Gwen Pichette, “The Patriarchy’s ‘Ideal’ Woman”
George Bernard Shaw’s reinvention of Pygmalion is a play about a linguist, Henry Higgins, who takes up the challenge of transforming a low-ranking flower girl with poor speech into a respectable lady, in an attempt to pass her off as a duchess. Similar to the story of Acis and Galatea in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Pygmalion entails a male figure pining after this flawless ideal of the perfect woman, while simultaneously harboring a distaste for women in general. However, the details significantly differ when it comes to the Galeta figure, Eliza Doolittle, in Shaw’s Pygmalion. Eliza is not an inanimate object prior to the transformation, as the ivory statue is in Ovid. Rather, the Galeta figure of Eliza is already a living woman at the outset of the story–but she is also one that is so vehemently scorned by patriarchal values that she is not even viewed as a “real” woman, and so must be fundamentally changed into the ideal one. This enlivenment of the flawed Galeta figure as a poor flower girl further advances the present themes of misogyny, as it is not just Eliza’s physical appearance that is rejected as is in Ovid; more significantly, it is her way of speech that must be crafted, making her Higgins’ puppet, which ultimately magnifies the way that the patriarchy dictates women in society. The patronizing and demeaning tone Higgins uses with Eliza throughout, the comparison of her to a doll, and Higgins’ revulsion at her expressing any human emotion because it is viewed as “ugly” further drive the theme of patriarchal influence. While Ovid’s story certainly contains elements of misogyny, Shaw’s humanization of Galeta with flaws, in lieu of the perfect ivory statue, exacerbates this theme, showing a lowly woman who must become molded by Higgins to fit the paragon of his ideal woman.
From the very outset of the play, the Pygmalion figure of Higgins exhibits not just an authoritative tone over Eliza, but also a condescending one, further highlighting Higgins’ sense of superiority over her. When Higgins first hears Eliza speaking poorly on the street, he perceives himself to be so far above her, that he is almost detached from her situation’s gravity. He sees her more as an entertaining object to occupy his time, as opposed to a human woman who could be fundamentally impacted by his words. Upon hearing her speak incomprehensibly in her cockney English accent, he says that she must remember that since her “native language is the language of Shakespeare and Milton and The Bible,” she should value this proper speech and not “sit there crooning like a bilious pigeon” (Shaw Act 1, page 8). Polysyndeton is present here to drive home Higgins’ point about Eliza’s inferiority. By using “and” more than when it is necessary, accompanied by no punctuation, and by saying her speech derives from “Shakespeare and Milton and the Bible,” he almost exhausts these many options of exemplary literature which he believes her speech should be modeled after.
Yet he then immediately juxtaposes it with the poor speech that Eliza possesses that is not deemed as worthy by high society and is similar to “the crooning of a bilious pigeon.” The vehicle in the simile serves as this humorous image of a pigeon: a bird that does not possess any grace and beauty in its movements, but instead is a dirty creature that primarily resides on the streets. Thus, by using the vehicle of this image of a “bilious pigeon,” this comparison effectively deems her speech lowly, and her character unworthy. This is intended to be comedic, and this condescending tone towards her is further revealed when he uses phrases such as “this creature” or a “guttersnipe” when referring to her, as opposed to her name, which reflects how little regard he holds for her (Act 1, page 8). Prior to the transformation of Ovid’s Galeta, the statue is stagnant, an object that is incapable of replying and thus has no flaws to be criticized. In contrast, Eliza’s speech is condemned as detestable and unfit to be used by a proper woman, making the elements of sexism more evident as it is being applied to a low-class woman who must undergo a transformation to gain respect at the hands of a man.
In the midst of this transformation that has Eliza beginning to be more respectable, Mrs. Higgins then directly questions the ethics of this endeavor and what is to become of Eliza through the use of a metaphor, considering Eliza to no longer be a woman, but a live doll; this effectively highlights the utter control that Higgins holds over her. She denounces Higgins and Colonel Pickering, as a “pretty pair of babies” that are “playing with [their] live doll” (Act 3, page 43). The vehicle of a live doll creates vivid imagery here: to be a doll is to be completely at the whim of whoever is controlling and dressing it up, just as the tenor, Eliza, is utterly at the mercy of Higgins’ dominance over her. The doll does not move on its own accord unless the one controlling it does, just as Higgins crafts Eliza’s every word through his teachings. Eliza Doolittle is there solely for entertainment in Higgins’ game to further his professional career as a linguist. This metaphor has a haunting undertone to it, as it exemplifies Higgins’ callous disregard for Eliza. He has Eliza around for flash and show, to “play” around with her, as if her life holds no weight, similar to how a child might make their doll mimic the life of a human without worry of the consequences. In Shaw’s play, the detrimental effects of misogyny are exhibited: unlike Ovid’s “ivory girl” who is only transformed physically, the Pygmalion figure Higgins crafts not just Eliza’s appearance but also her speech to be desirable by men, highlighting how speech is integral to identity. Formerly inanimate, Ovid’s statue had nothing to begin with; however, by ridding Eliza of any originality, Higgins leaves her with nothing but himself, while, again making these elements of the patriarchy more powerful.
Furthermore, following a high point of tension in the play when Eliza snaps and throws his slippers at him, Higgins admits he finds this outburst to be unattractive through use of a simile, mirroring how he only views her subservience to be appealing. Higgins finds Eliza attractive when she behaves and appears as he has taught her to, when she is “all right and quite [her]self” by his standards, but “not now” because she is “crying and looking as ugly as the very devil” (Shaw, Act 3, page 51). Although it could potentially be argued that this ugliness that Higgins labels her with could refer solely to her appearance, it is notable that he only finds her to be unattractive when she expresses emotion, because she is not the perfect puppet he has so meticulously crafted her to be. Furthermore, in regard to the simile, on a literal level, the devil is characterized as evil, ugly and deceitful, and evidently not a figure to be modeled after. Yet because she is veering from his teachings she is rejected by him and deemed “unattractive” like the devil.
Ultimately, while misogyny in any form is a notable theme for dissection to understand how women are fundamentally impacted by patriarchal ideals, in Shaw’s rendition, the mistreatment is far more discernible than in Ovid’s. In Ovid’s epic, we see that Galeta is pronounced as beautiful at all stages of transformation as both an ivory statue and a flawless woman. While this does play into impossible beauty standards for women, there is the glamorized language of the woman being Ovid’s “darling love” and his “ivory girl.” This makes it so that she is so angelic that she transcends the ideals for a human woman, unlike Shaw’s where the female protagonist is flawed in appearance, speech, and behavior before the male influence. Furthermore, in the original, the treatment is not just directed at the statue, but also at the other women who did not fit Ovid’s perception of a perfect wife. This behavior is directed towards one singular figure, Eliza, in Shaw’s play, thus making the tension with misogyny more intense between the Pygmalion figure and the Galeta.
Works Cited
Ovid. Metamorphoses. Edited by R. J. Tarrant. Oxford University Press, 2004. Oxford Classical Texts.
Shaw, George Bernard. Pygmalion. Dover Publications, 1994.
This essay was written for Professor Zysk in the Fall 2022 semester.