Pygmalion

I have heard about Pygmalion since I was in the foundation course which is about three or four years ago. In addition to that, my juniors in the Temenggong Ibrahim’s Teachers Trainee Institute used to do the performing of the novel Pygmalion and that should makes me knows the novel better. However, it never happed to me. I seemed like to know nothing about Pygmalion except for that there is Eliza in the novel and she is a flower girl. I was so lucky that my classmates and I were assigned to watch the movie through the EDU 3217 and this time, I get to know the real thing, what is actually happened in the novel. Besides watching the movie Pygmalion, we are supposed to learn the novel too.

As we learnt and watch Pygmalion, I felt that this novel is quite humorous compared to King Lear, Anike or Antigone in the way that Eliza is not so used to the new environment that she wants to be fit in. When we watched the movie, I guessed that it was so funny at the part when Eliza was shouting and scared as Mrs Pearce scrub and bathed her. Of course, I did not really understand her language and it is in fact quite funny to know that there are people like Eliza in the English society. Well, aren’t all the English people supposed to speak better than us, where English Language is only a second language?

Next, I also learn from the novel that it is so hard change and be something so unfamiliar and different from whom we really are. As we can see from the character Eliza when she does picks up the new style and language but she is actually speaking like a robot that just memorize and no nothing of what she is talking about at all. However, I still cannot see the romantic part in the novel that Dr Edwin has mentioned in the class. May be I should read the novel again or look for some information more about Pygmalion from the Internet.

I then realised that in the novel, there is element of discriminations of woman in the novel as what we can see through the treatment of Higgins towards Eliza. If I was Eliza, I will also choose Freddy rather than Higgins. I said this because what actually a woman need is a respect and not to being treated ‘Barbie dolled’ or an experiment that have no feelings at all. Honestly, in this case, I am a bit being feminism. May be it due to my education background where I used to study in a girls’ school and my siblings are all girls. Hahhahaha……

Pygmalion is indeed something to me to learn besides the interesting side that it has provided.