Ruirui Jiang

George Bernard Shaw is the greatest British playwright after Shakespeare, and he is the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1925. He is good at humor and satire, and his works focus on the urgent social issues of that time, often with realistic characteristics. Pygmalion is one of Shaw’s representative plays and is also one of his most popular works. This play, adapted from Greek mythology, tells the story of the heroine Eliza, who changes from a flower girl to a “duchess” after a series of transformations by Professor Higgins, a phonetics expert. During this process, Eliza’s self-awareness continuously awakens, and ultimately she chooses to leave Higgins to pursue her own life. From a Feminist perspective, this article interprets Eliza’s process of self-growth, exploring the social background of the Victorian era and Shaw’s feminist thoughts.

Pygmalion; George Bernard Shaw; Feminism; self-growth; Eliza

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