Class Distinction and Conflicts in Pygmalion

Running head: ENGLISH LITERATURE
ENGLISH LITERATURE
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2ENGLISH LITERATURE
George Bernard Shaw has tried to depict the class distinction and the class conflicts of
the 20TH century in the play Pygmalion. He has talked about the three different classes that
dwelled in England in the 20th century. The upper class mainly depicted the people having a
royal or a very good bloodline. The middle class consisting of people with good income and they
are the wealthy ones. The third or the lowermost class consisted of the peasants and the workers.
G.B Shaw as very clearly and sharply depicted each of the respective classes with some of the
other characters. Professor Henry Higgins represents the upper class, Freddy represents the
middle class and the lowermost class is deiced by Eliza the flower girl (Chan, 181). Through
Eliza, Higgins has tried to depict the unkempt condition of the lower class people having bad
rugged clothes. The language or the dialect is spoken by the character Eliza is also typically
spoken by the lower class people. G.B Shaw tries to represent the artificiality or the snobbery of
the upper-class people in a very ironic tone. It is for this reason that the plays of G.B Shaw were
referred to as sugar coated bitter pills (Shaw).
Shaw has always tied to represent the lower class people as shallow and ill-mannered.
However there is a very sharp distinction that has been seen between the overall mannerisms and
the behavior that is displayed by the people of the higher and the lower class. The flower girl,
Eliza belongs from the lower-class yet she shows better manners and proves to be a better person
in comparison to the people belonging from the higher or the upper class like Higgins.
The motif of Shaw was to represent the superficiality or the artificiality of the classes.
Initially he tries to show how the upper-class people looked down upon the people belonging
from the lower or the poor class. The lower class people are not only represented through the
poor and the rugged clothes or lack of money but also through lack of morals (Eden 110). The
character of Mr. Doolittle has been portrayed to show the immoral activities that are usually done