Pygmalion Response 2

Well, having finished the play, it's interesting to look back on my first post and to see how many things I've figured out since then. Firstly, that Shaw is writing in a time where public schooling did exist, how ever crude and generally unavailable it was, a slight difference from what I wrote previously. Secondly, I found out why Shaw includes the mother and daughter in the opening scene, as they play a key role in Act III. The mother and daughter, who we now know as Mrs. and Miss Eynsford Hill, are (ironically) present at Liza's, "first appearance in London society of the professional class."

Having made my peace with my previous post, I'll move on to the rest of the book. One of the first things from Act III that I became aware of is a sense of knowing how beautiful Liza looks like without having actually seen her at the reception. As a reader, I need not see a picture of what Liza is wearing as she walks through the room or see a video of her walking through the crowd to know how stunning and elegant she looks because as I reader, I know all about Liza and how hard she has worked for this. I hardly need a description to know that she looks absolutely gorgeous, because Shaw has done a marvelous job revealing this character to the audience. Also worth noting, Shaw is able to skip the entire 6 month process of Liza's learning and still is able to convey that Liza has worked as hard as possible and even before her first appearance in higher London society, we know that she will be a lady. I think it's amazing that Shaw can develop a character such that we know her so well that we can infer about the present results of past actions and even about future actions.

And my final word on the play is how Shaw chooses to the play. He leaves the future in so much question. The dialogue between Professor Higgins and Eliza leaves me as a reader wondering whether or not Eliza is ever coming back. As a reader, I am unsure whether or not Eliza is being serious or sarcastic, and I guess we'll never know how it turns out. I find that very intriguing and at the same time extremely frustrating that Shaw ends the play this way.

Pygmalion Response 1

Well, let's start at the very beginning (a very good place to start, so I've been told). I read as far in as the first few lines of the preface before noticing a very startling connection between the book and everyday life today. In the preface, he comes right out and says, "the English have no respect for their language," something that has been said to be true of many of today's youthful English speakers. I found myself in awe of the timelessness of this particular piece of advice, how Shaw wrote something almost a hundred years ago that rings so true in a modern context. Shaw was, of course, writing about a problem specific to his time; a time before standard public schooling. Multitudes of people had been speaking English since it's creation, but of those many, a very elite few fully understood the conventions (grammar, spelling, reading, writing, etc.) that formed the language. These days, the problem also appears to be a profound lack of respect for the English language; such things as text messaging language and emoticons show little respect for the many hundreds of years that the English language has been developing.

Another emotional response I experienced was an increasing sense of confusion as we drew to the climax of the first act when the crowd is gathered around The Flower Girl (Liza). So much is going on, so many people talking, so many different people, that in addition to my confusion, I began to feel overwhelmed. At the point when I thought I was going to have to put down the book for a few minutes, the rain stopped, and the crowd dispersed. Thinking back on it, I find it pretty amazing that Shaw is able to overwhelm me in a matter of a few lines. In my everyday life, things such as commercials and movies and other modern media try so hard to overwhelm my to get me to do something, and Shaw effortlessly does it in just a few lines of literature.

Lastly, I wonder why the woman and the daughter are in this act at all. I felt like they were going to play some higher role with Liza, at that point The Flower Girl. Because we start out with this extensive dialogue between the mother and daughter, I began to feel as though they were a part of the play and it would be the gentleman and the man taking notes who would walk away never to be seen again, not the mother and her daughter. Which also brings into question, is the man who is called Freddy really the mother's son?? Because if she is, why does it appear that she leaves him to go to use some other transportation without him in company??