The Ancient Greek myth of Pygmalion is one of the creation of the perfect woman. The play Pygmalion was heavily influenced by this myth, especially the male lead, Henry Higgins, who is also dissatisfied with the women around him. Shaw takes Ovid’s idea of creating the ideal woman and molds and distorts it into the consequences of control and not recognizing the importance of human relations.
The myth of Pygmalion and Galatea is one of undying devotion to art and love. Pygmalion, who deemed himself a fine artist, could never find himself drawn to any of the women in the city, as their crude behaviors often contradicted their decent looks. So he decided to sculpt the ideal woman from ivory. He spent days adding the finest of details; every carve and curve was made with the utmost care. Pygmalion soon realized that his feelings for the statue went beyond artistic pride, and he soon began to treat the statue as a real person. The goddess Aphrodite grew fascinated by this, and when Pygmalion had gone to her temple to give a bull as a sacrifice, she was pleased and decided to bless him. When he returned home, he found his statue was no longer cold and lifeless, but warm and soft, and hence Galatea was brought to life. The two got married and stayed devoted to Aphrodite, and so she blessed them with lasting happiness and deep love.
The story Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw is a story about a lower-class girl who sells flowers to earn a living. This girl, whose name is Eliza Doolittle, has a very heavy cockney accent. One day, she just so happens to run into a phonetics teacher, Henry Higgins. Now, Henry deems himself an excellent phonetician. And though he may be great in his field, he is a very self-centered man, not entirely caring about the feelings of others, and solely focuses on what benefits him and his research. So he half handedly threw out an offer to help her fix her speech to speak more lady-like, because Eliza wants nothing more than to work in a flower shop, but they won’t hire her due to her ‘dreadful’ voice. In summary, Eliza actually takes him up on the offer and visits Henry and his accomplice, Mr. Pickering. A bet was made between Higgins and Pickering, which is the only reason Henry took up Eliza. After six months of practicing and teaching phonetics, Eliza Doolittle transformed from a lower-class flower girl to a ladylike woman who could pass for upper class.
Now, how do Higgins and Pygmalion correlate? Well, to start, the two have a disdain for women. Neither of them liked the behavior of the women around them. And given that, the two decided to build their own ideal woman. One literally and one more metaphorically. Though unlike Pygmalion and Galatea, Higgins and Liza weren’t madly devoted to one another. In fact, quite the opposite. There were feelings there, but neither of them cared to acknowledge them, which led to a big fight towards the end. So much like Pygmalion, Higgins did, in his own way, fall for his creation. But that was also Higgins’ most fatal mistake, viewing Eliza as nothing more than his creation.
Higgins felt that since he practically created Eliza, he basically owned her. And Eliza did not appreciate that. This now begs the question: did Higgins have the right to a certain amount of control over Eliza? The answer is no. To have control over a person is to practically admit to not seeing that person as a person. And that is all Eliza wanted from Higgins: to be seen. She didn’t mind the chores or tasks, but she simply wished to be acknowledged. The argument Higgins gives during their fight is that he made her, but he failed to realize that it wasn’t simply a one-sided thing. To be able to transform someone into someone else entirely, to learn basically a new language, takes effort from both sides. The willingness to intake the information given. Eliza put just as much effort, if not more, into her transformation. Henry failed to see that; he failed to see that she was more than his creation. Eliza had her own agency. And that is where their love story falls. What Higgins viewed as a block of ivory to be crafted and molded to his
liking, was a living being all along, one with a heart, one with her own ideas and wants.
