ENGL 364 Dr. Helen Bittel Pygmalion Study Guide Please answer all four questions. Several critics have noted that one way that this play frustrates readers' (and viewers') expectations is its refusal to structure characters according to a Manichean moral logic, in which characters are either clearly good or clearly evil. How would you support (or challenge) this idea using specific examples from the play? Throughout the play, several individuals ask Henry Higgins a key question that is, in Act IV, finally articulated by Eliza herself: "What have you left me fit for?" Why do you think that this is such an important question? What does its repetition have to do with the larger themes of the play and the social questions it engages? In all of his writing, Shaw rejects the idea that politics and art should be separate endeavors. This play in particular engages a great deal with issues related to social class (and especially with middle-class values) and to gender. How do you see such critique operating in this play (and especially in the second half) and what "message" is Shaw conveying? Why, according to the sequel, does Shaw reject what seems to many the most "natural" ending---one in which Eliza marries Huggins? Apart from what Shaw explicitly says, what are the implications of this decision? Put another way, how does the refusal of this "expected" ending shape our interpretation of the play and how does is serve as a venue for social critique?     Contact the English Department at: 570-348-6219. E-mail: English@marywood.edu.

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Last update August 19, 2004
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