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Nupur's Works |
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(Mis)Reading Shaw  The power of Shaw’s plays and the ideas presented in them lies primarily in his ability to present all sides of a debate or an issue with equal force and conviction. Shaw is in many ways dramatic in the Joycean sense of the word, entering wholly into each discourse. Tremendous though this achievement is, it renders his plays liable to misreadings, for it is so difficult to know what Shaw believes or wants the reader to believe. The problem, one might say, lies in Shaw’s dramatic ability. This is especially evident in the scene in Pygmalion in which Eliza attends Mrs. Higgins’s at-home. Eliza who has just had mastered grammar and pronunciation, mimics more or less correctly the forms of refined speech, but expresses views incompatible with those held by the upper classes, or at any rate, those not publicly expressed. Referring to her aunt’s death, she expresses her “belief (that) they done the old woman in.” When Mrs. Eynsford Hill remonstrates at Eliza’s father pouring “spirits down (her aunt’s) throat,” Eliza hastens to assure her that “(g)in is mother’s milk to her” aunt. A double mimicking takes place here, for not only does Eliza attempt to imitate refined speech, but is imitated as well. Clara Eynsford Hill, erroneously supposing Eliza’s speech to be the latest “small talk”, begins to mimic her; succeeding, ironically enough, remarkably well. “Such bloody nonsense!” she exclaims, tempted by Higgins, on her way out. Taken in by form, she does not examine content Shaw draws upon two motifs here. The first, drawn from the socio-political sphere, is obvious. Eliza’s mimicry is equivalent to that of the colonized individual; an imitation that anglicizes without eradicating what would be seen as a basic difference. (Bhabha 87) In his essay “Of Mimicry and Man”, Bhabha explores the idea of mimicry as a resemblance that is partial, “almost the same, but not quite.” (89) Colonized peoples are provided with the forms of government and independence
sufficient to make them good servants or, as Macaulay puts it, good “interpreters between us and the millions whom we
govern,”(Bhabha 87) but not enough for them to sustain self-government. Eliza has, as Higgins realizes, the appropriate
forms of discourse, but not the content. As an insider, Higgins realizes this: “You see,” he admits to his mother,
“I’ve got her pronunciation all right, but you have to consider not only how a girl pronounces, but what she pronounces.”(202) Grammar in itself, then, is not empowering. Here after her initial lessons,
Eliza does indeed parrot, for she imitates without quite understanding. In characterizing
her as a parrot, though, Higgins like the colonizer is not willing to acknowledge that if Eliza apes form, it is because she
has not been taught anything else. The knowledge given to her is insufficient. Like the colonizer, Higgins is responsible
for the mimicry being “almost the same, but not quite”, but uses the gap as evidence of the inherently flawed
nature of the colonized. Higgins, though, has a greater investment in Eliza’s education than the colonizers had in that those they governed: “…you have no idea how frightfully interesting it is to take a human being and change her into a quite different human being by creating a new speech for her.” Higgins therefore does consider what Eliza will pronounce.  If the play itself does not indicate the importance of both form and content in bridging the gap between the classes, Shaw’s epilogue makes the point clearer. Clara resembles Eliza in her endeavour to integrate herself into a superior class by learning the forms and by faithfully mimicking them. To her chagrin, this does not in any way endear her to those who she seeks to emulate. When she takes up Wells, however, and rids herself of her snobbery, she begins to make friends. Her “accessibility to ideas”(258) enables her to win friends from among those who have hitherto shunned her. The difficulty here, though, is that Shaw valorizes the upper class and their speech and ideas. The gap cannot be bridged unless people like Eliza learn the speech of the Higginses. Wellesian ideas of social equality, it would seem from the epilogue, are available only to those whom Clara had earlier tried unsuccessfully to be intimate with. The colonized individual is inferior to the colonizer and the erasure of the gap can only take place by an adoption of the culture, the speech, and discourse of the colonizer. The second motif drawn from a Literary genre reinforces this view. In the tradition of protagonists of picaresque fiction from Lazarillo de Tomes and Felix Krull, Eliza and Clara – particularly the latter – emphasize form over content, choosing to master form. Picaresque fiction functions as a critique of society with its emphasis on money, status, and appearance to confirm positive moral and ethical attributes. Shaw seems to be using the picaresque motif in the same way, when Clara taken in by Eliza’s splendid appearance is impressed by her instead of, as would be usual, snubbing her. The Eynsford Hills, whatever their reaction to Eliza’s “new small talk”, are in no doubt as to her supposed origins. Freddie who had brushed past Eliza when she was a flower-girl without apologizing is now eager to renew his acquaintance with her. Mrs. Eynsford Hill admits to being old-fashioned and being unable to use the “latest slang”. Read in this way, Mrs. Higgins’s pronouncement on Eliza: “Shes a triumph of your art and her dressmaker’s; but if you suppose for a moment that she doesnt give herself away in every sentence she utters, you must be perfectly cracked about her,” only reinforces the traditional critique of the picaresque. Mrs. Higgins, after all, is in the know; the Eynsford Hills are not. The latter occupy a status higher than Eliza’s and we might think are, despite their poverty, on par with Mrs. Higgins for they call on her. But certain hints within the scene and the epilogue itself make Shaw’s purpose clearer. Shaw does not accept the picaresque view of high society being based solely on appearances. To emulate form alone as we have seen is but to parrot. One’s attire and accent cannot eliminate the differences. Content is as important as form. Shaw, then, problematises and undermines the picaresque critique of society. Before leaving, Mrs. Eynsford Hill
apologises to Mrs. Higgins for Clara’s behaviour: “You mustn’t mind Clara. We’re so poor! and she
gets so few parties, poor child! She doesnt quite know.” Because of their poverty, Clara has not had the exposure women
of her age would have had. It is her ignorance that accounts for her unquestioned praise and acceptance of Eliza and her slang.
Poverty relegates the Eynsford Hills to a lower social rung, limiting their social circle and resulting, at least in Clara,
in an ignorance of acceptable social forms. Since what we think of as Victorian morality
and prudery was really a middle class rather than a general trait, it may be that Shaw in criticizing Clara, was criticizing
the middle class and its strenuous efforts to maintain appearances, to appear to belong to the upper class. Doolittle, after
all, upon inheriting his fortune graduates straight to the upper class which accepts him and his speech, though the middle
class rejects him. He does have to conform, however, by marrying his mistress. One aspect of the scene, however,
serves to undermine this view. While Eliza to be accepted as the genuine article must conform to conventional speech forms
and must take care not only over her pronunciation, but over her pronouncements as well, Higgins can be and is accepted the
way he is. Mrs. Higgins and Pickering do criticize Higgins’s language: “Come, Higgins,” Pickering says,
“you must learn to know yourself. I havent heard such language as yours since we used to review the volunteers in Hyde
Park twenty years ago.”(211); and Mrs. Pearce constantly faults his manners, but his status despite all that is never
given away; precisely because there is nothing to be given away. Higgins most emphatically belongs. Eliza, of course, does
not. This seems to me, however, more a distinction
of gender than one of class. Higgins can use slang and expletives without Mrs. Eynsford Hill raising an eyebrow; for that
is how men express themselves. In a woman, on the other hand, such language would be unacceptable, crude, and uncouth. The
burden of upper class refinement rests on the women rather than on the men. What we have read as content becomes now an aspect
of form that men can afford to dispense with, but which women must bear in order to be accepted and to belong. I suspect that
this is the reason Doolittle is favoured by the upper class without having to conform in the way Eliza does. Economic status, then, does confer social status, for money is conferred
on women, but men have the power and the freedom to earn it. Doolittle is accepted because of his money; Higgins can sell
language to the middle class and not be thought of as being in trade because he does not depend for his living on what he sells. To portray society as it is, is not necessarily to preserve the status quo or to
valorize existing social relations. Shaw may well be presenting society as it is in order to critique it. In this case, however,
the epilogue does not provide us with any indication of Shaw’s purpose. Higgins
is criticized as being overbearing, but there is nothing to suggest that Shaw has realized and feels the need to criticize
the fact that financial independence and gender are both important in determining one’s status in society. Shaw is clearly
in favour of Higgins: to those who are uncultured, “that Higgins could have a passion for phonetics and idealize his
mother instead of Eliza, would seem…absurd and unnatural.”(251) Given Higgins’s resemblance to Shavian supermen
such as Bluntschli and Caesar, who adopt a similar role to the women they meet, I do not think that attributing to Shaw a
belief in the inherent superiority of men and of the upper class is a misreading of the play. Shaw’s focus remains on Higgins’s
belief that language can fill “up the deepest gulf that separates class from class and soul from soul” and that
he does not discriminate on the basis of class, for he is equally rude to everyone. “The great secret,” he tells
Eliza, “is not having bad manners or good manners, but having the same manner for all human souls..” This philosophy
will do for him, but not for Eliza as Higgins himself realizes, when he takes her to his mother that she may take charge of
her. The colonizer may bend the rules, but
the colonized must conform to be accepted. Acceptance relies, then, not on a toleration of difference, but on a complete erasure
of it. Eliza loses a part of herself when she loses her language. |
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