Evaluate Professor Higgins as a modern Pygmalion

Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw’s famous play Pygmalion is considered as one of the best plays of English literature. Through this play, Shaw tries to signify that anybody- even someone from a lower-class background- could flourish his or her talent if given the opportunity required.

The play is about a professor of Phonetics, Henry Higgins, and his journey of tutoring a very ordinary flower-selling girl with Cockney accent, Eliza Doolittle. She is wild in her behavior and devoid of manners required for aristocratic society. But Mr. Higgins could realize that the girl has some covert talent which if nurtured could do wonders.

Image Source

So, being a passionate phonetician, he takes up the challenge of making the girl a fit to the higher-class society, by giving her lessons on speaking proper English and teaching her manners, and he makes a bet with his friend Colonel Pickering who himself has keen interest in phonetics. Towards the end of the play, we can see how triumphantly Mr. Higgins along with Pickering passes off Eliza as a fine, beautiful lady with elevated posture at an ambassador’s party.

The title of the play has a reference to a Greek mythological character Pygmalion, a sculptor, who creates an ivory statue of a beautiful lady which he named ‘Galatea’ meaning sleeping beauty. Even though he previously had no interest in women, Pygmalion was enchanted by the beauty of the statue. So, he clothed the statue and furnished it with ornaments and sought the blessings of Aphrodite, the Greek Goddess of love, beauty and pleasure, to get a wife as beautiful as the ivory statue. When he reached home, he saw the statue in living form as his wish was already granted by the Goddess.

Henry Higgins in the play Pygmalion could be considered as a modern Pygmalion, even though there are dissimilarities between the phonetician and the mythological character. We can see that while the sculptor Pygmalion is deeply in love with his creation and craves to get someone like the statue as his real-life partner, we do not see Mr. Higgins feeling the same way for Eliza who is by no means a less significant creation than Pygmalion’s statue.

Henry Higgins has both good and negative sides. On the one hand, he is extremely talented and highly educated. As a teacher, he is successful too. He could turn Eliza into a real lady. Under his influence, inspiration and teaching, Eliza became like a high class polished and educated woman. At the beginning of the play, she was no better than a street girl. It indicates that Higgins was indeed a very skilled teacher.

On the other hand, Higgins was not a very good man. He did not show true respect to Eliza. He considered her as a lower class girl and acted rude with her all the time. When Eliza turned out to be like a high class girl then Higgins felt attracted to her because on the one hand, she is attractive and on the other hand, she knew about doing all the works for him and making his life easier. She became like a wife and a secretary for him.

Higgins can easily be called as a gentleman. He had some qualities too. He taught Eliza with heart but he neglected her a lot. More or less, he is a good person but if he can come out of the negative aspects then he will become a very good man and an ideal husband for any good woman.