Shaw’s Modern Reinvention of Pygmalion as “the Scientific Type”

Abstract

In the critical studies of Shaw's Pygmalion which tend to give the most highlight to the playwright's demythologizing rewriting of its mythic source, especially Eliza's transformation in comparison with the limited metamorphosis of her mythic model Galatea, the scientist Higgins' professional descendance from Pygmalion, an artist, has seldom been fully addressed despite the intriguing dramatic incongruity between their professional personas. This essay examines Shaw's reinvention of Pygmalion the mythic sculptor as Higgins, a phonetic scientist. While what is central to Pygmalion's interaction with his creation is the male artist's erotic romanticization of a passive statue-woman, which is fundamentally motivated by some artistic 'feeling,' the essay argues Higgins' characterization as the deemotionalized "energetic scientific type...careless about himself and other people including their feelings" serves to undo the emotional foundation making up the romanticized mythic artist. Shaw ultimately deromanticizes and deeroticizes Pygmalion's romantic and erotic dynamic with Galatea which is quintessentially amorous and private, rewriting it as the socially driven modern project of a scientist "to take a human being and change her into a quite different human being by creating a new speech for her" for the purpose of "filling up the deepest gulf that separates class from class and soul from soul."