Elements of Humour in Pygmalion
This is a timed essay that I wrote on the elements of humour in George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion a couple of weeks ago. My teacher’s paraphrased comments in the bottom of this post.
Discuss the elements of humour within the play
There are many theories about George Bernard Shaw’s intention with Pygmalion, his famous play. Many suggest that the theme is feminism, socialism or the class system dividing the population. However, there is one element that appears throughout the play: humour.
My thesis is taht Shaw has written Pygmalion in an attempt to entertain. This theory is supported by the fact that the play is still being read today, despite the drastic changes in the general population’s views of feminism and socialism.
Still, these elements are present in thep lay. In fact, they play an integral role in the usage of humour: Shaw is consistent in using satire to entertain. Feminism, socialism and the class system are easy victims for this. However, the paly is not completely unserious — the author utilizes satire to draw attention to real issues, such as those previously mentioned.
Although not evident, Shaw’s work is filled with examples of this. The most apparent one is located near the end of the act where Eliza is given her first chance in social life with mrs. Higgins’s friends: Clara, Freddy andmrs. Eynsford Hill. Their dialogue is scattered with sarcasm. The first occurring example is when Eliza is asked how the weather is, and she replies with the day’s weather forecast, perfectly pronounced. Higgins had earlier pointed out that it would be easy to teatch his apprentice how to say the words, but difficult to teach her which words to say.
If Eliza did this mistake consciously, the reader would have thought of it as a tounge-in-cheek insult aimed towards the upper class. Eliza did not; Shaw did. This is why the line is so amusing: he is making fun of the exaggerated “small talk” — the persistend discussion about the wheather and each other’s health. Shaw makes his point clear by including another example of this with Higgins remarking the absurdity in their shallow and narrow dialogues while limiting Eliza to the two very same topics.
More linguistics-related examples occur later in that act, when Freddy offers Eliza to accompany her. “Not bloody likely”, is the answer he gets along with an explanation that she’d rather go by taxi. Mrs. Eynsford Hill is very surprised by Eliza’s vocabulary: she breaks the norms for that kind of meeting. Here, Shaw has utilized satire as a tool for showing that the upper-class seldom is inedependent. Clara, on the other hand, isfascinated when she is told that this is the new “small talk”. Shaw once again uses sarcasm, and with the same purpose as the last time: to convey upon the reader that Clara isn’t independent, either. She only wants to follow the stream.
Anti-feminism, which was publicly accepted as the right way when the play was written, is also attacked by Shaw’s satire. When Eliza andFreddy had revealed their mutual love for each other, they decided to take a taxi home. Freddy had brought no money with himself, and so Eliza offered to pay. This would have been unthinkable contemporarily with the play. This kind of unexpected andstereotype-breaking events is naturally amusing.
From this, you can conclude that Shaw does in fact focus on issues such as women’s rights and political ideologies, though he uses sarcasm as a tool in order to achieve his goals.
In criterion A (response to the question) and B (presentation), I got 7 and 7-8, respectively. I should have treated more examples of humour, such as some related to Alfred Doolittle (Eliza’s father) and Nepommuck (Higgins’s prior student), which would have raised both grades. In criterion C, language, I got 10 with the comment that I should have used the word “satire” instead of “sarcasm” (this was changed in this version). Sarcasm is used more when the intent is to hurt someone’s feelings. The closing paragraph was apparently good, too.
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