Class Distinction in Pygmalion Essay - 766 Words

The play Pygmalion offers the readers a view on the theme of class distinction, and the problem of the barriers separating classes and people. Shaw reveals to us the truth about the artificiality of classes and how anybody can overcome them, He also shows us that society puts up high standards and that people are distinguished by their way of speaking, and their appearance alone and of course thats wrong. In the first act of Pygmalion, Shaw chooses a setting that really helped shedding light on this theme, for he chose the st. portico square between the church and the theatre, a setting that embraced everybody from different classes and made them all clash under one place for shelter. The gathering of all those†¦show more content†¦Mrs. Higgins thinks of the experiment that her son and Pickering are doing with Eliza as childs play, she tells the professor not to be happy for her didn?t succeed in passing Eliza as a duchess he only made her look better. Mrs. Higgins sees classes as something people acquire through their life, and they are taught as children how to behave according to their social classes. Eliza Doolittle the cockney flower girl that came from the gutter snipe, and who by the end of the play is a delicate beautiful lady, is the embodiment that crossed the class barriers and showed how artificial they are. When Eliza is first introduced to us in Act one, her appearance and way of speech gave away her very low class, and everybody treated her badly including Freddy who will fall in love with her later on. However, after Eliza spends months and months at the Professors trying to improve her pronunciation of words and her outside behavior, everybody is impressed, Freddy and his family are impressed, even though she is the same girl they looked down on in the first act. Elizas character developed through out the play tremendously, she became more aware of her feelings and what people said about her. Eliza thought that since she looked, talked and acted like a lady then she deserved to be treated like one, in fact, Elizas definition of a lady is not how she acts but how she is treated. 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