Pygmalion A Cultural Capital Study

George Bernard Shaw was an Irish playwright, critic, polemicist, and political activist. He had a grand influence on Western theatre, culture, and politics throughout his life. His parents divorced when he was sixteen years old so he didn’t have the kind of normal life and he was not very well educated. So, he is criticizing system of education and the differences among different classes in society. Pygmalion is one of his sixty plays. It’s the portrayal of a phonetics expert who, as a kind of social experiment, tries to teach the manner and educate an uneducated flower-girl named Eliza. He was successful in his way of educating Eliza. Eliza tries to improve her fields, but the question is whether her habitus permits her to get a better position or not. What makes this work impressive is the way Shaw chooses to write, using the idea of language and education and its effect upon society which is divided into various classes. Bourdieu believes that education provides an advantage in achieving a person’s higher position in society. This study tries to shed some light upon the possibility of language and education’s impact upon gaining a new identity in society. By using this type of analysis, we can view that Shaw has his way of reflecting the society which is constructed through different classes.