Role Of Satire In Pygmalion

Social criticism and satire in British Society The filmed play Pygmalion, by Bernard Shaw is romantic comedy and also drawing social criticism in British society at late nineteenth and early twentieth century. The story of Pygmalion start with this, on the rainy street of London Higgins and Pickering finding a lady that fits Higgins’ needs, they bet on a flower seller Eliza with an incurable accent. At this point, Higgins is a person who is arrogant, opinionated and eccentric, and he sneers at the culture of the high society, and Pickering as an amateur phonologist, he likes to bet on Professor Higgins and the phonetics. Revert to the subject, Higgins claims her speech and intonation can be changed using his phonetics teaching style, while

In Pygmalion, Higgins is a person who is in upper class and always dresses, speaks and acts to make his appearance more perfect. This part can be called satirical part, because he tried to make other people look like himself. Especially, people who are poorer than himself, like Eliza. Also he try to marry Eliza, after she becomes a high class gentle woman. Furthermore, the another humor happens in the filmed play is that even though Eliza get hard training from Higgins of how to act like high class woman, she still does not know how to think as a gentle woman. She behaves and acts like high class woman, but her a way of thinking does not change. For example, in the filmed play, the part that Higgins take Eliza into his mother’s house is an irony humor. Eliza acts well and have good conversation with the guests till they talk about influenza. She keeps mentioned about her aunts death, which died from influenza. Eliza tells the guests very in detail about how her aunt died and how she think about the reason that she dies. Higgins is worrying about Eliza’s talk, and he cannot sitting and just listen. He stand up and trying to keep out the words that she used which the guests do not understand. Moreover, when Eliza is just getting her education, she pronounce the words inflatedly. It is also a humor of satirical elements, because it shows she is still a poor person selling flowers on the street, who is not yet

It mainly shows how the upper class people behave and speak, and how it affect other people badly. Also the Shaw used the character Eliza’s process of her getting higher education to apply on satirical element humor. This kind of filmed play is about social criticism and have satirical elements, but still make people laugh and interests. Also the social criticism made in Pygmalion, not like that in today's society, but people still lives under some