Henry Higgins Essay

Higgins is an extremely interesting character and the purport of the play. Although the plays obvious concern is the metamorphosis of a common develop girl into a duchess, the development of Higgins character is also important. The play isnt b bely Elizas story. One also detects changes in Higgins or to be more precise he appears to the reader in a new get at the end. This is seen when he tells Eliza that he has grown accustomed to seeing her face and hearing her voice. This is not much(prenominal) of a sensitive display of emotions but it is quite different than the savage invective he hurled at her at the beginning of the play in Covent Garden.Higgins is portrayed as beingnessness highly educated. Apart from being a professor of phonetics, he has a oceanic abyss reverence for literature and fancies himself as a poet. In all distressfulness he thinks highly of the treasures of (his) Mittonic mind. He is self-indulgent, whimsical, and ill affected when it comes to interact ing with other people. Higgins is not a man given to extravagant aesthetic tastes. The walls in the Wimpole street laboratory are not ornament by paintings but by engravings.His passionate fondness for sweets and chocolates stands out in comic contrast to his seriousness and austere mode of living. Higgins most prominent characteristic is his restlessness and the consequent inability to sit still. He is constantly tripping and stumbling over something. For instance, in Act Three, Shaw writes in the format directions that Higginss sudden arriver at his mothers at home is accompanied by minor disasters He goes to the divan, stumbling into the pilot program and over the fire-irons on his way extricating himself with muttered impatiently on the divan that he roughly breaks it.These quirks and oddities of his character founder to the laughs in the play 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 humorous. Thus Shaw makes Higgins obsessed with his profession. His devotion to phonetics is so engrossing that it leaves lesser time or inclination for anything else. Consequently his behavior strikes people as odd and unconventional to the suggest of being rude. He despises the conventions of the middle class that include their manners and hypocritical sense of decorum.He claims to embrace everyone with equal disrespect yet his invective is lavished on Eliza while Mrs. Eynsford-Hill and Clara, who represent a more sickening aspect of club are never verbally reprimanded they are simply ignored. Higginss volatile tendency and frequent outbursts provide some of the most amusing moments in the play. While his apparently unfeeling mischievous attitude towards Eliza in Act Two Shes so deliciously low so rottenly dirty might have earned the reader reprimand for a lesser character, at times the reader is forced to laugh.This is because Higgins is not acting socially superior nor does he bear any enmity or pride. Rather he is amazed at Elizas poverty and is only stating the facts in a very clever yet also tactless way. He is genuinely concerned about cleanliness, which is prove by his order to Mrs. Pearce to clean Eliza with Monkey Brand soap, burn all her dirty clothes and inclose her up in brown paper until new ones arrive from the shop. When the play opens, the audience encounters an egotistical yob who harangues the helpless Eliza.He is insensitive to the feelings of those around him. However, surprisingly enough, the reader does not disapprove of his egoism and kinda indulges his frequent tyrannical outbursts because this is the key to his character, his childishness. At a certain level Higgins is an overgrown child. Shaw wrote in his stage directions that Higgins is, but for his years and size, alternatively like an impetuous baby pickings notice eagerly and loudly, and requiring almost as much watching to keep him out of unintended mischief. His manner varies from genial bullying when he is in a good humor to stormy petulance when anything goes wrong, but he is so in all frank and void of malice that he remains likeable even in his least conjectural moments. This trait of impetuous childishness in an otherwise extremely articulate and learned adult lends complexity to his characterization. This interpretation is confirmed by Higgins himself when he defends himself against the imagined notions held by Mrs. Pearce. He tells Colonel Pickering, Here I am, a shy, reserved sort of man.Ive never been able to feel really grown-up and tremendous, like other chaps. And yet shes firmly persuaded that Im an arbitrary overbearing bossing kind of person. I cant narration for it. His blindness to his faults serves to endear the audience to him despite him being an egoist and a bully. It is important to note Higginss lack of interest in women. In Act Three, Higginss conversation with his mother regarding Elizas society appearance gradually turns to the topic of young women and his antipathy towards them.Higgins dismisses the idea of any romanticistic association with a faint contempt for the fairer sex and dismisses them as idiots. He categorically tells his mother, Oh, I cant be daunted with young 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 emotional entanglements were deterrents to intellectual fulfillment.Thus it is only ingrained that Higgins is single-mindedly devoted to his career and exhibits indifference bordering on contempt for women. Higgins embraces Pygmalions typical distaste for the feminine. Shaw promote adds complexity to the issue by suggesting that the perfect woman for Higgins is his mother. This implies that Higgins only desires a sexually unchallen ging mother enter who can take care of his daily necessities. This role is more or less fulfilled to a large extent by Mrs. Pearce, his housekeeper, who mothers and reproves him for his unsociable mannerisms.In his climatic encounter with Eliza in Act Five, Higgins declares that he cares for life, for humanity rather than for particular individuals. His world is too broad in scope and cannot revolve only around Eliza. It is this humanism which makes him repudiate Elizas complaint with a profoundly meaningful rejoinder that do life means making trouble. Thus although there are several suggestions of the possibility of a romantic involvement between Higgins and Eliza, one knows that union between the twois impossible because of their fundamental incompatibility in their views they hold about life. The readers know that Higgins had bought a ring for Eliza in Brighton. One also learns that he has commence 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 blithely together. The main thrust of the play is not the depiction of the love between the master- pupil/artist-creation but rather the portrayal of the pupils assertion of independence.Higgins is thus thrilled when Eliza is no longer a mollymawk hanging around his neck but at last a woman capable of taking care of herself. Shaw questions the defining criteria of what constitutes a gentleman through the character of Higgins. It is obvious that Higginss manners are not much better than those of the Covent Garden flower girl. In fact Higgins comes off much worsened 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 boorish and ill mannered, is given to frequent inflammatory outbursts, and possesses abominable table manners.The fact that such(prenominal) an ill- mannered person is accepted by society as a gentleman provides Shaw with an opportunity to e xpose the superficiality and hypocrisy of such a society. Shaw thus critiques a society that views wealth and the ability to speak decent as the constitutive criteria of a prescriptive gentleman. It is one of Shaws master ironic strokes to make such a rude and boorish egotistical bully the main agent for transforming a common flower girl into a lady.