In January, we will be reading Pygmalion by Shaw.
Please post your comments and questions here.
Pygmalion: Online Text
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In January, we will be reading Pygmalion by Shaw.
Please post your comments and questions here.
Pygmalion: Online Text
Book Club Procedures
are we reading the novel version or the play version?
The play version. I was not aware that there was a novel version as well.Quote:
Originally Posted by Nightshade
huh yes there is I read that already but this is good because the library only had the play version in :nod:
I read Act I today. Does anyone think it's possible for someone to tell what neighborhood you're from just by pronounciation? I know accents are more distinct in England and i'm sure people did not travel about as far before mass transportation. But still what Higgins does in Act I seems kind of improbable. Does it make a difference?
hey Virg, there's a professor of historical linguistics at my univ who can actually do that! Well, I'm not sure she can pin people down to exact lanes but she can locate them within a few kilometres based on their accent!Quote:
Originally Posted by Virgil
Those early phoneticians were virtually obsessed with their work (care to know how Daniel Jones determined the position of the tongue during the articulation of vowels? It's a gruesome story), so they might have actually been as precise as that.
If I remember correctly, the girl is to be cured of her Cockney accent, that has very old roots in particular areas of and around London, so that there perhaps might have been a distinction even between neighbourhoods. I think Higgins was modelled on the famous phonetician Daniel Jones, and being able to recognise an accent that clearly surely adds to his being greatly skilled ;).Quote:
Originally Posted by Virgil
hehe Schoko, that was a good double post. Great minds think alike :)
Or else: two idiots - one thought ? :pQuote:
Originally Posted by SleepyWitch
I am not from England, or more specifically London. I do understand that the English have more distinct accents between their localities than Americans. I'm trying to touch on my experience and see how someone could actually find disctinctions between neighborhoods of a city. I grew up in Brooklyn, one of the five Boroughs of New York city. There are subtle distinctions between someone from Brooklyn and say someone from Manhatten or Bronx. I guess it's possible to be so learned in the local speech patterns as to hear it. No one from outside New York would be able to hear the distinction and I would bet that 90% of New Yorkers wouldn't hear it either. Like I said above, the time before mass transportation and now mass communication those distinctions would have been sharper. On the other hand, New York City is a city of 8 million people. London at the time of Higgins was probably around a million. Who knows. I guess it's possible.Quote:
Originally Posted by Schokokeks
Certainly in the world of the play, one has to accept it as possible.
Couple of months ago, there was an article in the TIME magazine on a similar subject:
http://www.time.com/time/nation/arti...535768,00.html
Hm..I also read Act I today. Is this meant to be a piece of satire?
Also, I find this Flower Girl to be extremely strange. She is dressed as a pauper, her accent reflects her as being a pauper (albeit a moaning, annoying one), yet she seems to be able to pay such things as a taxi fare! Is it out of cheating people from such methods as when she extracted money from the Mother? If so, then could it also be said that her moaning, weeping, and fear of the Notetaker as being a nark is just all an act to stir sympathy amongst the crowd (since it becomes very clear and evident that he is not going to inform the police about her)?
The significance of the title, Pygmalion, is also something I'm wondering about. At this point it doesn't appear to have any meaning, but perhaps later on.
In egypt there was this case of a begger woman, when she died they clered out her hovel and she had 1/2 million pounds under her bed! appearnce are nohing.
Well Ive been reading finshed act1 and moved into the second one and I must say Ive never seen a moore snobish bigoted yes rasist is classest man like hiigins ever in life or books:nod:
I didn't read it as trying to stir smpathy. There is no question that class consciouness is part of what is going on in Act I and the rest of the play perhaps. Perhaps this is why (or one of the reasons) that the English have many more distinct accents: class structure. In America we have never had class distinctions.Quote:
Originally Posted by Silv
"Hm..I also read Act I today. Is this meant to be a piece of satire? "
Yes
"Also, I find this Flower Girl to be extremely strange. She is dressed as a pauper, her accent reflects her as being a pauper (albeit a moaning, annoying one), yet she seems to be able to pay such things as a taxi fare! Is it out of cheating people"
No, it is because Higgins has just given her all his change - easy come, easy go.
"The significance of the title, Pygmalion, is also something I'm wondering about. At this point it doesn't appear to have any meaning, but perhaps later on."
Yes - .
"In America we have never had class distinctions"
Ho ho ho
quite...Quote:
Originally Posted by Whifflingpin
I wouldnt say never Virgil as far as I know where ever there are people there will be class distinctions in one way or another. A good example would be the sterotype american high school.
:D
I'm talking about titles such as lord, lady duke, earl, even knight or gentry. Yes there are distinctions between rich and poor in America. But I'm referring to the specialized sub-cultures that developed because of class distinctions in England, which is different from money disparity. Arstocracy can be relatively poor, but the class and sub-culture distinction remained. Look I'm amazed at how many English novels have as either a prominant theme or a sub theme class issues. Even as late as 1928 D.H. Lawrence wrote Lady Chatterly's Lover. Just about every 19th century novel is about class distinction. Great Expectations is about Pip who is caught between two class worlds. And look at how the people of those two worlds speak differently. Now I would believe that in recent generations it has deminished in importance. But you still have Lady Diana and all the issues she brought, like dating someone who was not in her class once she divorced or even being picked to marry the Queen's son. We don't have anything like that in America. Those kind of things affect people's psyche and the way they think. I can't think of any American novel (I'm sure someone will now point one out, but it has to be rare) that turns on class distinction. Even Henry James's rich Americans are usually rich because of some family business. Mark Twain continuouly made fun of supposed aristocracy and deflated them to satire.Quote:
Originally Posted by Nightshade
From Wikipedia, since you mentioned it:
Pygmalion is a fictional character from the Roman poet Ovid, found in the tenth book of his Metamorphoses. Pygmalion is a sculptor who falls in love with a statue he has made.
Pygmalion was a Cypriot sculptor who carved a woman out of ivory. According to Ovid he is 'not interested in women', but his statue is so realistic that he falls in love with it. He offers the statue presents and eventually prays to Venus. She takes pity on him and brings the statue to life. They marry and have a son, Paphos.
Ovid's mention of Paphos suggests he was drawing on the brief account of Pygmalion and Galatea in Bibliotheke, a Hellenistic encyclopedia of myth formerly attributed to Apollodorus.
No it was because she was dating/was pregnat by/ wanted to marry a muslim and she was the mother f the future head of church of E, a bit off dont you think??Quote:
Originally Posted by Virgil
I read a book once about class in america there was this 'blueblood" mayflower family and another family who was actually jsut as old came across on the same boat and all but One was consider high class and the other not. The book was about the feud and realtions between these 2 familys and went on all the way to the 19 somthings when one of the families died out. Then you have things like ahh what was it called a 19th century Knight or somthing lke that by E.P> Roe which was about class distinction or actually so was his first novel 'the barriers burned away' which was ste around the chicago fire. HUmm without a home was again about class and how if you were homless and lost everything eventually you be just the same and pride would dissapear. :nod:
Not that Im saying you have class the same way but still class is class.
Perhpas the religion was a complicating factor, but don't you think a similar issue would have happened if the guy was a lower class bloke from a blue collar town?Quote:
Originally Posted by Nightshade
Sounds like the Mayflower family you mention brought their English issues to America where they eventually got dissipated.Quote:
I read a book once about class in america there was this 'blueblood" mayflower family and another family who was actually jsut as old came across on the same boat and all but One was consider high class and the other not. The book was about the feud and realtions between these 2 familys and went on all the way to the 19 somthings when one of the families died out. Then you have things like ahh what was it called a 19th century Knight or somthing lke that by E.P> Roe which was about class distinction or actually so was his first novel 'the barriers burned away' which was ste around the chicago fire. HUmm without a home was again about class and how if you were homless and lost everything eventually you be just the same and pride would dissapear. :nod:
Yes there are distinctions between rich and poor, but they have not been institutionalized like that.Quote:
Not that Im saying you have class the same way but still class is class.
Let's bring this discussion back to Pygmalion. You don't see the class issues in there in Act I? "Gentleman" contrasted with "Flower girl"? in fact Liza's motivation is to try to move up ion class by changing the way she speaks.
"Let's bring this discussion back to Pygmalion. You don't see the class issues in there in Act I? "Gentleman" contrasted with "Flower girl"? in fact Liza's motivation is to try to move up ion class by changing the way she speaks."
Good, but, within the play, the matter is complex, (and I'll stick to Act 1 if I can, because the themes develop through the play)
For instance, wealth does not equal class. The fact that Higgins' profession is teaching the nouveau riche how to disguise their origins shows that acquisition of wealth is not sufficient to change someone's class.
However, it also shows that there is mobility between the classes to a greater extent than non-English people may realise. (To use a crude measure - a cursory glance through my 1907 edition of "Burke's Peerage" shows a great number of first generation peerages, as well as a handful that go back to the eleventh century.)
Moreover, within "society," (a nebulous term in itself) there is/was the question as to what makes a gentleman. This was a fascinating subject to Victorian and Edwardian writers. In the play (Act 1 at least) Pickering and Higgins are of the same class, but Pickering behaves as a gentleman would be expected to, while Higgins does not - maybe, there are some hints, e.g. that in spite of himself, he does give money to Eliza.
The speech issue is also not as simple as may be expected. Higgins may teach people to speak like those with whom they want to associate - but he says that shop assistants speak better English than duchesses.
So, let's not be too dogmatic, please.
:DQuote:
Originally Posted by Whifflingpin
I think class distinctions exist in every society - even though they are based on different criterias. In the UK, owing to its centuries old past, it was mainly based on aristocracy. In the US, this has taken a different turn; money, rather than family ties, became the main determining factor when it came to determination of classes (not to mention class disctions based on race, for example).Quote:
Originally Posted by Nightshade
However, not to go off topic, I think, yes, the play deals and questions the class issues; not emphasising the importance of those but rather showing how vain these are since they can be overcome by education and training. A flower girl can pass as a member of a royal family with the proper 'intervention' so these so-called distinctions are baseless since anyone can be 'taught' to behave like someone from upper classes.If my memory serves me right, he becomes disappointed with women on his island because they have no sense of shame and morally 'loose'.Quote:
Originally Posted by William Forrest
I agree completely with this. In fact that was what I as trying to say. I think of class as an aristocratic concept, titles and such. And I did say that in America we distinguish between income, and yes that is a form of class distinction. Look i'm no sociologist, but I do know literature. I'm amazed at how almost every english novelist prior to 1930's has some form a class conscousness as part of its theme. The characters seemed defined and locked in by their class. Perhaps only Joseph Conrad doesn't, and he wasn't a native englishman. On the other hand American consciousness is defined by an almost infinite land mass where one moves on to, re-establishes oneself anew. Huck Finn I think (I'm going by memory) says "lighting for the territories." And certainly we have never had titles.Quote:
Originally Posted by Scheherazade
I believe that is Shaw's central theme, the freeing capability from this class prison. And yes that is about class.Quote:
A flower girl can pass as a member of a royal family with the proper 'intervention' so these so-called distinctions are baseless since anyone can be 'taught' to behave like someone from upper classes.
SO what its a continuing of the edwardian theme of what makes a gentleman? Like when they thnik hes a 'tec' only one of the bystanders says look at his boots?
Ah well - that's an interesting example. There is no definitive answer, but I think the boots in this case (being externals) denote class, rather than being a 'gentleman.' (In different context, perhaps, having clean though shabby boots might symbolise being still a gentleman, albeit in reduced circumstances.)
Pickering's instant defence of the poor and helpless woman against the forces of authority - "Really sir ... Anybody could see that the girl meant no harm." That is the behaviour of a 'gentleman.'
Higgin's rudeness - "Never you mind, they did," "Ha Ha! What a devil of a name!" etc., is in contrast. But..
Higgin's behaviour is shown to be unclassifiable. Pickering, a gentleman, thinks he might be a music hall performer. A bystander says he has come from Hanwell, a lunatic asylum on the outskirts of London.
Since you agree with my previous post, Virgil, we can conclude that class distinction is not necessarily based on aristocracy and in the US as well there are similar incidents and books dealing with this issue:The Great Gatsby :pQuote:
Originally Posted by Virgil
My fair lady was based on this wasnt it? Well actually I know it was but I just want to say it :p So are we still discussing Act1 then?
not the most patiant of people.....:p
But while we are on act1 everyone but Higgins is described in detail why is that?
We dont have an age for him, althou we know Freddy is 20 and Eliza is 18...:goof:
Possibly. Certainly Fitgerald is trying to create an old money versus new money distinction. I don't know what it was like in the 1920's but I've never noticed any distinctions between when one acquired wealth. Of course I don't really know many (if any) really wealthy people. :p Yes i would agree with you Scher. I wonder though if Fizgerald is striving to immitate English novels, which he studied well, or he really knew that distinction. Good point, Scher.Quote:
Originally Posted by Scheherazade
Go a head Night. I've just started Act II, but you don't have to wait. Actually what you say may prod me to read faster. :DQuote:
Originally Posted by Nightshade
The written play is better than My Fair Lady in which Eliza's last decision is different.
There was one thing that I noticed and it was the usage of no apostrophe in contractions, even in Professor Higgins's and Pickering's speech. I am a bit confused about it. I have always heard that a sentence having "youre" instead of "you're" is gramatically incorrect. Can someone correct me if I am ignorant of something here?
The play was actually awesome, witty and engaging. I enjoyed reading Mr. Doolittle's dialogues a lot as well. Fascinating book, a bit of a laugh but deals with serious matters like class distinction and the changing of people according to the society they dwell in.
ha yes which is why I like this sooo much more :nod:Quote:
Originally Posted by Pensive
"I have always heard that a sentence having "youre" instead of "you're" is gramatically incorrect. Can someone correct me if I am ignorant of something here?"
You are correct. Shaw argued, I think, that English spelling should be reformed, but that has not yet happened. So keep using apostrophes correctly, at least until you have the standing of Shaw, and can take up his work.
Finished Act II. Here's something that struck me. Higgins traces Doolittle's paretage by his speech.
Quote:
HIGGINS
[to Pickering] Brought up in Hounslow. Mother Welsh, I should think. [Doolittle opens his mouth, amazed. Higgins continues] What do you want, Doolittle?
As I've said in the previous posts that it's a little hard to believe that one can tell from what neighborhood one comes from by the speech, but I guess it's possible. Now to be able to tell where your parents came from and, not only that, to tell where one's mother as opposed to father came from, now that is pushing credibility. ;) I don't believe that's possible.
Also, this seems to echo Sherlock Holmes and Watson, with Higgins being Holmes and Pickering being Watson. Is it just me? Not that it means anything one way or the other. Just a thought.
I have to catch up. Still going through Act I. But I wouldn't be getting through it at all if it weren't for that DailyLit website that someone here on LitNet recommended.
I never realized before that it dealt largely with phonetics.
I woudnt be so sure about that, from one who is a mix its not that hard to tell if the mix is differant enough, sya you take and egptian-nonenglish speaking mix. Usually if the mum is egyptian the arabic will be idomatic and almost abasloutly undisnguishable( who talks to the baby??) but if the mum is a foriegner well then little mistakes pop out and if your good enough you can tell where the persons parent came from by the mistakes thay make.Quote:
Originally Posted by Virgil
Boy it's beginning to sound like Sherlock Holmes more and more. :pQuote:
Originally Posted by Nightshade
But getting back to your point, if it's the mom talking to the child, and the child is male, wouldn't he talk like the mom. And then there would be no gender difference. How can Higgins distiguish Doolittle's mom as Welch but not the father? I should go back and see what exactly Doolittle has said up to that point.
no but the idea is that you devlop the idea of languge within the first few years of life, now Im not sure how higgins would have known this seeing as its a theory from later on but still.
But when and how would a man lose his mother's language quirks? How can he tell what Doolittle says was handed down from his mother if as a man he will developed his own idiosyncratic quirks?Quote:
Originally Posted by Nightshade
In Act II, does anyone else agree with me that Higgins is a complete jerk to Eliza? He is frustrating me, I hope he gets better.
Pickering sounds like he is trying to be nice to Eliza, but he's having fun watching Higgins insult her.