'Henry Higgins Essay\r'

'Higgins is an highly interesting display case and the breeding of the mash. Although the play’s obvious concern is the metamorphosis of a common flower girlfriend into a duchess, the development of Higgins’ character is excessively important. The play isn’t solely Eliza’s story. One also detects changes in Higgins or to be more(prenominal) precise he appears to the contributor in a new light at the end. This is seen when he tells Eliza that he has grown accustomed to sightedness her font and hearing her voice. This is non much of a sensitive display of emotions but it is quite divergent than the savage invective he hurled at her at the beginning of the play in Covent Garden.\r\nHiggins is portrayed as universe highly educated. Apart from being a prof of phonetics, he has a deep hero-worship for literature and fancies himself as a poet. In completely seriousness he thinks highly of â€Å"the treasures of (his) Mittonic mind. ” He is self-indulgent, whimsical, and lightheaded earthnered when it comes to interacting with other race. Higgins is not a man given to extravagant aesthetic tastes. The walls in the Wimpole path laboratory be not adorned by paintings but by engravings.\r\nHis passionate fondness for sweets and chocolates stands egress in derisory contrast to his seriousness and barren mode of living. Higgins’ most prominent characteristic is his self-consciousness and the consequent inability to sit still. He is constantly tripping and stumbling over something. For instance, in Act Three, Shaw writes in the stage directions that Higgins’s sudden arrival at his mother’s at home is go with by minor disasters †â€Å"He goes to the divan, stumbling into the fender and over the fire-irons on his way; extricating himself with muttered impatiently on the divan that he almost breaks it”.\r\nThese quirks and oddities of his character contribute to the laughs in the pla y and place Higgins in the tradition of the comic hero. It is obvious that simply as a professor of phonetics Higgins would not have been very(prenominal) humorous. Thus Shaw makes Higgins obsess with his profession. His devotion to phonetics is so engrossing that it leaves little judgment of conviction or inclination for anything else. Consequently his behavior strikes people as odd and unconventional to the point of being rude. He despises the conventions of the middle class that include their manners and hypocritical sense of decorum.\r\nHe claims to treat everyone with advert disrespect barely his invective is lavished on Eliza musical composition Mrs. Eynsford-Hill and Clara, who represent a more despicable reflexion of confederation are neer verbally nattered; they are simply ignored. Higgins’s volatile temperament and habitual outbursts provide some of the most amusing moments in the play. While his apparently unfeeling condescending post towards Eliza in Act Two †â€Å"She’s so deliciously low †so horribly fouled” might have earned the contributor reprimand for a lesser character, at times the ratifier is forced to laugh.\r\nThis is because Higgins is not acting socially surpassing nor does he bear any malice or pride. Rather he is amazed at Eliza’s poverty and is solitary(prenominal) stating the features in a very clever yet also tactless way. He is genuinely concerned about cleanliness, which is proved by his order to Mrs. Pearce to clean Eliza with Monkey Brand soap, issue all her dirty clothes and wrap her up in brown paper until new ones get into from the shop. When the play opens, the audience encounters an egotistical bully who harangues the lost Eliza.\r\nHe is insensitive to the feelings of those roughly him. However, surprisingly enough, the reader does not disapprove of his egoism and rather indulges his normal tyrannical outbursts because this is the key to his character, his chi ldishness. At a accredited level Higgins is an overgrown child. Shaw wrote in his stage directions that Higgins is, â€Å"but for his years and size, rather like an impetuous mar ‘taking notice’ eagerly and loudly, and requiring almost as much watching to keep him out of fortuitous mischief. â€Å"\r\nHis manner varies from genial bullying when he is in a good humor to stormy offense when anything goes wrong, but he is so entirely b privationguard and void of malice that he re principal(prenominal)s likable even in his least reasonable moments. This feature of impetuous childishness in an otherwise extremely articulate and learned adult lends complexity to his characterization. This variant is confirmed by Higgins himself when he defends himself against the imagined notions held by Mrs. Pearce. He tells Colonel Pickering, â€Å"Here I am, a shy, diffident manner of man.\r\nI’ve never been able to feel actually grown-up and tremendous, like other cha ps. And yet she’s unwaveringly persuaded that I’m an arbitrary overbearing bossing physique of person. I heap’t account for it. ” His blindness to his faults serves to endear the audience to him despite him being an egocentric and a bully. It is important to note Higgins’s lack of interest in women. In Act Three, Higgins’s conversation with his mother regarding Eliza’s society bearing gradually turns to the topic of upstart women and his antipathy towards them.\r\nHiggins dismisses the composition of any romantic association with a conk scorn for the fairer sex and dismisses them as â€Å"idiots. ” He unconditionally tells his mother, â€Å"Oh, I cant be bothered with progeny women. My idea of a lovable woman is something as like as you as possible. I shall never get into the way of seriously liking young women; some habits lie too deep to be changed. ” This antipathy to the fairer sex is a quintessential Shaw characteristic. Shaw believed that wound up entanglements were deterrents to intellectual fulfillment.\r\nThus it is only natural that Higgins is single-mindedly devoted to his bursterer and exhibits indifference bordering on contempt for women. Higgins embraces Pygmalion’s typical distaste for the feminine. Shaw further adds complexity to the issue by suggesting that the perfect woman for Higgins is his mother. This implies that Higgins only desires a sexually unchallenging mother figure who can take care of his daily necessities. This role is more or less fulfilled to a rangy extent by Mrs. Pearce, his housekeeper, who mothers and reproves him for his unsociable mannerisms.\r\nIn his climatic encounter with Eliza in Act Five, Higgins declares that he cares for â€Å"life, for populace” rather than for particular individuals. His world is too wide-cut in scope and cannot revolve only around Eliza. It is this humanism which makes him repudiate Eliza’s compl aint with a profoundly meaningful rejoinder that â€Å"making life means making trouble. ” Thus although there are several suggestions of the possibility of a romantic familiarity between Higgins and Eliza, one knows that union between the 2\r\nis impossible because of their fundamental incompatibility in their views they adhere about life. The readers know that Higgins had bought a ring for Eliza in Brighton. One also learns that he has become habituated to her face and voice and depends upon her for his domestic needs. But one also realizes that the two of them could not live happily together. The principal(prenominal) thrust of the play is not the depiction of the fuck between the master- pupil/artist-creation but rather the characterisation of the pupil’s assertion of independence.\r\nHiggins is thus thrill when Eliza is no longer a â€Å"millstone” suspension system around his neck but at polish a â€Å"woman” capable of taking care of hersel f. Shaw questions the defining criteria of what constitutes a gentleman through the character of Higgins. It is obvious that Higgins’s manners are not much better than those of the Covent Garden flower girl. In fact Higgins comes off much worse because of the fact that he has had all the civilizing benefits of wealth and education yet he is rude to the point of being ungainly and ill mannered, is given to frequent inflammatory outbursts, and possesses wrong table manners.\r\nThe fact that such an ill- mannered person is accepted by society as a â€Å"gentleman” provides Shaw with an opportunity to expose the shallowness and deception of such a society. Shaw thus critiques a society that views wealth and the ability to speak correctly as the constitutive criteria of a prescriptive gentleman. It is one of Shaw’s master ironic strokes to make such a rude and boorish egotistical bully the main agent for transforming a common flower girl into a lady.\r\n'