Class Struggle in Capitalist Society As Depicted in George Bernard Shaw's

CLASS STRUGGLE IN CAPITALIST SOCIETY AS DEPICTED IN GEORGE BERNARD SHAW’S PYGMALION

A THESIS

Presented as a Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements to obtain the Magister Humaniora (M.Hum) Degree in English Language Studies

by Yohanes Tuaderu Student Number: 066332012

THE GRADUATE PROGRAM IN ENGLISH LANGUAGE STUDIES SANATA DHARMA UNIVERSITY YOGYAKARTA 2008

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STATEMENT OF ORIGINALITY

This is to certify that all ideas, phrases, and sentences, unless otherwise stated, are the ideas, phrases, and sentences of the thesis writer. The writer understands the full consequences including degree cancellation if he takes somebody else’s ideas, phrases, or sentences without proper references.

Yogyakarta, October 15, 2008

Yohanes Tuaderu

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LEMBAR PERNYATAAN PERSETUJUAN PUBLIKASI KARYA ILMIAH UNTUK KEPERLUAN AKADEMIS

Yang bertanda tangan di bawah ini, saya mahasiswa Universitas Sanata Dharma:

Nama : Yohanes Tuaderu

Nomor Mahasiswa : 066332012

Demi pengembangan ilmu pengetahuan, saya memberikan kepada Perpustakaan Universitas Sanata Dharma karya ilmiah saya yang berjudul:

Class Struggle in Capitalist Society as Depicted in George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion

Beserta perangkat yang diperlukan (bila ada). Dengan demikian saya memberikan kepada Perpustakaan Universitas Sanata Dharma hak untuk menyimpan, mengalihkan dalam bentuk media lain, mengelolanya dalam bentuk pangkalan data, mendistribusikan secara terbatas, dan mempublikasikan di Internet atau media lain untuk keperluan akademis tanpa perlu meminta ijin dari saya maupun memberikan royalti kepada saya selama tetap mencantumkan nama saya sebagai penulis.

Demikian pernyataan ini yang saya buat dengan sebenarnya.

Di buat di Yogyakarta

Pada tanggal: 23 Januari 2009

Yang menyatakan

(Yohanes Tuaderu)

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Praise the Lord for all of His blessings. It is solely His grace that I can get this very special opportunity to pursue my education to the graduate program. It is only with His companion and guidance that I eventually finish this thesis. Deo gratias.

Great gratitude is sincerely addressed to my supervisor, Bapak Prof. Dr. C.

Bakdi Soemanto, SU., for his critical guidance and his patience that allow me to go deep down into the essence of the analysis of the thesis. I am very impressed to his welcome invitation to me to come to his house in Podang 2 Demangan Baru anytime

I need his help. Honestly, his friendly and familiar attention has become a very helpful factor that encourages me to finish the thesis.

A special thanks goes to Ibu Dr. Novita Dewi, M.S., M.A., who gives so many inputs through her careful reading on this thesis. She is also very friendly and welcoming as well. My thankfulness should also be addressed to Ibu Sri Mulyani,

M.A and Bapak Paulus Sarwoto, M.A who taught and guided me in literature classes in very interesting teaching and approaches. I will not forget the special meeting held on June, 26, 2008 when Bapak Dr. B.B. Dwi Jatmoko (the Head of

English Language Studies Program), Bapak Dr. J. Bismoko, Bapak F.X. Mukarto,

Ph.D., and Ibu Dr. Novita Dewi, M.S., M.A. encourage all students of ELS to finish

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their thesis as soon as possible. This meeting is very important for me since it makes me aware again to continue compiling this thesis. Thank you for your warm attention and powerful motivation.

I dedicate this thesis especially to my beloved wife, Ika Situmorang, and my lovely and smart children I left, Febby and Nuel, for more than two years to finish this study. They are the greatest inspiration and the strongest motivation when I encounter hard and boring times in my period of study. For them, I will give whatever I have for I love them very much till the end of my life.

Last but not least, I thank all my friends of KBI 2006 batch for their warm friendship I may enjoy for more than two years. I need to mention some names:

Mbak Endang, Mas Suryo, Mas Widya, Mbak Ari, Mbak Ully, Mbak Zaki, Mas

Tigor, Mbak Santi, Mas Davy, Mbak Ruth, Thomas, Dian, Kapris, Yuni and Venty.

When I remember and imagine their faces, I remember the unforgettable togetherness I experienced with them in Yogyakarta. Good luck, Friends. God bless you all!

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page TITLE PAGE ………………………………………………………………...... i APPROVAL PAGE …………………………………………………………….. ii BOARD OF EXAMINERS …………………………………………………….. iii STATEMENT OF ORIGINALITY ……………………………………………. iv LEMBAR PERNYATAAN PERSETUJUAN PUBLIKASI KARYA ILMIAH UNTUK KEPERLUAN AKADEMIS ...... v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ……………………………………………………. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS ………………………………………………………. viii LIST OF TABLES ……………………………………………………………... x ABSTRACT ……………………………………………………………………. xi ABSTRAK ……………………………………………………………………... xiii I. INTRODUCTION …………………………………………………….. 1 A. Background of the Study …………………………………………. 1 B. Problem Limitation ………………………………………………. 9 C. Problem Formulation ……………………………………………... 10 D. The Objectives of the Study ……………………………………… 11 E. Research Method …………………………………………………. 12 F. The Significance of the Study …………………………………….. 14 II. LITERATURE REVIEW …………………………………………….. 16 A. Review on Related Studies ……………………………………….. 16 B. Review of Related Theories ……………………………………… 23 1. Theory of Homology ………………………………………… 23 a. Class Distinction ………………………………………… 27 b. Human Exploitation …………………………………….. 28 2. Marxist Criticism …………………………………………….. 33 C. Theoretical Framework …………………………………………… 40 III. SOCIAL CONDITION IN CAPITALIST SOCIETY AS 42 PORTRAYED IN PYGMALION ………………………………...………... A. Class Distinction ………………………………………………….. 43 1. Physical Appearance …………………………………………. 43 2. Names of Characters …………………………………………. 56 3. Way of Behaving and Speaking ……………………………... 58 B. Human Exploitation ………………………………………………. 67 C. Social Implication of Class Distinction and Human Exploitation .. 83 1. Dehumanization ……………………………………………… 83 2 Poverty ……………………………………………………….. 93

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IV. MAIN CHARACTER’S REACTION TO THE SOCIAL CONDI - 100 TIONS AS THE PORTRAIT OF THE WORKING CLASS STRUGGLE IN CAPITALIST SOCIETY …………………………... A. Class Struggle to Oppose the Capitalist Oppression ……………… 101 B. Class Struggle to Abolish Class Distinction ……………………… 125 V. CONCLUSION ………………………………………………………… 140 BIBLIOGRAPHY ……………………………………………………………… 146 APPENDICES ………………………………………………………………….. 150 1. Biography of George Bernard Shaw ……………………………………. 150 2. Synopsis of Pygmalion ………………………………………………….. 161

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LIST OF TABLES

Table 1. Description of Physical Appearance and Clothes ……………….. 44

Table 2. The Comparison of Room Items …………………………………. 54

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ABSTRACT

Tuaderu, Yohanes. 2008 . Class Struggle in Capitalist Society as Depicted in George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion . Yogyakarta: The Graduate Program in English Language Studies. Sanata Dharma University.

Class struggle is a collective reaction of the workers toward the inhumane treatments of the capitalists. The bad treatments manifest in low wages, long working hours (12 to 19 hours per day), and the imposition of bad discipline and fine system. The capitalists’ avarice to accumulate the surplus value as high as possible is believed as the main causal factor of the treatment.

By employing sociological approach of literature, Pygmalion – a play of five acts written by George Bernard Shaw – is considered as one of the literary pieces of the early twentieth century that portrays the social condition of British society at the era when capitalism reached its height. Shaw himself is a socialist who supports the working class struggle through his propaganda, public lectures, critical essays, and literary works that attack the human exploitation in industrial sphere. The objectives of this research are: 1) to reveal the social conditions in capitalist society in England in the end of nineteenth century and the early twentieth century as reflected in Pygmalion , 2) to present the class struggle which is done by the main character of Pygmalion as the reaction toward the social condition in capitalist society. These two objectives are formulated in their inseparable relationship with the practices in capitalist society where human relation is always related to the economic affair between the capitalist and the workers. The capitalist has a big economic power since the capital, production machinery, and raw materials are fully in his hands. Meanwhile the workers do not have anything except their labor power that they sell in a very low price to earn their living and to stay survive. This is a qualitative research using two main theories i.e., 1) Theory of Homology postulated by Lucien Goldmann which is used to prove the interdependent relationship between the society which is told in Shaw’s Pygmalion and the real society in England at the time when Pygmalion was written, 2) Marxist criticism which is theorized by some scholars to analyze class struggle done by the main character of Pygmalion which is assumed as the portrait of the unstopped struggle of the proletariat to achieve their rights which are ignored by the bourgeoisie for hundred of years. These two theories are considered as the most appropriate instruments to analyze one of Shaw’s masterpieces, Pygmalion , since Shaw himself was a genuine socialist who strived for the social reform of British society which is signed by the presence of democracy, the admission of human rights, the just distribution of social welfare, and the reasonable respect to the individual freedom. The data which are used in the analysis consist of the main data and the supporting data. The main data are gathered from the text of Pygmalion in forms of

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dialogue and stage direction. Meanwhile, the supporting data are collected from various references such as books, articles, and magazines which are available both in the university library as well as on-line sources about the social condition in England in the early twentieth century and critiques of Shaw’s literary works. The result of the study shows that the social condition in England in the end of nineteenth century to the early twentieth century is mostly affected by the practice of class distinction and human exploitation in industry sphere. Meanwhile, the class struggle which is done by the main character of Pygmalion is the portrait of the struggle of the working class to free themselves from poverty, to release them from the capitalist’ oppression, and to gain the admission from the society that they have equal dignity as other human beings in society. This thesis intends to indicate to the readers that by employing the sociological approach of literature, a play – prose and poetry as well – can reveal the social condition of a group of people of certain place and time. It may happen since literary works are one of the social documents which reflect social phenomena and human interrelation aesthetically. In addition, the writer of this thesis also wants to underline the truth that has been trusted for a long time that literary pieces can be utilized as educational means to teach the society by using their moral messages that exist beyond the works.

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ABSTRAK

Tuaderu, Yohanes. 2008. Class Struggle in Capitalist Society as Depicted in George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion . Yogyakarta: The Graduate Program in English Language Studies. Sanata Dharma University.

Class struggle merupakan reaksi kolektif dari kaum buruh terhadap perlakuan yang tidak manusiawi dari kaum kapitalis. Perlakuan itu menjelma dalam bentuk rendahnya upah kerja, jam kerja yang sangat panjang (12-19 jam sehari), dan pemberlakuan disiplin dan system denda/hukuman yang sangat berat. Keserakahan kaum kapitalis untuk mengumpulkan surplus value sebesar-besarnya dianggap sebagai penyebab utama dari perlakuan yang buruk itu. Dengan menggunakan pendekatan sosiologi sastra, Pygmalion – sebuah drama 5 babak karangan George Bernard Shaw – diyakini sebagai karya sastra awal abad ke-20 yang memotret situasi sosial masyarakat Inggris ketika sistem kapitalis mencapai puncak kejayaannya. Shaw sendiri adalah seorang sosialist yang mendukung class struggle kaum buruh melalui propaganda-propaganda, kuliah umum, essai-essai berisi kritikan pedas terhadap eksploitasi manusia di lingkungan industri, dan yang paling banyak adalah melalui karya-karya sastranya. Tujuan penelitian dari tesis ini adalah untuk: 1) mengungkapkan kondisi sosial dalam masyarakat kapitalis di Inggris pada akhir abad ke-19 sampai awal abad ke-20 sebagaimana direfleksikan dalam Pygmalion , 2) melihat class struggle yang dilakukan oleh pelaku utama dalam Pygmalion sebagai reaksi terhadap kondisi sosial dalam masyarakat kapitalis saat itu. Kedua tujuan ini dirumuskan dalam kaitan yang erat dengan pengaruh dari kehidupan dalam masyarakat kapitalis di mana hubungan antarmanusia ( baca Gary Day ) dilihat sebagai hubungan ekonomi antara pemilik perusahaan dengan kaum pekerja. Pemilik perusahaan memiliki kekuatan ekonomi yang besar karena modal, mesin produksi, dan bahan baku sepenuhnya berada dalam kekuasaannya. Sedangkan kaum pekerja tidak memiliki apa-apa selain tenaga fisik (labor power) yang terpaksa mereka jual murah supaya bisa tetap bertahan hidup. Penelitian ini adalah penelitian kualitatif dengan menggunakan 2 (dua) teori utama yaitu: 1) Teori Homologi dari Lucien Goldmann untuk membuktikan hubungan resiprokal antara masyarakat yang diceritakan oleh Shaw dalam Pygmalion dengan masyarakat dalam realita di Inggris pada saat Pygmalion ditulis, 2) Teori Marxisme dari berbagai ahli yang dipakai untuk menganalisis class struggle si pelaku utama dalam Pygmalion yang merupakan potret dari perjuangan tanpa henti dari kaum proletariat untuk mendapatkan hak-hak mereka yang selama sekian ratus tahun tidak mereka dapatkan dari kaum borjuis. Kedua teori ini dianggap sebagai alat yang paling tepat untuk menganalisis karya besar Shaw, Pygmalion, sejalan dengan perjuangan Shaw sendiri dalam melakukan reformasi sosial yang ditandai dengan hadirnya demokrasi, pengakuan hak-hak asasi manusia, pemerataan kesejahteraan, dan penghargaan terhadap kebebasan individu.

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Data yang dipakai dalam analisis terdiri dari data utama dan data pendukung. Data utama diperoleh dari teks drama Pygmalion berupa dialog antarpelaku dan stage direction . Sedangkan data pendukung diperoleh dari berbagai referensi seperti buku- buku, artikel-artikel, dan majalah baik yang tersedia di perpustakaan universitas maupun yang diakses dari situs-situs internet yang memberi masukan tentang situasi sosial di Inggris pada awal abad ke-20 maupun kajian sastra dari para kritikus terkenal terhadap karya-karya Shaw. Hasil penelitian menunjukkan bahwa kondisi sosial di Inggris pada akhir abad ke-19 sampai awal abad ke-20 sangat dipengaruhi oleh praktek pembedaan manusia menurut kelas-kelas sosial dan eksploitasi manusia dalam lingkungan industri. Pembedaan manusia menurut kelas dan praktek ekploitasi manusia oleh manusia lain berdampak pada dehumanisasi dan kemiskinan berkepanjangan yang dialami oleh kaum pekerja. Sedangkan perjuangan kelas yang dilakukan oleh pelaku utama dari Pygmalion ternyata merupakan potret dari perjuangan kaum pekerja untuk membebaskan dirinya dari kemiskinan, untuk lepas dari penindasan pemilik modal, dan untuk mendapatkan pengakuan sebagai manusia yang memiliki harkat, derajat dan martabat yang sama dengan manusia lain dalam masyarakat. Tesis ini ingin menunjukkan kepada para pembaca bahwa dengan menggunakan pendekatan sosiologi sastra, sebuah drama – sebagaimana juga prosa dan puisi – dapat mengungkapkan situasi kemasyarakatan di suatu tempat pada zaman tertentu. Hal itu terjadi karena karya sastra merupakan salah satu dokumen masyarakat yang merefleksikan persoalan-persoalan sosial dan hubungan antarmanusia secara estetik. Selain itu, penulis tesis ini ingin juga menggaris-bawahi apa yang telah diyakini benar bahwa karya sastra dapat pula menjadi sarana untuk mendidik masyarakat melalui pesan-pesan moral yang dikemas secara metaforik dalam dialog, monolog, dan arahan lakon yang menyertai karya tersebut.

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CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

A. Background of the Study

Literature does not stand in isolation. It arises in its strong connection with other elements outside the text. One of the most obvious elements is social context. This is to say that literature never exists without any reciprocal relationship with social condition, political issue, and economic situation at the time when a literary work is written. Wolff

(1989:12) asserts,

So far I have argued that art is not necessarily produced in isolation and in opposition to any social group. I now want to examine the actual nature of artistic production, and compare this with other forms of production.

Most sociologists of art and Marxist proponents believe that literature is the expression of society. Every society has its own artistic production to portray its social phenomenon, human intercourse, and political or economic problems. Louis Althusser, for example, through his production theory, argues that literature is influenced by dominant hegemony or prevailing ideology of a society that shape the authors’ worldview in producing arts (Bressler, 1999:217). The authors’ imagination is grasped as the main strength to employ certain social phenomenon or event to be an aesthetic product in forms of plays, poems, and novels to reflect and mirror certain ideas and values underpinned by a particular social community. These works flourish from and root in certain social condition and therefore become a social production. The authors,

who represent society of a given period, produce literary works based on certain social context. As members of society, they interact with many people. They witness what people experience and feel as the implication of poverty, social and economic injustice, political instability, wars, technological invention in new industrial era, and the emergence of new way of thinking about many aspects of life. Generated by all those facts they then write their poems or plays or novels. Here, authors play roles as spokesmen and women who voice the actual social situation through their writings.

From this perspective, the ultimate source of the writings is not the individual author but rather the social situation from which the authors emerge and of which they role as the midwives who assist the birth of literary pieces. In fact, they do not write from their own intelligences but from the momentum they catch from the society where they live.

In accordance with this concept, Barry (1995,158) states that instead of seeing authors as primarily autonomous ‘inspired’ individuals whose ‘genius’ and creative imagination enables them to bring forth original and timeless works of art, the Marxist sees them as constantly formed by their social context.

The material object of this thesis is Pygmalion – a play written by George

Bernard Shaw; an art critic, a social reformer, and a socialist lecturer. His meeting with

Henry George in 1884 who proposed that national revenue should be collected by a single tax on land rather than by a numerous taxes on several things – and his new acquaintance to the works of Karl Marx introduced by H.M. Hyndman was considered as a turning point in Shaw’s life that directed him to be an activist in Fabian Society and

Social Democratic Federation ( see Appendix 1 ).

Written in England between 1913 and 1916, Pygmalion is a comedy about a phonetics expert, Professor Henry Higgins, who attempts to make a lady out of an uneducated flower girl for his linguistic and social experiment. The comic nuance is found in the vision of the folly, the lack understanding and the stupidity of the professor who thinks that social reconstruction can be simply conducted by teaching English people to speak proper language. In this sense, Pygmalion is a satirical comedy that not only stimulates its audience to laugh but also satires certain social ignorance and injustice. In fact, class distinction is not simply the matter of different way of speaking but a reality of the presence of capital holding class and the working class as the consequence of the concept and the practice of capitalist system.

Shaw points out how language creates divisions in society based on the fact that the way ones speak a language indicates their social class. The scene in the portico of St

Paul's Church is a brilliant introduction to the play because in that small area and within a short space of time Shaw has exposed to his audience a small cross-section of English society. Eliza and the bystanders occupy the lower class in society. Colonel Pickering represents the force and authority of that society used with some charity and humanity sense. Freddy and his mother and sister are the representatives of ineffectual gentility, while Higgins himself is the power of the intellectual and the social engineer, as he himself proceeds to boast,

HIGGINS: You see this creature with her kerbstone English: the English that will keep her in the gutter to the end of her days. Well, sir, in three months I could pass that girl off as a duchess at an ambassador's garden party. I could even get her a place as lady's maid or shop assistant, which requires better English.

(Chin, 2000:897)

Shaw shows explicitly the different way of speaking among people who are seeking for shelter during a heavy rain under the portico of St. Paul’s Church, Covent

Garden. The chaotic way of uttering words shown by Eliza and the bystanders indicates that they are from lower class supported by their ill-mannered, uncouth, coarse and grimy performance. While the subtle way of speaking performed by Colonel Pickering, the Eynsford Hills, and Higgins shows that they are from higher social class who are characterized by well-mannered, well-spoken, socially refined, having civilized benefits supported by wealth and education. Pygmalion probes important issue about social class division based on the way people speak their language and Shaw is the midwife who helps the birth of this famous play.

Actually, long time before the industrial revolution, there had been social class divisions in England regarding to the feudal society’s policy on land-tenure. There were, as informed by Gregg (1957, 20), five classes connected with the land. They were the lord of manor who was the largest landowner in the village and the legal owner of wasteland, the freeholders who had been noted from the Tudor times for their sturdy independence and were considered as the backbone of England, people who held their land by varying tenures (but who all paid rent for it), the squatters and cottagers who had no land but may build cottages on the wasteland to feed pigs or to pasture cows or to gather firewood from the woodland and cut turf from the waste, and the farm servants and laborers who worked for the farmers. When the industrial revolution occurred – in

the period of the late 18th and early 19th centuries – the notion of class changed. Kuper

(1996, 90) asserts,

In the course of the first decades of the nineteenth century the term class gradually replaced estates, ranks and orders as the major word used to denote divisions within society. The change of vocabulary reflected the diminishing significance of rank and ascribed or inherited qualities in general, and the growing importance of possessions and income among the determinants of the social position.

Since this period of time, class no longer refers merely to the existing social groups but also to the new characteristics of social classes in industrial society. It is the new social divisions created by a new way of interactions and behavior among people based on the possession of capital – the capital owner and the waged workers. Class, here, has an economic meaning located in the economic process of production, distribution, and consumption. In this economic process and relation, each ‘class’ gives their special contribution and receives in different amount the labor wage depend on their position in the factory. This notion makes a clear cut difference between the owners of the manufacture (the capitalists) whose livelihood depends on the profits of the company and the labourers (the working class) who work in the manufactures by selling their labour power.

As a social reformer, Shaw was so concerned with that new atmosphere of human interaction and behavior in society. All dialogues between Higgins and Eliza in

Pygmalion , for instance, are deliberately created to portray how the upper class treats the lower class. Eliza represents the lower class people in England who strive for better life because of the poverty they face. Shaw satirizes the social norms of his time

through a comedy about Eliza who wants to improve her life by learning a proper way of speaking in Higgins’ laboratory. Purdom (1964:9) states,

In the early eighteen ‘eighties there was constant and increasing unemployment in London and much social distress of a kind altogether unfamiliar today. Shaw was deeply impressed by the widespread poverty, and being not far from poverty himself.

This quotation informs that by the end of nineteenth century, caused by the great effect of industrial revolution lasting for more or less one century, poverty had become a problem in more complicated dimensions. Occurring at a time when the influence of the mechanical system in industry for mass product and the ignoring of human manual system in home industry for individual product, the poverty constituted a serious threat to national stability. Industrialization had brought a demographic shift causing many more unskilled laborers to seek work in the city. So, humanity and public interest was directed to the problem of the poor. Purdom (1964, 99) has this to say,

Shaw’s socialism was the outcome of his passion for order. His constant charge against the existing social order was that it was inefficient, wasteful, cruel, stupid, and shameful. Highly individualistic as he was, he was opposed to any form of anarchy, which he considered the existing order to be.

With his strong background in economics and politics, Shaw’s socialist viewpoint reacts toward the problem through his writings – one of them is Pygmalion – with a hope for human improvement. His political feeling encouraged him to found The

Fabian Society in 1884, a socialist political organization dedicated to transforming

England into a socialist state, not by revolution but by systematic progressive legislation, supported by persuasion and mass education. Through this organization he started to make socialism a practical, constitutional and respectable belief. He took part

in all controversies of the age and became a famous speaker, although always unpaid.

At the general election of 1892, the Fabians induced the Liberal Party to adopt their

‘New Castle programme’ of social reform. Having won the election on it, the Liberals quickly dropped it; and the Fabians determined to form their own political group. The result of their hard efforts is the appearance of Labour Party in parliament in 1906

(Arnstein, 1988:195).

In 1914, World War I or the Great War began with the assassination of

Archduke Ferdinand of Austria in Sarajevo, Bosnia (Galens, 1998). Personally, Shaw’s interest in education preventing the tragic destruction of human life due to wars was demonstrated in Pygmalion also. Great Britain was still a colonial power with colonies in the Pacific, Atlantic, Africa and the Caribbean. Queen Victoria characterized the times with a set of values called Victorianism which revolved around social high- mindedness, domesticity, and a confidence based on the expansion of knowledge and the power of reasoned argument to change society.

In 1956, Pygmalion was adapted into a musical play entitled My Fair Lady by

American song writers: Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe. It became one of the most commercially successful plays in the history of international musical theatre that attracts millions of spectators in more than 21 countries (especially in the two most influential and famous theatres: New York’s Broadway and London’s West End), translated into 11 languages, played in thousands performances, and takes great financial profit from the ticket selling. Shepard’s article in The New York Times

(October 21, 1964:56), claims that,

The musical adaptation of George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion, by Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe, has been jingling tunefully at box offices ever sing the first curtain was raised on Broadway on March 15, 1956. Since that date, the show has smashed records blithely. A six-and-a half-year Broadway run was seen by 3,750,000 persons (60,000 of them standees), who paid $20,233,918 to see 2,717 performances.

In other page, Shepard adds,

The show has played in 21 countries from Iceland to Japan, where 15 million playgoers have paid more than $30 million in pounds, marks, yen and pesos to enjoy, in 11 languages. In England, it had a record run of five and a half years- 2,281 performances.

In 1964, supported by its great success as a musical play, My Fair Lady was produced as a film directed by George Cukor under the same title. It won several awards such as

Oscar Award, Tony Award, Olivier Award, Drama Desk Award, and Theatre World

Award in various categories such as the best musical, the best actor and actress in musical, the best scenic design, the best choreography, the best costume design, the best conductor and musical director, the outstanding featured actor in musical, and the outstanding musical production (Shepard, 1964).

The facts that Pygmalion is written by a very prominent playwright who is also a social reformer, that Pygmalion has a great entertaining quality when it is adapted into a musical play entitled My Fair Lady , and that Pygmalion reflects the social distinction and human exploitation in industrial environment in England has encouraged the writer of this thesis to choose it as the material object of his analysis. Focusing on the issue about class struggle as the reaction of the main character, the writer of this thesis decides to entitle his thesis CLASS STRUGGLE IN CAPITALIST SOCIETY AS

DEPICTED IN GEORGE BERNARD SHAW’S PYGMALION . The analysis will be

employed by using sociological approach as the most suitable way to answer the research questions deal with the social conditions that motivates the main character to do class struggle.

There are many modes of class struggle practiced by people of lower class to reach higher social class. The most common ways we know through human history are class struggle through violence, proletarian revolution, and the dictatorship of the proletariat (Wilczynski, 1984:343). In this analysis, class struggle is understood as an extreme effort of a certain member of society to have better life not through violence or revolution but through education and self-awareness as free and independent social beings. The decision to struggle for a better and happier life is an independent choice made in free atmosphere and full consciousness as dignified human being. It means that one should act as subject of his own life not as the object exploited by others. The writer believes that individual fulfillment and liberty are of prime importance.

B. Problem Limitation

The close reading on Pygmalion reveals the play’s social contexts symbolized by the characters’ behaviors, dialogues, and way of thinking. Their behaviors picture how they perceive the social world. The dialogues in every act show how they develop a social interaction as the representation of human interaction and social intercourse in real life. Their attitudes reflect how human beings act individually and collectively to build up their relationship in society.

In this thesis, the researcher focuses his analysis primarily on the social aspects

of the class struggle represented by Eliza’s desire to attain better life and higher status than a flower girl in society. Since there are so many plays written by Shaw ( see

Appendix 1 ), the writer only chooses Pygmalion as single selected play to be his material object of study. It is assumed that this play contains the message on class struggle in capitalist society to convey to the audience. Since Shaw is a socialist and one of the key figures in the establishment of the Fabian Society – a middle-class socialist group who believed that social reform should come through the gradual education of the people and through changes in intellectual and political life, not through revolution – the theories used are socialist perspectives based on Marxist teaching. The elaboration in the analytical chapters focuses on the social condition that encourages the main character of Pygmalion struggle for a better social status.

C. Problem Formulation

Based on the information in the background of the study, there are two main questions to be answered through this thesis,

1. What social conditions in capitalist society are portrayed by Pygmalion ?

2. What is the main character’s reaction to the social conditions that portrays

the working class struggle in capitalist society?

The first question deals with the social condition that is portrayed in Pygmalion .

To answer this question the writer uses sociological approach to see the relationship between the society in the play and the real society in the end of nineteenth century and the early of twentieth century. The description of the society both in the play and in real

life at the given time helps the writer to answer the second question and understand why the main character in the play decides to do class struggle. This second question is analyzed by using Marxist criticism since class struggle which usually leads to class conflict – that performed by Shaw in Pygmalion satirically - is one of the main concerns in Marxism.

D. The Objectives of the Study

Since the analysis of this thesis deals with the social condition and the character’s class struggle depicted in Pygmalion , so the objectives of the study are:

1. The presentation of social condition in capitalist society in England in the

end of nineteenth century and the early twentieth century that become the

background of the production of Pygmalion .

2. The presentation of the main character’s reactions to the social conditions as

the portrait of the working class struggle in capitalist society.

The first objective is elaborated in Chapter III with the main investigation on social conditions in capital society in England. This assumption emerges from the belief that Pygmalion is a social document that reflects the society at the time when it was written and therefore can be used to portray the social condition as well. While the second objective is analyzed in Chapter IV to verify a hypothesis that certain social condition of society establishes in its members a special reaction whether to remain survive under any life oppression or – more than to be survived – to struggle to attain higher social and economic status. The analysis used to achieve these two objectives

will be based on the characters’ statements, judgments or comments stated explicitly in the play that show their behaviors, feelings, and thoughts on both the social condition they are engaging and the reaction toward the social conditions.

E. Research Method

The object of this thesis is the text of Pygmalion written by George Bernard

Shaw. The discussion focuses on the plot of the play. The analysis on the plot shows the relationships between sequences and acts. It is assumed that the relationships between those elements can be elaborated with the use of sociological approach and Marxist criticism to find the answers of the research problems.

Sociological approach is used to find the answer of social condition based on the theory of sociology of literature that considers literary work as social product of certain identifiable social group in certain historical period and as social document that reflects social reality. In line with this consideration, the writer of this thesis also tries to show the interdependent relationship between the society in the play and the society in real life based on the theory of homology. It is assumed that in writing a literary work an author is influenced by his or her society structurally. The result is the social structure in literary work is similar to that in real life.

As this is a qualitative research, the data collection is done through a library research. There is no interview with certain people or questionnaires distributed to particular group of respondents. The collection of data is conducted by finding and reading references that relate to and support the discussion on the theories used in the

analysis. This is done by reading books in the university library or books that are available in internet website.

There are two types of data used in this research; the primary data and the secondary data. The primary data are taken from the play script. Secondary data are collected from Shaw’s biography and prominent critics’ writings on Pygmalion .

Further more, since the play tells about life in the early of twentieth century, the writer also collects the data on the British history related to the setting of time and place of the play. This historical data is used to grasp the sociopolitical contexts that backgrounds the production of Pygmalion .

There are three steps taken in the research, i.e. explication, interpretation, and description. In the explication step, the researcher attempts to master and to understand the primary data in details as the material object of the research. In this step the researcher gets the surface meaning of the story. The second step is developed to find the hidden meaning of the primary data. It is done by finding out the meaning from the written text or from things which are not stated literarily in the play. The availability of the secondary data is very crucial in this step. The study needs to dig the author’s hidden message by the help of available books and references. In this sense, the availability of information talking about the sociopolitical context of Pygmalion is very helpful. The understanding of the sociopolitical background provides important clues to make more accurate and qualified interpretation since i nterpretation demands adequate historical information to correlate the research finding and the Zeitgeist of the

play . And the third step deals with the effort to formulate the interpretation in forms of description or explanation sequenced in logic sentences and paragraphs.

F. The Significance of the Study

Regarding to the objectives of this study, the first contribution this thesis may offer is that the readers may know the social condition in capitalist society in England in the era of more or less one century ago and how the spirit of class struggle has influenced the labor movements at that time. In this sense, this study helps the readers in Indonesia in this era – including the students of English and even my institution in Padang – to understand the reason why labor movement was so popular in capitalist society as the way to strive for working class’ rights and freedom. Labor movement arises from the fact that most laborers are exploited, dehumanized, and therefore pauperized by the capitalist system.

The second contribution is the understanding the readers may get in accordance with Marxist teaching. The breaking up of the USSR in the late 1980s and other states in the Balkan region till the early years of the 21 st century lead many people to draw a conclusion that Marxism has come to its end at the same seconds with the death of those communist and socialist countries. But it is, of course, not a right conclusion at all.

Marxist concept is still and will always be one of the most influential alternatives when the sociopolitical struggles deal with the working class fate and welfare. Marxism, as stated by Bressler (1999:211), details a plan for changing the world from a place of bigotry, hatred, and conflict due to class struggle to a classless society where wealth,

opportunity, and education are accessible for all people. Perhaps this is the answer why

Marxist concepts will never disappear from human’s mind.

Inspired by this study, hopefully, this thesis can motivate other researchers to do studies on other topic deals with the struggle for human development in other Shaw’s works. Furthermore, as far as the situation is possible, this study also encourages the readers to support everyone who struggles for better life.

CHAPTER II

LITERATURE REVIEW

This chapter discusses the theoretical bases of this research. The first sub- chapter will focus on the related studies that review the existing scholars’ criticisms on

Pygmalion to show how this research has a relationship to previous criticisms and how the analysis can be related to literature in general. The second sub-chapter deals with the theories which are assumed as the most appropriate instruments to use in answering the research questions stated in the previous chapter. There are two main theories used in this thesis analysis. The first theory is homology which is utilized to bridge the relationship between the society in Pygmalion and the society in real life. The second theory is Marxist criticism which deals with the idea of class struggle. These two theories are chosen since the objectives of this research are the presentation of the social conditions in capitalist society as portrayed in Pygmalion and the presentation of the main character’s reaction to the social conditions that reflects the working class struggle in capitalist society. The third sub-chapter is the theoretical framework that describes how each theory is employed to answer the research questions presented in chapter I.

A. Reviews on Related Studies

There have been many critics who write literary criticisms of Pygmalion as one of the most important plays of Shaw. All these studies help the writer of this thesis to relate his analysis on the problem he is working on, to provide a context for his research, to

enable him to learn from previous theories on the subject, and to ensure the readers that the research has not been done before.

Pygmalion was written in the age, when the romantic spirit was replaced by the spirit of realism. Shaw frequently repeated that observed life is the subject of his plays that fit most obviously under the rubric of realism – chiefly, perhaps, because of their subjects are slum life condition, landlordism, prostitution, and cockney peculiar language. Shaw points real life as the original source of his drama by stating, “I ... have collected slum rents weekly with these hands, and for four and a half years have been behind the scenes of the middle class landowner.” After triumphantly quoting several military authorities to authenticate the verisimilitude of Bluntschli’s words and actions in Arms and the Man , he rhetorically admitted, “I created nothing; I invented nothing; I imagined nothing; I perverted nothing; I simply discovered drama in real life.” Even the mythic and almost fairy-tale transformation of the flower-girl ‘Galatea’ by the phonetician ‘Pygmalion’, says Shaw in his Preface to Pygmalion , "is neither impossible nor uncommon” (Dukore, 1973:7-9).

Pygmalion highlights the complexity inherent in human relationships and reflects how the problems should be overcome. From sociological perspective,

Pygmalion parodies and satirizes the capitalist society in the early twentieth century. It is used as the medium of mass education since it contains didactic values as one of the strongest voice to influence the public opinion to reform their life. By considering

Shaw’s Pygmalion as ‘a natural history’, Bentley (1988, 14) underlines the role of

Pygmalion in criticizing the society. He states,

Pygmalion is a serious parody, a translation into the language of "natural history." The primary inversion is that of Pygmalion's character. The Pygmalion of Romance turns a statue into a human being. The Pygmalion of "natural history" tries to turn a human being into a statue, tries to make of Eliza Doolittle a mechanical doll in the role of a duchess.

It is tangible for Bentley that Shaw’s Pygmalion is a parody of the social situation. The inversion that is intentionally designed by Shaw is considered as the way to criticize the powerful influence held by the ruling class to treat other people as they wish. The problem that is portrayed by Pygmalion according to Bentley is a system that exists in society where the exploitation of human beings is practiced; even more than the exploitation of mankind there also exists the practice of dehumanization. Men are treated as statue or mechanical doll as can be clearly seen that Higgins cannot treat Eliza and others humanely. He sees them as only the object to achieve his experimental goals.

While the use of ‘natural history’ in Pygmalion shows how Shaw holds the naturalism he gets from Ibsen mostly to replace romance with the story that pictures the real social situation in England.

It seems that Shaw is obviously ignoring the entertaining content of the play by his insistence on didacticism. He brings into the public’s perception that a play can be used to teach the society how to improve human life. A play might not be merely romantic but must be also didactic. In the Preface of Pygmalion (Chin, 2000:890), he states,

It ( Pygmalion ) is so intensely and deliberately didactic, and its subject is esteemed so dry, that I delight in throwing it at the head of wiseacres who repeat the parrot cry that art should never be didactic. It goes to prove my contention that art should never be anything else.

Pygmalion is addressed to the audience who considers the activity of watching a play as an intellectual activity, not merely an entertaining activity that needs only emotional involvement. The audiences are asked to use not only their emotion to enjoy the play but also their thought to grasp the message. Consequently, Pygmalion was not really attractive when it was first produced on April 11, 1914, with Mrs. Patrick Campbell playing Eliza and Beerbohm Tree playing the part of Higgins. It arises in the audience’s mind many questions especially the question about the end of the play; a question that was answered by Shaw one year after the first performance by writing the Sequel or

Epilogue (Chin, 2000:952-960).

In line with Shaw’s statement about the didactic aspect of Pygmalion , Berst

(1988, 59) underlines that,

The didacticism of Pygmalion is thus important primarily as it informs the action, providing a ballast of social observation and giving further dimension to the characters. By themselves, the didactic message regarding phonetics may be interesting and the social didacticism may be true, but the phonetic lesson is scarcely world-shaking and the social implications are rather obvious.

Through Pygmalion, Shaw offers to his audience not a fairy and mythic story as the audience gets from the Greek Pygmalion but a number of questions about education of the human soul and conscience. When the audience listens to the dialogues and observes every character’s word, it might happen that the audience understands a little more about human life and the surrounding world. The audience, as if, gets new knowledge input to widen their perspective. However, since the human soul can be educated in an infinite variety of ways, there is no definite message that can be

extracted from Pygmalion and offered to the world as the essential goals of Shaw’s movement. Shaw offers his audience a variety of entertaining dramatic pictures in which a number of serious human problems are presented in a dramatic form. To expect

Shaw, and other playwrights, to unlock the secret of life is to expect from him more than he can give. Shaw offers to his audience the same experience as Eliza—the emotional and intellectual independence of a free spirit. Related to the quotation above,

Crompton (1988, 46) states,

For the issue about phonology, it is possible with a little analysis to see that it is really manners and not speech patterns that provide the clue to character contrasts in Pygmalion, accents being, so to speak, merely their outer clothing.

Berst and Crompton reconfirm Shaw’s expectation to the audience of the play to realize that the issue of phonetics is not the focal point of his play. By presenting such a man as phonetician, and it is to say that the phonetician himself is among the important people in England at that time, Shaw wants to say that one can improve his/her life by speaking proper language and accent but the importance of phonetics is not the most vital. In this sense, Pygmalion can be called as a play that expresses a very accurate idea about the study of the English language in its relation with the nature of English society. It asks a number of questions about the relations that exist between individuals in society. The issue about phonetics is only a stepping stone to ask other questions about human beings and the social implication the audience face in their daily real life. In line with this, Alexander (1988, 20) asserts,

The play ( Pygmalion ) is didactic: but what does it teach? It is clear that the play deals with an important social question and, as Shaw himself said: social

questions are produced by the conflict of human institutions with human feeling. In this case the human institution is the class structure of society, one of the most visible and distinguishing mark in England in nineteenth and early twentieth century.

The conflict of human institutions with human feeling becomes the main issue that is criticized by Shaw as he reflects in the conflict between characters in Pygmalion .

The characters represent some classes in society. Society becomes something important in Pygmalion because only society that constructs class structure. And class structure according to Shaw is something related to human attitudes and manners, not to one’s accent or way of speaking. The real reaction to anyone's dialect is the association of particular kinds of speech with particular classes and particular manners. Shaw uses this kind of perspective to make his Pygmalion a comedy because his concept about manners is opposed to the social perception about way of speaking. Crompton (1988:

47) argues,

He seems even to have harbored some limited admiration for the dignified code of manners of the Victorian period, though he found its artificialities cramping. He gives Mrs. Hill, Mrs. Higgins, and the Colonel exquisite manners to contrast with the Eliza's lack of them

Pygmalion contains the comic genus of drama since it arises from the vision of the folly, the lack understanding and the stupidity in society or in a particular man. It shows the imperfections in human nature as the subject matter of amusement. This amusement brings so many satirical aspects focused in the relationship between Higgins and Eliza.

Comic genus in drama, as stated by Purdom (1964, 83), is the power to perceive the general predicament of mankind, or a particular predicament of an individual, as absurd

and laughter making. The true comedian does not set out to cause men to forget who they are or to cover up their failures, but by arousing laughter to heighten their sensibilities and enlarge their equipment for life. The attack may be sharp and stinging, there may be bruises and shocks, but the aim is transformation. Shaw was a comic genus in this sense. Shaw contrasts the aim of mastering proper English as the way to get better job and as the effort to acquire the Standard English as demanded by the

English social structure. The first is an economic objective, while the second is a social- cultural purpose. As a practical and efficient comic genus he believes that the difference between the flower girl and the duchess was a matter of human manners and behaviors achieved through good and qualified education. He also believes that social status can be improved and that the social class division is not solely something related genetic inheritance.

The writer of this thesis is very sure that Pygmalion is not written without any special purpose. It is written in a situation when British people faced many social problems which were no longer simply that of the poor but of the working class – a class that is exploited and oppressed by the capitalist in industry. So, it is presented to the audiences to direct and educate them (as Alexander asserts above, “ Pygmalion is didactic”) to have social awareness regarding to the labour movement based on the class conflict between the capitalist and the workers. It portrays the class conflict that leads the oppressed class to a class struggle to free themselves from human exploitation, dehumanization, and poverty. It is very interesting to notice that the way Shaw uses to teach his audience is by presenting many contradictions that logically absurd but reveal

a kind of truth. He presents that it is absurd, for instance, that a Professor of Phonetics – who masters his field so perfect and boasted that he can place any man within two miles in London based on their way of speaking – still thinks that one’s social class can be simply changed by learning new speech in 6 months. Yet, this kind of paradox and also the reverse of the Greek myth arouse a new awareness in the audience’s mind that mankind may not be objectified for whatever objectives.

B. Review of Related Theories

This sub-chapter provides theories relevant to support the analysis on the topic raised in this thesis. There are two main theories. Firstly, the theory of homology in genetic structuralism postulated by Lucien Goldmann; and secondly, Marxist criticism which talks about the theory of class struggle. The theory of homology and Marxist criticism are elaborated with those of George Bernard Shaw’s view points about society which he conveys through Pygmalion as the medium to promote his socialist teaching.

1. Theory of Homology

To answer the first research question about the social condition in capitalist society reflected in Pygmalion , homology is the suitable theory to relate the society in real life and the society in literary work in an interdependent relationship. Theory of homology is one of the many theories used in sociological approach that examines literature in the social, economic and political context in which it is written or received. Sociological approach is used in analyzing literary pieces as instrument to emphasize the nature and

the effect of the social forces that shape power relationships between groups or classes of people. In this sense, as Gary Day cites from Goldmann, literature is considered as the representation of the world-view of a particular group or classes in society (Day,

2001:2). It is to say that literary works represent and reflect the way of thinking – and even the way of life – of certain human community of a particular era and place.

Influenced by this assumption, the authors of literary works put the social structure of his or her time into plays, novels, or poems. Consequently, the society which is told in the literary works has homolog characteristics with the society in real life. Quoting

Wilbur Scott’s statement, Kennedy and Gioia (1999, 1955) writes,

Art is not created in a vacuum. It is the work not simply of a person but of an author fixed in time and space, answering a community of which he is an important because he articulates its part.

This perspective has totally applied against traditional criticism and considers that art is not for art’s sake but for the sake of human instead. This approach does not analyze literary texts in isolation but together with its social elements. Thus, such literary texts are depicted to reflect the active relationship between characters and society in real human situations. In Higgins-Eliza relationship in Pygmalion , for instance, the audience gets a portrait of the capitalist-labor relationship that really existed in British society of early twentieth century. Shaw is strongly affected by his society that his writings promote the social, economic and political values through his characters, plot and setting.

In line with Kennedy’s and Gioia’s view about the relationship between society and literature, Janet Wolff, one of the most prominent and respectable sociologists of literature who writes The Social Production of Art (1989, 49), states,

Works of art are not closed, self-contained and transcendent entities, but are the product of specific historical practices on the part of identifiable social groups in given conditions, and therefore bear the imprint of the ideas, values and conditions of existence of those groups, and their representatives in particular artists.

It is very tangible here that Wolff views works of art, including literature, in a tight relationship with their social and historical practices from where they are created, and therefore they are called as social products of identifiable social groups. Wolff underlines that works of art do not stand in isolation, but always be interdependent with other aspects outside the aesthetic sphere. This assumption allows critics and students of literature to approach a literary work sociologically, in terms, that a literary study may investigate the main determining factors of literary creation in the institutional life of human beings – in economic, social and political conditions.

The theory of homology, which is postulated by Lucien Goldmann, underlines the interdependent correlation between the content of a literary work and its social, historical and cultural context. Therefore, literary analysis should involve a sociological approach to reveal all those contexts from which an author gives birth to a literary work.

With homology, it is not simply to say that a literary work is an imitation of society or even a report of what happens in society. A literary work does not provide a note of real events in details to let the readers know about what really happens in society,

conversely it is an artificial and aesthetic text written by an author to reflect the society.

Boelhower, in his introduction to Goldmanns’ lectures collection (Goldman, 1981: 29) argues,

By homology, Goldmann does not mean that the literary work is reduced to the level of imitation. … It is not a matter of relating directly the content of a literary work to the historical fact outside it. Instead, it is a question of relating the collective consciousness of a social class or classes to the imaginary structure of a literary work.

If homology functions to relate the consciousness of a social class to the imaginary structure of literary work, it can be now understood that there are so many authors who compose their novels and plays with certain structural plot to create imaginative society in those works as the representation of certain existing classes. Since Goldmann is a sociologist, he, then, explains homology in the structure and function of both literary work and society in their relation to the human facts. He asserts that historical reality is linked to a number of habits, activities, and mental structures. And whenever human beings are dealing with historical and social phenomena, they can only make those phenomena sufficiently intelligible on a large scale and in their wholeness by relating them to collective subjects (Goldmann, 1981:86).

Regarding to Pygmalion , what facts are employed in the framework of homology? As it will be developed in the first analytical chapter about the social conditions in capitalist society (Chapter III), there are two issues which are analyzed using the theory of homology to reveal the human relations between classes in capitalist society that is between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. They are the issues of class distinction and human exploitation. These two social phenomena are reflected in

Pygmalion and are considered as the ultimate causes of many social problems in society.

a. Class Distinction

Talking about class distinction, it is important to know the context of the term

‘class’ and its implication in social life regarding human relations in capitalist society.

Day (2001, 2-11) explains that ‘class’, in very broad terms, refers to divisions in society. Formerly, in medieval society, class is based on heredity as the only factor to divide people into social groups. Therefore, there are the nobility, clergy and commoners. Yet, as the transition from feudalist to capitalist system takes place, social class is no longer dependent on birth. The ascendancy of the bourgeoisie proves that hard work can change one’s social class. Even the hard effort run by the bourgeoisie has yielded in a certain point that is an exclusive class in capitalist society to oppose to another class called the proletariat. Marx and Engels assert in Swingewood (1975,

115),

Our epoch, the epoch of the bourgeoisie, possesses … this distinctive feature: it has simplified the class antagonism. Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other: Bourgeoisie and Proletariat.

With regard to this fact, the members of capitalist society are then divided into two main classes: the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. Pygmalion reflects class distinction in a very realistic way as if a report of what really happens in British society. It tells about class considerations such as dress, house, attitude and behavior, and way of speaking

that distinguish an individual from others or a group of people from other groups. In this sense, the theory of homology plays its strength since the analysis will deal with the juxtaposition of the society depicted in Pygmalion with that of the real life. Yet the problem is not as simple as distinguishing an individual from others or grouping individuals into a same social class based on their clothes or houses or behavior. It is assumed that the main problem portrayed by Shaw is the domination of one class to the other as Day (2001, 13) asserts that the major paradigm of the class distinction is a view of the social formation where dominant class exploits the subordinate groups to get economic benefits. b. Human Exploitation

The term exploitation – which has been used in England since the early nineteenth century as a borrowed word from French – may carry two different meanings. The first meaning is related to the act of utilizing something for any purpose.

In this case, to exploit is a synonym for to use . The second meaning refers to the act of utilizing other people in an unjust or cruel manner (Williams, 1985:130).

In political economy, exploitation involves a long-term social-economic relationship in which the working class are mistreated or unfairly used for the benefit of the capitalists. The workers, in this case, are exploited by working in the 24-hour process of production to produce goods (known as mass product) from which the capitalists get surplus value that is the value added to the capital accumulation which its ultimate source is the unpaid surplus labor performed by the worker for the capitalist.

Precisely, the concept of surplus is as explained by Day (2001, 12),

The calculation of labour in terms of time rather than kind brings us to Marx’s theory of surplus value. At its most basic level, this states that the capitalist sells his or her product for more than he or she pays the workers who produce it. More specifically, the capitalist pays the worker for the time it takes for him or her to earn the minimum amount of money he or she needs in order to survive. If this time amounts to three hours a day, and the workers is employed for eight hours a day that means the capitalist obtains five hours of free labour from the worker and this is the source of profit. The worker is therefore exploited by the capitalist since he or she does not receive the full remuneration for his or her labour.

With the unpaid surplus labor Marx points the practice that the capitalists apply in their factories by forcing the laborers to work in long working hours to increase the productivity of goods without any sufficient compensation such as what described by

Tucker (1978, 535) in the following quotation,

The whole capitalist system of production turns on the increase of the gratis labour by extending the working day or by developing the productivity, that is, increasing the intensity of labor power, etc; that consequently, the system of wage labour is a system of slavery, and indeed of a slavery which becomes more severe in proportion as the social productive forces of labour develop, whether the worker receives better or worse payment.

This revolting practice of forcing other people to work in the factory leads the workers become the slaves of the capitalists since they are asked to work all day long like machines for the profit accumulation of the capitalists. Day and night work using the relay system, which is described by Tucker (1978:372) as the alternation to shift the workers to work one week on day-work and the next week on night-work, does not give any influence to reduce the practice of worker exploitation. In fact, there are still many workers who are forced to work more than twelve hours without any extra-time payment. Relay system is only applied to overcome the fact that it is physically

impossible to exploit the same individual labour-power continuously during the night as well as the day. The workers are not treated as human beings who can be exhausted or hungry or thirsty after working for certain span of time; they are punished whenever they break the factory discipline which is made without their agreement and knowledge.

Instead of receiving extra-payment for the long working hours, they, even, have to pay certain amount of money as the capitalists impose a very strict fine system, and therefore the salary becomes much smaller that cannot support their daily life. The capitalists take this kind of exploitation for granted to keep the process of production on the track of the accumulation of big economic profits.

The following description, written by Pauline Gregg (1957:120-121), shows how the capitalists apply the exploitation to an entire segment of society that is the working class showing the practice of treating the workers as slaves whose duties are merely working and working for the capitalists’ benefits:

Children and adults of both sexes were employed in the factories, six or seven being the admitted age of starting work, though children sometimes began at three or four years old. Parents were frequently compelled by economic pressure to send their children to the mill; in some cases they were unemployed themselves, and were refused parish relief if they had children who could work; sometimes adults were refused work unless they brought their children with them. The consequences were reflected not only on the unfortunate child labourers but on the parents, whose wages were forced down by their own children. … (Working) hours ranged from twelve a day to as many as nineteen in busy periods. Discipline was in the hands of overseers who were bound to exact a full quota of work or be penalized themselves. Brutality, including whipping and beating, was said to be necessary to keep the children awake, who otherwise, from sheer fatigue, sometimes fell into the moving machinery, to be killed or maimed. … A rigid discipline was enforced on adults and children alike. Beating and loss of wages were the penalties for arriving late at work. For opening a window (the temperature was 80 – 84 degrees) the penalty was a fine of 1s.; for keeping the gas burning too long into the morning the operative was

fined 2s.; for washing himself 1s.; if he was able to raise his spirits so far as to whistle while at work he was fined 1s. In one mill near Manchester operatives were not allowed a drink of water, and even the rainwater was locked up.

Shaw witnesses this practice of human exploitation happening everywhere in the factories all around England. As a social reformist, he finds that the practice of waged slavery in industry – the use of man by man – is the main reason of all human problems in society including poverty, unemployment and crimes. He fights the capitalist’s mind set that considers capital as the most important determining factor in the process of production and treats the workers as the objects in process of production. Therefore he struggles through his propaganda and lectures to promote that the process of production will not run unless there are workers who cannot be positioned in the same degree as raw materials and machines. The workers must be treated as human beings who innately have right, feeling, desire, ideals, and freedom. In Pygmalion , Shaw portrays so many things around this concern and together with Fabian Society he voices the struggle against the social and political power of the oppressor that gives wide opportunity to the growth of human exploitation. For him, it is inhumane to force the workers to work in twelve to nineteen hours a day. It is sadistic to whip and beat the workers only because they come late at work. It is also very irrational that children of 4 years old are forced to work in the factory like adults.

By employing the main character, Eliza Doolittle, in a conflict along the play with

Higgins, Shaw highlights the spirit of struggle to abolish the practices of treating other people as objects and means to collect economic benefit, of seizing other people’s right and freedom without their agreement and knowledge, and of forcing other people to

work without adequate compensation. These issues become the focal points of the discussion in this section.

Treating other people as means or objects to take from them economic benefits is one of the main characteristics of human exploitation. Shaw gives strong stressing on this issue in Pygmalion as his objection to the fact in industrial society in which the inability of non-property-owners (the workers) to survive without selling their labor- power is ‘used’ by the property owners (the capitalists) as the opportunity to objectify them. In this sense, the workers are considered as undifferentiated and passive objects in the production process and therefore are treated merely as economic factors. The workers are placed in the same position with other production factors such as capital, raw materials and machines. Considering the workers as passive objects leads the capitalists to treat the workers inhumanely, force them to work all day long, give them no adequate wage, impose on them strict and inhumane work discipline, and – in certain notion – do not admit that workers are independent creatures who have rights and freedom to determine their own life.

Shaw satirically places Eliza and Higgins as the focus of his play since Higgins represents the capitalist and Eliza is the portrait of the working class. Eliza’s inability in speaking properly is used by Higgins to exploit her as object of a language experiment.

Thus, Higgins’ exploitation on Eliza in the language laboratory both as the object of his scientific experiment and as the object for his economic profits – if he wins the betting with Pickering as he can pass Eliza as a duchess in the ambassador’s garden party – is considered as the portrait of the social reality in industrial society picturing the

relationship between the factory owner and the workers.

2. Marxist Criticism

The use of Marxist criticism departs from a strong conviction that it is appropriate to analyze social problems depicted in literary works, especially those dealing with the social changes occurred in industrial society in which the struggle of the oppressed working class to be free from the capitalist oppression becomes the focal point of a literary analysis. Abcarian, et al. (1998, 1373), writes,

The Marxist critic analyzes literary works to show how, wittingly or unwittingly, they support the dominant social class, or how they, in some way, contribute to the struggle against oppression and exploitation. And since Marxist critic views literature as just one among the variety of human activities that reflect power relations and class divisions, he or she is likely to be more interested in what a work says than in its formal structure.

Based largely on Karl Marx’s writings, it claims that literary works are essentially political because they either challenge or support economic oppression of the dominant social class. On the other hands, literary works also mostly criticize the practice of human exploitation in the mode of production, distribution and exchange that in turn give big inspiration to the working class to struggle against the exploitation.

Due to its strong emphasis on the political aspects of the texts, Marxist criticism focuses more on the content and themes of literature than on its form. Nonetheless, as concluded by Kennedy (1999: 48), such approach to literary texts “can illuminate political and economic dimensions of literature other approaches overlook”.

Class struggle is one of the many theories postulated by Karl Marx. It arises originally from Marx’s concept of classless society – a concept that is based on the

common ownership of the means of production, distribution, and exchange. Since Marx sees the progress in society as coming about through the struggle for power between different social classes, class struggle then becomes a class conflict which is caused by the exploitation of one class by another especially in capitalist society (Barry,

1995:156-157). It occurs when the members of society are segregated into classes related to their functions in industry and therefore occupy different position in the industrial organization to utilize the technical and industrial equipments. Despite changes which have taken place in the industrial society, the divisions into classes and the struggle between these classes have persisted in industrial environment. Therefore the history of mankind has been a continuous struggle of classes as Karl Marx and

Friederich Engels wrote, “The written history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggle” (Berberoglu, 1994:21).

There are two main classes in capitalist society that relate to one another in the production sphere: the capitalists (the possessing class) and the waged labor (the proletarian/the working class). The first class possesses the means of production and accumulates capital through the exploitation of labor. This class includes anyone who gets their income from the surplus value they get from the workers who create wealth.

The income of the capitalists, therefore, is based on their exploitation of the workers.

The second class, the working class does not possess the means of production but instead uses their labor power to generate value for the capitalist as a condition for its survival. This class includes anyone who earns their livelihood by selling their labor power and being paid a wage or salary for their labor time. They have little choice;

instead they have to work for capitalist since they typically have no independent way to survive. The capitalist society is mainly divided into these two groups: the class of modern capitalists – the owners of the means of production and the employers of wage- labor; and the class of modern wage-laborers – who have no means of production of their own and reduced to sell their labor-power in the process of production. The clear- cut segregation between the possessing class and the working class represent one and the same human alienation but brings different impacts to the two classes. The possessing class feels satisfied and affirmed in this self-alienation, experiences the alienation as a sign of its own power, and possesses in it the appearance of a human existence. Conversely, the working class feels destroyed and isolated in this alienation or as Hegel describes that this class is indignation against the depravity, an indignation necessarily aroused in this class by the contradiction between its human nature and its life-situation, which is blatant, outright and all-embracing denial of that very nature

(Tucker, 1978:133-134).

In the age of capitalism, Marx describes an economic class where membership of a class is defined by one’s relationship to the means of production, i.e., one’s position in the social structure that characterizes capitalism. Marx talks mainly about two classes that include the vast majority of the population – the working class – and the capitalist.

In accordance with this understanding, class struggle is a conflict arisen in this capitalist-laborer/ exploiter-exploited/ oppressor-oppressed relationship because each of the two main classes has their own interests in common. The collective interests are in conflict with those of the other class as a whole. This in turn leads to conflict between

individual members of different classes.

Providing an analysis of class struggle based on the exploitation of labor,

Berberoglu (1994:19) writes,

Marx and Engels stressed that such an analysis must be placed within the framework of the dynamics of social change in the world historical process and that in this context the crucial task is to identify and examine the primary motive force of social transformation that defines the parameters of societal development: class struggle.

This quotation underlines the existing framework of the shifting of one type of society to another (from primitive to feudal, from feudal to capitalist, and then capitalist to socialist) as a process occurred in the history of human being society. Every type of society brings with it special characteristics reflected in the relationship among and the behavior of its members. It also questions the primary motive force of social transformation that encourages the society members to do class struggle. Quoting

Marx’s letter of March 5, 1852, to his friend Joseph Weydemeyer, Tucker (1978, 220) explains that the class struggle is mainly generated by the vision of the dictatorship of the proletariat and the very strong conviction that the dictatorship itself can constitute the transition to the abolition of all classes and to a classless society.

Marx and Engels then suggest a new type of society (later on also becomes the concern of Shaw and his Fabian Society) where the dictatorship of the proletariat can win the struggle of social, political, and economic domination, i.e., socialist society.

Marx says (Tucker, 1978:220),

And now as to myself, no credit is due to me for discovering the existence of classes in modern society or the struggle between them. Long before me

bourgeois historians had described the historical development of this class struggle and bourgeois economists the economic anatomy of the classes. What I did that was new was to prove: 1) the existence of classes is only bound up with particular historical phases in the development of production, 2) that the class struggle necessarily leads to the dictatorship of the proletariat, 3) that this dictatorship itself only constitutes the transition to the abolition of all classes and to a classless society

Based on this idea, the society should be ruled by the working class and the laboring masses in its ideals to establish a workers’ state. The cornerstone of a workers' state is the abolition of private property in the major means of production and an end to the exploitation of labor for private profit. The establishment of a revolutionary democratic society ruled by the working class (as against the rule of capital) is what distinguishes a socialist society from its capitalist counterpart. In socialist society the state protects the interests of the working class against capital and all other remains of reactionary exploitative classes.

The breaking down of the bourgeoisie – as the goal of class struggle –can be achieved, Berberoglu, (1994: 46-48) argues, only by the proletariat becoming the ruling class, capable of crushing the inevitable and desperate resistance of the bourgeoisie, and of organizing all the working and exploited people for the new economic system. In this context, then, the proletarian state has a dual role to play: to break the resistance of its class enemies (the capitalists), and to protect the revolution and begin the process of socialist construction. The class character of the new state under socialism takes on a new form and content. This situation directs the capitalists in a crisis of power, and this

crisis is not just understood as a breakdown of capitalism but is seen rather as the moment of class struggle when working class self activity undermines capitalist control.

As one of the most respected and prolific figures in the socialism movement, Shaw basically supports the idea of class struggle taught by Marx and Engels, but there is a principle difference between Marx’s class struggle with that of Shaw. Marx allows a revolutionary struggle through two arms of class struggle as asserted by Draper (1978,

125) that in the language of the labour movement, it became standard to speak of the trade unions as the economic arm of the working class, the proletarian party as the political arm. In opposing to the way of Marx’s class struggle, Shaw chooses an evolutionary way that he promotes with other important early members of Fabian

Society such as Sidney and Beatrice Webb . If the people’s souls are to be saved, Shaw argues, the only way is to raise the standard of mass-education to a degree at which its recipients will be rendered immune against the grosser forms of exploitation. Together with other Fabians, Shaw persuades that if society has insured for man the opportunity for satisfying his primary needs and his advance in the refinements of social morality the sole way to follow is mass education. What Shaw means with mass education are public meetings, lectures, journals, social intercourse, drama, and opera (Simon,

1958:10).

It is clear to see here the difference between the struggles to the same vision – social and economic reform – between Shaw and Marx. While Marx and Engels suggest revolutionary means as the way to break down the domination of capitalists, Shaw and the Fabians accepted a program of socialism by evolutionary ways. They promote such

way of reforms as necessary to the establishment of a socialist state, the final result of a long series of struggle. For them socialism is a new organization of society in which the means of production would be owned by the state. This principle encourages Shaw and the Fabians to help the founding of a separate party that became the Labor Party in 1906 where most of its members in Parliament are the Fabians (Chambers’s Encylopaedia,

1973:465).

Of all means to educate people mentioned above, it is interesting to notice that for Shaw the theater is a means of education. Shaw frequently, as stated by Simon

(1958:16), admits that he is a teacher whose aim is the making of better men and women. He believes that art, particularly dramatic art, is able to improve morals and behavior by destroying stereotyped concepts of life. It is no wonder that he writes so many plays to teach people how to struggle against any dehumanized power in society.

C. Theoretical Framework

The theories elaborated above are utilized to help the analysis in the analytical chapters due to the two research questions in chapter I. There are two main theories used to do the analyses: the theory of homology and Marxist criticism. The theory of homology postulated by Lucien Goldmann is employed with other sociological criticisms of Janet Wolff and X.J. Kennedy and Gioia to investigate the social conditions and the characteristics of the capitalist society portrayed in Pygmalion that becomes the topic of discussion in Chapter III. Sociologists of art believe that every work of art is a social product and every literary work is a social document. It is said so

because literature portrays society and reflects the life of human beings of certain time and place. This belief has deeply influenced the writer of this thesis to use the theory of homology since he is eager to know what kind of society criticized by Shaw in

Pygmalion .

To support the theory of homology, the writer of this thesis also provides the sociopolitical context of the era when Pygmalion was written. It is important to notice that to show his concern to the social conditions, George Bernard Shaw, the writer of

Pygmalion , not only writes novels and plays to reflect the society of his lifetime but also involves very actively and militantly in the socialist movements to reconstruct the

British society through his lectures, public speech, and propaganda. This fact becomes an interesting aspect to underline since it creates certain nuance in every literary text written by Shaw. Therefore, the presentation of the sociopolitical context of British society in the era when Pygmalion was written will be very helpful and useful in doing this research.

Marxist criticism, on the other hand, is used in chapter IV to analyze the reason and the background of the reaction shown by the main character of Pygmalion to fight the existing social conditions which are marked by class distinction, human exploitation, dehumanization, and poverty. These social problems are assumed as the consequences of the practice of capitalist system in which human nature and human value are ignored. The struggle of the main character, then, is the portrait of the working class struggle to abolish the class distinction in capitalist society and to be free from the capitalist oppression. To analyze these issues, the writer of this thesis employs the

theory of class struggle as the main instrument of Marxist criticism to get an adequate understanding of the main character’s reaction to fight the social problems she faces.

The analysis will be mostly based on the dialogues and the stage directions of the play which show how the characters interact each other. From that interaction among characters the writer of this thesis draws his interpretation and description on the social conditions and the class struggle of the main character supported by the relevant theories mentioned above.

CHAPTER III

SOCIAL CONDITIONS IN CAPITALIST SOCIETY

AS PORTRAYED IN PYGMALION

Dealing with the first research question of this thesis, this chapter analyzes the social conditions reflected in Pygmalion in accordance with the action, thought, and attitude of the characters. The discussion is based on the dialogues among the characters and the technical stage directions which describe the performance and the movements of the characters on the stage. The analysis departs from the perception that considers literary text as a social document from which the readers can study its social, political and economic conditions of a society in a given time and place.

Since Pygmalion was written in the early twentieth century and was deliberately utilized by Shaw to criticize the practice of human relationship in the process of goods production, the analysis in this chapter focuses on the social conditions in capitalist society. Capitalist society meant by this thesis is a society characterized by the principles of production relationship between wage labor and the owners of the means of production in capitalist system (Berberoglu, 1999:44). This society establishes capitalism as an economic system in which property is owned by private individuals or corporation . Individual or corporate ownership of capital and means of production has created the distinction between the capital owners (the bourgeoisie) and the workers (the proletariat). This distinction gives the chance to the capital owners to practice human exploitation on the workers by forcing the workers to

work in long working hours with very low wage to gain big economic profits. In turn, class distinction and human exploitation result in dehumanization and poverty as the most visible and concrete consequences.

A. Class Distinction

Influenced by the late Victorian age that views social class as one of the most important issue to consider, in Pygmalion , Shaw shows that class structure of society is the most visible and distinguishing marks in England in the nineteenth and early twentieth century. He writes about a situation in society where everything is constructed and understood in class dimension: physical appearance (such as personal appearance and clothes, ornaments, furniture, and homes), the names of the characters, and the way of speaking and behaving. As a socialist, Shaw maintains that the difference between a flower girl and a lady is a matter of education that sharpens one’s brilliance, good attitude and right moral behavior. This notion causes him to object an unscientific, but common, assumption that the upper classes are superior by virtue of their birth. Thus,

Pygmalion echoes a new way of thinking that in a class society it is possible for an individual to change his/her membership to a social class which is usually ascribed at birth and is considered as something hereditary.

1. Physical Appearance

This aspect is so obvious to show class distinction since personal appearance and clothes, ornaments (pictures, photographs, etc), furniture and place of living owned by the characters are closely related to the social status. Shaw develops this aspect

interestingly by providing detailed stage directions composed in novel-like style.

Conveying a social message to a variety of decoders, clothes or accessories or human physical appearances have become reliable ways to denote social status, profession, and economic situation. In fact, it really happens in society that clothes have become one of the most crucial parts of a person’s social class. Shaw knows about this fact, and therefore he catches the phenomenon, arranges it aesthetically in his literary works as a play, and uses it to clarify the social distinction that exists in British society by using the issue of different clothes worn by the characters.

There are some descriptions of clothes and personal appearance in the beginning of an act or somewhere in the middle of the play to show what kind of clothes the characters wear and how they look like. These clothes and physical appearance are considered as indicators of one’s social class and they give strong influence in daily human relation in society. The table shows this aspect.

Table 1. Description of Physical Appearance and Clothes

Page Name of Description of Act number the Description of Clothes Physical appearance in Chin characters (2000) Mrs. She wears evening dress. Eynsford 1 891 Hill Miss She is in her evening Eynsford dress. 1 891 Hill He wears evening dress. A young man of Freddy 1 891 twenty The She wears a little sailor A girl of perhaps 1 891

Flower hat of black straw that eighteen or twenty Girl has long been exposed to with hair that needs the dust and soot of washing rather badly: London and has seldom its mousy color can if ever been brushed, a hardly be natural. She shoddy black coat that is no doubt as clean as reaches nearly to her she can afford to be; knees and is shaped to but compared to the her waist, a brown skirt ladies she is very with a coarse apron, and dirty. She needs the boots which are much the services of a dentist. worse for wear.

Page Name of Description of Act number the Description of Clothes Physical appearance in Chin characters (2000) He is in evening dress, An elderly gentleman Colonel with a light overcoat. of the amiable military 1 893 Pickering type. Dressed in a A man of around professional-looking forty, energetic, black frock-coat with a scientific type, white linen collar and heartily, even Professor black silk tie. violently interested in Henry everything that can be 2 900 Higgins studied as a scientific subject, careless about himself and other people, including their feelings. She wears a hat with three ostrich feathers, orange, sky-blue, and red. Liza (She is the flower girl 2 901 Doolittle She has a nearly clean in act 1). apron, and the shoddy coat has been tidied a little.

Clad in the costume of his profession, including Alfred An elderly but a hat with a back brim 2 910 Doolittle vigorous dustman covering his neck and shoulders.

From the table above, the characters can be divided into two social classes. They are

Mrs. Eynsford Hill, Miss Eynsford Hill, Colonel Pickering, and Professor Henry

Higgins in one group, and Eliza Doolittle and Alfred Doolittle in another group. The first group represents the bourgeoisie or the capitalists and the second one represents the proletariat or the working class. These two classes are contrasted to each other by Shaw not only by their behavior and mannerism related to their inner aspects of human nature but also by their clothes and appearance.

The story in Act 1 begins at a quarter past eleven at night in London during a heavy downpour of summer rain. A group of people are seeking for shelter under the portico of St. Paul's Church, Covent Garden. Among them are Mrs. and Miss Eynsford

Hill, Colonel Pickering and Professor Henry Higgins who is preoccupied while taking notes. Freddy, the son of Mrs. Eynsford Hill, who is looking for a cab for his mother and sister to ride back home is also from this class. They wear evening dress to show that they have special attires to wear in the evening. This kind of dress shows that they are not common people. They must be people of middle or upper class because, like in many other societies, people of that class reserve special kinds of clothes for special occasions as symbols of their social status . Wearing an evening dress here is not just to protect the human body from extreme weather and other features of the environment . It

is not only worn for safety and comfort due to the cold weather at night, but to convey a social class message of the wearers. In this sense, clothes has a social meaning understood socially and culturally by all members of a society since clothes maintain in their models, basic materials, ornaments, and functions the social classes of the people who wear them.

When the audiences turn their attention to the flower girl (Eliza), they find other kinds of clothes. Instead of wearing a luxurious evening dress, the flower girl just wears a little sailor hat of black straw that has long been exposed to the dust and soot of

London, a shoddy black coat, a brown skirt with a coarse apron, and old boots which are much the worse for wear. Perhaps she has only two or three pairs of dresses which make her having no choice to change clothes everyday so that the clothes “have seldom if ever been brushed.” Her limited income of selling flowers is not enough to buy new clothes to make her appearance more interesting as to add and polish her natural beauty.

Furthermore, it is because of the matter of clothes that Eliza experiences a bad treatment from Higgins who extremely dislikes seeing the clothes she is wearing when she comes to his laboratory at the first time. She is very surprised when Higgins orders

Mrs. Pearce (Higgins’ housekeeper) to put all her clothes off and throw them away into the dustbin. While waiting for the arrival of the new clothes, Eliza is wrapped in brown paper just like an object. It is to say that Higgins cannot bear to see her ‘ugly’ clothes and prefers to witness her wrapped in paper. How disgusted are the clothes that Higgins treats them like garbage as he asks his housekeeper to throw the clothes away into the dustbin. How low the social status of a flower girl is that her clothes must be stripped

down and replaced by a brown paper. Of course, clothes are more precious and decent to wear by civilized human beings than a piece of paper, but the point is the fact that the upper class people have no respect at all to the lower class. They tend to force the lower class to wear particular kind of clothes they wish, including the imposition of the uniform policy in industrial environment to distinguish the common workers with the higher officers and the owner of the factory as well. In industrial environment, the owners of manufactures also have no respect to the workers and treat them as if they have no right and freedom. The manufacturers ask the overlookers to wallop the workers to force them to work harder and to be more disciplined. They give inadequate wages that the workers cannot use to fulfill their basic needs. They give no rest time to the workers and prohibit them to eat and drink during the working time.

It is interesting to give special attention on the brown paper used to wrap Eliza. The problem of using paper as cloth is its endurance. It is only a short-time ‘cloth’ that has no ability to protect the body for a long time from bad weather, for instance. It gives a very minimal guarantee of comfort since it is easy to tear. Related to the social condition in capitalist society, this metaphorical paper refers to everything given by the manufacture owners that provides slightest guarantee to the laborers for their barest necessities of life. This condition leads most of the laborers to a serious poverty.

When Eliza knows that Mrs. Pearce is ordering new clothes for her, she says to

Higgins,

“Mrs. Pearce says you’re going to give me some to wear in bed at night different to what I wear in the daytime; but it do seem a waste of money when you could get something to shew. Besides, I never could fancy changing into cold things

on a winter night”

(Chin, 2000: 914).

This quotation shows Eliza’s disagreement of the replacement of her old clothes with new garments ordered by Mrs. Pearce. She is not familiar with the habit of wearing clothes different in the day time and at night. For Eliza, the clothes she usually wears when she sells flowers in the curb of Tottenham Court Road are also the same clothes she wears when she goes to bed at night. But who cares to her objection and disagreement. She must accept whatever order of his ‘master’. This is one of the typical social conditions in capitalist society where laborers’ voice is usually ignored by their masters. They have no other choice except to follow what the masters have decided.

The same situation of wearing simple clothes is found in Alfred Doolittle,

Eliza’s father. He wears the costume of his profession, including a hat with a back brim covering his neck and shoulders. Since he is a dustman, the readers can imagine what is meant by “the costume of his profession”. A dustman never wears a suit or a light coat as that of Colonel Pickering. Instead, he might wear a long-sleeve shirt, coarse and grimy trousers, and boots on his feet merely to protect his body of the heat of the sunlight and the dust that fly everywhere whenever he sweeps the road and collects the waste disposals. When people meet a man who wears this kind of clothes, it is not difficult for them to guess the profession of the man, even when he is not working with his broom, dustpan, or garbage barrow.

To understand how house, furniture, and room decoration give effects to and influenced by one’s social class, Mrs. Higgins’ home in Act 3 is a wonderful text to

begin this discussion.

… Her drawing-room, in a flat on Chelsea embankment, has three windows looking on the river; and the ceiling is not as lofty as it would be in an older house of the same pretension. The windows are open, giving access to a balcony with flowers in pots. If you stand with your face to the windows, you have the fireplace on your left and the door in the right-hand wall close to the corner nearest the windows. Mrs. Higgins was brought up on Morris and Burne Jones; and her room, which is very unlike her son's room in Wimpole Street, is not crowded with furniture and little tables and nicknacks. In the middle of the room there is a big ottoman; and this, with the carpet, the Morris wall-papers, and the Morris chintz window curtains and brocade covers of the ottoman and its cushions, supply all the ornament, and are much too handsome to be hidden by odds and ends of useless things. A few good oil-paintings from the exhibitions in the Grosvenor Gallery thirty years ago (the Burne Jones, not the Whistler side of them) are on the walls. The only landscape is a Cecil Lawson on the scale of a Rubens. There is a portrait of Mrs. Higgins as she was when she defied fashion in her youth in one of the beautiful Rossettian costumes which, when caricatured by people who did not understand, led to the absurdities of popular estheticism in the eighteen-seventies. In the corner diagonally opposite the door Mrs. Higgins, now over sixty and long past taking the trouble to dress out of the fashion, sits writing at an elegantly simple writing-table with a bell button within reach of her hand. There is a Chippendale chair further back in the room between her and the window nearest her side. At the other side of the room, further forward, is an Elizabethan chair roughly carved in the taste of Inigo Jones. On the same side a piano in a decorated case. The corner between the fireplace and the window is occupied by a divan cushioned in Morris chintz. … (Chin, 2000:918)

As the issue of clothes has been used to bring to light the fact of class distinction, Shaw also elaborates the description of place for living in his plays to inform to the audience about the social status of the owner of the home. He writes every detail of the room like a magazine-reporter tells to the readers what he/she catches through his/her eyes. All those details are deliberately presented to bring the focus to the understanding of home as symbols of capitalist values and social stability as corner-stones of class distinction.

Living in an exclusive and luxurious environment supported by high income as the

result of labor exploitation in manufactures is one of the value maintained by the capitalists in their life. Every ornament and furniture as if speak about that value and

Shaw is the skillful writer who voices the phenomenon by describing home and its interiors to reflect the economic prosperity possessed by the upper class people.

Mrs. Higgins’ home is very luxurious fulfilled with expensive and elegant furniture and paintings. It is contrast to Eliza’s dormitory which she considers, “It wasn’t fit for a pig to live in; and I had to pay four-and-six a week” (Chin, 2000:894).

Shaw reveals the contradiction of situation of possessing and not-possessing a home and of living in the comfortable central town and living in the slums. He criticizes the fact of no possessed home-space encountered by the lower class (the working class) because the capitalists have no good will to provide homes for the laborers. Through the description of Mrs. Higgins’ home above, the readers are exposed to the issue of social class difference between the wealthy bourgeois Mrs. Higgins against the poor but struggling Eliza. The fact that the home of bourgeois has balcony, for instance, indicates that the home must be consisted of more than one floor. Only upper class people have the home like that. The balcony is usually located on the higher floor as a special place to be relaxed while viewing what happens outside the home. From a balcony people interact with the external world of a home and broaden their perspective of seeing things. Balcony brings into the viewer a new intellectual and emotional activity since it stimulates the individual mind to consider home-outside aspects as things to ponder regarding to every effort of human improvement. Shaw includes balcony of home in some of his plays – the balcony in front of Raina’s bedchamber in Arms and the Man ,

for instance – to represent his desire to provoke in the audience’s mind to think that capitalists should not only focus on the economic matters of accumulating profits and bank interests. Instead, they must broaden their perspective to the socio-economic problems encountered by their labors due to the minimum wage, the long working hours, and the working contract system. Through a balcony as the symbol of high position in decision-making process, the capitalists relate themselves to the concepts of the relationship between the external world and the workings of the individual mind, particularly as they apply to moral responsibility toward labors’ daily and future life.

Other facts to underline that the home belongs to the upper class people are the presence of the expensive furniture such as a big ottoman, Chippendale chair,

Elizabethan chair carved in the taste of Inigo Jones 1, a decorated case, elegant writing- table, a divan cushioned in Morris chintz; beautiful portrait and paintings of Morris and

Burne Jones 2, good oil-paintings from the exhibitions in the Grosvenor Gallery 3, the

Morris wall-papers, Cecil Lawson on the scale of a Rubens, a portrait of Mrs. Higgins in one of her beautiful Rossettian costumes when she attended a fashion contest; and other ‘accessories’ such as the fireplace, carpet, the Morris chintz window curtains, brocade covers of the ottoman and its cushions. In Pygmalion , St. Paul’s Cathedral and

1 Inigo Jones is a very famous architect in England in seventeenth century, who, between 1625 -1640, was concerned principally with the work on two major London sites: the repair and remodel of St. Paul's Cathedral, and the design of Covent Garden (Sharp, 1991:84).

2 William Morris and Burne Jones are the most prominent painters in England in the end of nineteenth century. Their famous paintings such as Pelicans symbolic of Sacrifice, Baptism of Christ, Crucifixion, Annunciation to the shepherds, Nativity, Star of Bethlehem, Cophetua, and Love among the Ruins are among their best works of art displayed and sold in Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery ( http://www.birmingham.gov.uk/burnejones ). 3 The Grosvenor Gallery is also a famous art gallery founded in Bond Street, London, by Sir Coutts Lindsay and his wife Blanche Lindsay in 1877. It holds annual paintings fair every year where the wealthy people of London usually visit to enjoy the classical and decorative paintings of many prestigious painters from all over the world (http://www.victorianweb.org/decadence/grosvenor.html ).

Covent Garden are mentioned in the first act and become important places from where

Eliza’s life journey gets its start. Instead of showing his well-knowledge about the famous artists of his time and their prominent works of art, Shaw deliberately presents situation of a home of upper class people by mentioning all those prestigious paintings and furniture to underline that with the money they collect from their manufacture business they are able to buy such expensive paintings and furniture.

All those furniture and paintings create a very comfortable feeling when one sits in Mrs. Higgins’ drawing room. Regarding to this comfort, Shaw offends the upper class way of thinking that considers wealth and prosperity as the objective of life. And for that objective, they allow whatever ways including exploiting their fellowmen. The situation aroused by that way of thinking is that the upper class people tend to live for themselves. In other part of Pygmalion , Shaw, using Alfred Doolittle as his mouthpiece, criticizes the middle class morality run by the upper class people who live in full of hypocrisy (remember Higgins throws a handful of coins into Eliza’s flower basket right after the sound of church bell to show his Christian charity), who do not live for others but for themselves, who rob whatever they wish from the poor because of their avarice.

Eliza’s house is very different from Mrs. Higgins’ home. It is not a home but only a hiring room, as described in the following interesting passage.

… Her lodging: a small room with very old wall-paper hanging loose in the damp places. A broken pane in the window is mended with paper. A portrait of a popular actor and a fashion plate of ladies’ dresses, all wildly beyond poor Eliza’s means, both torn from newspapers, are pinned up on the wall. A birdcage hangs in the window; but its tenant died long ago: it remains as a memorial only. These are the only visible luxurious: the rest is the irreducible minimum of poverty’s needs: a wretched bed heaped with all sorts of coverings that have any

warmth in them, a draped packing case with a basin and jug on it and a little looking-glass over it, a chair and table, the refuse of some suburban kitchen, and an American alarm clock on the shelf above the unused fireplace: the whole lighted with a gas lamp with a penny in the slot meter. Rent: four shillings a week. … (Chin, 2000: 898) In contrast to Mrs. Higgins’ home - which is fulfilled with expensive and elegant furniture and paintings – Eliza’s dormitory is considered as “wasn’t fit for a pig to live in” (Chin, 2000:894). These two homes are really far different. One is so luxurious and comfortable, but the other is so dirty and unfit for human to live. The reasons of all those differences are the social status. Whenever the descriptions in that stage direction are read, every item in Mrs. Higgins’ room is as if directly compared with those in

Eliza’s bedroom. Therefore it will be easy to see the difference by putting the room items in a table. The table below shows the comparison.

Table 2. The comparison of Room Items

No Room items in Eliza’s bedroom Room items in Mrs. Higgins’ home

the Morris wall-papers 1 very old wall-paper

three windows looking on the river 2 A broken pane in the window

Morris and Burne Jones oil-paintings from the exhibitions in the 3 A portrait of a popular actor Grosvenor Gallery

a wretched bed heaped with all a divan cushioned in Morris chintz 4 sorts of coverings a big ottoman, Chippendale chair and 5 a chair and table Elizabethan chair Mrs. Higgins’ own home 6 Rent: four shillings a week

In line with what Shaw describes above, Engels (1979, 61) informs,

The houses are occupied from cellar to garret, filthy within and without, and their appearance is such that no human being could possibly wish to live in them. … Scarcely a whole window-pane can be found, the walls are crumbling, doorposts and window frames loose and broken, doors of old boards nailed together, or altogether wanting in this thieves’ quarter, where no doors are needed, there being nothing to steal. Here live the poorest of the poor, the worst paid workers with thieves and the victims of prostitution indiscriminately huddled together, the majority Irish, or of Irish extraction, and those who have not yet sunk in the whirlpool of moral ruin which surrounds them, sinking daily deeper, losing daily more and more of their power to resist the demoralizing influence of want, filth, and evil surroundings.

It seems that the descriptions of the place for living which are reflected by Shaw in

Pygmalion and written by Engels in The Condition of The Working Class in England voices the same reality in details about the real conditions of houses where thousands of the workers live in. Engels reports that in the most extensive working-people’s district lies east of the Tower in Whitechapel and Bethnal Green, for example, there exists

1,400 houses, inhabited by 2,795 families, or about 12,000 persons where it is nothing unusual to find a man, his wife, his four or five children, and sometimes both grandparents, all live in one single room of ten to twelve square feet, where they eat, sleep, and work (Engels, 1979:62). It can be imagined how crowded and uncomfortable the houses are. While their masters are enjoying the comfort of luxurious ‘palaces’, the workers have no other choices instead of living in those slums. It is clear here that

Pygmalion is so homolog with the situation in real life by exposing Eliza’s dorm to show the similar situation of the workers’ houses in Whitechapel and Bethnal Green.

Different from Mrs. Higgins’ home, there is another home which is used as a language laboratory in Wimpole Street. It is Higgins’ Laboratory. Shaw describes that

laboratory as follows,

It is a room on the first floor, looking on the street, and was meant for the drawing-room. The double doors are in the middle of the back wall; and persons entering find in the corner to their right two tall file cabinets at right angles to one another against the walls. In this corner stands a flat writing-table, on which are a phonograph, a laryngoscope, a row of tiny organ pipes with a bellows, a set of lamp chimneys for singing flames with burners attached to a gas plug in the wall by an India rubber tube, several tuning-forks of different sizes, a life-size image of half a human head, showing in section the vocal organs, and a box containing a supply of wax cylinders for the phonograph. Further down the room, on the same side, is a fireplace, with a comfortable leather-covered easy-chair at the side of the hearth nearest the door, and a coal- scuttle. There is a clock on the mantelpiece. Between the fireplace and the phonograph table is a stand for newspapers. On the other side of the central door, to the left of the visitor, is a cabinet of shallow drawers. On it is a telephone and the telephone directory. The corner beyond, and most of the side wall, is occupied by a grand piano, with the keyboard at the end furthest from the door, and a bench for the player extending the full length of the keyboard. On the piano is a dessert dish heaped with fruit and sweets, mostly chocolates. The middle of the room is clear. Besides the easy-chair, the piano bench, and two chairs at the phonograph table, there is one stray chair. It stands near the fireplace. On the walls, engravings; mostly Piranesis and mezzotint portraits. No paintings.

(Chin, 2000:900)

Higgins’ house contains every object that supports his phonetic experiment. The description in the quotation leads the readers to grasp that it is not a common room.

Instead of considering it as a living room, they may guess it is a studio or music room because there are piano and other instruments used to measure human voice such as phonograph, laryngoscope, a box containing a supply of wax cylinders for the phonograph, and a row of tiny organ pipes with a bellows. Others perhaps consider the room as an office because there are file cabinets with documentation of Higgins’ work and a flat writing-table. And the rest may also think it is a laboratory since there stands

a life-size image of half a human head, India rubber tube, and a set of lamp chimneys.

Yet when the readers follow the story in Act two, then, they are aware that it is a laboratory of a professor of phonetics; it is a room for a scientific research and experiment that usually belongs to an educated person.

The description of the devices needed to conduct an experiment due to the effort to record particular language sounds proves Shaw’s expertise in evoking in the readers’ mind an imagination of a phonetic laboratory. It indicates Shaw’s wide knowledge on the characteristics and functions of a laboratory. His acquaintanceship and good communication with Henry Sweet, a professor of Phonetics whose name he mentions in the Preface of Pygmalion as the best phonetician he has ever known might be able to explain the reason why he knows so many details related to a linguistic laboratory and the teaching-learning process held in such laboratory to change or to improve the pupils’ language ability (Chin, 2000:887). Nevertheless, the focal point is not the laboratory and the activities held in it. It is presented in Pygmalion to voice a social critique in industry.

Shaw’s understanding on the facilities and the activities in the laboratory helps him to criticize the malpractices in industrial environment. He metaphorically uses the laboratory as the symbol of industry where goods are produced. In line with this, the role of Higgins’ laboratory in the plot of Pygmalion as a whole is very central. It is the place where Eliza is transformed from a cockney flower girl with a chaotic way of speaking to a lady with well-spoken ability. Shaw presents Eliza as the object of a language experiment to show his socialist objection to the capitalists’ treatment to the

workers as objects just like capital, machines, and raw materials.

In contrast to Mrs. Higgins’ home which is so comfortable and luxurious,

Higgins’ laboratory is not an appropriate place for living. It is not caused by the absence of any beautiful decoration or expensive furniture but by the way Higgins treats his pupils, especially Eliza. Higgins’ rude remarks addressed to Eliza, his inconsiderateness of others, and his petulance to everything that does not fit to his desires have made the

‘home’ becomes an unsafe and uncomfortable place to develop good relationship among people who live in it. Thus, it is undoubtedly to underline that this laboratory has correctly represented the situation in industry where the workers also feel unsafe and uncomfortable.

2. Names of Characters

In Act 1, all characters are identified not by name, except Freddy. They are called as the Mother or the Lady, the Daughter, the Bystanders, the Flower girl, the

Gentleman, the Note-taker, and the Taximan. In this case, Pygmalion is different from

Arms and the Man , for example, which mentions all its characters’ name from the beginning of the play. It is not without any intention that Shaw ‘hides’ the characters’ name in act one. He wants to highlight the characters’ social status by calling them the lady, the gentleman, the note-taker in one group and the flower girl, the bystanders, and the taximan in another group. The first group refers to the upper class people, and the second one affiliates to the lower class.

The Lady, her daughter, and Freddy must be from a rich family who are able to buy evening dress, who can hire a taxi, and who have much money to buy expensive tickets to watch interesting performances in an opera house. They have economic capability not only to suffice their basic needs (food, clothes, and home) but also to enjoy entertainments and live luxuriously with other comfortable life facilities. The

Gentleman and the Note-taker live in more or less the same situation. In the end of act

1, the Gentleman introduces himself to the Note-taker as Colonel Pickering, the author of Spoken Sanskrit and the Note-taker introduces himself as Henry Higgins, author of

Higgins’s Universal Alphabet. This is to say that they are not common people; they are scholars and experts of Linguistics. They live from their professional job and from their expertise on the subject matter they master very well.

How about the flower girl, the bystanders, and the taximan? They are

‘unfortunate’ people who have less access to enjoy worldly happiness due to their poverty. The flower girl should wait for hours in the curb of Tottenham Court Road to get one penny. The bystanders must be patient to look for job by walking from one place to another as job-lookers. The taximan must drive around the city to look for passengers till midnight. They all represent the proletariat who struggle for their daily needs as workers in industries both permanent workers and casual workers based on the temporary contract of employment. They are the majority of British Isles citizens who earn daily wage only for one-day consumption.

The flower girl’s name starts to be mentioned in the middle of Act two. When she introduces herself as Liza Doolittle, Higgins sneers her by mentioning some other

names as Eliza, Elizabeth, Betsy and Bess and then continued by a mockery, “They went to the woods to get a bird nests” (Chin, 2000:902). It shows as if the nama “Eliza” is not a human name, while the name “Doolittle” implies something negative regarding to class distinction. Since “Doolittle” represents the working class, perhaps this name brings with it a perception that generally exists in capitalist society that laborers are less important among other means of production; that the workers don’t contribute something special in the process of production; or that the labor force can DO so

LITTLE in capitalist system since it cannot do anything without capital, machines, and raw materials.

3. Way of Behaving and Speaking

The opening act operates on the principle of contrast both the way of behaving and the way of speaking of all characters. For instance, it explicitly contrasts the characters of Higgins and Colonel Pickering as well as Eliza and Clara. There is a subtle contrast between the socially refined Clara and the uncouth Eliza. Compared to Eliza,

Clara appears to be ill-mannered. She has evidently had the civilizing benefits supported by wealth and education but shows bad manners. She represents the worst traits of the middle-class. She is quickly bothered by Eliza's presence and wants to avoid any interaction with her, when she asks her mother, “Do nothing of the sort,

Mother. The idea” (Chin, 2000:893). She speaks imperatively to strangers and rebukes

Higgins for his audacity to speak to her; "Don't dare to speak to me" (Chin, 2000: 896).

Yet later when she discovers who Higgins is, she becomes respectable towards him.

While Eliza, she is a strong and independent young woman, self-sufficient through her business of selling flowers on the street, and with a highly developed moral sense and self-respect.

The well-spoken mother and daughter are opposed to the chaotic-spoken bystander, for instance, as can be read in following conversation,

A BYSTANDER [ on the lady's right ] He wont get no cab not until half-past eleven, missus, when they come back after dropping their theatre fares. THE MOTHER. But we must have a cab. We can’t stand here until half-past eleven. It's too bad. THE BYSTANDER. Well, it aint my fault, missus. (Chin, 2000:891)

The daughter and her mother speak Standard English as most of other people of their class. Comparing with these two women, the bystander’s sentence is grammatically incorrect. He uses negative forms more than once in the same sentence and mispronounces ‘Mrs.’ as ‘missus’ in the sentence “He wont get no cab not until half-past eleven, missus, when they come back after dropping their theatre fares.”

Other example to explore the dynamics of manners in a society that assumes that speech patterns determine social class can be taken from the conversation between The

Mother and The Flower Girl.

THE MOTHER. How do you know that my son's name is Freddy, pray? THE FLOWER GIRL. Ow, eez ye-ooa san, is e? Wal, fewd dan y' de-ooty bawmz a mather should, eed now bettern to spawl a pore gel's flahrzn than ran awy athaht pyin. Will ye-oo py me f'them? [ Here, with apologies, this desperate attempt to represent her dialect without a phonetic alphabet must be abandoned as unintelligible outside London .] THE DAUGHTER. Do nothing of the sort, mother. The idea! THE MOTHER. Please allow me, Clara. Have you any pennies? THE DAUGHTER. No. I've nothing smaller than sixpence.

THE FLOWER GIRL [ hopefully ] I can give you change for a tanner, kind lady. THE MOTHER [ to Clara ] Give it to me. [ Clara parts reluctantly ]. Now [to the girl ] This is for your flowers. THE FLOWER GIRL. Thank you kindly, lady. THE DAUGHTER. Make her give you the change. These things are only a penny a bunch. THE MOTHER. Do hold your tongue, Clara. [ To the girl ]. You can keep the change. THE FLOWER GIRL. Oh, thank you, lady. THE MOTHER. Now tell me how you know that young gentleman's name. THE FLOWER GIRL. I didn’t. THE MOTHER. I heard you call him by it. Don’t try to deceive me. THE FLOWER GIRL [ protesting ] Who’s trying to deceive you? I called him Freddy or Charlie same as you might yourself if you was talking to a stranger and wished to be pleasant. [ She sits down beside her basket ]. (Chin, 2000:891-893)

The conversation indicates that the flower girl’s answer, in her peculiar dialect and way of uttering words, is something special that shows her cockney background.

She says, “Ow, eez ye-ooa san, is e? Wal, fewd dan y' de-ooty bawmz a mather should, eed now bettern to spawl a pore gel's flahrzn than ran awy athaht pyin. Will ye-oo py me f'them?” Annoying with the strange sound getting out of the girl’s mouth, the daughter interrupts and asks her mother not to continue the conversation. Yet generated by her eagerness, after giving the girl some money, the mother asks the girl for the second time, “Now tell me how you know that young gentleman’s name?” The answer of this same question is rather funny. The flower girl shows that it is not important to call a stranger as Freddy or Charlie. Not as simply as the flower girl thinks, for the mother, it is a sort of indication that the girl is not a good woman. The girl might have an affair with her son. So, she asks the flower girl to explain what happens between her and the son. In this sense, the flower girl is actually being suspected of soliciting as a

prostitute simply because she belongs to a class that often relied on prostitution as a way to earn money.

Shaw smartly composes the dialogue to point out how language – including dialect – creates distinction in society. He regards phonetics and the proper pronunciation of the English language as a serious instrument of social change. Shaw, that is to say, has serious and important views about this question and makes use of them in his play. The idea that speech and accent is one of the great class barriers is certainly one of the important ideas of this play. It would, however, be a mistake to suppose that it is necessary to read and understand Shaw’s views on phonetics in order to understand Pygmalion . The study of language and the science of phonetics is an extremely complex subject. Nor is it clear that a phonetic alphabet is the solution to the problems of the English language. A student who really wishes to understand these questions would not learn very much about them by reading Pygmalion . A complex academic subject of this kind can hardly be grasped immediately by an audience in a theatre, and Shaw provides them only with a minimum of easily assimilated information. In his preface Shaw writes:

But if the play makes the public aware that there are such people as phoneticians, and that they are among the most important people in England at present, it will serve its turn.

(Chin, 2000:890)

The importance of phonetics is only the most obvious, not the most vital, idea in the play. Pygmalion can hardly be called a play that expresses very accurate or particularly profound ideas about the study of the English language. It does, however,

make use of some fairly simple ideas about the English language in order to make some very accurate observations about the nature of English society, and it asks a number of questions about the relations that exist between individuals in such a society which are both important and profound. Shaw can be seen making use of simple ideas about language in order to ask difficult questions about human beings.

Shaw indicates that Pickering is a military gentleman while Higgins is only a note-taker. Right from the beginning Shaw emphasizes the gentlemanly behavior of the

Colonel which serves to highlight Higgins’ more boorish behavior. Obsessed by his interest in changing Eliza through language, he has no idea that his behavior might be unusual. His manners are boorish. But at the same time it is significant that it is Higgins and not the Colonel who performs an act of Christian charity by giving Eliza, whom he had mercilessly humiliated earlier, a handful of money. Eliza’s vulgar need of money from prospective customers is motivated by her poverty circumstances, as shown in the following conversation,

THE FLOWER GIRL [ to Pickering, as he passes her ] Buy a flower, kind gentleman. I'm short for my lodging. PICKERING. I really haven’t any change. I'm sorry [ he goes away ]. HIGGINS [ shocked at girl's mendacity ] Liar. You said you could change half-a- crown. THE FLOWER GIRL [ rising in desperation ] You ought to be stuffed with nails, you ought. [ Flinging the basket at his feet ] Take the whole blooming basket for sixpence. The church clock strikes the second quarter . HIGGINS [ hearing in it the voice of God, rebuking him for his Pharisaic want of charity to the poor girl ] A reminder. [ He raises his hat solemnly; then throws a handful of money into the basket and follows Pickering ]. THE FLOWER GIRL [ picking up a half-crown ] Ah-ow-ooh! [ Picking up a couple of florins ] Aaah-ow-ooh! [ Picking up several coins ] Aaaaaah-ow- ooh! [ Picking up a half-sovereign ] Aaaaaaaaaaaah-ow-ooh!!!

(Chin, 2000:897)

In this conversation, a note of social conscience enters the play. Higgins flings a handful of coins into Eliza’s basket when he is reminded by the striking of the church clock which he considers as a rebuke for his lack of Christian charity. This again reveals the hypocrisy of the middle class. Here he is not so much doing it out of a genuine act of generosity but in order to realize a higher order and guarantee his salvation. The background elements of the church bells that remind Higgins of Christian charity, symbolically introduce the element of the medieval morality play in the opening act.

According to Abrams (1993, 118), a morality play, popular during the Elizabethan Age, depicted the fierce battle between the forces of good and evil for the possession of the soul of the individual character. The medieval world picture believed in a chain of being which determined each individual’s position in the scale of social hierarchy. There is a conflict in Higgins’ mind whether to buy or not the flowers offered by Eliza till the church bell reminds him to show his charity. Using the money given by Higgins, at the end of act one Eliza is shown as challenging and disturbing that rigid social hierarchy by hiring a cab. She dares to challenge the common perception that poor flower girls cannot hire cabs.

All acts introduce the idea of what defines being a gentleman and lady. For instance, a bystander says of Higgins, “E’s a gentleman: look at his boots” (Chin,

2000:894), while Eliza says of him, “He's no gentleman, he aint, to interfere with a poor girl” (Chin, 2000:895). For the bystander clothing and general appearance is the distinguishing mark of a gentleman while for Eliza behaviors and manners are the

essential criteria of gentility. This idea about what constitutes a lady and a gentleman continues throughout the play. It also provides the background to Eliza’s speech in Act

Five about ladies and gentlemen when she distinguishes Higgins from Pickering by saying,

(to Pickering ) You see, really and truly, apart from the things anyone can pick up (the dressing and the proper way of speaking, and so on), the difference between a lady and a flower girl is not how she behaves, but how she’s treated. I shall always be a flower girl to Professor Higgins, because he always treats me as a flower girl, and always will; but I know I can be a lady to you, because you always treat me as a lady, and always will. (Chin, 2000:945) It is very interesting to reflect that a flower girl has a very deep and rigid notion of the difference between a lady and a flower girl when she asserts that “the difference between a lady and a flower girl is not how she behaves, but how she’s treated.” This statement comes after another dialogue between Eliza and Pickering in which Eliza praises Pickering’s gentility and good examples of treating others. Eliza says to

Pickering,

… But it was from you that I learnt really nice manners; and that is what makes one a lady, isn’t it? You see it was so difficult for me with the example of Professor Higgins always before me. … And I should never have known that ladies and gentleman didn’t behave like that if you hadn’t been there. (Chin, 2000:944)

The question is what actually Pickering has done that makes Eliza becomes so impressed of him. Eliza admits that from Pickering she gets real education. And when

Pickering asks her what real education he has given, Eliza points out his calling to her as “Miss Doolitle” at the day when she first came to Wimpole Street. Eliza mentions that event as the beginning of self-respect for her. In Act three, most of the characters –

the Parlor Maid, Mrs. Eynsford Hill, Mrs. Higgins, Pickering, and Freddy – call Eliza by “Miss Doolittle”, except Higgins and Clara. Instead of calling her Miss Doolittle,

Higgins calls her using objects name that sounds very sarcastic such as “baggage”

(Chin, 2000:902), “draggled-tailed guttersnipe” (Chin, 2000:903), “creature picked from the mud” (Chin, 2000:943), “thing out of the squashed cabbage leaves” (Chin,

2000:944), and “common idiot” (Chin, 2000:949).

B. Human Exploitation

Most of the dialogues in Pygmalion tell about human relation established among the characters that leads them to involve in a linguistic experiment using Eliza as ‘the main object’. The experiment happens in one single setting of place that is Higgins’ laboratory. Pickering comes to the laboratory due to Higgins’ invitation. In the previous meeting, in Covent Garden, Pickering introduces himself as the author of spoken

Sanskrit, while Higgins tells Pickering that he is the author of Higgins’ Universal

Alphabet. This same concern in exploring language scientifically unifies Higgins and

Pickering into an experimental cooperation in Wimpole Street to ‘repair’ Eliza’s way of speaking. For Higgins, a woman should have a well-spoken ability unless she will not be recognized as an existence. Higgins says to Eliza,

A woman who utters such depressing and disgusting sounds has no right to be anywhere – no right to live. Remember that you are a human being with a soul and the divine gift of articulate speech: that your native language is the language of Shakespeare and Milton and the Bible: and don’t sit there crooning like a bilious pigeon. (Chin, 2000:897)

It is actually a very extreme statement to say that Eliza has no right to exist and to live as human being only because of her improper way of speaking. What does Shaw want to say to his audience through this statement? It is assumed that instead of underlining that language can become the benchmark to distinguish one’s social status from others, Shaw also wants to utilize the statement to trigger the lower class people to think about their existence in society. Shaw encourages the lower class to contemplate about their own future which is designed freely as independent human beings who have

“souls and the divine gift” to improve their life day by day. He opens their eyes to strive for their rights to live as respectable people, not as slaves of the capitalists along their life time. He hates the proletariat who lead their life of servant-hood only to fulfill the demands of the bourgeoisie as if they were born to be exploited by that class. In his ideals, the proletariat must revolt and seize the mode of production in the capitalist society and become the subjects who determine their own life.

Eliza leads herself to be the object of the experiment by visiting the laboratory on the day after her meeting with Higgins and Pickering in the portico of St. Paul’s

Church Covent Garden. She is very interested in Higgins’ statement that he could pass her off as a duchess in six months. She is very convinced if Higgins’ statement can be realized her life will be better compared with the life of a cockney flower girl. The following dialogue tells about her coming to the laboratory.

MRS. PEARCE [ hesitating, evidently perplexed ] A young woman wants to see you, sir. HIGGINS. A young woman! What does she want? MRS. PEARCE. Well, sir, she says you’ll be glad to see her when you know

what she’s come about. She’s quite a common girl, sir. Very common indeed. I should have sent her away, only I thought perhaps you wanted her to talk into your machines. I hope I’ve not done wrong; but really you see such queer people sometimes—you’ll excuse me, I'm sure, sir— HIGGINS. Oh, that’s all right, Mrs. Pearce. Has she an interesting accent? MRS. PEARCE. Oh, something dreadful, sir, really. I don’t know how you can take an interest in it. HIGGINS [ to Pickering ] Lets have her up. Shew her up, Mrs. Pearce [ he rushes across to his working table and picks out a cylinder to use on the phonograph ]. MRS. PEARCE [ only half resigned to it ] Very well, sir. It's for you to say . [She goes downstairs ]. (Chin, 2000:900-901)

This conversation shows the first seconds of Eliza’s coming to the laboratory. It tells to the audience that firstly Eliza comes to the laboratory voluntarily encouraged by her own desire to improve her English. Yet, what happen after she becomes the student of

Professor Higgins is the despotic treatments she gets since the Professor’s hegemony dominates her freedom and rights. This hegemony pictures the great domination of the capitalist on the workers practiced everywhere in England in the industrial revolution era.

Other interesting reflection from the dialogue above is how Mrs. Pearce views

Eliza. She introduces Eliza to Higgins as a young woman, a quite common girl, very common indeed. This introduction shows how Mrs. Pearce treats other people based on their social class. She differentiates privileged and common people, lower class and upper class, and – regarding to the capitalist society portrayed in this play she also distinguishes – the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. It is not her fault since it is usual in

England at that time to relate people to their social class.

Moreover, Mrs. Pearce also underestimates Eliza as a girl who has nothing to

contribute to the experiment in the laboratory, even for whatever social relationship.

What can a young-inexperienced woman contribute to the laboratory? Can a “common girl” give something special to a scientific experiment? As most of common people are uneducated, what does an uneducated-common girl know about phonetics? It seems that through Mrs. Pearce, Shaw wants to criticize human relationship based on the binary opposition distinction: common – special/privileged; educated – uneducated; experienced – inexperienced; and scholar – laymen. Although Eliza says that Higgins will be glad to see her, Mrs. Pearce remains confused and thinks what Higgins can get from that common girl. Mrs. Pearce bases her consideration on the advantage Higgins may take from Eliza as she knows that Higgins is so concerned to his scientific business and takes in charge with others only for his linguistic ‘business’. The sentence “I should have sent her away, only I thought perhaps you wanted her to talk into your machines” proves Mrs. Pearce’s basic thought of the advantage.

Another reflection goes to how Higgins responds to Eliza’s arrival. In contrast to

Mrs. Pearce, Higgins does not care on how Eliza looks like. Instead of commenting

Mrs. Pearce’s eye-catching report, Higgins raises a new question, “Has she an interesting accent?” This is to show that Higgins does not care whether Eliza is a common girl or not. His concern is solely on something regarded to the accent or language sounds, one of the objects of his experiment. That is why the subject of the scene is not the hundred and thirty vowel-sounds distinguished by Professor Higgins but the entry of Eliza which is encouraged by her own imagination that is caught by

Higgins’ boast that he could teach her to speak properly and she has now come to learn.

The point here is Higgins’ perception on his relation with other people that as a prominent phonetician his concern is not on the humanistic aspect but on the linguistic aspect that is the language sounds one produces. Since every one who comes to his laboratory is always bound to his experiment, there occurs in his mind that the most important thing related to his expertise is the process of production of language sounds and the final product of his experiment. While the pupils and all machines in the laboratory are the objects to support his ‘process of production’.

Actually, it is ambiguous to interpret what Higgins means with ‘interesting accent’. Does he really mean a nice accent Eliza has? Or he means a unique language sound Eliza produces which becomes something ‘interesting’ to observe in the laboratory? It is assumed that Higgins is interested in the uniqueness rather than the niceness of the accent since Eliza’s accent is very unique and therefore it is interesting to be explored. This notion of uniqueness is not well grasped by Mrs. Pearce. She has misunderstood what Higgins means with ‘interesting accent’ when she replies the question by saying, “Oh, something dreadful, sir, really. I don’t know how you can take an interest in it.” Eliza’s ideals to be a lady of a florist shop that meets with Higgins’ boast to polish Eliza’s language in six months is of course out of Mrs. Pearce’s understanding. Mrs. Pearce’s intends to ask Eliza to go away since Eliza is just a common girl and probably useless for Higgins. But she delays her intention since she assumes that Higgins may need Eliza to speak to his machines. Higgins is, then, very interested in the ‘dreadful accent’ Eliza has and starts to arrange a schedule of six- month language course for Eliza. He says,

HIGGINS: Eliza, you are to live here for the next six months, learning how to speak beautifully, like a lady in a florist's shop. If you’re good and do whatever you’re told, you shall sleep in a proper bedroom, and have lots to eat, and money to buy chocolates and take rides in taxis. If you’re naughty and idle you will sleep in the back kitchen among the black beetles, and be walloped by Mrs. Pearce with a broomstick. At the end of six months you shall go to Buckingham Palace in a carriage, beautifully dressed. If the King finds out you’re not a lady, you will be taken by the police to the Tower of London, where your head will be cut off as a warning to other presumptuous flower girls. If you are not found out, you shall have a present of seven-and-sixpence to start life with as a lady in a shop. If you refuse this offer you will be a most ungrateful and wicked girl; and the angels will weep for you. [ To Pickering ] Now are you satisfied, Pickering? [To Mrs. Pearce ] Can I put it more plainly and fairly, Mrs. Pearce? (Chin, 2000:906)

This is the beginning of a six-month contract that creates a new cooperative relationship between Higgins and Eliza regarding to the language experiment to produce well-spoken manner for Eliza and economic benefits for Higgins. It is Eliza’s chaotic manner of uttering words that is considered by Higgins as a qualified raw material to be refined in his “language factory” due to her original and unique way of speaking. Without that qualification, Eliza may not get the permission from Higgins to come into the laboratory when Higgins says, “Lets have her up. Shew her up, Mrs.

Pearce!” But at the same time this is also the beginning of a new bad human relationship Eliza encounters.

Since the beginning of the meeting, Higgins has explained the rule of balance that is usually known as ‘award and punishment’. He says, “If you’re good and do whatever you’re told, you shall sleep in a proper bedroom, and have lots to eat, and money to buy chocolates and take rides in taxis. If you’re naughty and idle you will sleep in the back kitchen among the black beetles, and be walloped by Mrs. Pearce with

a broomstick.” What Higgins says to Eliza pictures the contract of work that usually exists in a factory environment which made by the first party as the work provider to be obeyed by the second party as the work seeker. In that kind of contract the two parties agree to tie each other in a relationship that normally provides mutual understanding.

But in Eliza – Higgins relationship, the contract is very unfair. It states only things related to Eliza: her duties, her behavior, the award she may enjoy, and the punishment she may face.

People come from countryside and villages to the town, to the centre of industrial complex seeking for jobs. As people who seek for work to earn for living by selling their labor power – the only property they have – the workers are warned not to break any rules made by the job provider. They should obey rules in the factory or they will be punished by the overseers who get the power from the factory owner to keep the discipline in the factory. For this purpose, every factory owner has arranged a strict discipline. The most famous rule due to the working system in the factory is the Factory

Act (imposed since 1834) that regulates the length of the working day in mills in which wool, silk, cotton, and flax are spun or woven by means of water or steam-power. This law also reduces the working hours to an average of twelve to thirteen, and forbids the employment of children less than nine years of age (Engels, 1978: 199).

“Sleeping in the proper bedroom” is not more than the picture of living in some houses provided by the factory owner for the staffs of the factory who are considered as loyal men and women who dedicated their life for the survival of the company. It is a

kind of award for those who behave well and give bigger contribution to the accumulation of the surplus value. On the other hand, for those who are naughty and idle and give less contribution in the production of goods should live in the houses which are mentioned by Eliza as “wasn’t fit for a pig to live in” or as described by

Engels as places “that no human being could possibly wish to live in them”(1979, 61).

As Higgins has less attention to Eliza’s daily needs, it seems that the factory owners also do not have good will to give good income to fulfill the workers’ daily needs such as proper houses, enough food and clothes. The capitalists think that giving high salary to the workers may decrease the profit and reduce the surplus value which they get by exploiting the workers. Therefore, since a factory may have thousands of workers, it is easier and cheaper for the capitalists to provide a kind of boarding house than a proper house for each family of the workers. It proves that the factory owners give more attention on the profit they may get from the process of production than the workers’ welfare. They merely exploit the labor power of the workers without gives to the workers a balanced compensation such as adequate wage, proper houses, good health service, and good condition of work. Instead of receiving good compensation, the workers are often punished and fined whenever they break the discipline of the factory.

Even, the workers who involve in factory strikes or labor movements will be put in jail without any fair court process as illustrated by Shaw as “sleeping in the back kitchen among the black beetles, and be walloped by Mrs. Pearce with a broomstick.”

By exposing Mrs. Pearce as the figure who controls Eliza, Shaw reminds his audience about the role of the factory overseers who observe and command the workers

to work in the name of the capitalists. About the existence of the supervision mechanism in the factory, Tucker (1978, 385-386) explains,

An industrial army of workmen, under the command of a capitalist, requires, like a real army, officers (managers), and sergeants (foremen, overlookers), who, while the work is being done, command in the name of the capitalist. The work of supervision becomes their established and exclusive function.

As the number of labourers increase to a large scale of working army, the capitalists need to have a kind of supervising staffs in order to create and to secure the harmonious team-work for their factory. If the supervision of the capitalists through their overlookers is to maintain the smoothness of the process of production, people may have no comment and objection on it. The problem is that the supervision and the control which is applied by the capitalists in the factory tend to be very despotic. “To be walloped by Mrs. Pearce with a broomstick” shows that brutality, including whipping, beating, and loss of wages have become a usual despotism that deliberately penetrated by the capitalists.

The fact that the workers are treated as the object and the commodity of industry is reflected in Pygmalion by exposing Eliza as the object and the commodity of

Higgins’ phonetic experiments. Higgins treats Eliza as if she has no other potentials as human being except her capability as a producer of language sounds. And for Higgins, the language sounds are more important than Eliza, the producer of sounds. From the opening of the play it is emphasized that Higgins knows more and cares more about sounds than about people. In this sense, Shaw criticizes the perception of the capitalists who consider goods or the products of their factory as the ultimate things, more than the

workers, the producers of the goods.

Compared with Pygmalion in Greek legend, the audience will find some inversions in Shaw’s Pygmalion . The primary inversion is that of Pygmalion’s character. The Pygmalion in Greek legend turns a statue into a human being, while

Shaw’s Pygmalion (read: Higgins) tries to turn a human being into a statue – or a ‘live doll’ according to Mrs. Higgins – as Higgins tries to make of Eliza a mechanical doll in the role of a duchess. It is Mrs. Higgins who becomes rather upset when Higgins and

Pickering ‘report’ the language experiment on Eliza. Mrs. Higgins objects the way her son and Pickering treat Eliza. She judges that those two scholars as a pretty pair of babies who have treated Eliza not more than a live doll, a passive figure with whom other people can do whatever they wish. The following dialogue illustrates the dispute between Higgins and Pickering in one side and Mrs. Higgins about the way of treating

Eliza.

HIGGINS. As if I ever stop thinking about the girl and her confounded vowels and consonants. I'm worn out, thinking about her, and watching her lips and her teeth and her tongue, not to mention her soul, which is the quaintest of the lot. MRS. HIGGINS. You certainly are a pretty pair of babies, playing with your live doll. HIGGINS. Playing! The hardest job I ever tackled: make no mistake about that, mother. But you have no idea how frightfully interesting it is to take a human being and change her into a quite different human being by creating a new speech for her. It's filling up the deepest gulf that separates class from class and soul from soul. PICKERING [ drawing his chair closer to Mrs. Higgins and bending over to her eagerly ] Yes: it's enormously interesting. I assure you, Mrs. Higgins, we take Eliza very seriously. Every week—every day almost—there is some new change. [ Closer again ] We keep records of every stage—dozens of gramophone disks and phonographs— HIGGINS [ assailing her at the other ear ] Yes, by George: it's the most

absorbing experiment I ever tackled. She regularly fills our lives up; doesn’t she, Pick? PICKERING. We’re always talking Eliza. HIGGINS. Teaching Eliza. PICKERING. Dressing Eliza. MRS. HIGGINS. What? HIGGINS. Inventing new Elizas (Chin, 2000:925-926)

This objectification of Eliza reduces her humanity. Higgins does not think Eliza has any feelings to bother about and dehumanizes her as an object of experiment. However

Higgins defends himself by saying that by teaching Eliza a new speech he is actually

“filling up the deepest gulf that separates class from class and soul from soul.” Then in an extreme state of excitement Higgins and Pickering declare that they both take Eliza very seriously and that they are always “talking Eliza,” “teaching Eliza,” “dressing

Eliza” and “inventing new Elizas.” All these statements make Mrs. Higgins surprised, but for her, Higgins is still not aware that he has treated Eliza like a doll that can be played with to make him joyful. Higgins only concerns to his joyfulness. He ignores the humanity aspect that Eliza has had since she was born into this world. In fact, he is really joyful playing with ‘the doll’ since ‘the doll’ has confounded vowels and consonants; things that he loves so much as the objects of his phonetic experiment. He is also very absorbed to watch Eliza’s lips, teeth, and tongue – the sounds articulators – to explore how every vowel and consonant is produced. He records the sounds into various machines, studies them with the help of Pickering, and uses them as the bases to repair Eliza’s way of speaking. Eliza’s vowels and consonants are considered as raw materials which should be processed mechanically in the laboratory before the

gramophone disks and phonographs; the language labor machines.

Shaw deliberately put in details all the machines – phonograph, laryngoscope, tiny organ, tuning forks, gramophone disks, wax cylinder box, and a set of lamp chimneys (Chin, 2000: 900) – as a metaphor to the factory machines that change raw materials to fabricating material goods or finished goods which are ready to be sold in the market. It seems that these metaphorical machines play the same role as the machines in the factory in the sense of forming raw materials become valuable-finished materials. However, Eliza is not ‘a material’. She is a human being. She must be treated as a respectable woman regardless to what social class she belongs. Without doing all these processes, Higgins thinks that Eliza cannot be sold to the ‘market’. During the six- month experiment, Eliza is exposed twice in two different ‘markets’. The first ‘market’ is in Mrs. Higgins’ at-home day when Eliza makes her fault regarding to her ‘blindness’ of what should be told in high class intercourse. In this upper-class company she behaves like an imperfectly functioning mechanical doll before Mrs. Higgins’ friends.

The second market is the ambassador’s garden party when she appears in triumph at the ball. But what happens after the ball is not expected by both Higgins and Pickering?

Eliza’s feelings are wounded because, after the reception, Higgins does not treat her kindly, but talks of her as a guinea pig.

All those bad treatments are the evidences of cruel practice of human exploitation in capitalist society in England portrayed by Pygmalion where the surplus- value – and all processes for creating it – is considered more important and higher than humanity value of the workers. The workers in the capitalists’ eyes are not more than

one of the factors of production. They are objects and commodities that work together with other factors of production to accumulate money in form of bank interest and surplus-value. It is Higgins who represents the nature of the capitalist – the target of

Shaw’s critique – who allows every effort on behalf of money. He measures Eliza regarding to her possession of money and laughs at her when she bargains to pay one shilling for the language lesson. Eliza’s imagination has been caught by Higgins’ boast that he could teach her to speak properly and she has now come to learn and to pay for her instructor. It is, of course absurd that in her ignorance, she imagines that she can pay a shilling for her lessons by saying,

A lady friend of mine gets French lessons for eighteen pence an hour from a real French gentleman. Well, you wouldn’t have the face to ask me the same for teaching me my own language as you would for French; so I won’t give more than a shilling. Take it or leave it. (Chin, 2000: 902-903)

The audience will naturally consider this as a joke. They will be reminded by Higgins that it is not really a joke but regarded as a percentage of Eliza’s income, a serious business proposition. Fortunately, Pickering - the gentleman, to whom Eliza gives her respect so much – challenges Higgins to pay all the expenses of the lessons if Higgins can create a new way of speaking for Eliza in six months. As Higgins decides to respond the challenge, Eliza is freed of paying any money and takes the language lessons free of charge. The following dialogue illustrates the challenge and response conversation.

PICKERING. Higgins: I'm interested. What about the ambassador's garden party? I'll say you’re the greatest teacher alive if you make that good. I'll bet you all the expenses of the experiment you cant do it. And I'll pay for

the lessons. LIZA. Oh, you are real good. Thank you, Captain. HIGGINS [ tempted, looking at her ] It's almost irresistible. She’s so deliciously low—so horribly dirty— LIZA [ protesting extremely ] Ah-ah-ah-ah-ow-ow-oo-oo!!! I aint dirty: I washed my face and hands afore I come, I did. PICKERING. You’re certainly not going to turn her head with flattery, Higgins. MRS. PEARCE [ uneasy ] Oh, don’t say that, sir: there’s more ways than one of turning a girl's head; and nobody can do it better than Mr. Higgins, though he may not always mean it. I do hope, sir, you wont encourage him to do anything foolish. HIGGINS [ becoming excited as the idea grows on him ] What is life but a series of inspired follies? The difficulty is to find them to do. Never lose a chance: it doesn’t come every day. I shall make a duchess of this draggletailed guttersnipe. LIZA [strongly deprecating this view of her ] Ah-ah-ah-ow-ow-oo! HIGGINS [carried away ] Yes: in six months—in three if she has a good ear and a quick tongue—I'll take her anywhere and pass her off as anything. We'll start today: now! this moment! Take her away and clean her, Mrs. Pearce. Monkey Brand, if it wont come off any other way. Is there a good fire in the kitchen?

(Chin, 2000:903-904)

It is interesting here to pay attention on how the two scholars and Mrs. Pearce treat and view Eliza. To Higgins, Eliza is “so deliciously low and so horribly dirty”. By saying so (and so many other sarcastic remarks like, “Take all her clothes off and burn them...”, “Wrap her in brown paper till the new clothes come,” ”Put her in the dustbin”), the audience of Pygmalion learns that Higgins is a man who really lacks of any understanding of his own behavior and has no empathy to the lower class people.

To Colonel Pickering, on the other hand, Eliza is a young girl, poor young girl and he sponsors her lessons with which he shows to the audience that he is really a generous man who care for the ‘fate’ of the poor. His concerns are more gentlemanly. He always has positive consideration on Eliza as Eliza herself thinks that she is a virtuous woman

by saying repeatedly along the play, “I'm a good girl, I am.” To Mrs. Pearce, Higgins’ housekeeper, Eliza is only a poor common girl. At first, she treats her as being beneath her but eventually she becomes so care to the poor girl and concerned about what

Higgins will do to her. She does not dehumanize Eliza and in fact becomes protective of her. These differing perspectives about the same individual contribute to the complexity of Eliza’s characterization.

Pickering now offers the famous betting that if Eliza can be passed off as a member of the upper classes at the ambassador’s garden party he will pay both for the lessons and for the expenses of the experiment and will ‘promotes’ Higgins as the greatest teacher alive. For Higgins, this betting will bring to him two advantages.

Firstly, it is a certain amount of money that Pickering will pay to him if he wins the betting. And secondly, the promotion that will be done by Pickering as a kind of announcement to the public that Higgins is really a great teacher of phonetics.

Economically, with the money and the fame he gets from Pickering’s promotion,

Higgins can secure his economic and social status as an expert of phonetics who usually belongs to the upper class of society. That is why, generated by his own excitement,

Higgins catches this chance (that he considers “doesn’t come every day”) and repeats his boast in the first act that he can pass off Eliza as a duchess in six month – “even in three months if Eliza has a good ear and a quick tongue” (Chin, 2000:904). Higgins is too enthusiastic that he does not want to postpone the ‘project’ any longer. Instead, he wants to start the experiment as soon as possible.

Dealing with human exploitation, consciously or unconsciously, Pickering’s

challenge directs Eliza to a worse situation. It happens since Higgins’ passion of money and fame has pushed him to work very hard and has forced Eliza into an inhumane condition of work. Higgins oppresses Eliza as if she is an unexhausted creature who can work day and night without any time to rest, who can be treated like an animal, who does not mind to accept sarcastic remarks, who has no feelings, who has no rights and freedom to voice her desires and complaints. Pickering, in this sense, plays two roles: he is the donator who funds the experiment, and simultaneously he is also the customer who orders certain ‘product’ to be provided by Higgins. When a factory accepts an order from its customer, the owner will push all workers to work hard day and night to fulfill the demand of the customer. The oppression from the capitalist usually happens in this kind of situation. The working hours become longer and the supervision becomes much stricter since the process of production must be finished on the time wished by the customer. The quality of the product must be also in the level desired by the order giver unless the product can be rejected and it means the loss for the factory. This picture of the life in capitalist society makes Pygmalion fit most obviously under the rubric of realism. It proves that the use of homology to show that an author is influenced by his/her society in writing literary works also bases on this rubric of realism. Shaw asserts (Dukore, 1973:8),

I created nothing; I invented nothing; I imagined nothing; I perverted nothing; I simply discovered drama in real life.

C. Social Implications of Class Distinction and Human Exploitation

Class distinction and human exploitation bring with them two social implications in society i.e., dehumanization and poverty. Dehumanization occurs since class distinction and human exploitation constitute gap between the capitalist and the workers which consequently lead the capitalist to give low respect to the workers and consider them as human beings of different level or objects of certain interest. While poverty is the consequence of the unfair treatment and the despotic policy in capitalist society in which the labor power of the workers are compensated so low. Poverty is also caused by the great unemployment since man-power loses in its competition against the machinery-power in industry, as Engels (1979, 163-164) asserts,

Every improvement in machinery throws workers out of employment, and the greater the advance, the more numerous the unemployed.

1. Dehumanization

Dehumanization is the deliberate removal of sympathetic human traits when referring to members of an opposing ideology, race, political party, or other source of conflict ( http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-dehumanization.htm ). It often begins with the removal of personal right and the treatment to other people as of lower dignity level

– even in the same level of animals – as the impact of the class distinction in society.

Bad treatments of the capitalist to the workers can be obviously seen in the form of rude remarks, brutal physical punishment, inhumane fine system, etc. In this case, the workers are not considered by the capitalists as their fellowmen or business partners,

but as ‘creature’ from lower level who can be exploited for the benefits of the capitalists.

It is, then, so tangible that dehumanization in capitalist system is related to the ignorance of human value and human nature as the capitalist imposes long working hours and low wage system that lead the factory owners to force the laborers to work like slaves. This practice shows the capitalists’ denial of the workers’ feelings, creativity, unique characters, talents and potentialities only because they are so greedy for the surplus value. This is contradicted to Marx’s theory of economic mode of production, as underlined by Berberoglu (1994, 19), that human beings are the prime agents of material production – a process that forms the basis of production and reproduction of human existence. Therefore, human beings must be placed as the centre of every economic activity and that all process of production, distribution and exchange should be dedicated to human needs.

The most obvious phenomenal practices of dehumanization in Pygmalion are shown by Shaw in the relationship between Higgins and Eliza which assumed as the reflection of the relationship between the capitalist and the workers. It is obvious since this play performs, in all acts, Higgins inhumane treatments to Eliza by calling her with so many sarcastic remarks, ignoring her feelings, considering her as foolish girl, and using her as far as she is needed. These are the focus of attention of the following discussion.

Talking about the sarcastic language used in the daily conversation between the capitalist and the laborers, Engels informs that the language used in the factories is

characterized by many witnesses as ‘indecent’, ‘bad’, and ‘filthy’ (1979, 176). This happens since the capitalist considers that hard work to gain big profit and surplus value can only be run well if he imposes strict method of control, rude instruction and sarcastic remarks. The capitalist – who knows that the workers rely their lives fully on the wage they receive from the factory – views the unfortunate class as lower and are not able to live without his ‘help’. This perception leads the capitalist to contempt the workers and shows his lack of respect to them in daily interaction.

Pygmalion shows almost in all acts how Higgins dehumanizes Eliza by calling her with some inhumane remarks. This indicates not only his low respect to the cockney flower girl but also his arrogant attitude to other people as if they have nothing to parallelize with his scientific property that is his brilliance as the professor of phonetics.

In the preface to the play, Shaw writes that one of his models for Henry Higgins is

Henry Sweet, a distinguished phonetician whom Shaw knew. Sweet’s arrogance and his lack of sweetness of character lead him to regard all scholars who are not rabid phoneticians as fools. Rather than contributing anything to scholarship on phonetics it is a libelous attack on another professor of language and literature whom Sweet considers incompetent to hold his position. All these characteristics are then adopted by Shaw ‘to create’ Higgins, the expert of phonetics in Pygmalion .

Higgins calls Eliza as “guttersnipe”, “creature picked from the mud”, or “a thing out the squashed cabbage leaf”. “Guttersnipe” is a special term which is usually used for beggars who live on the curb. This term is opposed to a noble predicate – ‘duchess’

– when Higgins says,

HIGGINS [ becoming excited as the idea grows on him ] What is life but a series of inspired follies? The difficulty is to find them to do. Never lose a chance: it doesnt (sic) come every day. I shall make a duchess of this draggle-tailed guttersnipe. (Chin, 2000:903)

According to Cambridge Advanced Learner’s Dictionary (2003), guttersnipe is a child from a poor area of a town who is dirty and dressed badly. Actually it is a proper term for Eliza since she is a poor girl living in slum and now she is wearing – according to Higgins’ perspective – dirty and ugly clothes. The problem is not whether the term proper or not to the actual situation related to who Eliza is and what she is wearing.

“Guttersnipe”, here, is used by Higgins in the conversation with Pickering talking about their betting.

By using this term, Higgins deliberately reminds Eliza of her lowest social status

(guttersnipe) and boasting that – if he wishes – he can transform the girl to the stratum she dreams (a duchess). Since this is a difficult project of transforming human’s social status – and simultaneously a very profitable experiment – Higgins shows that it is reasonable for him to receive from this rare opportunity a big amount of money from

Pickering who generously pays for Eliza’s language lessons. And beyond this economic issue related to Higgins’ greed to take profit from his experiment, another concern is the objectification of Eliza. Eliza becomes the object of the betting between Higgins and

Pickering and at the same time the object of a language experiment. This reflects the phenomena that exist in most of the capitalists’ perception. Firstly, the capitalist always regards the workers as people from the lowest class in society. They are the have-not.

They rely their lives upon the wage they earn from the capitalist. It is the capitalist’s

wish to determine the amount of their wage and the length of their working time.

Secondly, based on the first perception, the capitalist objectifies the workers and exploits them to raise the productivity in order to collect as much money as possible.

In other occasion, Higgins calls Eliza as “creature picked from the mud” or a

“thing out the squashed cabbage leaf”. He wants to make other people sure that six months ago Eliza was a flower girl with chaotic way of speaking. She lived in the slum and sold flowers by sitting all day on the curb of Tottenham Court road. Yet, now she has been transformed “by the help of a professor of phonetics” to be a lady. Without that help, Eliza is nothing. Higgins is so proud and arrogant to see that many witness his success and thinks that those people admire him due to the success. The two following quotations show this situation.

HIGGINS. Oh, all right. Very well. Pick: you behave yourself. Let us put on our best Sunday manners for this creature that we picked out of the mud. [ He flings himself sulkily into the Elizabethan chair ]. (Chin, 2000:943)

Or in another part of the play, Higgins says to his mother,

You let her alone, mother. Let her speak for herself. You will jolly soon see whether she has an idea that I haven’t put into her head or a word that I haven’t put into her mouth. I tell you I have created this thing out of the squashed cabbage leaves of Covent Garden; and now she pretends to play the fine lady with me.

(Chin, 2000:944)

For Higgins, Eliza is like his masterpiece that proves to the world that he is – as

Pickering says in the beginning of their betting – the greatest teacher alive. He ignores

the human nature in general that man qua man has his/her own ideals, desires, talents, and potentialities. For Higgins, Eliza is like a blank sheet of paper on whom he ‘writes’ the new way of speaking to promote her social status through his language experiment in Wimpole Street laboratory. Higgins as if only believes in the concept that human – who is born like tabularasa – should be modified by teaching him/her knowledge and skills to survive in his/her life. The ignorance of the human nature in general that manifested in the possession of ideals, talents, and freedom is considered as the dehumanization of the potentialities and the values of humanity of human beings, including human feelings.

Feeling is something inherently exists in human beings and becomes one of the most essential faculties that distinguish human beings from animals and other living creatures. Whenever one’s feeling is ignored or considered nothing, consciously or unconsciously, the essence and the dignity of human beings is dehumanized. When the audience of Pygmalion watches the play, the impression that Higgins does not care of

Eliza’s feeling is so strong. Many critics then conclude that there is dehumanization portrayed by the play to criticize the practice of the ignorance of feelings in daily human relation through attitudes, words, and action (Bentley 1988, 14). Observe the following conversation.

HIGGINS [ storming on ] Take all her clothes off and burn them. Ring up Whiteley or somebody for new ones. Wrap her up in brown paper till they come. LIZA. You’re no gentleman, you’re not, to talk of such things. I'm a good girl, I am; and I know what the like of you are, I do. HIGGINS. We want none of your Lisson Grove prudery here, young woman. Youve got to learn to behave like a duchess. Take her away, Mrs. Pearce.

If she gives you any trouble wallop her. LIZA [ springing up and running between Pickering and Mrs. Pearce for protection ] No! I'll call the police, I will. MRS. PEARCE. But I’ve no place to put her. HIGGINS. Put her in the dustbin. LIZA. Ah-ah-ah-ow-ow-oo! PICKERING. Oh come, Higgins! be reasonable. MRS. PEARCE [ resolutely ] You must be reasonable, Mr. Higgins: really you must. You cant walk over everybody like this. (Chin, 2000:904) To start his project of transforming Eliza from a flower girl to a duchess,

Higgins gives orders which are susceptible of more than one interpretation. Eliza hears the phrase, “Take all her clothes off,” and, assuming that Higgins considers her as a prostitute. Therefore she protests by saying that she is a good girl and in contrast to

Higgins’ remarks she suspects Higgins as not a gentleman. The whole action of the second act depends upon this doubt about whether Higgins’ intentions are sexual or intellectual. Eliza assumes that they are sexual, and Pickering advises Higgins to be reasonable. Alfred Doolittle, Eliza’s father, also arrives to investigate this dubious situation and extract what economic profit he can get for himself.

Audiences and readers, therefore, are right to wonder about the relationship between Higgins and Eliza. She is right to be alarmed since Higgins does make it appear that he considers her something which he may use for his pleasure. She naturally interprets her role as that of a prostitute. The irony is that nothing could be further from

Higgins’ intentions. He is interested in her mind as the object of an experiment and does not really regard her as having any feelings that go with her. As a critique to every policy in industry that neglects the aspect of emotion/feeling and gives more respect to

reason as the typical of rationalism, Shaw performs Colonel Pickering who objects what

Higgins practices on Eliza.

PICKERING [ in good-humored remonstrance ] Does it occur to you, Higgins, that the girl has some feelings? HIGGINS [ looking critically at her ] Oh no, I don’t think so. Not any feelings that we need bother about. [ Cheerily ] Have you, Eliza? LIZA. I got my feelings same as anyone else. (Chin, 2000:905)

Pickering’s question whether Higgins is aware or not that Eliza has some feelings is answered smartly by Higgins that his project does not deal with the feelings but with the scientific effort to teach Eliza how to speak properly in. Anyhow, for Eliza, the experiment should not only touch the intellectual aspect but also the emotional one.

Therefore, she strictly underlines that she has feelings as other human beings and highlights her will to be treated as other mankind.

Dehumanization also goes with the consideration that other people have no capabilities to understand things and to determine their own future, that other people cannot be involved (or invited to involve) in the decision making process, and that other people must follow whatever ordered by the decision maker whether they agree or not.

This consideration degrades the potentialities every human has and denies the equality of dignity among human beings. On the other hand, the perception has led certain person or group of people to treat others as foolish, incapable, unskilled, uneducated, or even savage as reflected in the following dialogue.

HIGGINS. How can she? She’s incapable of understanding anything. Besides, do any of us understand what we are doing? If we did, would we ever do it?

PICKERING. Very clever, Higgins; but not sound sense. [ To Eliza ] Miss Doolittle— LIZA [ overwhelmed ] Ah-ah-ow-oo! HIGGINS. There! That’s all you get out of Eliza. Ah-ah-ow-oo! No use explaining. As a military man you ought to know that. Give her orders: that’s what she wants. (Chin, 2000:906)

To criticize this malpractice of ignoring human potentialities in capitalist society, Shaw presents Higgins as a figure who always views Eliza as an idiot, a poor stupid girl, and a foolish guttersnipe who cannot make any better effort to survive and to live in more reasonable ways. This is a critique that Shaw conveys upon what he witnesses in manufacture sphere where the workers are regarded as stupid laborers who can only work by orders. The quotation reflects the fact how the workers are treated as if they have no creativity, no imagination, and no desires. The capitalists ignore the fact that workers can express who they are through the activities which shows what they produce and how they produce. Through working, the workers actually can express their creativity or desires and at the same time they fulfill their daily needs. Yet, from the capitalists’ view point, the workers must work based on the capitalists’ design and desires. The workers are considered as ‘idiot’ people who must work under the command and instructions from the capitalist. As Eliza’s objection to Higgins’ less appreciation to every human’s feelings arouse a serious conflict between Higgins and her, in fact, the situation where the workers’ potentialities are neglected by the factory owners also often arouse conflict between the capitalist and the laborers.

It is common, whenever an instruction is given in very strict and detailed steps;

there is a big possibility for the workers to do any mistake. When this happens, the factory owner will brutally punishes the workers and fines them. This condition causes many workers feel uncomfortable to keep working in a factory. Yet it is hard for them to choose whether to quit from the job which leads them to be unemployed or remain working in the factory while experiencing those bad treatments. The capitalists, who is very tricky in keeping the workers to be their employees, are usually persuade – and simultaneously intimidate – the workers not to leave the work. They try to convince the workers that the strict discipline, the sarcastic remarks, and the despotic treatment upon them are needed to keep the factory run well. In turn, with the profit that the factory gains and collects, the factory owner can pay their wage to make them survived. The workers, who in fact rely their life mostly on the wage they receive from the factory, then, decide to stay working. Pygmalion reflects the persuasion made by the capitalists through Henry Higgins who tries to make Eliza convinced that his sarcastic manners is something natural as far as it dedicates for Eliza’s transformation. Higgins says to Eliza,

It's all you’ll get until you stop being a common idiot. If you’re going to be a lady, you’ll have to give up feeling neglected if the men you know don’t spend half their time snivelling over you and the other half giving you black eyes. If you can’t stand the coldness of my sort of life, and the strain of it, go back to the gutter. Work till you are more a brute than a human being; and then cuddle and squabble and drink till you fall asleep. Oh, it's a fine life, the life of the gutter. It's real: it's warm: it's violent: you can feel it through the thickest skin: you can taste it and smell it without any training or any work. Not like Science and Literature and Classical Music and Philosophy and Art. You find me cold, unfeeling, selfish, don’t you? Very well: be off with you to the sort of people you like. Marry some sentimental hog or other with lots of money, and a thick pair of lips to kiss you with and a thick pair of boots to kick you with. If you can’t appreciate what you’ve got, you’d better get what you can appreciate.

(Chin, 2000:949)

When Higgins accuses that Eliza’s admirer, Freddy, cannot make something of her, Eliza replies that “I never thought of us making anything of one another; and you never think of anything else. I only want to be natural.” Being natural is something that

Higgins cannot comprehend. Being so focused on and thinking merely about the scientific experiment in his language laboratory leads Higgins to neglect some of human social and psychological needs. He ignores the fact that human needs to be honored and to have affection and respect. Instead of giving attention on Eliza’s feeling, he accuses her of wanting to marry “some sentimental hog or other with lots of money, and a thick pair of lips to kiss you with and a thick pair of boots to kick you with.” It is interesting to reflect that Higgins is aware of his lack of attention to other people’s feeling but this awareness does not give any influence to change his manner in treating other people.

Relating this reflection to the reality, it is tangible that the capitalists are actually aware that the system they impose in the factory has dehumanized the workers due to the long working hours with low wage and the brutal punishment to the workers but the awareness does not contribute any change to the way they treat the workers.

2. Poverty

As the factories started to be the center of economic activities in England from which the laborers earned their living, there was a vast wave of urbanization that led many people moved to the industrial cities which continued to grow in numbers and extent. Morgan (1988, 481) informs,

The urbanization of the mass of the population and the decline of rural areas not surprisingly had profound social consequences for all classes of the population. The greatest fear of the propertied class in the first decade of the century had been of a revolutionary working classes: that no such class emerged is perhaps the most striking feature of the second decade of the century.

The migration of people to the cities in the early twentieth century to work in the central areas of industry is considered as the most striking feature of urbanization compared with the people mobility from the rural areas to the cities in other eras. It means that most of the industrial labourers were from the villages outside the towns who were bound themselves to the manufactures as the waged workers. Yet, since the wages they earned are so low, their coming to the cities causes new social problems regarded to housing, health and education services, unemployment, crime, and above of those all is the poverty itself. Many children do not go to school because their parents have no money to support their education. Instead of going to school, the children are brought to the factory to work as child-labors or asked to sell things like flowers, cigarettes, candies on the curb as portrayed through the Pygmalion ’s main character, Eliza, the flower girl. Robert Blatchford, a Socialist journalist, who makes so many reports about the revolting life situation of the poor, asks his readers to be aware of the children future and asks them to think about certain concrete effort to help the children. He writes,

… Suppose that a child is born in a poor hovel, in a poor slum. Suppose its home surroundings are such that cleanliness and modesty are well-nigh impossible. Suppose the gutter is its playground; the gin shop its nursery; the factory its college; the drunkard its exemplar; the ruffian and the thief its instructors! Suppose bad nursing, bad air, bad water, bad food, dirt, hunger, ill- usage, foul language, and hard work are its daily portion. Suppose it has inherited poor blood, dull spirits, enfeebled wit, and a stunted stature, from its ill-fed, untaught, overworked, miserable, ignorant, and unhealthy parents, can

you expect that child to be clever, and moral, and thrifty, and clean, and sober? (Ausubel, 1955:33)

For Shaw, the main factor that causes all social problems is poverty. He witnesses how poverty marginalizes so many working class people, including children, and leaving them beyond the support of civilization. In his perception, there are no evil people but evil circumstances which must be identified, attacked and eliminated. In his opinion, the children of poor family become uneducated not because they are foolish but because their circumstance does not give to them sufficient support for schooling; prostitution is not seen as a moral sin but as a product of social environment; and crime must be viewed not as the action of criminal people but of the depressed situation of poverty. Showing his concern on the less improvement in political legislation to relieve the social problem that creates extreme contrasts of wealth and poverty, in his letter to

H.G. Wells (Wodd, http://us. penguinclassics. com/ static/ html/ essays/bernardshaw.html ), Shaw writes,

Poverty is the greatest of our evils and the worst of our crimes and humanity cannot realistically advance until poverty is eliminated. We must reform society before we can reform ourselves since personal righteousness is impossible in an unrighteous environment.

Employing Alfred Doolittle as his mouth piece, Shaw attacks the welfare legislation that is rooted in the concept of the deserving and undeserving poor introduced by the 19 th century Poor Laws (Batty, 2003), which provides substantial assistance only for old people and widows. According to this law, the working class people who earn low wages are not deserved to get such assistance. Shaw objects this

law since it treats poor widows and poor old people different from poor laborers. In this sense, he does not agree to distinguish poor people as the law instructs. Instead, he suggests an equal treatment and distribution of social donation from the government to all paupers including the poor laborers who are described by Engels as people who

“consume today what they earned yesterday” and “the subjects who do not have the slightest guarantee for being able to earn the barest necessities of life” (Engels,

1979:146). In the ‘discussion’ about the depressed situation caused by the poverty he encounters, Alfred Doolittle says to Mrs. Higgins,

DOOLITTLE: [ softening his manner in deference to her sex ] That’s the tragedy of it, maam. It's easy to say chuck it; but I haven’t the nerve. Which of us has? We're all intimidated. Intimidated, maam: that’s what we are. What is there for me if I chuck it but the workhouse in my old age? I have to dye my hair already to keep my job as a dustman. If I was one of the deserving poor, and had put by a bit, I could chuck it; but then why should I, cause the deserving poor might as well be millionaires for all the happiness they ever has. They don’t know what happiness is. But I, as one of the undeserving poor, have nothing between me and the pauper's uniform but this here blasted three thousand a year that shoves me into the middle class. (Excuse the expression, maam: you’d use it yourself if you had my provocation). They’ve got you every way you turn: it's a choice between the Skilly of the workhouse and the Char Bydis of the middle class; and I haven’t the nerve for the workhouse. Intimidated: that’s what I am. Broke. Bought up. Happier men than me will call for my dust, and touch me for their tip; and I'll look on helpless, and envy them. And that’s what your son has brought me to. [ He is overcome by emotion ]. (Chin, 2000:942)

Besides describing the unjust treatment that Doolittle experiences as an undeserving poor, this quotation also reflects the intimidation felt by poor laborers who live in workhouse. The intimidation is so strong that Doolittle has no audacity to leave his job as a dustman as he says, “but I haven’t the nerve”, which also means that he is

afraid of losing his place for living. Since most laborers do not have any capability to buy private houses, they have to live in the houses provided by their employers. In certain extent, this system keeps the laborers to stay working in the same factory unless they will lose the house. Doolittle wishes to be the deserving poor in order being able to leave the workhouse, many laborers also dream to have their own house to free themselves from the employers’ bound. Instead of the small amount of workhouses, most houses are located in slums. Shaw witnesses many people live in that kinds of houses which do not fit to live. He puts his testimony about the condition of the houses of poor people in his fictional character’s mouth, Eliza, who says that her own dorm in

Lisson Grove is “wasn’t fit for a pig to live in” (Chin, 2000: 894). Since the local authorities are trying to clean up the city from many wild settlements of the new comers, these unfortunate people can be removed any time the local officials wish. But some of them are luckier that they may live in workhouses built by the local government though they have to work for certain public services with very low wages.

These people live in an intimidated situation of slum clearance, lose of jobs, and epidemic diseases caused by bad sanitation.

Poverty is affected by many factors including income, health, education, access to fulfill daily basic needs, family circumstances and the socio-political system a society has. Actually, it is difficult to measure poverty, but income and expenditure are commonly used to measure poverty. When someone or a family cannot afford the basic needs for daily life, they are categorized as poor. In this sense the fulfillment of the basic needs becomes the measurement to evaluate the minimum standard of living of

someone or family or group of people. The satisfaction of basic needs means meeting the minimum requirements of a family for personal consumption: food, shelter, and clothing. In Pygmalion , Shaw underlines that the paupers need the same basic necessities as the wealthy people require. Again, through Alfred Doolittle he voices the idea and tells the audience if there is no difference between the poor and the rich in the need of food, clothes, and shelter.

DOOLITTLE. … But my needs is as great as the most deserving widow's that ever got money out of six different charities in one week for the death of the same husband. I don’t need less than a deserving man: I need more. I don’t eat less hearty than him; and I drink a lot more. I want a bit of amusement, cause I'm a thinking man. I want cheerfulness and a song and a band when I feel low. Well, they charge me just the same for everything as they charge the deserving. (Chin, 2000:912)

Yet unfortunately, as the hand-work is superseded by machine-work, many workers are thrown out of employment. Thus, unemployment, then, becomes the new cause of poverty since the low purchasing power that has existed among the poor laborers decreased to zero or even to minus. What can a poor family buy if there is no money in their cash? In fact, the greater the advance in the new invention of machines the more numerous the unemployed, and in turn, makes the economic condition of the laborers becomes worse. This revolting condition is faced by the working class without any capability to release themselves from the oppression the capitalists apply on them.

Conversely, they even rely their life upon the capitalists’ ‘policy’. The capitalists know about this dependence and utilize it to exploit the workers further.

LIZA. … Last night, when I was wandering about, a girl spoke to me; and I tried to get back into the old way with her; but it was no use. You told me, you

know, that when a child is brought to a foreign country, it picks up the language in a few weeks, and forgets its own. Well, I am a child in your country. I have forgotten my own language, and can speak nothing but yours. That’s the real break-off with the corner of Tottenham Court Road. Leaving Wimpole Street finishes it. PICKERING [ much alarmed ] Oh! but you’re coming back to Wimpole Street, aren’t you? You’ll forgive Higgins? HIGGINS [ rising ] Forgive! Will she, by George! Let her go. Let her find out how she can get on without us. She will relapse into the gutter in three weeks without me at her elbow. (Chin, 2000:946)

Using irony, Higgins mocks Eliza that she cannot live without depending on his help along her life. He says, “Let her find out how she can get on without us. She will relapse into the gutter in three weeks without me at her elbow.” He convincingly says that because he assumes that Eliza has lost all of her relationship with her previous customers and her former livelihood. It is impossible for Eliza to live without Higgins.

This is the portrait of the capitalists’ perception that once a laborer works with them he will not go away from them. This dependence on the ‘policy’ of the capitalists leads many workers to stay working in the same factory although their wages are so low, although they are treated very badly, and although they remain living as poor people along their life time.

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CHAPTER IV

MAIN CHARACTER’S REACTION TO THE SOCIAL

CONDITIONS AS THE PORTRAIT OF THE WORKING CLASS

STRUGGLE IN CAPITALIST SOCIETY

To answer the second research question of this thesis, this chapter will discuss the reaction of the main character of Pygmalion , Eliza Doolittle, to fight for better life with regard to the social conditions she faces. It is assumed that Eliza’s reaction to the exploitation and the despotic treatment of Higgins is the portrait of working class struggle in capitalist society due to the class antagonistic conflict between the capitalist

(the dominant and the oppressor) and the labourers (the subordinate and the oppressed).

The capitalist-labourer antagonism on which Karl Marx bases the modern class struggle is considered by many socialists as the main casual factor of the many conflicts occurred in society in the end of nineteenth and the early twentieth century in England.

Capital , according to Marx, is created with the purchase of commodities for the purpose of creating new commodities with an exchange value higher than the amount of money in the original purchases. The use of labor power had itself become a commodity under capitalism since the exchange value of labor power, as reflected in the wage, is less than the value it produces for the capitalist. This difference in values, he argues, constitutes surplus value , which the capitalists extract and accumulate. In his book

Capital , Marx argues that the capitalist mode of production is distinguished by how the

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owners of capital extract this surplus from workers in its comparison with the sale-value of produced commodities. For Marx, this cycle of the extraction of the surplus value by the owners of capital or the bourgeoisie becomes the basis of class struggle (Tucker,

1978:444-445).

Pygmalion pictures the class conflict between the capitalist vs. the workers and satirizes the social ignorance in which the labour regulations made by the ruling class and the political economy practiced by the capitalist do not meet with the needs and the aspirations of the working class. Shaw criticizes the effort that is meant to help the workers, yet even, in fact, creates a new sort of exploitation. The writer of this thesis finds that class struggle reflected in Pygmalion is closely related to the collective efforts of the labourers to oppose the capitalist oppression, and to abolish the class distinction.

It is obvious that the conflict in that play is between Eliza and Higgins.

Basically, it is a kind of domestic conflict between the professor and his student but since the conflict is brought to light due to human exploitation practiced by a man of a higher social class to a girl of lower social class, the writer of this thesis strongly insists that the conflict symbolizes the class antagonism between the capital holding class and the working class. Eliza voices the struggle that is usually strived by the labourers; that is the struggle to oppose the capitalist oppression and the struggle to be treated equally as human beings.

A. Class Struggle to Oppose the Capitalist Oppression

As stated in chapter III, the conflict occuring in capitalist society is caused by

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class antagonism, human exploitation, dehumanization, and poverty. This conditions lead the struggle of the working class becomes a class conflict with the capital holding class (Barry, 1995:156-157). It is the conflict between the oppressed class who experiences the exploitation and the oppressor class who practices the exploitation and exercises power. The oppressed class does the struggle to be free from the social and economic evils (class distinction, human exploitation, dehumanization and poverty), while the oppressor class struggles is to achieve the highest profit and to accumulate as much surplus values as they can.

Draper (1978, 42) states,

The working class moves toward class struggle insofar as capitalism fails to satisfy its economic and social needs and aspirations. There is no evidence that workers like to struggle anymore than anyone else; the evidence is that capitalism compels and accustoms them to do so.

This quotation shows that it is the capitalists who cause the working class to do class struggle since they do not have any concern to treat the workers humanely and to satisfy the workers’ economic and social needs. As far as the capitalism exists, it is assumed that the implementation of low wage and long working hours will remain at the station that gives economic benefits mostly to the capital holding class. Thus, class struggle is effort to enforce the capitalists to impose the average rate of wage to support the workers to live sufficiently. Citing Engels’ statement, Draper (1978, 95) writes,

The average rate of wages is equal to the sum of necessaries sufficient to keep up the race of workmen in a certain country according to the standard of life habitual in that country. That standard of life may be very different for different classes of workmen. The great merit of Trade Unions, in their struggle to keep up the rate of wages and to reduce working hours, is that they tend to keep up

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and to raise the standard of life … The law of wages, then, is not one which draws a hard and fast line. It is not inexorable with certain limits. There is at every time for every trade a certain latitude within which the rate of wages may be modified by the results of the struggle between the two contending parties.

Eric Hobsbawm, in the introduction chapter for Frederick Engels’ book entitled The

Condition of the Working Class in England (Engels, 1979:12-13), shows that not all workers are concerned to the struggle to get better conditions of life. Regarding to the ways of facing the bad situations in the factory, Hobsbawm divides the workers into three main groups. The first group succumbs to the bad treatment of the factory owner – allowing themselves to be dehumanized. The second group submits passively to their fate and exists as best they can as respectable law-abiding citizens, take no interest in public affairs and thus actually help the middle class to tighten their chains which bind the workers. Finally, the third group is the workers who have real and strong concern to humanity and dignity, who are to be found in the fight against the bourgeoisie in the labour movement.

Dealing with those three groups of workers according to Hobsbawm, there are three characters presented by Pygmalion who have different way of thinking about the social condition they encounter. The first character is Alfred Doolittle – Eliza’s father – who accepts himself as a dustman without any comment and complaint. He does his job as garbage collector and road sweeper as one of the duties of people who live in the workhouse – a government’s facility for poor people. He is the representation of the first group of workers described by Hobsbawm who has given up to the bad condition of life and thinks that he was born to be an undeserving poor along his life as he himself

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says,

…Undeserving poverty is my line. Taking one station in society with another, it’s – it’s – well, it’s the only one that has any ginger in it, to my taste. (Chin, 2000:913).

The second character to represent the second group of workers is Mrs. Pearce –

Higgins’ housekeeper. She has enough audacity to object her master regarding to the rude remarks or bad treatment her master applies to other people but she is so receptive to the station of life she has without striving to change it. She protests that Higgins

“can’t take a girl up like that as if (he) were picking up a pebble on the beach” (Chin,

2000:904). She expresses her concern over Eliza’s future and insists that Eliza has a right to know what she is doing if she will entrust herself to Higgins for six months. She does not dehumanize Eliza and in fact becomes protective of her. The union and the solidarity of Mrs. Pearce and Eliza are then interpreted as new strengths and consciousness to arouse the workers’ collectiveness feeling in their class struggle. The third character who deals with the third group of workers stated by Hobsbawm is Eliza

Doolittle. While Alfred Doolittle is satisfied to be part of the undeserving poor and rejects the hypocrisy of middle class morality; and while Mrs. Pearce receives her position as a housekeeper as a final station of her life; Eliza wants to escape from her class and willing to become a member of the middle class. “I want to be a lady in a flower shop ‘stead of selling at the corner of Tottenham Court Road”, she says (Chin,

2000:902). In fact this is exactly the reason she has come to Higgins’ laboratory; this is also the real expression showing her life ideals that must be struggled. All the plot of

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Pygmalion indicates her consistent struggle to fight her poverty and to oppose every human exploitation and dehumanization addressed to her. The analysis in this chapter will focus on Eliza’s struggle.

Eliza’s struggle is supported by some other characters. She gets positive support from Mrs. Pearce (Higgins’ house keeper) – who, in some senses, is very concerned and protective to her; from Pickering (Higgins’ colleague) – who pays for Eliza’s language lesson and who gives high respect to Eliza’s humanity and feelings; and from Mrs.

Higgins (Higgins’ mother) – who always pleads Eliza of his son’s rudeness, questions and criticizes the importance of the language project in Wimpole Street laboratory for Eliza’s future and protests the way her son treats Eliza as a live-doll. By presenting all these supports from other characters, Shaw underlines that class struggle should be done in togetherness.

Mrs. Pearce’s is from, more or less, the same class with Eliza. Thus, her support to Eliza’s struggle reflects the support and the solidarity among the workers that later on emerges in the form of labour movements. The workers have experienced hard times together, and can therefore feel for those in trouble. It is the experience of exploitation which leads them to feel as one group of people who encounter the same suffering due to the oppression of the factory owner. In Marxist terminology, this feeling has aroused in every worker a class consciousness which is described by Drapper (1978, 97) as a consciousness that come through practical experience of oppression. This class consciousness unifies the workers structurally as one social class in opposition to the capitalist who exploit them in industry. It makes the workers so solider each others and

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considers every person as human being although they are less than human beings to the capitalist. They are more approachable, friendlier, and less greedy for money, though they need it far more than the capital holding class. It is assumed that this class consciousness has encouraged Mrs. Pearce to show her objection when Higgins asks her to take all Eliza’s clothes and put her in the dustbin.

HIGGINS [carried away ] Yes: in six months—in three if she has a good ear and a quick tongue—I'll take her anywhere and pass her off as anything. We'll start today: now! this moment! Take her away and clean her, Mrs. Pearce. Monkey Brand, if it wont come off any other way. Is there a good fire in the kitchen? MRS. PEARCE [ protesting ]. Yes; but— HIGGINS [storming on ] Take all her clothes off and burn them. Ring up Whiteley or somebody for new ones. Wrap her up in brown paper till they come. LIZA. You’re no gentleman, you’re not, to talk of such things. I'm a good girl, I am; and I know what the like of you are, I do. HIGGINS. We want none of your Lisson Grove prudery here, young woman. Youve got to learn to behave like a duchess. Take her away, Mrs. Pearce. If she gives you any trouble wallop her. LIZA [ springing up and running between Pickering and Mrs. Pearce for protection ] No! I'll call the police, I will. MRS. PEARCE. But I’ve no place to put her. HIGGINS. Put her in the dustbin. LIZA. Ah-ah-ah-ow-ow-oo! PICKERING. Oh come, Higgins! be reasonable. MRS. PEARCE [ resolutely ] You must be reasonable, Mr. Higgins: really you must. You cant walk over everybody like this. Higgins, thus scolded, subsides. The hurricane is succeeded by a zephyr of amiable surprise. HIGGINS [with professional exquisiteness of modulation] I walk over everybody! My dear Mrs. Pearce, my dear Pickering, I never had the slightest intention of walking over anyone. All I propose is that we should be kind to this poor girl. We must help her to prepare and fit herself for her new station in life. If I did not express myself clearly it was because I did not wish to hurt her delicacy, or yours. ( Liza, reassured, steals back to her chair ). MRS. PEARCE [ to Pickering ] Well, did you ever hear anything like that, sir? PICKERING [ laughing heartily ] Never, Mrs. Pearce: never.

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HIGGINS [ patiently ] What’s the matter? MRS. PEARCE. Well, the matter is, sir, that you can’t take a girl up like that as if you were picking up a pebble on the beach. HIGGINS. Why not? MRS. PEARCE. Why not! But you don’t know anything about her. What about her parents? She may be married. LIZA. Garn! HIGGINS. There! As the girl very properly says, Garn! Married indeed! Don’t you know that a woman of that class looks a worn out drudge of fifty a year after she’s married. LIZA. Whood marry me? HIGGINS [ suddenly resorting to the most thrillingly beautiful low tones in his best elocutionary style ] By George, Eliza, the streets will be strewn with the bodies of men shooting themselves for your sake before I’ve done with you. MRS. PEARCE. Nonsense, sir. You mustn’t talk like that to her. LIZA [ rising and squaring herself determinedly ] I'm going away. He's off his chump, he is. I don’t want no balmies teaching me. HIGGINS [ wounded in his tenderest point by her insensibility to his elocution ] Oh, indeed! I'm mad, am I? Very well, Mrs. Pearce: you needn’t order the new clothes for her. Throw her out. LIZA [ whimpering ] Nah-ow. You got no right to touch me. MRS. PEARCE. You see now what comes of being saucy. [ Indicating the door ] This way, please . LIZA [ almost in tears ] I didn’t want no clothes. I wouldn’t have taken them [ she throws away the handkerchief ]. I can buy my own clothes. HIGGINS [ deftly retrieving the handkerchief and intercepting her on her reluctant way to the door ] You’re an ungrateful wicked girl. This is my return for offering to take you out of the gutter and dress you beautifully and make a lady of you. MRS. PEARCE. Stop, Mr. Higgins. I wont allow it. It's you that are wicked. Go home to your parents, girl; and tell them to take better care of you. LIZA. I aint got no parents. They told me I was big enough to earn my own living and turned me out. (Chin, 2000: 904)

Mrs. Pearce gives her support to Eliza’s struggle by protesting to bad things regarding to the way Higgins treats ‘the new student’. Higgins’s order to take all Eliza’s clothes off and burn them on fire is the first matter that arouses Mrs. Pearce’s protest.

As to make someone nude is a humiliated matter, Mrs. Pearce humanist feeling is

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disturbed by the instruction. She objects, “You must be reasonable, Mr. Higgins: really you must. You cant walk over everybody like this” when Higgins ask her to put Eliza in the dustbin. Dustbin is a place into which the garbage is thrown away. By putting Eliza into the dustbin, Higgins as if treats her as garbage, not as human beings. For Mrs.

Pearce, Eliza is a human being. She should be treated in reasonable ways as other human beings regardless her social status, gender, appearance, education, etc. By assuming that Mrs. Pearce is also sometimes treated badly in the same way as Higgins treats Eliza, her objection emerges from class consciousness as Goldmann (1981,86) describes,

Men living under similar conditions constitute social groups which elaborate a complex of habits and mental structures to resolve their problems. With these elaborations they are able to act in the world, but such habits and mental structures not only govern their behavior but also their intelligence, thought, and emotions.

The similar condition which is experienced by Eliza and Mrs. Pearce reflects the condition that is faced by most workers in England in early twentieth century. It is the condition due to the practice of dehumanization in industrial sphere which constitutes two main social classes – the working class and the capital holding class. The condition constitutes not only those classes but also the antagonism between them in accordance with their totally different interest in industry. From the workers’ side, the antagonism is related to the inhumane treatment they encounter. Shaw views the inhumane treatment that is applied by the capitalist on the workers as a phenomenon that arises from the concept of man in the capitalist’s mind. Pygmalion highlights the oppression

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to the lower class as the effect of the misconception of the upper class about human being.

If man qua man is a recognizable and ascertainable entity; that man can be defined as human not only biologically and anatomically but also psychologically – as defined by Karl Marx in Fromm (1963:24) – so, Mrs. Pearce’s plead toward Eliza represents the struggle of the working class to regain their dignity as human beings.

Physically, people wear clothes in order to protect their bodies from natural conditions: heat, extreme cold weather, humidity, and strong sunlight. But psychologically, wearing clothes is meant to wrap some certain parts of human body that may not be exposed to other people based on certain cultural, social and religious beliefs. Thus, putting off

Eliza’s clothes and burning them means denuding Eliza physically and humiliating her or hurting her feelings psychologically. This metaphoric action is deliberately presented by Shaw to reveal an inhumane treatment of the capitalists who have “put all the rights of the workers off” and considered them not as human beings but as waged slaves. The instruction to denude Eliza – that comes from a professor of phonetics – is really absurd, inhumane, and rarely happens in normal situation whenever people give their respect to each other in good ways. When Mrs. Pearce asks Pickering, “Did you ever hear anything like that, sir?” – Pickering answers, “Never, Mrs. Pearce: never.” This is an irony presented by Shaw to criticize the lack of human sense of the capitalist who usually has better education level; who knows much about what good things they should perform based on their religion moral teaching; who is considered as savage, civilized, and cultured, who knows much about poetry, philosophy, art, and science (as

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boasted by Higgins in Chin, 2000:921) – but has no good will to practice all those excellences in their factory.

To counter Mrs. Pearce’s objection, Higgins’ defends, “I never had the slightest intention of walking over anyone. All I propose is that we should be kind to this poor girl. We must help her to prepare and fit herself for her new station in life.” Higgins utters the sentence innocently as if he does not do anything wrong. He as if ignores the inhumane instruction to denude Eliza. He intends to make a clarification by uttering that sentence, but he also says the more or less same answers which usually come out from the capitalists’ mouth to counter every protest of the workers regarding to the exploitation and dehumanization they practice. Although Mrs. Pearce and Pickering have protested Higgins’ ignorance to human feelings and dignity and justify it as unreasonable, Higgins remains in his mannerism, and Eliza still receives rude treatment from him.

The conflict between master and workers that is metaphorically shown in

Pygmalion through the confrontation between Higgins and Eliza does not occur coincidentally. It happens as the consequence of the way of treatment to the workers who are considered as sub-ordinate class to the capitalist. The treatment that is based on the capitalist system is the main cause of the conflict especially the policies related to wages, working hour, and work discipline. The working class struggle is, in fact, the struggle to experience a better treatment and condition of work related to wages, working hour, and work discipline. In its history, the struggle faces many obstacles from the capitalists who insist to maintain the system on behalf of the high economic

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benefits they may get. Pygmalion reflects this insistence through Higgins who also insists to behave in the same way to everyone in every occasion as he says, “I can’t change my nature; and I don’t intend to change my manners” (Chin, 2000:947).The capitalists defend that every practice is still on the track according to the law or the regulation related to the workers’ rights. They base their wage system and working hour, for instance, on the Factory Act which allows the children of nine years old to work in the factory and applies twelve to sixteen hours of a day as official length of working hours (Gregg, 1957:127). Yet, this Act has raised many protests from the working class, but the protests do not change the bad conditions of work in the factory.

The situation even becomes worse and worse since many labour leaders who become parliament members are bribed by some influential capitalists to support the regulations that make the practice of human exploitation in industry imperishable. This fact has decayed the labour movement in England and gives less contribution to the working class struggle. Karl Marx in 1878, as cited by Draper (1978, 131), criticizes this corrupted parliament members,

The English working class has been gradually becoming more and more deeply demoralized by the period of corruption since 1848 and had at last got to the point when it was nothing more than the tail of the Great Liberal Party, i.e., of its oppressors, the capitalists. Its direction had passed completely into the hands of the venal trade-union leaders and professional agitators. These fellows shouted and howled behind the Gladstones, Brights, Mundellas, Morleys and the whole gang of factory owners, etc., in majorem gloriam (to the greater glory) of the Tsar as the emancipator of nations, while they never raised a finger for their own brother in South Wales, condemned by the mine-owners to die of starvation.

Marx’s wife, Jenny, says (Draper, 1978: 131) more rudely,

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About the English workers’ (leaders) á la Mottershead, Eccarius, Hales, Jung, etc., let me say nothing. They are all arch-rascals, up for sale and bought and sold and chasing after an honest shilling by hook and by crook. A really pitiful crew.

The practice of bribery which places money as an effective tool to influence the decision making process in parliament has weakened one of the arms in class struggle, i.e., political arm. Shaw, who becomes one of the midwives in giving birth to the

Labour Party in 1906 (Gregg, 1957:391-402), is very disappointed of the practice. He, then, satirizes it by presenting Alfred Doolittle as a father who ‘sells’ his daughter for only £5 (five pound sterling). Doolittle, who should be a responsible father for Eliza and who should protect her from any practice of human exploitation, even involves in creating another exploitation on his own daughter. He is really “do little” in pleading his daughter. By giving such name to Eliza’s father, Shaw criticizes the role of the workers’ leaders in parliament who represent the Labor Party but contribute nothing to the workers’ aspirations. They are elected by the workers to plead the workers’ rights but in fact they also “do so little” to plead their ‘brothers’ from the capitalists’ exploitation and fails in bringing their fellows to a better work condition in industry as Doolittle also fails in preparing her daughter to have a better future.

DOOLITTLE [ to Pickering ] I thank you, Governor. [ To Higgins, who takes refuge on the piano bench, a little overwhelmed by the proximity of his visitor; for Doolittle has a professional flavor of dust about him ]. Well, the truth is, I’ve taken a sort of fancy to you, Governor; and if you want the girl, I'm not so set on having her back home again but what I might be open to an arrangement. Regarded in the light of a young woman, she’s a fine handsome girl. As a daughter she’s not worth her keep; and so I tell you straight. All I ask is my rights as a father; and you’re the last man alive to expect me to let her go for nothing; for I can see you’re one of the

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straight sort, Governor. Well, what’s a five pound note to you? And what’s Eliza to me? [ He returns to his chair and sits down judicially ]. PICKERING. I think you ought to know, Doolittle, that Mr. Higgins's intentions are entirely honorable. DOOLITTLE. Course they are, Governor. If I thought they weren’t, Id ask fifty. HIGGINS [ revolted ] Do you mean to say, you callous rascal, that you would sell your daughter for £50? DOOLITTLE. Not in a general way I wouldn’t; but to oblige a gentleman like you I'd do a good deal, I do assure you. PICKERING. Have you no morals, man? DOOLITTLE [ unabashed ] Cant afford them, Governor. Neither could you if you was as poor as me. Not that I mean any harm, you know. But if Liza is going to have a bit out of this, why not me too? HIGGINS [ troubled] I don’t know what to do, Pickering. There can be no question that as a matter of morals it's a positive crime to give this chap a farthing. And yet I feel a sort of rough justice in his claim. DOOLITTLE, That’s it, Governor. That’s all I say. A father's heart, as it were. PICKERING. Well, I know the feeling; but really it seems hardly right— DOOLITTLE. Don’t say that, Governor. Don’t look at it that way. What am I, Governors both? I ask you, what am I? I'm one of the undeserving poor: that’s what I am. Think of what that means to a man. It means that he’s up agen middle class morality all the time. If there’s anything going, and I put in for a bit of it, it's always the same story: "You’re undeserving; so you cant have it." But my needs is as great as the most deserving widow's that ever got money out of six different charities in one week for the death of the same husband. I don’t need less than a deserving man: I need more. I don’t eat less hearty than him; and I drink a lot more. I want a bit of amusement, cause I'm a thinking man. I want cheerfulness and a song and a band when I feel low. Well, they charge me just the same for everything as they charge the deserving. What is middle class morality? Just an excuse for never giving me anything. Therefore, I ask you, as two gentlemen, not to play that game on me. I'm playing straight with you. I aint pretending to be deserving. I'm undeserving; and I mean to go on being undeserving. I like it; and that’s the truth. Will you take advantage of a man's nature to do him out of the price of his own daughter what he’s brought up and fed and clothed by the sweat of his brow until she’s grown big enough to be interesting to you two gentlemen? Is five pounds unreasonable? I put it to you; and I leave it to you. HIGGINS [ rising, and going over to Pickering ] Pickering: if we were to take this man in hand for three months, he could choose between a seat in the Cabinet and a popular pulpit in Wales. PICKERING. What do you say to that, Doolittle? DOOLITTLE. Not me, Governor, thank you kindly. I’ve heard all the preachers

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and all the prime ministers—for I'm a thinking man and game for politics or religion or social reform same as all the other amusements—and I tell you it's a dog's life anyway you look at it. Undeserving poverty is my line. Taking one station in society with another, it's—it's—well, it's the only one that has any ginger in it, to my taste. HIGGINS. I suppose we must give him a fiver. PICKERING. He'll make a bad use of it, I'm afraid. DOOLITTLE. Not me, Governor, so help me I wont. Don’t you be afraid that I'll save it and spare it and live idle on it. There wont be a penny of it left by Monday: I'll have to go to work same as if I'd never had it. It wont pauperize me, you bet. Just one good spree for myself and the missus, giving pleasure to ourselves and employment to others, and satisfaction to you to think it's not been throwed away. You couldn’t spend it better. HIGGINS [ taking out his pocket book and coming between Doolittle and the piano ] This is irresistible. Lets give him ten. [ He offers two notes to the dustman ]. DOOLITTLE. No, Governor. She wouldn’t have the heart to spend ten; and perhaps I shouldn’t neither. Ten pounds is a lot of money: it makes a man feel prudent like; and then goodbye to happiness. You give me what I ask you, Governor: not a penny more, and not a penny less. (Chin, 2000:912)

This quotation, instead of showing the role of money and what one may do with money, indicates another kind of exploitation conducted by people who are liable for the fate of their fellows. Shaw ironically presents Doolittle as a father who can be bribed for only £5 to satire the fact that there are so many politicians who come from the working class background now become the new oppressors of the workers. No wonder, if Jenny, Marx’s wife, calls them as “arch-rascal” or as it is ‘imitated’ by

Higgins who calls Doolittle as “callous rascal”. This fact leads the workers to lay less expectation to the political arm as the alternative to do their class struggle since in the capitalist society of the early twentieth century, politics is subordinated to business, and economic elite of merchants, financiers, and manufacturers dominated the policy making. With money they collect from the profits of doing their business in the factory

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by exploiting the labourers, they bribe the parliament members to plead their interest, including the parliament members from the party called Labor Party. Chirot (1977, 18-

27) describes that by 1900 the capitalist world system reigned supreme. Its economic and political power had spread throughout the world. Its influence had changed social, economic, and cultural life as well as political forces within and between countries.

How capitalism achieved such supremacy is of great interest to pay attention, which takes for granted the strength of the West at the start of the twentieth century. Among all the benefits contributed by capitalism to the progress of human development, the historical records – especially those made by Marxist followers – always portrays the dark sides of its practice. It is caused by the way the capitalists treat their workers in industries and their greed on the surplus values they get by exploiting the labor power.

They are mostly attacked by many labor movements for the long hour of working time, the low wage they pay to the workers, and their inhumane treatment to the workers including women and children labor.

The application of capitalist system in industrial environment has inevitably

‘produced’ – instead of material goods – the new poor slaves and put them into a social hell in which they are beaten, fined, underpaid, starved, left to live in slums, and neglected by the capitalists who regard them as object and not as man, as labor or hands and not as human beings. Capitalists, supported by bourgeois law, impose their factory discipline, fine the workers and cause them to be imprisoned. Very often, the conflict between the capitalist and the workers due to the discipline imposed by the capitalist is brought to the court. But unfortunately, the court always stands is the capitalist’s side

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and says to the worker who breaks the discipline, as asserted by Engels (1979, 206),

You were your own master, no one forced you to agree to such a contract if you did not wish to; but now , when you have freely entered onto it, you must be bound by it. All these facts turn the attention of the working class into another arm of class struggles, i.e., economic arm. This arm suggests the establishment of trade unions and labour strikes as the means of the working class struggle. It is amazing that the unions of the workers who have the same fate emerge everywhere in England and become strong organizations of workers to struggle for their aspirations. Pygmalion reflects the organizations by showing the unions between Eliza and Mrs. Pearce (as women of the same class), the support of Pickering to Eliza’s struggle, and the sympathetic care from

Mrs. Higgins who always reminds his son, Professor Higgins, not to treat Eliza as object of his experiment.

Pickering’s involvement in Eliza’s struggle is grasped as the representation of the sympathetic attention from the upper class to the labourers’ struggle. His advice to

Higgins to treat Eliza in reasonable way reflects the upper class concern to the fate of the working class who encounter inhumane treatment from the capitalists. As the practice of capitalist system becomes much more revolting, there appear many scholars, politicians, parliament members, journalists, and even individuals from the capitalist circle to plead the rights of the working class. They are, for examples, Frederick Engels,

Robert Blatchford, William Cobbett, and Robert Owen. Engels – who comes from a wealthy family of cotton manufacturers (Ermen and Engels) in Manchester – was surrounded by the horrors of early industrial capitalism that encouraged him to react

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against the narrow and self-righteous pietism of his home and then involved in the great movements of the British proletariat struggle as the crucial revolutionary force in the modern world (Engels, 1979:7). His acquaintance with Karl Marx brings him to be one of the most prolific Marxist proponents who struggle for society reconstruction. Robert

Blatchford is a journalist from Manchester who condemns capitalism as a curse, commercial competition as wasteful, cruel and wrong, and the factory system as ugly, disagreeable, mechanical, injurious to health, unnecessary, and dangerous to national existence. He argues that as far as the capitalism exists the country will suffer from low wages, long working hours, unemployment, insecurity, low standards of public health and morality, pauperism, crime, and false ideals (Ausubel, 1955:69). William Cobbett – a journalist, a politician and a socialist – is very concerned to the struggle of the proletariat. Through his writings and speeches, he criticizes the British government who gives less attention to the fate of the working class. He says, as cited by William (1961,

33),

A laboring man, in England, with a wife and only three children, though he never lose a day’s work, though he and his family be economical, frugal and industrious in the most extensive sense of these words, is not now able to procure himself by his labour a single meal of meat from one end of the year unto the other. Is this a state in which the laboring man ought to be?

Cobbett contrasts an actual poverty encountered by the working class who even cannot afford for sufficient meals and an apparent prosperity of the capitalists who live in abundant materials. Robert Owen is a successful manufacturer and one of the nineteenth socialists who has different vision and perception of transforming England. William

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(1961:43) gives this information,

The real originality that gives value to Owen’s work is that he begins from an acceptance of the vastly increased power which the Industrial Revolution had brought, and sees in just this increase of power the opportunity for the new moral world. He is the successful manufacturer, and not the scholar or poet; in temperament and personality he is at one with the new industrialists who were transforming England, but his vision of transformation is human as well as material. As the new generation of manufacturers would organize their places of work for production, or for profit, so he would organize England for happiness.

This quotation shows how Robert Owen gives his attention to the increased power brought by the Industrial Revolution to build a new moral world. This new world must be created by an active and just government underpinned by a national system of education to develop science and technology based on human values. He attacks the manufacturers’ policy that regards the employers as mere instruments of gaining economic benefits (William, 1961:44) and strongly criticizes the practice of workers alienation in ‘enjoying’ the products they make.

Owen’s famous objection to the alienation of workers in industry is voiced by

Frank Owen – the central character in a novel entitled The Ragged Trousered

Philanthropists written by Robert Tressel in 1910, who says,

Everything is produced by the working class. In return for their labour they are given money, and the things they have made become the property of the people who do nothing. Then, as the money is of no use, the workers go to the shops and give it away in exchange for the thing they themselves have made. They spend – or give back – all their wages; but as the money they got as wages is not equal in value to the things they produced, they find that they are only able to buy back a very small part. So you see that these little discs of metal – this money – is a device for enabling those who do not work to rob the worksers of the greater part of the fruits of their toil

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(Day, 2001:160).

Alienation is another sort of oppression from the capitalist to the workers. It is the workers who produce all the products but in fact they cannot enjoy the profits as the result of the goods sale. The capitalists share the profits in a very small amount of money which the workers receive as wage. In this case, they are alienated by their masters in enjoying the results of their own work. Shaw indicates this alienation in

Pygmalion by plotting the ignorance to Eliza’s brilliant achievement in the

Ambassador’s garden party by Higgins. It is told that on returning home after Eliza’s successful appearance both in speaking and in dancing, rather than congratulate her on her achievement, Higgins and Pickering congratulate themselves and ignore Eliza while

Eliza is there with them. They thank God for the success at the gala as if it is their own achievement or their own hard work. They forget Eliza who realizes all their dreams.

This action reflects the reality in the factory whenever the factory owner is very satisfied with the quality and the perfection of the products and moreover if the products can be sold in high price. In this situation he usually forgets the makers of the products.

Eliza escapes from the laboratory at the same night when she is ignored by

Higgins and Pickering and hides at Mrs. Higgins’ house. She decides to end her relationship with those two old bachelors and determines to seek an independent course for herself. Eliza’s escape from the laboratory and her decision to stop her attendance in the language experiment reflect the labor strikes that usually happen in industrial sphere when the workers are frustrated with the capitalists’ ignorance of their needs and aspirations. Her struggle is supported by Mrs. Higgins who appears in the play to plead

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Eliza’s rights. It is interesting here to scrutinize what Mrs. Higgins preaches to the two men about the bad things they have done but they are not aware of. Shaw uses the

‘sermon’ to remind the capitalists to be aware of the practice of alienation they apply on the workers.

MRS. HIGGINS. Just so. She had become attached to you both. She worked very hard for you, Henry! I don’t think you quite realize what anything in the nature of brain work means to a girl like that. Well, it seems that when the great day of trial came, and she did this wonderful thing for you without making a single mistake, you two sat there and never said a word to her, but talked together of how glad you were that it was all over and how you had been bored with the whole thing. And then you were surprised because she threw your slippers at you! I should have thrown the fire-irons at you. HIGGINS. We said nothing except that we were tired and wanted to go to bed. Did we, Pick? PICKERING [ shrugging his shoulders ] That was all. MRS. HIGGINS [ ironically ] Quite sure? PICKERING. Absolutely. Really, that was all. MRS. HIGGINS. You didn't thank her, or pet her, or admire her, or tell her how splendid she'd been. HIGGINS [ impatiently ] But she knew all about that. We didn’t make speeches to her, if that’s what you mean. PICKERING [ conscience stricken ] Perhaps we were a little inconsiderate. Is she very angry? MRS. HIGGINS [ returning to her place at the writing-table ] Well, I'm afraid she won’t go back to Wimpole Street, especially now that Mr. Doolittle is able to keep up the position you have thrust on her; but she says she is quite willing to meet you on friendly terms and to let bygones be bygones (Chin, 2000:943)

Mrs. Higgins reminds her son – Higgins – and Pickering to realize that they should thank not only to God but also to Eliza since she has worked very hard and performs her speech and dance successfully. She blames those two bachelors that they do not “thank her, or pet her, or admire her, or tell her how splendid she’d been”. She protests, on behalf of Eliza, the ignorance of one’s hard work from which great benefits

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are accumulated. It is the fact that Eliza’s success gives great benefits to Higgins’ prospect as language teacher in terms that he will become a prominent expert who can change his student’s speaking manner in only some couples of months; he will have many students who come from all around the world to learn proper English from him; and he will receive much money from Pickering due to the betting he wins.

Yet, what does Higgins do with Eliza’s brilliant achievement? He neglects Eliza and thinks as if Eliza’s role is nothing for him. He considers the success merely as the

‘product’ of his experiment, places Eliza as the ‘instrument’ to display the new manner of speaking, and uses the garden party as ‘the market’ to sell his product. This way of thinking has led Eliza to feel so alienated and estranged. What she does, then, is escaping from Higgins’ laboratory at the same night to show her protest to the unfair treatment. Her son’s bad attitude to Eliza has also made Mrs. Higgins very upset as she says, “I should have thrown the fire-irons at you” – more than the slippers thrown by

Eliza on Higgins’ face for the same reason.

Shaw’s sense of humanity is triggered by the practice of alienation in industry.

He criticizes the practice of ignoring the workers’ role in the process of production and condemns the alienation of the workers. For Shaw, the workers are the producers of the products. They have rights to receive appropriate wages from the profits of selling the products. But in fact, as Eliza is neglected by Higgins after the garden party, Shaw witnesses many workers in factories in England who live in revolting poverty because of that alienation. Living in that kind of situation leads the workers to the labour movement to protest the ignorance. As Eliza ‘goes on strike’ by bolting from the

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laboratory, there are also labour strikes conducted everywhere in England. It is assumed that Shaw underlines the labor strike as one of the many ways the labourers may use to win their struggles. Labour strikes and trade unions are believed as the economic arm of working class struggle that go together with proletarian party as the political arm to force the capitalists to fulfill the workers’ demands (Draper, 1978: 125).

Seeing that Higgins will not change his manner, Eliza leaves him after announcing that she will marry Freddy who loves her, and will teaches phonetics to support him. Higgins tells Eliza that he cares “for life, for humanity” (Chin, 2000:948) but her objection is that he does not care personally for her . When the capitalists states that they care for the fate of the workers by imposing the wage system and the working hours according to the Factory Act, the objection of the workers is not whether their master imposes the regulation or not but the inadequate wage that cannot support their basic needs and the sixteen to nineteen hours of working as if they cannot be exhausted.

On hearing that Eliza is going to marry Freddy, Clara’s amiable but brainless brother,

Higgins objects, “Can he make anything of you?” He is disappointed at seeing his duchess, so to speak, thrown away fruitlessly. Eliza in her turn finds such a question unintelligible, “I never thought of us making anything of one another, and you never think of anything else. I only want to be natural“ (Chin, 2000:949). Starting from this time, Higgins’ role to determine Eliza’s future has no power anymore. Higgins persuasion to Eliza to ask her returns to the two men to be one of “three old bachelors together,” is refused by Eliza. Here, she wins her struggle of Higgins’s oppression by leaving him as “a cruel tyrant” (Chin, 2000: 949-950) and cut off her relationship with

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her oppressor. This is interpreted as the symbol of the breaking down of capitalism by the labour movement through the two arms of working class struggle: economic and political struggle.

The role of education in class struggle is another issue that is highlighted by

Shaw. The language lesson attended by Eliza in Higgins’ laboratory for 6 months symbolizes the contribution that education may offer make someone to live better.

Shaw insists that education should be conducted for the labour as he shows it in

Pygmalion that to be free of upper class’ oppression Eliza has learnt phonetics which later on leads her to be a phonetics teacher. The image as a street girl of original Eliza as the audience meets in Covent Garden has been changed after a process of education in Wimpole Street laboratory. This education has formed a new Eliza with new dignity and independence. Eliza has now mastered more than the pronunciation of the educated classes and, therefore, has also an audacity to begin a new life as a teacher of phonetics, not as a flower girl anymore. The transformation from a flower girl to a phonetics teacher is done through education. In this respect she becomes a new petty bourgeoise 4 who has the capability to live independently by utilizing her new expertise in phonetics.

Pygmalion is a play that attempts to place education at the centre of class struggle and social change. For Shaw, there is a close relationship between class struggle and education. Education enlightens the workers’ perception and ideals to gain their aspirations through apparent ways and objectives of class struggle. Education is

petty bourgeoisie — are people who make their own living primarily by the exercise of their own own labor with their self-owned means of production (tools) or other property (like a shop). They are, typically self-employed small producers or trades people: carpenters working on their own shops, tailors working for their own customers, small merchants, and so on; in short , largely self-employed artisans and shopkeepers (Draper, 1978:288)

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viewed as the way through which the workers broaden their perspectives to judge the cruel and bad treatment they encounter critically and, simultaneously, prepare their future independently. Shaw underlines education as one of the most effective ways for class struggle but he criticizes every inhumane ways applied in education that gives less respect to humanity aspect. In Pygmalion , he presents the incorrigible and rude teacher

– Professor Higgins – as the paradox of what the audience expects of a teacher in real life. He employs the action by showing Eliza as the object of teaching – learning activity that arouses many objections from Mrs. Pearce, Colonel Pickering, and Mrs.

Higgins. Instead of admitting Higgins’ service in teaching her phonetics, Eliza asserts the she gets the real-education not from Higgins but from Pickering.

In line with Owen’s concept of new moral world (Williams, 1961:46) which underlines education as the means to build new society, Shaw maintains that the struggle of lower class to obtain better life should be supported by the standard of mass- education to a degree at which its recipients will be rendered immune against the grosser forms of exploitation. What Shaw means with mass education are public meetings, lectures, journals, social intercourse, drama, and opera (Simon, 1958:10). Yet, he satirized the way in educating human beings. He argues that the students are not objects of education who have nothing to be developed. Educational sphere is something different from industrial environment. And then, being educated, civilized and cultured is a matter of process in which the students are considered as the subjects of learning-teaching activity. This process cannot be conducted mechanically where the students are considered as the raw materials that after passing certain mechanical

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processes become the ‘products’ expected by the factory owner.

B. Class Struggle to Abolish Class Distinction

The struggle to abolish class distinction that the writer of this thesis means is the struggle to be treated equally. It is the struggle to win the basic equalities for all society members due to the opportunity and rights to live in humane social and economic standards, to get a just and fair treatment before the law, and to live as independent beings regardless of their abilities and capacities. Yet, the practice of capitalist system that develops private property and labor alienation has destroyed the spirit of equality since that kind of system places human beings into different classes based on their relation to the process of production. Private property has distinguishes society members into “the property owners” (the bourgeoisie) and “the propertyless workers”

(the proletariat). Meanwhile, the practice of alienation has sunk the workers into the level of commodity, and thus places them in unequal hierarchical class as subordinate to the capital holding class.

Karl Marx in Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts – translated by T.B.

Bottomore – (Fromm, 1963:95) states,

We shall begin from a contemporary economic fact. The worker becomes poorer the more wealth he produces and the more his production increases in power and extent. The worker becomes an ever cheaper commodity the more good he creates. The devaluation of the human world increases in direct relation with the increase in value of the world of things. Labor does not only create goods; it also produces itself and the worker as a commodity and indeed in the same proportion as it produces goods. This fact simply implies that the object produced by the labor, its product, now stands opposed to it as an alien being, as a power independent of the producer.

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This quotation apparently indicates that alienation does not only devaluate the workers to the ‘rank’ of commodity but also estranges them from the commodity they produce.

It is said so because when the products are finished created by their hands, the products do not belong to them but to the hands of the capitalists who have the power to determine the value and the price of the new products before they enter the market. The profit that the products ‘produce’ also belongs to the capitalists, not to the workers.

Even, when the workers need the products, they have no capability to buy them because the money they receive as wages is not enough to purchase the products. The principle of buying cheap (for the raw materials and the labour power) and selling expensive (for the finished product) in the market/exchange system has impoverished the workers. By conducting this principle, the capitalists get high profit and maximum surplus value but at the same time it causes great poverty in the workers’ side and put them into a very distinctive life condition with their masters. No wonder if the class distinction in capitalist society has caused revolting poverty in the workers’ life rather than the good prosperity. Marx in Fromm (1963:97) asserts,

Political economy conceals the alienation in the nature of labour insofar as it does not examine the direct relationship between the worker (work) and the production. Labor certainly produces marvels for the rich but it produces privation for the worker. It produces palaces, but hovels for the worker. It replaces labor by machinery, but it casts some of the workers back into a barbarous kind of work and turns the others into machines. It produces intelligence, but also stupidity and cretinism for the workers.

The bad condition of the workers’ life that is created by class distinction in capitalist system has encouraged many scholars to think about better alternatives of social-economic system to safe the workers from that situation. One of the alternatives

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to pull the workers out of their privation is the abolition of class distinction in society as proposed by many socialists. It is applied by replacing the capitalist system with the socialist system or socialism. Socialism arises as a reaction to the economic and social changes associated with the bad economic conditions in society as the direct effect of the capitalist system. While rapid wealth comes to the factory owners, the workers become increasingly impoverished. As this capitalist industrial system spread, reactions in the form of socialist thought increased proportionately. Citing Schumpeter’s stance about the characterization of this system, Kilcullen (1996) describes,

… Socialism could adopt the market as the planning mechanism. Suppose the publicly-owned means of production are managed by managers who are instructed to aim at making a profit for their enterprise (the profit would of course belong not to them or to private owners or shareholders, but to the community); then the central board managing the allocation of productive factors will auction them off to factories etc. according to what they bid, factories etc. will produce what consumers will buy, consumer income will be wages from employment, employees will seek good wages, firms will offer wages according to prospective profitability.

This quotation shows that in socialist society the ownership of property does not lay on the hands of a private-individual but on the hands of community (or the state) for greatly the welfare of all citizens. It stands in opposition to the private ownership of means of production in capitalist system which manages the economic profits from the market activity merely to fulfill the capitalist’s avarice and in fact it ignores the welfare of the workers.

According to Shaw, human beings are equal in value and dignity. They are not objects and sub-ordinates of others. On the other hand, they are the prime agents of

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material production. Therefore, all kinds of class distinction that leads to human exploitation and dehumanization must be demolished. He hates the way the rich accumulate their wealth by exploiting the workers, and pities the poor who lives under certain living standard as the impact of human exploitation in factory environments. He shows his concern to encourage the working class struggle to gain equality in society through many speeches. One of his speech is cited by William (1961, 182) in the following quotation,

We have to confess it: Capitalist mankind in the lump is detestable … Both rich and poor are really hateful in themselves. For my part I hate the poor and look forward eagerly to their extermination. I pity the rich a little, but am equally bent on their extermination. The working classes, the business classes, the professional classes, the propertied classes, and the ruling classes are each more odious than the other: they have no right to live: I should despair if I did not know that they will all die presently, and that there is no need on earth why they should be replaced by people like themselves. … And yet I am not in the least a misanthrope. I am a person of normal affections.

Shaw hates ‘the existence’ of the poor and pities the rich of their ‘no-care attitudes’ to the poor’s suffering, looking forward, to the extermination of both groups.

Taking great pains to deny that he is a misanthrope, Shaw insists, as described by

Simon (1958:65), that there is nothing that can be changed more completely than human nature when the job is taken in hand early enough. If a civilized state is the aim, then humans are not to be picked up in the slums: they have to be cultivated very carefully and expensively. The goal of society should be that of increasing the percentage of individuals who are carefully bred and nurtured, even to finally making the most of every man and woman born.

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What Shaw has done as his contribution to Fabian Society for forty years by providing so many essays and lectures talking about human improvement is the evidence of his struggle for egalitarianism against the existing class structure especially the capitalist and aristocrat. As a response to the question on the meaning of egalitarianism, Erik Olin Wright – a senior professor at Harvard and at Berkeley

University – explains that egalitarianism is a commitment to end the social-structured forms of economic inequality rooted in the social positions people occupy within the social division of labor. It is a commitment to an egalitarian vision of just and good society regarding to two things of economic inequality: 1) there is a very deep form of equality of opportunity for material well-being in which a person’s social location and natural talents have no effects on their access to the resources and processes for acquiring the material means of life; 2) everyone, regardless of the choices they make, is assured a decent standard of living (“ Reflections on Marxism, Class and Politics ”,

February 2001).

In Shaw’s mind, the distribution of economic product, status and privileges should be egalitarian in order to minimize the social gaps, to secure justice between individuals, and to equalize opportunities. With other Fabians, he struggles for weakening the existing established social class divisions which divide society members into classes based on their relationship with the means of productions, the process of producing goods, and the possessing of production factors. Shaw says

(Simon,1958:249),

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I want to be a cultured human being; I want to live in the fullest sense; I require a generous subsistence for that; and I expect my country to organize itself in such a way as to secure me. In return for that I am willing to give my country the best service of which I am capable. . . . My ideal shall be also that, no matter how much I have demanded from my country, or how much my country has given to me, I hope . . . to give to my country in return more than it has given to me; so that when I die my country shall be the richer for my life.

This quotation indicates Shaw’s socialist view point on the role of state. It is the state’s obligation to organize and to manage all economic modes for social welfare. Every citizen has the equal right to be secured (protected) by his/her state from poverty that is caused by class distinction and human exploitation.

As a media to educate the society, Pygmalion contains a very influential message in accordance with the struggle to realize the vision of egalitarian society that is a community of people which maintains the equality for all of its members to access their basic needs to live in a good standard of living. This equality ignores the difference of social status, religion, educational background, and political affiliation.

Shaw underlines this belief in social equality as the most characteristic feature of socialist thought and supports the struggle for egalitarian society by employing Eliza who encounters rude, inhumane, sarcastic, and despotic treatment from Higgins only because she is a flower girl. Generated by so many miserable things, Eliza hard fights for the acknowledgement of equality and wins it when she is successfully achieved her ideals as phonetics teacher, the same profession as her professor. Shaw employs this action to encourage the workers that by their hard working they are also able to be independent as ‘businessman’, separated from their master and therefore release

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themselves from the vicious circle of human exploitation and dehumanization.

Shaw puts in contrast the way of building human relations of Higgins and that of

Pickering to show how these two language experts understand and apply the concept of egalitarianism in the play. Higgins is, in many ways, a paradoxical being. He is at once a tyrannical bully, a scientist with a wildly extravagant imagination and a man so blind to the nature of his own personality that he thinks of himself as timid, modest, and diffident. Obsessed by his interest in changing Eliza through language, he has no idea that his behavior might be unusual. His manners are boorish. Although his pronunciation and grammar are perfect, his rough language is inappropriate to the profession. Meanwhile, Pickering is a gentleman who pays for Eliza’s language course and all the expenses needed to conduct the experiments. He does so not only to bet on

Higgins’ expertise in teaching new speech but also to help Eliza to overcome her financial problem in paying the course. Along the play, he appears as a very kind gentleman who pleads Eliza from Higgins’ oppression and crudeness. Eliza states that it is not Pickering’s generosity in funding the course that makes her so grateful to him but his good treatment and life example to her.

LIZA [ continuing quietly ]—but I owe so much to you that I should be very unhappy if you forgot me. PICKERING. It's very kind of you to say so, Miss Doolittle. LIZA. It's not because you paid for my dresses. I know you are generous to everybody with money. But it was from you that I learnt really nice manners; and that is what makes one a lady, isn’t it? You see it was so very difficult for me with the example of Professor Higgins always before me. I was brought up to be just like him, unable to control myself, and using bad language on the slightest provocation. And I should never have known that ladies and gentlemen didn’t behave like that if you hadn’t been there. (Chin, 2000: 944)

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This conversation shows a new notion of social class. In the principle of egalitarian society, one’s social class is not determined by his/her wealth, education level, or social status but by his/her ‘nice manner’ and behavior. Shaw intentionally presents Higgins as an educated and wealthy man but while one may expect a well educated man, like him, to be a gentleman with nice manner, he is far from it. Shaw criticizes the arrogance of the capitalists who deify money and wealth as the only determiners of social class. In fact, it is the money and the material wealth that trap them to fall deeper and deeper into the hole of avarice. It is their greed of wealth that leads them to exploit the workers and devaluate them into the level of object. They ignore the humanity aspects of the workers as they think that the workers may be treated brutally and inhumanely.

In contrast to Higgins, Shaw employs Pickering as ‘a generous to every body with money’. In this extent, Shaw opposes the capitalists who are so busy to enrich themselves and centralize all the production activities only for their interest without any spirit of sharing and helping others. This lack in spirit of sharing is considered as one of the causes of poverty and privation. Reflecting the socialists’ voice, Shaw underlines that money is but facility to make life easier and better. He puts this voice in Eliza’s mouth, “It’s not because you paid for my dresses. I know you are generous to everybody with money. But it was from you that I learnt really nice manners; and that is what makes one a lady, isn’t it?” Eliza admits that money is important, but nice manner is more important than money. Money cannot arouse in one’s heart the what so-called

‘self-respect’ but nice manner can. Shaw indicates, here, his perspective about money

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by subordinate it under human psychological needs i.e., self respect. By presenting this action, he satirizes the capitalist’s greed of money as the new god that can safe them from all human problems. But if capital is money used to make money how can money be used to create self-respect? In fact, money can even be only used to create artificial and temporary self-respect as ironically cited by Marx from Goethe in Fromm (1963,

165-166),

What I am and can do is, therefore, not at all determined by my individuality. I am ugly, but I can buy the most beautiful woman for myself. Consequently, I am not ugly, for the effect of ugliness, its power to repel, is annulled by money. As an individual I am lame, but money provides me with twenty-four legs. Therefore, I am not lame. I am a detestable, dishonorable, unscrupulous and stupid man but money is honored and so also is its possessor.

Higgins is influenced by this kind of perspective that he defends Eliza so hard when he remembers that he has bought Eliza from her father of £5.

MRS. HIGGINS. Well, I'm very glad you’re not going to do anything foolish, Mr. Doolittle. For this solves the problem of Eliza’s future. You can provide for her now. DOOLITTLE [ with melancholy resignation ] Yes, maam: I’m expected to provide for everyone now, out of three thousand a year. HIGGINS [ jumping up ] Nonsense! he cant provide for her. He shan’t provide for her. She doesn’t belong to him. I paid him five pounds for her. Doolittle: either you’re an honest man or a rogue. DOOLITTLE [ tolerantly ] A little of both, Henry, like the rest of us: a little of both. HIGGINS. Well, you took that money for the girl; and you have no right to take her as well. (Chin, 2000:942)

This dialogue presents the portrait of the capitalists’ perspective on the workers. As

Higgins insists that Eliza does not belong to her father any more because he has bought her with the price of £5 – a very unreasonable price of a human beings’ girl, the

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capitalists also insist that since they have bought the workers by giving them wages, then, the workers are their possessions – even though the wage is not in the reasonable comparison with the economic value of the final products produced by the workers.

This is a revolting reality happens in capitalist society that man can be bought by others with certain amount of money. It is only things or objects that can be purchased by using money as its means of exchange. But how can it be applied to human beings?

This happens since the capitalists view the workers as lower ‘creatures’ than themselves. But lower in what sense – ask the socialists and the humanists. The workers are only more unfortunate in sense that they have nothing to be survived except their labour power – but this cannot be used as the reason to dehumanize them as objects or commodities or things. They are still human beings with equal dignity, rights, freedom, and opportunity to access to better life. Therefore the struggle to build a new egalitarian society means the struggle to end the capitalist system in human beings’ life.

In the conversation about who really gives the education to Eliza, there is a debate conducted by cross-cutting the retrospective viewpoints of Eliza and Higgins on the concept of equal treatment one may address to others. The conversation is stormy when Higgins begins by repeating the boast which started the whole complicated action and which he has repeated in the second and the fourth acts. Each time it is repeated, it has been slightly more a weapon of insult designed to hurt Eliza for what he considers her ingratitude.

HIGGINS: You let her alone, mother. Let her speak for herself. You will jolly soon see whether she has an idea that I havnt put into her head or a word that I havnt put into her mouth. I tell you I have created this thing out of

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the squashed cabbage leaves of Covent Garden; and now she pretends to play the fine lady with me. (Chin, 2000: 944)

Higgins again shows the tendency, common throughout the play, to refer to people as things – and Eliza is “a thing out of the cabbage leaves”. There is, however, a surprise when Eliza starts to answer him not by falling in with his bullying and boorish manner, but by addressing herself quietly to Pickering. And it suddenly becomes very clear that she has a great ideas that Higgins puts less good and positive things into her head since he does not himself possess the things or even quite understand them.

Instead, she admits that it is from Pickering she begins the real education. Pickering’s respectful and honorable attitudes to her have more contribution to her personality development. This is what Eliza considers as real-education.

LIZA: But do you know what began my real education? PICKERING: What? LIZA [ stopping her work for a moment ]: Your calling me Miss Doolittle that day when I first came to Wimpole Street. That was the beginning of self- respect for me. [ She resumes her stitching .] And there were a hundred little things you never noticed, because they came naturally to you. Things about standing up and taking off your hat and opening doors— PICKERING: Oh, that was nothing. LIZA: Yes: things that shewed you thought and felt about me as if I were something better than a scullery-maid 5; though of course I know you would have been just the same to a scullery-maid if she had been let into the drawing room. You never took off your boots in the dining room when I was there. PICKERING: You mustnt mind that. Higgins takes off his boots all over the place. LIZA: I know. I am not blaming him. It is his way, isn't it? But it made such a difference to me that you didnt do it. You see, really and truly, apart from the things anyone can pick up (the dressing and the proper way of speaking, and so on), the difference between a lady and a flower girl is not how she

5 Scullery maid refers to a girl who washed dishes and who was in the very bottom of the hierarchy of servants.

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behaves, but how she's treated. I shall always be a flower girl to Professor Higgins, because he always treats me as a flower girl, and always will; but I know I can be a lady to you, because you always treat me as a lady, and always will. (Chin, 2000: 944)

Eliza insists that the real education she accepts is not the language lesson in which she learns new speech, but the way Pickering treats her and the good examples he displays before her. Real education according to Eliza does not only deal with every scientific matter but also with simple and natural and good examples the teachers show to their students. The first deals with the intellectual development and the latter deals with the mental or behavioral aspects of human education. Since human beings are naturally equipped not only by the cognitive but also the affective capability; so, those two aspects should be developed proportionally in the educational service. Using the language laboratory in Wimpole Street to metaphorically criticize the practice of dehumanization in factory sphere in England, Shaw brings to light the ignorance of the capitalists to the psychological needs of the workers that is the needs to be treated respectfully as human beings; and to be considered as having equal role in producing the surplus value and therefore having equal rights to ‘enjoy’ a reasonable living standard supported by adequate wages.

To treat members of all classes alike is to recognize no essential class distinctions. Pickering treats a flower girl the same way he treats a lady. In this matter— the elimination of class distinctions through treatment that does not take such distinctions into account—Higgins and Doolittle resemble Pickering. “The same to everybody,” Eliza tells Higgins, “like father.” Higgins treats Eliza as rudely and as

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inconsiderately as he treats every other character in the play, including his mother and

Mrs. Pearce. As Eliza sometimes is aware of his social class in the same position with the scullery maid, Pickering never considers it as a significant factor to alter his view points on treating other people equally. It makes Eliza sure that Pickering is really a gentleman to whom she should address her thankfulness. Before Pickering she feels as a lady since he treats her like a lady. In this matter, Eliza contrasts the notion of ‘how one behaves’ and ‘how one is treated’. Regarding to behavior, people may behave hypocritically to hide their weakness or badness. Shaw criticizes this morality of the capitalists who pretend to be good to the workers as if they are really concerned with the fate of the workers by paying their wages based on the labour regulations. Yet, people of England know that the regulations are made by the corrupted parliament members who are bribed by the capitalists for their necessity. Meanwhile, the way one is treated reflects the view points of other people as respectful or not. Eliza has been treated in respectful ways by Pickering but not by Higgins. Since Higgins represents the capitalist, then, the judgments of the capitalists’ treatment to the workers become so tangible. For the Higgins views Eliza as thing and exploits her for his benefits, it portrays the same practice the capitalists apply to the workers.

The phonetic lesson is actually merely a stepping stone to a more fundamental message beyond the action – although Shaw believes that phonetics and proper pronunciation is a serious instrument of social change and, at his death, left money to finance research into phonetics and for the development of a proper phonetic alphabet

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for English 6. The major didactic achievement of the play is its pointed objectification of the hollowness of social distinctions, and its assertion of the importance of the individual personality which such distinctions ignore.

The concept of classless society is, then, considered as the ultimate alternative which can be realized by breaking down the capitalist system as the way class struggle may follow to abolish class distinction. Classless society is a concept that is based on the common ownership of the means of production to oppose the private ownership system in capitalist society. In such society, all factors of production for public welfare are owned or controlled by the state and are operated for profit in which investments , distribution , income , production , pricing of goods and services are determined through the operation of a market economy . This society is built under the dictatorship of the proletariat that win the struggle of social, political, and economic domination by breaking down the capitalist system. This concept comes firstly from Marx and Engels but later on also becomes the concern of Shaw and his Fabian Society. In Pygmalion , this victory is symbolized by the triumph of Eliza to free herself from Higgins’ oppression and independently live as a new phonetics teacher, like her professor. Shaw

6 Shaw regarded phonetics and the proper pronunciation of the English language as a serious instrument of social change and, at his death, left money to finance research into phonetics and for the development of a proper phonetic alphabet for English. Shaw, that is to say, had serious and important views about this question and made use of them in his play. The idea that speech and accent is one of the great class barriers is certainly one of the important ideas of this play. It would, however, be a mistake to suppose that it is necessary to read and understand Shaw’s views on phonetics in order to understand Pygmalion . The study of language and the science of phonetics is an extremely complex subject. Nor is it clear that a phonetic alphabet is the solution to the problems of the English language. A student who really wished to understand these questions would not learn very much about them by reading Pygmalion. A complex academic subject of this kind can hardly be grasped immediately by an audience in a theatre, and Shaw provides them only with a minimum of easily assimilated information. (Alexander, 1988:26)

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indicates here that hard work generated by high idealism to live better time by time may bring whoever to be equal with others economically and socially.

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CHAPTER V

CONCLUSION

Class Struggle, which is chosen by the writer of this thesis as his topic to discuss, emerges from the class conflict between the capital holding class and the working class in industrial sphere. The conflict occurs whenever the interests of the two classes do not fit each other i.e., when the greed of the capitalist to accumulate surplus value ignores the welfare of the working class and neglects the human aspects of the workers. In practice, the working class is, even, exploited, dehumanized, and objectified or devaluated into the level of economic commodity.

The long-term of social and economic conflict in capitalist system manifests itself in more and more revolting bad treatments from the capitalist to the workers. In line with this situation, class struggle is the way taken by the workers to fight every capitalist policy that causes the bad working conditions in industry regarding mostly to the low wage and the long working hour system and other inhumane treatments implemented in strict disciplines and terrible punishments. It is to prove that the labourers are not powerless. They have become the victims of the capitalist system, but since the treatment of the capitalist is so despotic they then rise and fight the system through the labour movement. Class struggle, thus, is conducted to free the workers from the evils of capitalism and simultaneously to bring them toward better future marked by the existence of the respect to human rights and other humanity values such

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as freedom, just, equality, and brotherhood. According to many socialists, this better situation can only be realized in a new egalitarian society called socialist society.

Pygmalion portrays the social conditions in England in the end of nineteenth century and the early twentieth century and reflects class struggle as the reaction to the conditions. As it is told briefly in Appendix 2 of this thesis, Pygmalion employs Eliza

Doolittle, a flower girl, who wishes to be a duchess to free herself from the poverty and the stupidity she encounters. Eliza, then, attends a speech lesson in language laboratory in Wimpole Street possessed by Professor Henry Higgins as the way she should take to realize her dream. Yet, instead of treating Eliza as the subject of the lesson, Higgins exploits her as the object of his phonetic experiment and the object of his economic benefit. Pygmalion can be considered as a play that expresses any accurate and comprehensive ideas about the study of the English language but Shaw does not mean to offer to his audience to use the play as the medium to study phonetics. It does, however, make use of some ideas about the English language to make a sort of observation about the nature of capitalist society, and it asks a number of questions about the relations that exist between individuals in such a society.

Conducting close reading on Pygmalion leads the writer of this thesis to the understanding of how George Bernard Shaw has utilized this play to convey his socialist view points. He symbolizes the power exercise of Higgins to Eliza as the power relation applied by the capitalist on the workers, and reflects the support of

Pickering and Mrs. Higgins to Eliza’s struggle as the support of many socialists to the

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labour movements. Moreover, he encourages every labour movement to win the struggle for better life condition as Eliza has done it in Pygmalion .

Sociological approach of literature demands the writer of this thesis to use the theory of homology since he grasps that there is a kind of reciprocal relationship between the social conditions portrayed in Pygmalion and those in reality at the given time. The use of such theory assumes that Shaw was influenced structurally by his society when he wrote Pygmalion . The result is, then, the plot of Pygmalion homolog with the real situation in society.

From the dialogue and the behavior of certain characters, the writer of this thesis assumes that Pygmalion reflects the situation in capitalist society. There is Henry

Higgins who is so despotic exploiting Eliza for his interest. There is Mrs. Pearce and

Alfred Doolittle who are suffered from a social system that makes them so difficult to be free from their poverty. And there is Eliza who struggles for better life by attending a language lesson. All these facts lead the writer to focus his attention mostly on class struggle in capitalist society. And since the analysis due to the portrait of class struggle in capitalist society, there is no other theory to employ except utilizing Marxist criticism as the most suitable instrument – including for this era.

Although the audiences of Pygmalion are mostly from the middle class level who have money to buy tickets to watch the play performance, this play is still effective to convey the social reform message. Shaw, for instance, deliberately performs Colonel

Pickering and Mrs. Higgins – the representation of the middle class people – who plead

Eliza in many occasions of Higgins’ despotism. For Shaw, the middle class people have

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the biggest responsibility to reform the society since they are the people who have caused the most revolting social problems: dehumanization and poverty. Social reformation can only be conducted by persuading the middle class to involve; and the way Shaw uses to ‘invite’ the middle class to take part in the social reconstruction is through his plays performing. So, besides as critique medium, Pygmalion is also a persuasive performance for the middle class. Play is chosen as the medium to convey his socialist viewpoint since William Archer asked him to collaborate in writing a play

(see Appendix 1 page 146-147) that made him prefer using plays to novels in his career as literary writer.

The argument about manners is extremely important in Pygmalion . Shaw criticizes his society that gives more respect to people from higher social class although their manners are so bad. If Eliza admits that the real education she gets from Pickering, it is merely because Pickering’ good manner has become a good example to be imitated.

Teaching by giving more good examples, instead of giving ‘dry’ scientific lesson without any respect to human feelings and rights, is considered more effective in nourishing human values. Eliza’s point is that it does not matter that Higgins treats everyone alike, if the way in which Higgins actually treats them implies that they do not really exist and that their opinions and feelings may be ignored.

For Shaw, education as the instrument to develop human values and human nature is a central issue in his propaganda. He views education linked with craftsmanship, nature, and religion as an aid in breaking down class distinctions. He argues that even a child must be taught, that men must reform themselves before they

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reform society, and that the process of education is the most effective way of bettering human nature. Viewing art as the means of educating people, he writes some novels and so many plays telling about the evils of capitalism, war, selfishness, money-getters, the future, the family, marriage, sex, the will to grow, etc. Shaw frequently admits that, as

Simon (1958:16 ) informs, he is a teacher whose aim is the making of better men and women. Deliberately pedagogic and propagandistic, Shaw believed that art, particularly dramatic art, must improve morals and behavior by destroying stereotyped concepts of life. Here, he accepts the existence of human nature and believes that the nature must be nurtured continuously along human life. The place to ‘nurture’ the nature is the society with all of its phenomena. That’s why instead of accepting the existence of human nature, Shaw also admits that the development of the nature is the product of existing social, political, economic, and moral institutions.

It is interesting to know here that Shaw underlines the growth of the nature of man and the development of noble faculties as the benchmark of the progress of human civilization. His stance on the human development, as the objective of his movement as a socialist, is so rigid that he objects all forms of human exploitation due to the invention of new technology in industrial society that dehumanize human values.

Since Marxist critics see their duty – indeed, the duty of all responsible and humane people – as not merely to describe the world but to change it, Pygmalion has brought about new way of thinking or, in some ways, enlightened its audience of all eras and places about the oppression and the necessity of class struggle to achieve better future which is marked not by the advance of science and technology which gives to

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mankind materialistic comforts and conveniences, but the growth of the spirit of human and the development of nobler faculties. In this sense, Pygmalion brings to the audience not only a new inspiration to conduct his/her own class struggle regarding to any oppression he/she faces as an individual but also encourages the audience to scrutinize every injustice in labour phenomena and then support every labour movement to help the workers succeed in struggling their aspirations. As Eliza has succeeded in winning her struggle to be free from the upper class oppression and wins it as the new opportunity to develop her nature as human beings who lives not only for herself but also for others, the writer of this thesis is convinced that the workers who work in bad conditions, wherever in this globe, are also able to attain better life as far as they succeed conducting the struggle in the way more or less as Eliza has done – unless

Pygmalion is fruitless.

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Appendix 1

BIOGRAPHY OF GEORGE BERNARD SHAW

George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) was born on the 26th of July, 1856 in

Dublin, in a lower-middle class family of Scottish-Protestant ancestry. His father,

George Carr Shaw, son of a failed Dublin stockbroker, had been a civil servant and retired on a pension of £60 before Bernard was born. He became a corn merchant but was unsuccessful in this venture due to a drinking problem and a squint (which Oscar

Wilde's father, a leading Dublin surgeon, tried unsuccessfully to correct). Shaw’s mother, Lucinda Elizabeth Shaw, the daughter of an Irish landowner, was a professional singer, the sole disciple of George Vandeleur Lee, a voice teacher claiming to have a unique and original approach to singing. Lee lived with the Shaws and caused a great deal of gossip.

Bernard went to a series of schools starting with the Wesleyan Connexional

School and ending his fifteenth year at the Dublin English Scientific and Co mmercial

Day School. He claimed to hate all the schools he attended. By the time Shaw was fifteen his parents' marriage had broken up. His mother deserted her husband and went off to England along with her two daughters. Shaw's father appears to have been a weak and ineffectual man, prone to drowning his sorrow in alcohol. Shaw left school and worked as a clerk and cashier for a firm of land agents for nearly four and a half years.

During this period Shaw read voraciously and frequented the theatre. He saw every new play and was especially interested in Shakespeare. His deep and profound knowledge of

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Shakespeare may be traced to these early theatre visits. Shaw also loved music. His father played the trombone and his mother was an excellent singer. His elder sister,

Lucy, was an opera singer.

In 1876 following the tragic death of his sister Agnes from consumption (at the age of nineteen), Shaw left Ireland and joined his mother and Lucy in London with the intention of becoming a musician or a painter. Shaw was an acutely shy young man and took considerable time to adjust to the liberal London atmosphere. He undertook a variety of odd jobs in his early years in London. He wrote a series of articles as a music critic under the name of Lee in a weekly paper The Hornet , from November 1876 to

July 1878. He also worked for a couple of years in the Edison and Bell Telephone

Company and left in 1880 when the company was absorbed by another. He then gave up as he puts it, “working for his living” and decided to establish himself as a writer.

During these years Shaw was financially dependent on his mother. Shaw was candid enough about this decision and remarked, “I did not throw myself into the struggle for life: I threw my mother into it.” (Preface to The Irrational Knot, 1931). Shaw started writing articles on various subjects but they were rejected by the magazines and newspapers he sent them to. He then decided to become a novelist and wrote a novel

(entitled Immaturity ) but could not find a publisher for it. During 1880 to 1883 he wrote four more novels which were also rejected. He read voraciously, in public libraries and in the British Museum reading room. And he became involved in progressive politics.

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Standing on soapboxes, at Speaker’s Corner in Hyde Park and at socialist rallies, he learned to overcome his stage fright and his stammer. And, to hold the attention of the crowd, he developed an energetic and aggressive speaking style that is evident in all of his writing.

During these early years of his stay in London, Shaw became interested in socialism. He was immensely influenced by the alarming rise in unemployment and general social distress. Shaw became a socialist in 1882 and then in 1884, with Beatrice and Sidney Webb, Shaw founded the Fabian Society that would later be instrumental in founding the London School of Economics and the Labour Party . Shaw lectured for the

Fabian Society, and wrote pamphlets on the progressive arts, including The Perfect

Wagnerite , an interpretation of Richard Wagner's Ring cycle, and The Quintessence of

Ibsenism , based on a series of lectures about the progressive Norwegian playwright,

Henrik Ibsen. Meanwhile, as a journalist, Shaw worked as an art critic, then as a music critic (writing under the pseudonym “Corno di Bassetto”), and finally, from 1895 to

1898, as Theatre Critic for the Saturday Review , where his reviews appeared over the infamous initials ‘GBS.’ The Fabians aimed to bring about a gradual change from capitalism to socialism and were a powerful influence on British political thought. Shaw served on The Executive Committee of the Fabian Society for many years.

In a letter to Henry James dated 17 January, 1909 Shaw said: “I, as a Socialist, have had to preach, as much as anyone, the enormous power of the environment. We can change it; we must change it; there is absolutely no other sense in life than the task of changing it. What is the use of writing plays, what is the use of writing anything, if

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there is not a will which finally moulds chaos itself into a race of gods.” Shaw maintained that each social class worked to serve its own ends, and that those in the upper echelons had won the struggle. He believed the working class had failed to promote its interests effectively, which made him highly critical of the democratic system of his time. Shaw's writing, as evinced in plays like Major Barbara and

Pygmalion , has class struggle as an underlying theme. Notwithstanding that, Shaw was not a Marxist in the traditional sense, and abhorred the aggressiveness of Trade

Unionism.

In 1884 Shaw attended a lecture delivered by Henry George. Here it was proposed that national revenue should be collected by a single tax on land rather than by numerous taxes on several things. This lecture proved to be a turning point in Shaw’s life and shaped his political thought. Henry George’s views on land nationalization gave depth and direction to Shaw’s political convictions. Shortly thereafter he applied to join the Social Democratic Federation led by H. M. Hyndman who introduced him to the works of Karl Marx. However, the newly-formed Fabian Society conformed more closely to his views, so he joined it instead, in 1884. He was an active Fabian, writing a number of their pamphlets, and supplying money to set up the independent socialist journal The New Age. He argued that owning property was a form of theft and campaigned for an equitable distribution of land and capital. He was involved with the formation of the Labour Party. A clear statement of his position can be found in The

Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Socialism, Capitalism, Sovietism, and Fascism, also known as The Intelligent Woman's Guide to Socialism and Capitalism. Having visited

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the USSR in 1930s and met Stalin, Shaw became an ardent supporter of the Stalinist

USSR. He declared that all the stories of a famine were slander after a carefully managed short tour of the country (Stalin privately disparaged him). Having been asked why he didn't want to stay permanently in the Soviet ‘earthly paradise’, Shaw ironically remarked that England was a but of course he was a small devil himself. He wrote a somewhat ironic defense of Stalin’s espousal of Lysenkoism, in a letter to the 1946

Labour Monthly. He also “simply did not believe” that the Holocaust had happened.

Shaw obtained work as a journalist with the help of the drama critic and Ibsen translator, William Archer, with whom he shared an interest in Ibsen. Shaw wrote as a music critic under the name of “Corno di Bassetto” in The Star (1888-90), an evening paper of London. Shaw also wrote as a drama critic for The Saturday Review (1895-98), a weekly periodical. His insightful articles on the contemporary theatre scene are collected in Our Theatre in the Nineties . It is in three volumes and was published in

1932.

Shaw's first published works were novels, Cashel Byron’s Profession (1886) and

An Unsocial Socialist (1887). Cashel Byron’s Profession was extremely popular but

Shaw came to dislike it. His career as a novelist came to an end even though he returned to the form many times, for example, in the socio-political parable, The Adventures of the Black Girl in Her Search for God (1932).

At one point during their association, William Archer suggested to Shaw that they collaborate in writing a play. Although this never occurred, their discussions on

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Ibsen resulted in Shaw's The Quintessence of Ibsenism (1891). This was the first

English book on Ibsen whose work had only recently been translated. While this book was undoubtedly a proclamation of Ibsen's genius it was also a manifesto for Shaw’s own later dramatic work. Both Ibsen and Shaw shared a concern for the welfare of common people and critiqued social mores of the day in their plays. Shaw thus initiated his own unique brand of the play of ‘ideas’. He had made an attempt to write a play with William Archer in 1885 but had abandoned the project midway. He now completed it and the play The Widowers’ Houses was performed in London on

December 9th, 1892 at the Royalty Theatre. It was produced by J. T. Grein for the

Independent Theatre Club. The play is both ‘didactic’ and ‘realistic’ and constitutes a savage attack on slum landlords who made money by exploiting the poor. Shaw declared its theme to be “middle class respectability fattening on the poverty of slums as flies fatten on filth.” This play spurred Shaw’s interest in drama. But the play’s subject was considered too radical for its time and the play had no success. Shaw went on to write serious plays of ‘ideas’ like Mrs. Warren’s Profession (written in 1893) which explores the subject of prostitution due to the “underpayment and ill treatment of women who try to earn an honest living.” Another such play was The Philanderer

(written in 1893 and produced in 1905) which dealt with the subject of women and marriage. Mrs. Warren’s Profession was denied performance by the Examiner of Plays who considered it immoral. It was given a private performance by the Independent

Theatre Club in 1902 and its first public performance was later in 1925.

Shaw’s next play Arms and the Man (1894) a bitter attack on the romanticism of

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war enjoyed great popularity. Shaw presents an anti-hero as the protagonist in the play.

This was followed by Candida (1897), The Devil’s Disciple (1897) The Man of Destiny

(1897), You Never Can Tell (1899) and Captain Brassbound's Conversion (1900).

Shaw’s plays acquired popularity during the seasons organized by Harley Granville-

Barker and J.E. Vedrenne at the Royal Court Theatre in 1904-1907. John Bulls' Other

Island (1904) which tackled the Irish question was the first play to become popular. In it

Shaw depicts the old Ireland. The age-old conflict between the English and the Irish is the source of the play’s humor. In the Preface Shaw passionately pleads for Home Rule.

The play was written when Ireland was still under British rule.

This was followed by How He Lied to Her Husband (1904) an anti-romantic treatment of the familiar triangular situation of husband, wife and lover. Shaw’s first great play was Man and Superman (1905). He called the play “a comedy and a philosophy.” Shaw’s ideas about the “life force” are embodied in the characters of the battling lovers Ann Whitefield and John Tanner. As dictated by her father’s will, Ann has two guardians, the dignified Roebuck Ramsden and the radical John Tanner. She decides to marry Tanner. This decision, how much ever Tanner struggles to evade it, proves irresistible. Shaw’s next play Major Barbara was also produced in 1905 and dealt as Shaw states in the preface with “the tragi-comic irony of the conflict between real life and the romantic imagination.” The Doctor’s Dilemma (1906) contained an expose of the medical profession. Although it is subtitled a “tragedy”, it deals with its subject in a light-hearted manner.

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The first decade of this century was Shaw’s golden period as a dramatist. Caesar and Cleopatra , written in 1898, was performed in 1907. It was Shaw's interpretation of history in contemporary terms. This was followed by Getting Married (1908) which is a single conversation from the beginning to the end. The subject, as is apparent from the title, is marriage and Shaw discusses several points of view about it. The Shewing - up of Blanco Posnet (1909), a one-act “religious tract in dramatic form” was censored for blasphemy. Misalliance (1910) is a long debate about the relationship between parents and children. Fanny’s First Play (1911) is in Shaw’s own terms a “potboiler.”

Androcles and the Lion (1911-12) depicts Shaw’s religious views and his belief that a religious aim is essential for human existence. Pygmalion followed in 1913 and is one of Shaw’s most popular plays.

It is beyond the scope of this guide to list the entire canon, but it must be mentioned that Shaw contributed four of his most serious and intellectual plays to the new theatre movement of the 1920s: Heartbreak House (1920), Back to Methuselah

(1922), Saint Joan (1923) and The Apple Cart (1929). Heartbreak House is subtitled "A

Fantasia in the Russian Manner on English Themes” and the main theme is Shaw’s condemnation of the “cultured, leisured Europe before the War." Back to Methuselah is preoccupied with the theme of Creative Evolution. It is an extremely long play in five parts. Shaw was anti-Darwinian. In Darwin’s scheme of things, the fittest of the species survive while the weak are killed by the strong. Shaw believed instead that the fittest survive by use of their superior intelligence and will power. Shaw held that one could consciously will oneself to become a superman. The play was a failure, possibly due to

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the lack of a protagonist, which rendered the impersonal for the audience. The action of

Saint Joan follows Joan of Arc’s career from her first encounter with Robert de

Baudricourt, to her meeting with the Dauphin at Chinon, and her fortunes after she lead the assault on the English and raised the siege of Orleans. In his last important play, The

Apple Cart , Shaw exposes democracy and royalty as forms of government. He desperately wishes for dictatorship but realizes its limitations. The only solution seems to be the building of “a political system for rapid positive work instead of slow nugatory work, made to fit into the twentieth century instead of the sixteenth.”

Shaw’s social, political and religious opinions cannot only be gleaned from the

Prefaces to his plays which were collected in a single volume in 1934, but also in his provocative works like Common Sense about the War (1914), How to Settle the Irish

Question (1917), The Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Socialism and Capitalism (1928), and Everybody’s Political What’s What (1944). Shaw’s later plays include Too True to be Good (1932), The Millionaires (1936) and In Good King Charles’s Golden Days

(1939). Although he was averse to writing for film, he did agree to prepare a script for the filming of Pygmalion which was completed in 1938 and had a successful reception.

A musical version of Pygmalion called My Fair Lady was produced in New Haven,

Connecticut in 1956, starring Rex Harrison and Julie Andrews. It was later made into the well-known film by the same name that won an Academy Award for Best Picture in

1964.

Shaw lived the rest of his life as an international celebrity, travelling the world,

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continually involved in local and international politics. (He visited the Soviet Union at the invitation of Stalin; and he came briefly to the United States at the invitation of

William Randolph Hearst, stepping on shore only twice, for a lecture at the

Metropolitan Opera House in New York, and for lunch at Hearst’s castle in San Simeon in California). And he continued to write thousands of letters and over a dozen more plays.

In 1950, Shaw fell off a ladder while trimming a tree on his property at Ayot, St.

Lawrence, in Hertfordshire, outside of London, and died a few days later of complications from the injury. Shaw died at the age of ninety-five in the year 1950. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1925, which he first refused and afterwards accepted. He had been at work on yet another play ( Why She Would Not ). In his will, he left a large part of his estate to a project to revamp the English alphabet.

Only one volume was published with the new “Shaw Alphabet”: a parallel text edition of Shaw's Androcles and the Lion . After that project failed, the estate was divided among the other beneficiaries in his will: the National Gallery of Ireland, the British

Museum, and the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. Royalties from Shaw’s plays (and from the musical My Fair Lady , based on Shaw’s Pygmalion ) have helped to balance the budgets of these institutions ever since.

Adapted from: 1. Henderson, Archibald. (1956). George Bernard Shaw: Man of the Century . New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, Inc. 2. Huneker, Ames (1990), The Quintessence of Shaw, retrieved from on: April, 26, 2008 3. Purdom, G.B. (1964). A Guide to the Plays of

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George Bernard Shaw . London: Methuen and Co Ltd. 4. retrieved on 24 Apr 2007.

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Appendix 2 THE SYNOPSIS OF G.B. SHAW’S PYGMALION

Act one opens with a group of people seeking for shelter from a heavy downpour of summer rain under the portico of St. Paul’s Church, Covent Garden.

Among them, there are a lady (Mrs. Eynsford Hill), her daughter (Clara) and her son

(Freddy), a note taker (Professor Henry Higgins), a military gentleman (Colonel

Pickering) and a flower girl (Eliza). While they are waiting for the rain to stop, Higgins takes note of the interesting Cockney accent of the flower girl who coaxes some money out of the Colonel. A bystander who sees Higgins takes notes suspects him as police informant and warns the flower girl to give the Colonel some flowers in return. This alarms the flower girl who begins to loudly protest her innocence. The crowd is sympathetic enough to take the side of the flower girl. Higgins claims that he is able to place any man within two miles in London solely by virtue of his speech patterns.

Higgins displays his phonetic expertise and correctly guesses the origins of several people.

When the rain stops the crowd disperses and Higgins is left alone with the

Colonel and the flower girl. Higgins explains to the Colonel that his profession is a phonetician and asserts that he can teach anybody any dialect, including how to speak correctly. The flower girl is still hysterical about the imagined harm to her respectability and Higgins l oses his temper. He declares that he can transform her into a duchess and even get her a place as a shop assistant. As they leave together Higgins throws some

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money into the flower girl’s basket. Delighted by this unexpected fortune the flower girl calls a cab to take her home.

The second act opens the next day at Higgins’ Wimpole Street laboratory.

Higgins is engaged in a technical discussion about vowel sounds with Colonel Pickering when Mrs. Pearce (Higgins’ housekeeper) announces that a common flower girl has come to see him. Excited by this stroke of good luck, Higgins eagerly asks Mrs. Pearce to show the girl up. He is so happy to the news of the common girl’s coming since it will become the chance for him to demonstrate and to prove to Pickering how he can make records. However, he is so disappointed knowing that the girl is the same flower girl whom he had met last night. The girl introduces herself as Eliza Doolittle and says that she wants to be a lady in a flower shop, but cannot get a job unless she can “talk more genteel.” She wants Higgins to teach her correct pronunciation. After indulging in some playful banter, Higgins seizes her as an excellent subject and vows that he will

“make a duchess of this draggletailed guttersnipe” within six months and she is entrusted to his housekeeper. This is the starting point of Eliza’s class struggle that is the struggle for better life by attending a language lesson since she is very convinced that by speaking good and correct language she can get a better job.

A little while later, Eliza’s father, Alfred Doolittle, a dustman, arrives with the intention of inquiring about his daughter. However in fact he does not care about Eliza and his sole concern is not to let her go for nothing. Higgins cunningly mocks his plan and tells him that he may take Eliza away. Doolittle confesses that all he wants is five

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pounds in return for which Higgins gives a long discussion about middle class morality.

At the end of the act, it is shown that Doolittle fails to recognize his own daughter who is dressed in a clean kimono like a Japanese lady. There is an angry exchange of words between the father and daughter before Doolittle leaves.

The third act begins at Higgins’ mother’s house on her at-home day. A few months have passed by since the last act. Mrs. Higgins is dismayed when her son shows up unexpectedly, since his social clumsiness always offends all her friends and guests.

Higgins informs her about his latest phonetic project to pass off a common flower girl,

Eliza, as a duchess in six months. He also tells her that he has invited Eliza to her at- home. Before Mrs. Higgins has any time to voice her objections they are interrupted by the arrival of two guests - Mrs. and Miss Eynsford Hill. Soon Freddy Hill and Colonel

Pickering also arrive. Higgins who has had a lingering suspicion that he has seen Mrs. and Miss. Eynsford Hill somewhere before now recognizes them as the mother and daughter who were under the portico in Covent Garden. Soon Miss Doolittle is announced and Eliza enters exquisitely dressed. She however fails to restrict herself to the topics prescribed by Higgins (health and weather) and the conversation takes a dangerous turn.

A short time later, taking Higgins’ sign, Eliza rises to leave. At the same time

Freddy, who is rapturous by her beauty, offers to take accompany her while she walks across the park. It is here that Eliza responds with the famously infamous words,

“Walk! Not bloody likely!” This shocks everybody present. Soon the at-home breaks up

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and the Eynsford Hills leave. Higgins and Colonel Pickering excitedly discuss Eliza with Mrs. Higgins. They agree with her that Eliza needs to undergo more training before she is presentable. Mrs. Higgins rebukes the men for their unconcern about

Eliza’s future. She accurately foresees that the advantages imparted by Higgins will transform Eliza into a lady, which would disqualify her from earning her own living without giving her a lady’s income. However Pickering and Higgins do not consider this as any significant problem and Mrs. Higgins can only exclaim in frustration “Oh men! men!! men!!!”

Act four is the climax of the play. It opens at midnight at the Wimpole Street laboratory.

Eliza, Pickering and Higgins return to the laboratory after an exhausting night at the

Ambassador’s garden party where Eliza has made everybody impressed and the hostess is convinced that she is of royal blood from Hungary. It is a considerable period of time that has elapsed since her appearance at Mrs. Higgins’ at-home. Eliza has lost her coarse way of speaking and plays her role to perfection in the ball. In the laboratory,

Pickering and Higgins talk about the evening and their great success, though Higgins seems rather bored, more concerned with his inability to find slippers. Eliza is very upset to witness that Higgins seems more concerned with the slippers than her. “What the slippers are that they are more important than a girl who has performed a great success in the ball,” thinks Eliza. Higgins talks absentmindedly with slips out, returns with his slippers, and lays them on the floor before him without a word. Unmindful of

Eliza’s feelings, Higgins declares that he would have abandoned the silly project much earlier had he not wagered a bet. Higgins and Pickering talk about the great success as if

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Eliza is not there with them, saying how happy they are that the entire experiment is over, agreeing that it had become rather boring in the last few months. Eliza sits silently on a bench while the men voice their happiness that the whole affair is over. The two of them then leave the room to go to bed. Eliza is clearly hurt. “Eliza’s beauty turns murderous,” say the stage directions, but Higgins and Pickering ignore her.

After Pickering leaves, Higgins reenters the laboratory, once again still wondering what he has done with his slippers. Eliza becomes so angry with Higgins for his insensitivity and lack of concern. She flings the slippers at him and demands to know why he picked her out of the gutter if he wanted to throw her back again. She is worried about her future since now that she has been made a lady, she is fit for nothing else. As Higgins’ retort that she is ungrateful, she answers that no one has treated her badly, but that she is still left confused about what is to happen to her now that the bet has been won. Higgins says that she can always get married or open that flower shop, but she replies by saying that she wishes she had been left where she was before. She goes on to ask whether her clothes belong to her, meaning what she can take away with her without being accused of thievery. Higgins is genuinely hurt, something that does not happen to him often. She returns him a ring he bought for her, but Higgins throws the ring violently into the fireplace and leaves. Eliza kneels to look for the ring and after finding it she puts it down on the dessert stand and furiously goes upstairs to change her dress and leave. She meets Freddy and reciprocates his kisses since she needs to be comforted. They take a taxi and Eliza resolves to call on Mrs. Higgins in the morning for some advice.

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In the fifth and last act, Higgins comes to his mother’s house to tell her that

Eliza has run away. He does not know that Eliza has bolted to his mother for support.

Shortly thereafter Alfred Doolittle, who has been sent from Wimpole Street, arrives. He accuses Higgins of having delivered him into the hands of middle class morality. He complains that he had been left a legacy of three thousand pounds a year by an

American language fanatic, Ezra D. Wannafeller and holds Higgins responsible for suggesting his name as the most original moralist present in England. He dramatically complains his loss of freedom. He is however unwilling to add to his burdens by taking the additional responsibility of providing for Eliza. Higgins points out that Doolittle has already received five pounds in return for Eliza and he has no rights over her. Soon

Eliza enters and hurts Higgins by telling the Colonel that it was his genteel manners and kindness that really made her a lady and not Higgins who merely taught her to speak correctly. Alfred Doolittle leaves to marry the woman he has lived with as Eliza’s stepmother. Higgins is at last left alone with Eliza.

Higgins asks Eliza to return to Wimpole Street because he has become used to having her around, and is dependent on her for all sorts of little services. He would obviously miss her if she would go away. However Eliza goes on to accuse him of creating Duchess Eliza without thinking about the trouble that it could bring. To

Higgins’ surprise Eliza reveals that Freddy loves her and would make her happy.

Higgins tells her that her choice is between the cold unfeeling world of Science and Art and the life of the gutter. Eliza revenges herself by stating that she will advertise in the papers that Higgins’ Duchess is only a flower girl that he taught and that she will teach

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the same to anybody for a hundred guineas. Although hurt, Higgins is happy at the same time that he has made “a true woman” out of Eliza. He says that now they can live together like three old bachelors instead of only two men and a silly girl.

Shaw finishes Pygmalion without any information to whom Eliza will marry to.

The audience is left guessing whether she might indeed marry Higgins. The audience only knows through the last act that Eliza insists to leave the two bachelors and will begin her new life as a phonetics teacher to support her living. However, Shaw provides a resolution to the action in his anti-romantic epilogue in the part that is called ‘sequel’ where he states that Eliza tends to choose Freddy as her husband and lives happily with him.