Pygmalion
Pygmalion, by Bernard Shaw 
Blurb: Pygmalion both delighted and scandalized its first audiences in 1914. A brilliantly witty reworking of the classical tale of the sculptor Pygmalion, who falls in love with his perfect female statue, it is also a barbed attack on the British class system and a statement of Shaw's feminist views. In Shaw's hands, the phoneticist Henry Higgins is the Pygmalion figure who believes he can transform Eliza Doolittle, a cockney flower girl, into a duchess at ease in polite society. The one thing he overlooks is that his 'creation' has a mind of her own. Adapted into the Oscar-winning musical film My Fair Lady starring Audrey Hepburn and Rex Harrison in 1964, Pygmalion.My ReviewI love My Fair Lady, so of course I wanted to read the book, once I actually realised it was a book! I feel so stupid for not knowing! But anyway, I read it and it was both disappointed that there wasn't more that wasn't in the film (like most stories, thought this is a play) and happy that it was the same, almost word for word because it had all my favourite lines! I'm still amazed, though, that such a short play can make such a long film... Anyway, for anyone whose watched My Fair Lady, I don't really need to expand. For those who haven't... go watch it! The story is about transformation and the relationships between people (not romantically), especially between pupils and teachers, or "children" and parents. I'm glad that there isn't anything romantic between Eliza and Higgins, which I feel is implied at the end of the film; the book makes it a lot clearer that a romance between them wouldn't be possible, which I like, simply because they would not mesh. Honestly, there is so much you can get from this book, but since this isn't an English essay I'm not going to go into depth, but you can also just read it as the enjoyable, classic play that it is. Personally, I'd say that if you've seen the film, there's little reason to read the book. That's almost sacrilegious, I know, but the book is almost word for word, so... 
My favourite quotes from 'Pygmalion':'... it is impossible for an Englishman to open his mouth without making some other Englishman despise him.' 'I suppose the woman wants to live her own life; and the man wants to live his; and each tries to drag the other on to the wrong track. One wants to go north and the other south; and the result is that both have to go east, though they both hate the east wind.' ' "Oh, nonsense! She speaks English perfectly.""Too perfectly. Can you show me any English woman who speaks English as it should be spoken?" ' 'I sold flowers. I didn't sell myself. Now you've made a lady of me I'm not fit to sell anything else.' 'Let us put on our best Sunday manners for this creature that we picked out of the mud.''... the difference between a lady and a flower girl is not how she behaves, but how she's treated.' 'The question is now whether I treat you rudely, but whether you ever heard me treat anyone else better.' 'Nevertheless, people in all directions have assumed, for no other reason than that she became the heroine of a romance, that she must have married the hero of it.'
Blurb: Pygmalion both delighted and scandalized its first audiences in 1914. A brilliantly witty reworking of the classical tale of the sculptor Pygmalion, who falls in love with his perfect female statue, it is also a barbed attack on the British class system and a statement of Shaw's feminist views. In Shaw's hands, the phoneticist Henry Higgins is the Pygmalion figure who believes he can transform Eliza Doolittle, a cockney flower girl, into a duchess at ease in polite society. The one thing he overlooks is that his 'creation' has a mind of her own. Adapted into the Oscar-winning musical film My Fair Lady starring Audrey Hepburn and Rex Harrison in 1964, Pygmalion.My ReviewI love My Fair Lady, so of course I wanted to read the book, once I actually realised it was a book! I feel so stupid for not knowing! But anyway, I read it and it was both disappointed that there wasn't more that wasn't in the film (like most stories, thought this is a play) and happy that it was the same, almost word for word because it had all my favourite lines! I'm still amazed, though, that such a short play can make such a long film... Anyway, for anyone whose watched My Fair Lady, I don't really need to expand. For those who haven't... go watch it! The story is about transformation and the relationships between people (not romantically), especially between pupils and teachers, or "children" and parents. I'm glad that there isn't anything romantic between Eliza and Higgins, which I feel is implied at the end of the film; the book makes it a lot clearer that a romance between them wouldn't be possible, which I like, simply because they would not mesh. Honestly, there is so much you can get from this book, but since this isn't an English essay I'm not going to go into depth, but you can also just read it as the enjoyable, classic play that it is. Personally, I'd say that if you've seen the film, there's little reason to read the book. That's almost sacrilegious, I know, but the book is almost word for word, so... My favourite quotes from 'Pygmalion':'... it is impossible for an Englishman to open his mouth without making some other Englishman despise him.' 'I suppose the woman wants to live her own life; and the man wants to live his; and each tries to drag the other on to the wrong track. One wants to go north and the other south; and the result is that both have to go east, though they both hate the east wind.' ' "Oh, nonsense! She speaks English perfectly.""Too perfectly. Can you show me any English woman who speaks English as it should be spoken?" ' 'I sold flowers. I didn't sell myself. Now you've made a lady of me I'm not fit to sell anything else.' 'Let us put on our best Sunday manners for this creature that we picked out of the mud.''... the difference between a lady and a flower girl is not how she behaves, but how she's treated.' 'The question is now whether I treat you rudely, but whether you ever heard me treat anyone else better.' 'Nevertheless, people in all directions have assumed, for no other reason than that she became the heroine of a romance, that she must have married the hero of it.'
No comments have been added yet.
