IDENTITY AND

APPEARANCE
IN ‘PYGMALION’
Identity and appearance represent a
major theme in the play, in which it
embodies the english mentality in the
early XX. The events take place from
the determination of a ‘common
ignorant girl’ to improve her life: at the
beginning she sold flowers along the
street, however it wasn’t enough for
her and made a big effort in order to
change her appearance since she had
understood it’s crucial to get what you
want.
 OBJECTIVES
Identity is shaped by the way
someone appears and
speaks.
Strict division among social
classes.
According to the play,
someone’s social status is
determined by how they’re
perceived.
Is it possible to change
someone ‘s identity?
However deceiving
someone’s appearance
might seem, can a lower-
class person be considered
a noble in spite of their
origins?
 Pages 91-118

During her conversation with both gentlemen,

Eliza proves to be a strong, independent
woman now that she has finally gained the
‘identity’ she had longed for. She even
expresses the desire to teach what she had
been taught for six months.
I have created this thing out of the squashed
cabbage leaves of Covent Garden; and now she
pretends to play the fine lady with me.

Your calling me Miss Doolittle […] That was the

beginning of self-respect for me.

The difference between a lady and a flower

girl is not how she behaves, but how she's
treated.

When a child is brought to a foreign country, it picks up the

language in a few weeks, and forgets its own. Well, I am a child in
your country. I have forgotten my own language, and can speak
nothing but yours..

She will relapse into the gutter in three weeks

without me at her elbow.
Middle class morality claims it’s victim.

L: He treats a flower girl as if she was a duchess.

H: And I treat a duchess as if she was a flower
girl.

The great secret, Eliza, is not having bad manners or

good manners or any other particular sort of manners,
but having the same manner for all human souls.

Would the world ever have been made if its maker

had been afraid of making trouble? Making life
means making trouble.

I’m not dirt under your feet.

H: Do you not understand that I have made you a consort for a
king?
L: Freddy loves me: that makes him king enough for me.

H: I said I'd make a woman of you; and I have.

L:Yes: you turn round and make up to me now that I'm
not afraid of you, and can do without you.