Garn!

Pickering: Does it occur to you, Higgins, that the girl has some feelings?
Higgins: Oh no, I don't think so. Not any feelings we need bother about.

Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion is one my favorite plays ever. The heroine, Eliza Doolittle is just adorably irresistible not too love. She has such a drive to see her dreams come true, even if her dreams are not as lofty and those of Higgins and Pickering.

While this play is a hilarious comedy it is also an interesting critic on the relationship between men  and women as well as, the affect of class on language, education, and psychology. Poor sweet ill-speaking Liza is thrust into relations with two men (Higgins and Pickering) who are obviously a part of a higher more educated upper class. Liza must struggle to understand and learn from these men in order to better her social standing, but will learning proper English, or as Higgins claims, "the language of Shakespeare and Milton and The Bible" (18), really help elevate her?

I think in some sense it will. With correct pronunciation Liza could herself a job in a flower shop like she dreams, but will she be able to rise above the misogyny of the rest of the culture. I started off with the above lines because they are wildly funny and horribly sad. Higgins does treat Liza ill and at first you think it is just his nature, that is the only misogynist, but Pickering and even Miss Pearce do little to really correct him. I could almost chalk this all up to a form of snobbery on their behalf, but then you have Liza's father who says, "she' [Liza's] only a woman and dont know how to be happy anyhow" (47). This statement from Mr. Doolittle shows that it is more than just a simple class distinction. In the beginning of our book in the introduction by Nicholas Grene he claims, Shaw has reworked, "the Ovidian legend int a feminist fable" (xvi). I am hopeful by the end of the play I will agree full heartily with that claim, but for now I will stand behind and support Liza for being a good girl.