Pygmalion: A Reader's Guide
Shaw's play that became My Fair Lady — Higgins, Eliza, and class as costume.
George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion (1913) — phonetics professor Henry Higgins bets he can pass flower girl Eliza Doolittle as duchess.
Arc
Eliza masters accent; wins Higgins's bet; rebels against being experiment and property — "I am a person in my own right."
Shaw versus musical
No fairy-tale romance ending in play — Eliza independence stressed.
Themes
Class performance, education as power, gender economics.
Witty, argumentative, still staged constantly.