Recent Work on Pygmalion in Nineteenth‐Century Literature

Abstract

Pygmalion, Ovid’s story of the sculptor who falls in love with his own statue, later brought to life by Venus, is a popular subject in English literature. In this essay I review recent work on Pygmalion in 19th-century literature, focusing on the key themes of gender, class and metamorphosis. The literature reviewed includes analyses of specific Pygmalion poems and plays, as well as the use of Pygmalion as a trope for a range of concerns relating to male control, fashioning and the female subject. In the essay I consider Romantic and Victorian versions, as well as early 20th-century texts such as George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion (1912) which I suggest has shaped modern ways of understanding Pygmalionism and transformation

Deciphering the Fairytale: Deconstruction of Romance Through the Construction of Self in Pygmalion

“…Sociolinguistics studies those types of variation resulting from the correlation between language and social factors, which is utilized to analyze Eliza's speech styles in her conversational turns (Qadha, 2019). Analyses of specific Pygmalion poems and plays and the use of Pygmalion as a trope for a range of concerns relating to male control, fashioning, and the female subject, which has shaped modern ways of understanding Pygmalionism and transformation (Yeates, 2010). The process of transformation and evolution takes momentum in the flower girl, who resolves to dictate her new thoughts of winning a momentary position of a duchess for Higgins and his friend Colonel Pickering and the profession of a lady in a florist shop for herself.…”