Street laboratory.

Higgins is engaged in a technical discussion about vowel sounds with Colonel Pickering

when Mrs. Pearce (Higgins’ housekeeper) announces that a common flower girl has

come to see him. Excited by this stroke of good luck, Higgins eagerly asks Mrs. Pearce

to show the girl up. He is so happy to the news of the common girl’s coming since it

will become the chance for him to demonstrate and to prove to Pickering how he can

make records. However, he is so disappointed knowing that the girl is the same flower

girl whom he had met last night. The girl introduces herself as Eliza Doolittle and says

that she wants to be a lady in a flower shop, but cannot get a job unless she can “talk

more genteel.” She wants Higgins to teach her correct pronunciation. After indulging in

some playful banter, Higgins seizes her as an excellent subject and vows that he will

“make a duchess of this draggletailed guttersnipe” within six months and she is

entrusted to his housekeeper. This is the starting point of Eliza’s class struggle that is

the struggle for better life by attending a language lesson since she is very convinced

that by speaking good and correct language she can get a better job.

A little while later, Eliza’s father, Alfred Doolittle, a dustman, arrives with the

intention of inquiring about his daughter. However in fact he does not care about Eliza

and his sole concern is not to let her go for nothing. Higgins cunningly mocks his plan

and tells him that he may take Eliza away. Doolittle confesses that all he wants is five
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pounds in return for which Higgins gives a long discussion about middle class morality.

At the end of the act, it is shown that Doolittle fails to recognize his own daughter who

is dressed in a clean kimono like a Japanese lady. There is an angry exchange of words

between the father and daughter before Doolittle leaves.

The third act begins at Higgins’ mother’s house on her at-home day. A few

months have passed by since the last act. Mrs. Higgins is dismayed when her son shows

up unexpectedly, since his social clumsiness always offends all her friends and guests.

Higgins informs her about his latest phonetic project to pass off a common flower girl,

Eliza, as a duchess in six months. He also tells her that he has invited Eliza to her at-

home. Before Mrs. Higgins has any time to voice her objections they are interrupted by

the arrival of two guests - Mrs. and Miss Eynsford Hill. Soon Freddy Hill and Colonel

Pickering also arrive. Higgins who has had a lingering suspicion that he has seen Mrs.

and Miss. Eynsford Hill somewhere before now recognizes them as the mother and

daughter who were under the portico in Covent Garden. Soon Miss Doolittle is

announced and Eliza enters exquisitely dressed. She however fails to restrict herself to

the topics prescribed by Higgins (health and weather) and the conversation takes a

dangerous turn.

A short time later, taking Higgins’ sign, Eliza rises to leave. At the same time

Freddy, who is rapturous by her beauty, offers to take accompany her while she walks

across the park. It is here that Eliza responds with the famously infamous words,

“Walk! Not bloody likely!” This shocks everybody present. Soon the at-home breaks up
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and the Eynsford Hills leave. Higgins and Colonel Pickering excitedly discuss Eliza

with Mrs. Higgins. They agree with her that Eliza needs to undergo more training

before she is presentable. Mrs. Higgins rebukes the men for their unconcern about

Eliza’s future. She accurately foresees that the advantages imparted by Higgins will

transform Eliza into a lady, which would disqualify her from earning her own living

without giving her a lady’s income. However Pickering and Higgins do not consider

this as any significant problem and Mrs. Higgins can only exclaim in frustration “Oh

men! men!! men!!!”

Act four is the climax of the play. It opens at midnight at the Wimpole Street laboratory.

Eliza, Pickering and Higgins return to the laboratory after an exhausting night at the

Ambassador’s garden party where Eliza has made everybody impressed and the hostess

is convinced that she is of royal blood from Hungary. It is a considerable period of time

that has elapsed since her appearance at Mrs. Higgins’ at-home. Eliza has lost her

coarse way of speaking and plays her role to perfection in the ball. In the laboratory,

Pickering and Higgins talk about the evening and their great success, though Higgins

seems rather bored, more concerned with his inability to find slippers. Eliza is very

upset to witness that Higgins seems more concerned with the slippers than her. “What

the slippers are that they are more important than a girl who has performed a great

success in the ball,” thinks Eliza. Higgins talks absentmindedly with slips out, returns

with his slippers, and lays them on the floor before him without a word. Unmindful of

Eliza’s feelings, Higgins declares that he would have abandoned the silly project much

earlier had he not wagered a bet. Higgins and Pickering talk about the great success as if
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Eliza is not there with them, saying how happy they are that the entire experiment is

over, agreeing that it had become rather boring in the last few months. Eliza sits silently

on a bench while the men voice their happiness that the whole affair is over. The two of

them then leave the room to go to bed. Eliza is clearly hurt. “Eliza’s beauty turns

murderous,” say the stage directions, but Higgins and Pickering ignore her.

After Pickering leaves, Higgins reenters the laboratory, once again still

wondering what he has done with his slippers. Eliza becomes so angry with Higgins for

his insensitivity and lack of concern. She flings the slippers at him and demands to

know why he picked her out of the gutter if he wanted to throw her back again. She is

worried about her future since now that she has been made a lady, she is fit for nothing

else. As Higgins’ retort that she is ungrateful, she answers that no one has treated her

badly, but that she is still left confused about what is to happen to her now that the bet

has been won. Higgins says that she can always get married or open that flower shop,

but she replies by saying that she wishes she had been left where she was before. She

goes on to ask whether her clothes belong to her, meaning what she can take away with

her without being accused of thievery. Higgins is genuinely hurt, something that does

not happen to him often. She returns him a ring he bought for her, but Higgins throws

the ring violently into the fireplace and leaves. Eliza kneels to look for the ring and after

finding it she puts it down on the dessert stand and furiously goes upstairs to change her

dress and leave. She meets Freddy and reciprocates his kisses since she needs to be

comforted. They take a taxi and Eliza resolves to call on Mrs. Higgins in the morning

for some advice.

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In the fifth and last act, Higgins comes to his mother’s house to tell her that

Eliza has run away. He does not know that Eliza has bolted to his mother for support.

Shortly thereafter Alfred Doolittle, who has been sent from Wimpole Street, arrives. He

accuses Higgins of having delivered him into the hands of middle class morality. He

complains that he had been left a legacy of three thousand pounds a year by an

American language fanatic, Ezra D. Wannafeller and holds Higgins responsible for

suggesting his name as the most original moralist present in England. He dramatically

complains his loss of freedom. He is however unwilling to add to his burdens by taking

the additional responsibility of providing for Eliza. Higgins points out that Doolittle has

already received five pounds in return for Eliza and he has no rights over her. Soon

Eliza enters and hurts Higgins by telling the Colonel that it was his genteel manners and

kindness that really made her a lady and not Higgins who merely taught her to speak

correctly. Alfred Doolittle leaves to marry the woman he has lived with as Eliza’s

stepmother. Higgins is at last left alone with Eliza.

Higgins asks Eliza to return to Wimpole Street because he has become used to

having her around, and is dependent on her for all sorts of little services. He would

obviously miss her if she would go away. However Eliza goes on to accuse him of

creating Duchess Eliza without thinking about the trouble that it could bring. To

Higgins’ surprise Eliza reveals that Freddy loves her and would make her happy.

Higgins tells her that her choice is between the cold unfeeling world of Science and Art

and the life of the gutter. Eliza revenges herself by stating that she will advertise in the

papers that Higgins’ Duchess is only a flower girl that he taught and that she will teach
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the same to anybody for a hundred guineas. Although hurt, Higgins is happy at the same

time that he has made “a true woman” out of Eliza. He says that now they can live

together like three old bachelors instead of only two men and a silly girl.

Shaw finishes Pygmalion without any information to whom Eliza will marry to.

The audience is left guessing whether she might indeed marry Higgins. The audience

only knows through the last act that Eliza insists to leave the two bachelors and will

begin her new life as a phonetics teacher to support her living. However, Shaw provides

a resolution to the action in his anti-romantic epilogue in the part that is called ‘sequel’

where he states that Eliza tends to choose Freddy as her husband and lives happily with

him.