pygmalion

A detailed Summary of pygmalion


Professor Higgins is seen throughout Pygmalion as a very rude man. You would expect a well-educated man, such as Higgins, to be a gentleman, however, he is far from it. Higgins believes that how you treat someone is not important, as long as you treat everyone equally.

"The great secret, Eliza, is not having bad manners or good manners or any other particular sort of manners, but having the same manner for all human souls: in short, behaving as if you were in Heaven, where there are no third-class carriages, and one soul is as good as another"

Higgins says this to Eliza, hoping it will justify his treatment of her. This theory would be fine if Higgins always lived by it himself. However, he shows this in many different ways.

It can seen how Higgins follows this theory. He is consistently rude towards Eliza, Mrs. Pearce, and his mother. His manners are the same towards each of them, according to this philosophy of his. However the Higgins we see at the parties and in good times with Pickering


Higgins could never see the "new" Eliza. Higgins only saw the dirty flower girl that had become his "experiment." Much like an author never sees a work as finished, Higgins could not view Eliza lady or duchess. Since Higgins knew where Eliza came from it was difficult for him to make her parts fit together as a masterpiece that he respected.

It is obvious that Higgins does not treat everyone equally all of the time, as witnessed by his actions when he is in "one of his states" (as Mrs. Higgins' parlour maid calls it). The Higgins that we see in Mrs. Higgins' parlour is not the same Higgins we see at the parties. When in "the state" Henry Higgins wanders aimlessly around the parlour, irrationally moving from chair to chair, highly unlike the calm Professor Higgins we see at the ball. Higgins does not believe that a person should have the same manner towards everyone all of the time, but that a person should treat everyone equally at a given time (or in a certain situation). When he is in "one of those states" his manner is the same towards everyone; he is e

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Approximate Word count = 716
Approximate Pages = 3 (250 words per page double spaced)

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