Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion - A Contemporary Reading
I believe there are only a few stories, created a long time ago and recreated over and over again, across tribes and societies, dressed in contemporary clothes and customs to teach the same lessons to the ever-forgetful audience; humanity. One of the oldest of the tropes is the story of the creator and the "perfect" creation, dating way back - to the Bible, or to Ovid - pick your own devotion. It was the latter that inspired George Bernard Shaw, the Irish playwright in his 1912 play, Pygmalion, (you might know of it as the basis for the famous Hollywood musical, My Fair Lady). Shaw took Ovid's retelling of the Ancient Greek myth of Pygmalion and dressed it up to match and comment on modern English society.
Pygmalion was a sculptor in Cyprus, who - disgusted by the immoral behaviour of the women of his native land and in contrast with the womaniser male artist trope - dedicated all his time and energy to his work. One day he finished a marble statue that appeared as the perfect woman in his eyes. He was so taken with the beauty of the creation that he named her Galatea, kissed her and caressed her day and night, becoming obsessively in love with the cold, motionless statue. He then prayed to Aphrodite, the goddess of love, to send a woman just like Galatea to his way. When he went home and kissed the statue, its lips felt warm and its body started to move; Galatea came to life. How their lives developed from this point on differs in each account of the myth. In some versions, they had children together and lived happily ever after, while in others Galatea's transformation from Ideal to Reality disappointed Pygmalion, who wasn't able to project his idea of perfection onto her anymore.
Shaw's Pygmalion is about Henry Higgins, a phonetician, who takes in a simple flower girl, Eliza Doolittle, and teaches her to speak and behave flawlessly, like a duchess. Similar to the ancient myth, Higgins forms a marvellous creature in the new and improved Eliza and expects her to act "perfectly", just as he likes. He then ends up surprised, disappointed and upset when his creation starts thinking and acting on her own.
The play ridicules modern English society, where clothes, manners and pronunciation make a gentleman and a lady, rather than their actions, convictions or anything internal. Shaw also presents a very real Galatea in Eliza Doolittle, with thoughts and emotions of her own, far from the "perfect" pleasantness expected of women at the time. Eliza's dialogue is as fun and empowering to read now as it must have been back when it was first performed. The perfect woman of men's and society's fantasy is lingering above our heads transformed and less defined perhaps but not less coerced today. Pygmalion's assessing and admiring gaze falls upon us the same, when we enter a room, move our bodies or converse and we are all too aware of it still. Eliza "making trouble" over that is a good reminder for us to do the same.
Shaw presents Higgins's egotism and will to control and own its creation. As soon as Eliza wants to own up to her new language and behavioural skills, Higgins shuts her down and ridicules her; "... 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". Eliza talks back and she does not let him take all the credit for the "improvements" in her being and the play dares not to end with the love-resolves-all sentiment of My Fair Lady.
Pygmalion's obsession with perfection is both his tragedy and his triumph. It is the source of the artist's sacred loneliness, fetishised by so many male creators, that devastates him personally but allows him to create The Work. Shaw celebrates it in his own way too, lifting Higgins's professional research and work above all in importance and having him celebrate Eliza's refusal to submit as a tool and necessary step in the sacred artistic process, rather than the triumph of her embracing her right and power. Higgins cries "Would the world ever have been made if its maker had been afraid of making trouble? Making life means making trouble. There is only one way of escaping trouble, and that's killing things. Cowards, you notice, are always shrieking to have troublesome people killed" and he is all too satisfied with how things sort themselves out around him.
The drama has strong, critical commentary on the English class system and on the politics of being rich, poor, well-educated or unschooled which are very relevant today. Social differences are often major drivers of the plot, sometimes even more so than emotion or character in Shaw's work. Today's literary canon, in the post-blogging era, is overflooded by narratives of "the me and I", which all too often resemble diary entries without any real meaning or thought. It is refreshing to read Shaw's social commentary and his rich, playful linguistic approach.
The play was first presented in German, in Vienna. One can see an adaptation of the original now too, in the Residenz Theatre of Munich. The Iranian director, Amir Reza Koohestani and the playwright, Mahin Sadri, lifted the old story to the present and dressed it in the accessories of our digital age. But, Shaw's original stabs at social inequalities surely remain the essence of the play, trying to teach the same lessons as before. Who knows, we might listen this time.
Gréta Csernik