Me he llevado una sorpresa. Hace tropocientos años que ví la pelicula de My Fair Lady con Audrey Hepburn, pero creo recordar que no fue esto lo que me vendieron.... Xddd

Tanto es así que me he quedado descolocada y aún no sé si me ha gustado o no, por eso le pongo tres estrellas, bueno realmente 3,5.

El caso es que ha habido cosillas que me han molestado y el profesor Higgins me ha parecido odioso y pedante, pero en cambio el final me ha encantado veo más lógico que Eliza y Higgins no se enamoren, porque no pegan ni con cola. Por otro lado el epílogo me ha sobrado y se me ha hecho pesadísimo.

George Bernard Shaw's play Pygmalion is a story based on two completely different people and their primary wants. Eliza Doolittle is a flower girl, who has always wanted to be accepted in society and be loved. Henry Higgins is a linguistics professor, who has no respect for women and his main goal is to prove his knowledge to others and make them aware of his existence. Henry Higgins takes Eliza off the streets in order to give her what it is she wants; teaching her the English language and ways while he is set on turning her into a duchesse. Throughout this process of transformation and the play, there are demonstrations of differences between social groups and gender equality existing in society, and Shaw did a fine job of showing this through Henry and Eliza's actions. Henry Higgins is disrespectful towards Eliza, forcing her to do his daily tasks and complete his lessons. Eliza just does what she is told, for she feels it is the only way for her to be accepted in society. This abuse towards Eliza (Shaw's showing of discrimination against women) continues throughout most of the play, with Eliza doing nothing about it. Pygmalion is a perfect example of society in the early 1900s.

Pygmalion doesn't turn out to be just an average story of a man taking advantage of a woman. Most would think that Eliza lets the disrespectful ways of Henry to continue and take over. But no, taking the ways of society that she has learned and self confidence and understand that she has gained, she goes against Henry and lets him know how she feels and what she truly wants; to be appreciated and loved. Shaw demonstrates perfectly the effects of one's actions (Henry's) and the true emotions of Eliza. In the end, Eliza has finally gained enough knowledge and understanding to survive on her own, and finds what she desires, true love, in a respectable man named Freddy.

Shaw's Pygmalion is a story that is original, quite entertaining and contains characters that have true recognizable personalities.

A thinking parrot? Oh dear! Eliza is fed up selling flowers down the streets. She dreams of working in a posh shop. Fair enough! BUT, young girl raised by an alcoholic and from the lower classes of the London Est End, poor Eliza only speaks the dialect of her class, and with a strong accent reflecting her social roots that is, a resounding cockney absolutely unacceptable to serve ladies and gentlemen in a posh shop! Imagine that... ! Oh dear. Fortunately, she will meet Mr Higgins, expert in linguistic and speech therapy who will change all that...

Don't be fooled by the title. The link with Ovid's myth is rather shallow. Eliza is far from being a silly girl, and the rest is more a punchy criticism of English society before WWI (it was staged for the first time in 1914) than a naïve romantic little story.

The cruel relationships between the characters, Higgins' tyranny, barely counter-balanced by the curiosity of a Colonel Pickering intrigued by this weird bet to change a poor street seller into a lady, hide in fact a violent slap given right into the face of a arrogant class society, where each is judged, snobbishly, for their language. At the time indeed, to be educated was to speak a 'proper' English that is, the English of London's social elite. To don't abide by it was to risk ridicule, and stigma. An accent carried, after all, a lot of prejudices; Shaw, Irishman in England, knew very well what he was speaking about (no pun intended!).

Oh! Did I write 'at the time'... ? Ha! Yes. We are way above that nowadays, aren't we? We don't judge people anymore solely on their way of speaking, do we?... Gnark gnark^^

Timely, and pure genius!

Όταν ήμουν μικρή μία απο τις ταινίες που παιζόταν πάντα στην τηλεόραση στις γιορτές των Χριστουγέννων ,ήταν το "Ωραία μου κυρία" και δεν την έχανα ποτέ μια που ήταν απο τις αγαπημένες μου.
Φέτος είπα να διαβάσω επιτέλους και το θεατρικό έργο στο οποίο βασίστηκε η ταινία και νομίζω οτι έκανα την ιδανική αρχή για το αναγνωστικό μου 2018.
Κοφτερή σάτιρα,έξυπνοι διάλογοι,αστείο και αγαπημένη Eliza Doolittle.

4/5
I liked this story quite a lot. It's a story about how language, dialect and education shape society and how various cultures can be in one society. How one given a chance can bloom and rise to their full potential. It was also about how toxic masculinity mixed with higher class culture views other people and specially women.
So altogether I think it was an good book to wrap up my 2024 list with.

5/5 stars

Well, this was very enjoyable! It was witty and sarcastic and deeply character driven and utterly amusing! Every single character was interesting and the dialogues had me smiling and shaking my head! Plus, some of its main themes are female empowerment, linguistics and criticism of the social classes and the obsession with social uprising, so imagine how amusing I found it!

A lot of my reading at the moment seems to revolve around the relationship between art and artist, creator and creation.

Reading other reviews on "Pygmalion", I realise how strange my approach to it was, and how disappointed I was at first because my expectations were not met. I chose it as part of a reading challenge I set myself a couple of years ago - to read all Nobel Laureates in literature. The title appealed to me, and I was thrilled to explore a modernist's take on the ancient myth of Pygmalion. Believe it or not, I had never realised that "My Fair Lady", which I love, is based on this play, and I waited for GREEK characters to show up, as I had been immersing myself in Enlightenment art concerned with the artistic questions raised in the Pygmalion story.

Falconet's sculpture of the misogynistic sculptor falling in love with his own creation, kneeling in front of the carefully chiselled woman, praying to Aphrodite to make her come alive, - that was what I was waiting for!

I kept wondering about the charming cockney and 19th century scientific approach to social class distinctions. I enjoyed the reading experience, but could not make sense of it at all. Don't judge a book by its title, I was inclined to say, until it dawned on me all of a sudden that:

a) Shaw's "Pygmalion" was linked to the musical "My Fair Lady", and

b) Higgins had more than a trace of Pygmalion, in fact was his modern alter ego.

Just like the ancient artist, he did not quite expect the outcome of his experiment, and Eliza Doolittle, like so many other literary creatures, does a beautiful job of emancipating herself from her creator. Art is quite amazing that way: as soon as it enters the world, it has a life of its own, and the artist is forced to watch its development together with other spectators.

I like that idea, as it symbolises the relationship between older and younger generations as well: we are nurtured and shaped by our parents' choices, but when we grow up, the freedom and responsibility is ours.

In a way, Frankenstein and Moreau's monsters in The Island of Doctor Moreau demonstrate the same emancipation process, and I don't think it is a coincidence that artists and writers of the 19th century were obsessed with that theme, as the world went through major political, social, economic and scientific changes.

Shaw showed wonderful creativity when transforming the ancient myth into modern life while keeping the essential questions alive. And his creation lives its own, independent life as well!
Must-read for anyone interested in the eternal human questions, as well as 19th/20th century social history.

Along with O'Neill's "Mourning Becomes Electra", this is my favourite merging of myth and modern drama!

‎دوستانِ گرانقدر، این نمایشنامه، موضوعی بسیار جالب دارد و به زبان شناسی و آوا شناسی و البته تأثیرِ آن در شخصیتِ انسانها اشاره دارد.. که چگونه میتوانیم با تغییر و آموزشِ نوعِ بیانِ واژه ها و جملات، به نوعی به اصالت دست یابیم و البته در موردِ زندگیِ اشرافیان و طبقهٔ ثروتمندِ جامعه نیز اشاره هایی در داستان خواهید دید
‎داستان در موردِ دختری زیبا به نامِ <الیزا دولیتل> میباشد.. الیزا دختری گل فروش و دوره گرد است، او در شبی بارانی، به طورِ اتفاقی با پروفسور <هنری هیگینز> و سرهنگ <پیکیرینگ> آشنا میشود.. پروفسور هیگینز، استاد و پژوهشگرِ زبان شناسی و آوا شناسی میباشد.. او با سرمایهٔ پیکیرینگ، هر دو تلاش میکنند تا با شش ماه آموزشِ شبانه روزی، الیزا را که نوعِ سخن گفتنش کوچه بازاری و کولی وار است، تبدیل به دوشیزه ای خوش بیان و اصیل کنند که هرکس او را ببیند، تصور کند که با یک پرنسسِ اشرافی و نژاده، طرف است
‎الیزا استعدادِ زیادی دارد و تمامیِ تمریناتِ هیگینز را با شور ِ فراوان، انجام میدهد
‎در مهمانیِ بزرگی که در سفارتخانه برگزار میشود، و اشراف زاده ها و دوک هایِ اروپایی و انگلیسی در آن حضور دارند، هیگینز و پیکیرینگ از دوشیزه ای که در شش ماه آن را پرورش داده اند، رونمایی میکنند.. و جالب است که هیچکس شک نمیکند که الیزا همان دخترِ گلفروشِ خیابانی است، و به خیالشان، او یک پرنسسِ نژاددارِ اروپایی میباشد
‎الیزا، به مرورِ زمان به هنری هیگینز، دل میبندد، ولی رفتارِ هنری با او بسیار بد است و همچون کنیز با او برخورد میکند.. البته به نظر می آید، پروفسور هیگینز نیز الیزا را دوست دارد، ولی غرورش اجازه نمیدهد تا این علاقه را آشکار نماید
‎جالب است بدانید که "پیگمالیون" نامِ این کتاب، از داستانی یونانی گرفته شده است.. او دلباختهٔ یکی از مجسمه هایی میشود که با دستانِ خویش آن را ساخته است... به نوعی پروفسور هیگینز نیز همچون پیگمالیون، دلباختهٔ ساختهٔ خویش میشود و دل به دختری میبندد که آن را در شش ماه تغییر داده و پرورش داده است
‎عزیزانم، بهتر است خودتان این داستان را خوانده و از سرانجامِ داستانِ الیزا و پروفسور هیگینز، آگاه شوید
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‎الیزا به هیگینز: من گل میفروختم، ولی خودم را نمیفروختم... حالا تو از من بانویی ساختی که دیگر هیچ چیزی نمیتوانم بفروشم... ای کاش، همانجایی که مرا پیدا کردی، رهایم میکردی
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‎تفاوت میانِ یک بانو و یک دخترِ گلفروش، نوعِ رفتار کردنش با دیگران نیست، بلکه تفاوت در این است که دیگران چطور با او رفتار کنند
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‎اگر نمی توانی قدرِ چیزی که داری را بدانی، بهتر است چیزی به دست آوری که بتوانی قدرِ آن را بدانی
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‎زنانِ زیادی هستند که شوهرانشان را مست میکنند تا بتوانند آنها را تحمل کنند
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‎آن انسانی خوشبخت است که می تواند با سرگرمیِ خویش، هزینهٔ زندگی اش را دربیاورد
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‎امیدوارم این ریویو در جهتِ آشنایی با این کتاب، کافی و مفید بوده باشه
‎<پیروز باشید و ایرانی>

Shaw's Masterpiece
16 April 2010

tPygmalion, in my opinion, is Shaw's piece de resistance (if that is how you spell it). It is a masterpiece. While I can simply leave it at that I am compelled to say a lot more about this play, but first, the plot.

tTwo English gentlemen (and when I read this book I wondered if it was implied that they were homosexual) bet as to whether they can take a street urchin and turn her into a lady by teaching her how to speak proper English. They do and the experiment is successful, and the bet is won. However the problem is that the woman, Eliza, is left in a difficult position as despite the fact that she is now educated, she is still a woman and has all the rights of a woman - which is none. So, while Henry Higgins has proven that he can turn a street urchin into a lady, she is still a woman and is left in the situation that she cannot do anything with the education that she now has.

tThis play is an attack upon education and upon the status of women in early 20th Century England. They simply had no rights and while they could learn and they could appear to move among the gentry, the fact that they were women relegated them to a second class status. It is said that the system of education was one of the areas that Shaw attacked in his plays, and in this play we see how despite Liza having an education, she knows that she can do nothing with it, and is not recognised as having an education.

tThis play has spawned a lot of duplicates, one of them being a play by Willy Russell called Educating Rita. I read that book in year 11 when I returned to high school and my English teacher loved it because he believed that it showed us how an education can change us. After reading Pygmalion I believed that that play was left for dead (and still do). However there are differences, namely that the status of women in the mid-twentieth century had changed dramatically. However, the theme is still the same, in that a woman from the working class, through education, was able to lift herself out of the working class.

tAnother spawn would be an Eddie Murphy movie called Trading Places. Here two incredibly wealthy men make a bet that they could turn a bum into a successful Wall Street Trader, and turn the successful Wall Street Trader into a common criminal. Like Henry Higgins in Pygmalion, they succeed, but further, they have no understanding of the power of education, because after turning the bum into a successful trader, they realise that they cannot simply send him back to the streets. He has become educated, and in becoming educated he has the power to fight back, which he does so successfully.

tIt is a shame that Shaw has disappeared into relative obscurity. I do not see any of his plays being performed (though being stuck in the little backwater that is Adelaide means that we see very little in the way of good theatre, or more correctly, what I consider good theatre). Still, beggars can't be choosers, but the educated have the world at their doorstep.

Znając moje podejście do dramatów nie spodziewałem się, że komedia noblisty i zapalonego eugenika bedzie mi się jakkolwiek podobała. Jednak satyryczny obraz życia towarzyskiego wiktoriańskiego Londynu okazał się zaskakująco ciekawy i dał, może już odrobinę przestarzałą, ale wciąż dość zabawną, komedyjkę na wieczór lub dwa.

The great secret, Eliza, is not having bad manners or good manners or any other particular sort of manners, but having the same manner for all human souls: in short, behaving as if were in Heaven, where there are no third-class carriages, and one soul is as good as another.

G. B. Shaw has a rare eye for weaving social issues unto his plays, with sarcastic undertones, also generating humour nonetheless. A man ahead of his epoch. His ideas about society and people are genuine and captivating.

A truly feminist work.
The protagonists, Eliza Doolittle is a headstrong Shavian heroine, while Henry Higgins presents the modern drama’s most profound studies of the artist’s psychology— for the Professor forget the line between life and art.

The play could be allusioned back to Adam-Eve, Shakespeare, Miltonic work as well as Mary Shelly’s creation and some more. This speaks in itself.

An admirer of literature, one never fails to enjoy Shaw’s intelligence, artistic insight and characters.

I recently re-watched “My Fair Lady” for the first time in decades, and that is what brought me to this play. Seeing the movie through an adult’s eyes is radically different than seeing it as an adolescent. When I was younger, I didn’t question why Eliza would fall in love with Higgins. His abuse of her went completely over my head. But as an adult, I was appalled. He strapped her to a machine, he barely let her eat or sleep, and finally, after the night of triumph, he completely ignored her and denied her any of the credit. So why would she ever go back to him? How did a movie with such a retrogressive message get made in the progressive sixties?

The abusive relationship wasn’t the only thing lost on me. A kid doesn’t have to earn a living, so I didn’t understand Eliza’s motivation. She was a working woman hoping to acquire the skills to land herself a better job. She wasn’t a Cinderella who met Prince (or Professor) Charming.

But of all the things that got me curious about the play, nothing intrigued me as much as the very first scene. It seemed so contradictory! Despite his overbearing character, Higgins reflects a progressive point of view. “Why can't the English teach their children how to speak? This verbal class distinction, by now, should be antique!” I suspected that the lyric was much more in keeping with Shaw’s original vision, so I got hold of the play to find out just how much else Hollywood changed.

Luckily, I chose an excellent edition to learn from. It included both a preface and an epilogue. The preface contained the perfect confirmation. Here are Shaw’s own words: “The English have no respect for their language, and will not teach their children to speak it. . . It is impossible for an Englishman to open his mouth without making some other Englishman despise him.”

He then goes on to describe a phonetician named Henry Sweet on whom Higgins is loosely based. He sounded like a pedantic genius that nobody could stand. So there’s the source of the contradiction. Shaw built the scenario of educating a commoner from his own views on class, but he gave them to a character whose real-life equivalent would never stoop so low.

With that tidbit of literary history under my belt, I began the actual play. To my surprise, the movie stuck pretty closely to the script. The first meeting in the square, her visit to his house, and her father showing up are all there, pretty much word for word. The horseracing scene was a low-key tea party in the play, but the Eynsford-Hills were part of it. In the play, Freddy has a sister who is the counterpoint to Eliza. She’s gentry on her way down while Eliza is a commoner working her way up. And other than the addition of “move your bloomin’ a***,” Eliza’s embarrassing dialogue and Freddy’s bemused reaction were identical to the movie.

The play narrates through Eliza’s education, so you don’t see it happen. There’s no “Rain in Spain” moment, and no “I Could Have Danced All Night.” Eliza never falls for Henry in the play. She’s got too much good sense for that.

The ballroom scene is much longer in the movie. It’s clearly based on the play, but stretched out. The aftermath scenes are also there, first with Higgins ignoring Eliza, and then her throwing his slippers at him. She does leave in a taxi with Freddy, but there’s no scene showing where they go. I actually liked that part of the movie. Freddy gave her space while she walked around her old stomping ground and was emotionally attentive when she was ready to move on. I definitely thought he was the better option, and it gave me an idea for a fanfic. I’d call it “On the Street Where We Live.” The two of them get married and open up a flower shop. She teaches him to work, just as Higgins taught her to class up. So it’s a reverse Pygmalion where the man is the Galatea.

And that brings me to the play’s end. Eliza does show up at Mrs. Higgins’ house, and she indeed takes Eliza’s side. Higgins gets a line that clearly inspired “I’ve Grown Accustomed to Her Face,” but the best part, which I don’t remember in the movie, is when Eliza credits Pickering, and not Higgins, for teaching her the manners of a lady. “He treats a flower girl as if she was a duchess,” says Eliza. “And I treat a duchess as if she was a flower girl,” replies Higgins. In other words, Higgins thinks upper class snobbery is B.S., but if we’re all equal, it’s better to treat everyone as equally noble instead of equally lowly.

In the midst of this, Eliza’s father shows up, and that is where Shaw’s message about class gets muddled. Like in the movie, Alfred P. Doolittle laments his new status as “respectably middle class.” Eliza, too, complains that Higgins should have left her in the gutter where at least she had her independence. So what is Shaw’s ultimate point? That the lower classes should remain in their place because that will make them happier? That doesn’t sound very progressive to me, but then, I suppose it was for the times it was written.

The play ends with Higgins laughing over Eliza’s impending marriage to Freddy. There’s no scene in which she chooses him. So even while the ending shows Higgins laughing at Eliza, the audience sees that the joke is really on him. It’s abrupt and unromantic, but it seems like poetic justice.

From there, I turned the page to Shaw’s epilogue. It was written after the play had been seen and took off as a success. “The rest of the story need not be shewn in action,” writes Shaw, “and indeed, would hardly need telling if our imaginations were not so enfeebled by their lazy dependence. . . in which Romance keeps its stock of ‘happy endings.’” If that’s how he felt about audience reception then, he must have been turning over in his grave at “My Fair Lady.” The ending he envisioned is much like my “On the Street Where We Live.” Eliza marries Freddy, they set up a little flower shop, and although they struggle at first, they start taking business and bookkeeping classes, and with their ability to pass as genteel folk, they manage to keep themselves respectably ever after. There’s even a line in the play that hints to my Pygmalion/Galatea gender reversal: “Perhaps I could make something of him,” says Eliza. So it felt good to know I was right on target with Shaw’s real intention for Eliza, even though I’m not entirely sure about his overall message. But now that I’ve read his most famous play, I look forward to deepening my understanding with a literary biography.