Pygmalion

Use these questions or activities to help gauge students’ familiarity with and spark their interest in the context of the work, giving them an entry point into the text itself.

Short Answer

1. The title of Shaw’s play is a reference to the Greek myth of Pygmalion. What do you know about the myth of Pygmalion? What happens in the myth? What lessons do you think the myth teaches?

Teaching Suggestion: The myth of Pygmalion is best known from Ovid’s Metamorphoses. In the myth, the sculptor Pygmalion falls in love with a statue of a beautiful woman that he himself had created. Eventually, the goddess of love Aphrodite (or Venus, to the Romans) listens to Pygmalion’s prayers and brings the statue to life. Pygmalion marries the statue-woman, and the two even have a child together. (It is only much later, in Medieval and post-Medieval Europe, that the statue-woman was sometimes given the name Galatea.) Thinking about the literary context behind Shaw’s Pygmalion can help students engage more deeply with the play’s themes.

• This page on The Victorian Web contains an English translation of the story of Pygmalion from Book 10 of Ovid’s Metamorphoses.
• This academic article discusses Shaw’s reinterpretation of the myth of Pygmalion as told by Ovid.

2. Shaw produced Pygmalion in 1913, during a time when new ideas on politics and political reforms were circulating through much of the world. What are some of the political movements with which you associate the late 19th and early 20th centuries? What do you know about these movements and their history? (Teaching note: This question connects to the theme of Women’s Identity.)

Teaching Suggestion: Shaw wrote Pygmalion as the push for suffrage and equal citizenship for women in England was approaching its climax—no wonder that the significance of the female voice is quite literally the center of its plot. Shaw was also a proponent of Fabian socialism, a branch of democratic socialism opposed to Marxism, and these socialist beliefs are reflected in many of Shaw’s plays. Understanding some of the major political and social ideologies of the period, including Socialism, Capitalism, and Communism, can help students think about some of the issues in the background of Shaw’s play.

• This comprehensive article on the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy provides an introduction to Socialism.
• This page from the British Library highlights the major events in women’s suffrage in the late 19th and early 20th century.

Personal Connection Prompt

This prompt can be used for in-class discussion, exploratory free-writing, or reflection homework before reading the text.

Have you ever thought about the way you talk? Reflect on some unique aspects of your everyday speech, such as unusual expressions you use or the way you pronounce certain words. Where did these idiosyncrasies of your speech come from? Did you learn them from a specific community or family members? How do these attributes of your speech contribute to your identity? (Teaching note: This prompt connects to the theme of Language and Phonetics.)

Teaching Suggestion: In addition to thinking about unique expressions, dialects, and pronunciations, it could be informative to urge students to think about the stereotypes that surround certain speech patterns and why it is important to combat these stereotypes.

Differentiation Suggestion: For students with musical interests and/or intelligences, consider allowing them to find and share a song that represents their unique way of speaking, explaining to the class how it is representative of their community and/or identity.