Pygmalion

Ashley Taylor

Mr. K.

Adv. English IV

First Hour

19 February 2007

George Bernard Shaw believed that all art should be didactic. Phonetics is very important and the way we speak affects our personal appearance to the public’s opinion. As Higgins sings in Act One Scene One in the musical, My Fair Lady, he states, “It’s ‘Aooow’ and ‘Garn’ that keep her in her place. Not her wretched clothes and dirty face. Why can’t the English teach their children how to speak? This verbal class distinction by now should be antique. If you spoke as she does, sir, instead of the way you do, why, you might be selling flowers, too.” Phonetics is the basis of the story and the question is: can a flower girl really be turned into a duchess by improving her speech? Shaw was a brilliant author and had an exceptional point to his playwright, Pygmalion, but Alan Jay Lerner’s version of My Fair Lady has a much more respectable ending. The book also refers more towards social class differences, while the movie explains more of the male and female relationships. The songs in the musical made the play more entertaining and vaguely enjoyable.

“You see this creature with her kerbstone English; the English that will keep her in the gutter to the end of her days? Well, sir, in six months I could pass her off as a duchess at an Embassy ball.” The book and the musical are both based off the fact that phonetics puts us in our place; our social category. According to the author, someone can change social classes by speaking differently. The improvements and changes Eliza had made throughout the story shows that what you look like doesn’t matter, but how you converse is what affects you. If we were all raised with moral ethics and the correct dialogue, it could dramatically change our position in life; be it a fertilizer sales men or a doctor.

The musical didn’t add the scene of Clara Hill’s upper class ignorance. The book revealed social class distinctions much better