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3.75 AVERAGE
3.75 AVERAGE
Read for the very last prompt left in the Sunday Book Club Challenge - “Re-read a book you have studied in the past.”
I was surprised that I remembered so much of this as it has been many years since I last read it. We had a lot of fun with it in class, all those years ago and it was heavily discussed, repeatedly read; we also watched the musical that was based on it.
Set in early 20th-century England, the book explores themes of class, identity, how one is perceived by society and the power of language. The book I read has lovely drawings by Feliks Topolski. So glad I picked it up to read again!
I was surprised that I remembered so much of this as it has been many years since I last read it. We had a lot of fun with it in class, all those years ago and it was heavily discussed, repeatedly read; we also watched the musical that was based on it.
Set in early 20th-century England, the book explores themes of class, identity, how one is perceived by society and the power of language. The book I read has lovely drawings by Feliks Topolski. So glad I picked it up to read again!
Pretty good play, but very confusing to read sometimes. Also, Higgins, is a jerk. And Liza cries a lot. But you know what, it's likable anyways.
I've used this play a few times with my first year intro to lit students. Very few had ever read it and most had never even seen the musical My Fair Lady. Required some context setting (e.g. explaining aspects of the British class system and the importance of different dialects of English such as Cockney or Received Pronunciation). I was pleasantly surprised at how much the students enjoyed doing a dramatic reading and discussion of it.
Perhaps my favourite line written ever is contained within Pygmalion:
Liza [in the same tragic tone] But it's my belief they done the old woman in.
Liza [in the same tragic tone] But it's my belief they done the old woman in.
I have to admit I do like the movie My Fair Lady. The songs always get stuck in my head, the clothes are pretty, and it's fun. But this is one of those times when the movie has missed the point of the book. Shaw was a socialist, he believed in social equality and women's rights. This play was a go at everything he was against - the attitudes of the privileged against the lower classes.
Shaw, as a Irishman living in London, was well aware of the effect that an accent had upon people's perception of him and the prejudices an accent would bring out in others.
If you have never read Pygmalion or seen My Fair Lady the plot is this: An arrogant professor (voice-coach) Higgins and his friend Pickering make a bet that Higgins can turn the most ignorant and badly-accented cockney flowergirl into someone who could pass for royalty in six months. Enter Eliza, the flowergirl in question, who, of course, takes to her lessons like a duck to water and turns out to be stunningly beautiful to boot (starvation and poverty being good for the complexion I guess?). But while Higgins is thrilled about winning his bet he is less thrilled that his compliant student finds a voice of her own: refusing to fit into the mould he has made for her. In the movie they changed the ending: a compliant Eliza comes back to Higgins.
The character of Higgins is both forward thinking - he thinks that with the right education and money anyone could be mistaken for Upper-class - but at the same time he has no consideration for the fallout from his "experiment" - Eliza no longer belongs in her former life but hasn't the funds to maintain her new one. Higgins is a bit of a d*&k to be perfectly honest. He has the unthinking arrogance of someone who has never experienced poverty or desperation.
Pickering's role in the play is partly for exposition and partly to move the plot along. He, in spite of the fact that he didn't think Higgins would succeed, treats Eliza as he would any lady. Higgins meanwhile treats her the whole way through as a lowly flowergirl - someone to be used and discarded. Higgins claims that that is the way he treats everyone; the fact is he never looks at Eliza as a being worthy of notice.
Eliza is almost a non-person. At the beginning of the play she is almost comically idiotic - bursting into tears over every little thing. It seemed to me that someone who is on the mean streets of London scraping a living everyday wouldn't be quite so thin-skinned. By the end of the play she has somehow become a poised, articulate, beautiful young woman, but still lacking in personality. Higgins' mother refers to her very accurately as a "living doll". At the beginning of the play she irritated me. It is one thing to have a limited vocabulary and an atrocious accent but that doesn't automatically make a person stupid. Nor does a nice voice make someone smart. Shaw may have been quite a forward thinking person but he clearly didn't write women well.
Overall, I enjoyed the play but having a better understanding of Shaw's life gave it more layers than I had been aware of previously. Knowing now where Shaw was coming from I am angry at the Hollywood ending of My Fair Lady. This is still a play with a lot so say: prejudice and class still effect the way we treat people, even now when the class system isn't as visible as it was when Shaw wrote Pygmalion. Well worth reading and I'm glad it was on my 2018 reading challenge, but make sure you read an edition that includes notes about Shaw's life because that will make it so much better.
Shaw, as a Irishman living in London, was well aware of the effect that an accent had upon people's perception of him and the prejudices an accent would bring out in others.
If you have never read Pygmalion or seen My Fair Lady the plot is this: An arrogant professor (voice-coach) Higgins and his friend Pickering make a bet that Higgins can turn the most ignorant and badly-accented cockney flowergirl into someone who could pass for royalty in six months. Enter Eliza, the flowergirl in question, who, of course, takes to her lessons like a duck to water and turns out to be stunningly beautiful to boot (starvation and poverty being good for the complexion I guess?). But while Higgins is thrilled about winning his bet he is less thrilled that his compliant student finds a voice of her own: refusing to fit into the mould he has made for her. In the movie they changed the ending: a compliant Eliza comes back to Higgins.
The character of Higgins is both forward thinking - he thinks that with the right education and money anyone could be mistaken for Upper-class - but at the same time he has no consideration for the fallout from his "experiment" - Eliza no longer belongs in her former life but hasn't the funds to maintain her new one. Higgins is a bit of a d*&k to be perfectly honest. He has the unthinking arrogance of someone who has never experienced poverty or desperation.
Pickering's role in the play is partly for exposition and partly to move the plot along. He, in spite of the fact that he didn't think Higgins would succeed, treats Eliza as he would any lady. Higgins meanwhile treats her the whole way through as a lowly flowergirl - someone to be used and discarded. Higgins claims that that is the way he treats everyone; the fact is he never looks at Eliza as a being worthy of notice.
Eliza is almost a non-person. At the beginning of the play she is almost comically idiotic - bursting into tears over every little thing. It seemed to me that someone who is on the mean streets of London scraping a living everyday wouldn't be quite so thin-skinned. By the end of the play she has somehow become a poised, articulate, beautiful young woman, but still lacking in personality. Higgins' mother refers to her very accurately as a "living doll". At the beginning of the play she irritated me. It is one thing to have a limited vocabulary and an atrocious accent but that doesn't automatically make a person stupid. Nor does a nice voice make someone smart. Shaw may have been quite a forward thinking person but he clearly didn't write women well.
Overall, I enjoyed the play but having a better understanding of Shaw's life gave it more layers than I had been aware of previously. Knowing now where Shaw was coming from I am angry at the Hollywood ending of My Fair Lady. This is still a play with a lot so say: prejudice and class still effect the way we treat people, even now when the class system isn't as visible as it was when Shaw wrote Pygmalion. Well worth reading and I'm glad it was on my 2018 reading challenge, but make sure you read an edition that includes notes about Shaw's life because that will make it so much better.
Mr. Pickering more like pickerKING
Mrs. Higgins is a badass
Mr. Higgins is of the Redditor variety but you learn to love him
And while I am a sucker for romances and happy endings, I appreciate what Shaw created here by keeping true to the characters and having Eliza fight for her independence and respect, rather than settle for Higgins behavior that she had stated she felt hurt by. Love love love so good
4.5⭐️
Mrs. Higgins is a badass
Mr. Higgins is of the Redditor variety but you learn to love him
And while I am a sucker for romances and happy endings, I appreciate what Shaw created here by keeping true to the characters and having Eliza fight for her independence and respect, rather than settle for Higgins behavior that she had stated she felt hurt by. Love love love so good
4.5⭐️
Pygmalion - A Play by George Bernard Shaw
Not many people in their teen years have heard of the play Pygmalion. I mean most of us don’t even read plays! I read this for a school assignment but for me it became so much more. As an avid fan of the movie My Fair Lady with Audrey Hepburn and Rex Harrison, I was extremely excited to hear that this play is what the movie was based off.
Set in the early 1900's under Edwardian rule, this play is about a teacher of phonetics, the science of speech, and Eliza Doolittle a poor flower girl trying to get by on the little amount of money she makes. Higgins meets Eliza in not the best of situations with her convinced he's a cop and thinks she was ‘coming onto’ an older gentlemen. She is absolutely horrified to say the least. You can imagine the noises she makes with her horrid cockney accent when she’s in a rush! As the play progresses Higgins decides to take Eliza on as a bet of a sort with a friend of his, Colonel Pickering a fellow linguist (scientist of speech if you will) that he could transform Eliza and even pass her off as the queen of Sheba within 13 months. A the bet progresses and Eliza is taught how to speak and act like a proper elegant and well-dressed lady, more problems, feeling, and characters come to light. The real question is will Eliza ever be able to pull it off and what will happen to her now if she doesn’t?
As a play it is very different from a book in how you read it and how to understand what exactly is happening so I’ll give you some tips. All stage directions will be in italics and [brackets], it gives actors directions for movement and expression. At the beginning of each act, think of them as chapters if you will, there will always be a very detailed setting so that you know exactly of your surroundings because that is how it was meant to be done on stage. When one character is speaking to the other it may come up with them speaking their name and then saying something aimed to them and them alone. One thing that I found to be a great help was if you completely had no clue what a word meant just have a dictionary on your lap or on a laptop. By the end of the book your vocabulary will clearly be so resplendently refined that you will be able to baffle all whom you meet just like Eliza does.
If you happen to enjoy the movie that was based of this play then I recommend you read this too as it opens your eyes so much to all of these other ideas and things that were meant to happen and coincide with each other, I for one find it absolutely fascinating.
I see now that I have rambled on quite a bit about this play probably because for me I’ve always wondered if more happened beyond the movie because as they say all of the best movies are based off books.
As far as I know this doesn’t have any prizes behind it like many others of the time but it does have a string of performances and a movie featuring some of the most brilliant actors and singers alike starring in it. Also I can add that My Fair Lady won many awards in 1965 - including Best Picture Oscar, Best Actor in a Leading Role Rex Harrison , Best Director George Cukor, Best Cinematography, Best Costume Design, and Best Music.
L.E Simpkin
Not many people in their teen years have heard of the play Pygmalion. I mean most of us don’t even read plays! I read this for a school assignment but for me it became so much more. As an avid fan of the movie My Fair Lady with Audrey Hepburn and Rex Harrison, I was extremely excited to hear that this play is what the movie was based off.
Set in the early 1900's under Edwardian rule, this play is about a teacher of phonetics, the science of speech, and Eliza Doolittle a poor flower girl trying to get by on the little amount of money she makes. Higgins meets Eliza in not the best of situations with her convinced he's a cop and thinks she was ‘coming onto’ an older gentlemen. She is absolutely horrified to say the least. You can imagine the noises she makes with her horrid cockney accent when she’s in a rush! As the play progresses Higgins decides to take Eliza on as a bet of a sort with a friend of his, Colonel Pickering a fellow linguist (scientist of speech if you will) that he could transform Eliza and even pass her off as the queen of Sheba within 13 months. A the bet progresses and Eliza is taught how to speak and act like a proper elegant and well-dressed lady, more problems, feeling, and characters come to light. The real question is will Eliza ever be able to pull it off and what will happen to her now if she doesn’t?
As a play it is very different from a book in how you read it and how to understand what exactly is happening so I’ll give you some tips. All stage directions will be in italics and [brackets], it gives actors directions for movement and expression. At the beginning of each act, think of them as chapters if you will, there will always be a very detailed setting so that you know exactly of your surroundings because that is how it was meant to be done on stage. When one character is speaking to the other it may come up with them speaking their name and then saying something aimed to them and them alone. One thing that I found to be a great help was if you completely had no clue what a word meant just have a dictionary on your lap or on a laptop. By the end of the book your vocabulary will clearly be so resplendently refined that you will be able to baffle all whom you meet just like Eliza does.
If you happen to enjoy the movie that was based of this play then I recommend you read this too as it opens your eyes so much to all of these other ideas and things that were meant to happen and coincide with each other, I for one find it absolutely fascinating.
I see now that I have rambled on quite a bit about this play probably because for me I’ve always wondered if more happened beyond the movie because as they say all of the best movies are based off books.
As far as I know this doesn’t have any prizes behind it like many others of the time but it does have a string of performances and a movie featuring some of the most brilliant actors and singers alike starring in it. Also I can add that My Fair Lady won many awards in 1965 - including Best Picture Oscar, Best Actor in a Leading Role Rex Harrison , Best Director George Cukor, Best Cinematography, Best Costume Design, and Best Music.
L.E Simpkin
I loved this. It was funny, cute, and gave a satirical view of society. It is one of my favorites.
I saw the movie My Fair Lady years ago in high school. I thought the ending was so weird with Higgins asking her to get his slippers. Now after reading the play, the ending makes so much more sense! It was kind of a weird play. Not a lot of plot, but just a lot of arguing and fighting with each other. But I think I'm glad I read it.