Essay about Pain: Child Abuse and Shaw Act

The play Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw takes place during the Industrial Revolution around 1916, and was about a poor girl Eliza, who had to sell flowers on the street corner just to live. She later transforms herself into a duchess, with phonetic and etiquette training from a phonetics professor Dr. Henry Higgins. Throughout Eliza’s life her parents were not there for her, and her father was an alcoholic who worked as a local dustman. Shaw’s Pygmalion is an early depiction of what today’s society deems as a negligent parent. Several factors of unfit parenting such as neglect, abuse, and harsh social environments have been around for centuries. Given Eliza and Alfred Doolittle’s tumultuous relationship, today’s society would classify Doolittle as an unfit and negligent parent who inflicts emotional and physical harm on his daughter. In the American South in the early 1900’s, people’s social stature consisted of three separate social classes during this time. There was the upper class, which consisted of mainly the wealthiest people in their respective communities. The emergence of the middle class consisted of people with moderate incomes and was the majority of Americans at the time. Then lastly there was the lower class, which consisted of the poor and mostly immigrant workers. Also, in the lower class were African Americans, and some Caucasian people who were born into the lower class. The lower group was sometimes also called a caste system (Warner 234). In a journal article written by W. Lloyd Warner called American Caste and Class, he describes the early class systems in America in the early 1900’s. Warner writes:

A caste organization however can be further defined as one where marriage between two or more groups is not sanctioned and where there is no opportunity for members of the lower groups to rise into the upper groups or of the members of the upper to fall into the lower ones. (234)

This means that if a person is born into a certain class, that person cannot marry out of that class or better his or her status by getting a better job. In Pygmalion, Eliza was born into the lower class, just as her parents were. The lower class they lived in was slightly different then the way a caste system was set up. Warner describes the lower class as:

A certain proportion of interclass marriage between lower and higher groups and there are in the very nature of the class organization mechanism established by which people move up and down the vertical extension of the society. (234)

In certain circumstances, members of the lower class can rise to the middle or even the upper classes. In Pygmalion, Alfred Doolittle rose to the middle – upper class at the end of the play, as did Eliza. Alfred came into money because of a letter Dr. Higgins wrote to a dyeing wealthy man who in turn put Doolittle in his will. However, Eliza rose because of her change in speech, manners and etiquette. There are various signals given off by a parent to determine weather or not they are an unhealthy parent. A social journal written by Dan Neuharth titled “If You Had Controlling Parents” explains what unhealthy parenting is and the various signs that lead to a dysfunctional home. The author writes “In many cases, families with older parents or immigrant parents who cannot cope with changing times or a different culture” (Neuharth 2). In the early 1900’s, the lower class was made up of mainly immigrants and people who were born into poverty. Most of those people never even attempted to better themselves and move up in social society. Neuharth writes about a sign of an unfit parent to be “Socially dysfunctional” (4). Alfred Doolittle fits that description because he likes his life of being a dustman, and living for himself on his terms. Doolittle makes references of being free in the lower class, mainly because no one will take the time to judge a person because everyone’s in the same situation. In Act 5 of Pygmalion Doolittle

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