PYGMALION - THE TITLE.

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Pygmalion – The title.

The title "Pygmalion" refers to a play written by George Bernard Shaw, which was first performed in 1913. Shaw's play takes its name and inspiration from the ancient Greek myth of Pygmalion, a sculptor who falls in love with a statue he has created and, with the help of the goddess Aphrodite, brings it to life. Shaw's "Pygmalion" explores themes of social class, identity, and transformation, using the myth as a metaphor for the transformation of a lower-class flower girl into a refined lady through education and training.

Mythical Context.

In Greek mythology, Pygmalion was a king of Cyprus who fell in love with a statue of Aphrodite. But Ovid, the Roman poet (43 B.C.-A.D. 18), invents a more sophisticated version in his Metamorphoses. According to him, Pygmalion was a sculptor, a worker in marble. He was exclusively devoted to his art. He had an image of beauty in his mind and no woman could come up to it in the world. He, therefore, worked over his statue from morning to evening in search of loveliness beyond his powers of expression.

In fact, the statues of Pygmalion were always far more beautiful than real human beings, and each statue was more nearly perfect than the last. Still in each new statue, Pygmalion felt something lacking. While his admirers stood entranced before his statues, he never cared to look on them, but was wholeheartedly absorbed in his next attempt.

Finally, in his quest for ideal beauty, he began to work on a statue of a girl who satisfied him in every way. Even before this statue was finished, he would lay the chisel and stare at his work for an hour or so, tracing in his mind the beauty that had as yet only partly unfolded itself. By the time, the statue was completed, Pygmalion could think of nothing else. In his very dreams, the girl in the statue haunted him and seemed to wake up for him and come alive. The mere contemplation of the finished statue filled him with exquisite pleasure. He would sit gazing at the maiden, whom he had given the name Galatea. Often he imagined that he saw her move and asked himself what a joy it would be if she were actually living. In this obsession with the beauty of his dreams, Pygmalion wore out and became pale and exhausted.

The play's title draws a direct parallel to the myth of Pygmalion, where the sculptor's creation comes to life. In Shaw's play, the transformation of the main character, Eliza Doolittle, from a common flower girl into a refined woman is akin to the awakening of Pygmalion's statue. The reference to this ancient story adds depth and symbolism to the play's themes.

G. B. Shaw’s Pygmalion.

In Shaw’s play, Higgins is Pygmalion and Galatea is Eliza Doolittle, an uneducated girl who sells flowers in a London Street. Professor Higgins keeps the flower girl for six months in his laboratory. She is well trained and becomes a perfect, refined lady of London. The experiment of Higgins has succeeded and Eliza Doolittle can pass for a duchess.

Thus Shaw has not followed the Greek legend. Eliza Doolittle is the creation of Professor Higgins. But when she becomes a refined and cultured lady, she shows no inclination to marry Professor Higgins. The Professor also does not like to marry her. He neglects her after the experiment is over. Eliza Doolittle then leaves the place as a free woman. Professor Higgins is quite unsentimental and unromantic in his approach to Eliza Doolittle. 

Thus the title of the play is apt and suggestive because Higgins ‘creates’ a new woman, a duchess out of a shabby flower-girl, just as in the Pygmalion legend. Galatea was created out of marble. But Shaw has modified the Pygmalion legend and mixed it up with the Cinderella fairytale. The play is based on the Pygmalion legend but with a difference.

Eliza Doolittle to Colonel Pickering