Eliza in Pygmalion as feminist.

  MEG – 02: BRITISH DRAMA

ASSIGNMENT 2021 - 2022

5. Can Eliza in Pygmalion be termed as feminist? Elaborate.

Ans.

The relationship between men and women and how they interact, is often the basis of many novels and plays. Struggle and conflict between them is very evident, yet the meaning and reason for the conflict are sometimes deeper than what is on the outside.

Bernard Shaw uses the play Pygmalion to also comment upon the conflict which exists between the sexes. This conflict is most clearly brought out through the relationship between Eliza and Henry Higgins. Higgins is a polished teacher of phonetics and is introduced as a person who is of the energetic, scientific type, heartily, even violently interested in everything that can be studied as a scientific subject and careless about himself and other people, including their feelings. 

These traits of character are bound to lead to conflict with Eliza Doolittle, a common flower girl who, by a contrivance of plot, brings her to learn to speak like a lady in a flower shop from Henry Higgins. Eliza has ambition and dignity and resents being bullied by Higgins, a social superior.

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