Pygmalion Analysis

The looking-glass is only mentioned once, toward the very end of Act 2. It is involved in what seems to be a very minor incident. Eliza, it seems, has never looked at herself in a mirror, and she d...

In the beginning of the 20th Century, the city of London  was the capital of the largest empire in the world. That being said, we only get a very small glimpse of it (both the city and the emp...

Shaw has a lot to say here: heavy stuff about language, society, and the soul. Lucky for us, in this case he likes to show and tell. We get long speeches from Higgins about how language is what mak...

As we've said more than once, Shaw wants to get us thinking about a lot of important stuff. Luckily, he's not into lecturing. Think of him as a zany, loveable teacher: he wants you to learn somethi...

Though Henry Higgins claims to be a regular John Milton, Shaw doesn't let him get too poetic. He has too many important topics to tackle, and he can't be bothered with heavy symbolism, complicated...

Made In His ImageOooh, this is a juicy one.Shaw wrote Pygmalion in 1912, but he took its name from something way, way older: an Ancient Greek myth. The most famous of its many versions can be found...

Fight! Fight Fight!Pygmalion ends with a bang, not a whimper.Here's what goes down: Henry and Eliza have a huge fight. Eliza's already made Higgins plenty angry by leaving his house, and then proce...

As another great character of British literature once said, "A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down." Shaw seems to have kept that saying in mind when writing Pygmalion. Sure, it's got a Gr...

Eliza Doolittle is a poor girl with a thick accent and no prospects. Henry Higgins and Colonel Pickering are gifted linguists. The three have a fateful encounter one night in Covent Garden, during...

Eliza Doolittle has been standing on the corner selling flowers for who knows how long. She's uneducated, dirty, and, to top it all off, has an incredibly thick accent. Oh, and she's also extreme...

Henry Higgins bets Colonel Pickering that he can turn Eliza Doolittle, a flower girl, into a duchess in six months. After dealing with her for a short while, they both agree it will be a tough tas...

The Family Guy episode entitled "One If By Clam, Two If By Sea" features a subplot in which Stewie attempts to teach his new neighbor (a woman suspiciously similar to Eliza Doolittle) to speak prop...

Surprise: Pygmalion's got a lot more violence than romance. Higgins and Eliza come closer to killing each other than loving each other, and pretty much everyone's terminally single. Mrs. Eynsford H...

The Bible (1.125)William Shakespeare [spelled Shakespear] (1.125, 3.262)John Milton (1.125, 1.129, 5.223)Homer, the Odyssey. (5.67)Piranesi (2.4)William Morris, Edward Burne-Jones, William Morris,...