Background to Pygmalion

 Authors are influenced by their own life experience  Also influenced by their times (history)  What they experience is often reflected in their writing  However, we cannot assume that everything in an author’s work is a product of her/his own life.

 Was born in Ireland in 1856  Moved to London in 1872 (his mother was having an affair)  Worked as a music and literature critic  Became successful as a critic in the 1880s  Was influenced by Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen

 Member of the Fabian Society – middle class socialists  Was in favour of women’s right to vote (gained in 1918)  Was against the hypocrisy of the British class system  Was a pacifist, against World War I

 Famous for his many plays, particularly Pygmalion and Saint Joan  Felt that all his writing was didactic (meant to teach and inform)  Strong advocate of phonetic (alphabet sound) reform

 He married in 1898  Marriage was celibate and unconsummated  he often developed infatuations with his actress, but never slept with them  Was he gay?  Did he secretly hate women?

 George V was king  Class structure was quite rigid  High class people often inherited money, but often lived beyond their means  Making money in industry was becoming socially acceptable  A person’s accent helped define their class  With the wrong accent, you could never get ahead in life  People didn’t usually move up in the class system

 The working class lived in misery and poverty  Lots of alcoholism, abuse and prostitution  The Housing Question: where to put the working masses (who comprised most of the population?)  A Cockney is originally a person from a specific district of London  Cockney often generalized to be a member of working class Londoners  Had their own dialect (specific accent and vocabulary)