changes through time...

The classic version of Pygmalion by Bernard Shaw is Ovid’s Metamorphoses.

In the contemporary Pygmalion, the transformation is done o a flower girl, Eliza who are poor and unable to speak the proper English. As a man of linguistic, Professor Higgins was intrigued by the way she talks in her local dialects. But, unlike Pygmalion who treats Galatea with attentive care and kind words, Professor Higgins talks to Eliza rudely and treats her with indifference and didn’t care for her feelings. A bit ironic for a man who is considered as a gentleman.

Professor Higgins transforms Eliza by dressing her up like an upper class woman. He also taught her the proper way to talk until people could mistaken her for an aristocrat or a princess. But, in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, there is transformations, first one is when Pygmalion transforms an ivory by carving it into a statue of a woman. The second one is when the goddess of Venus grant his wish for a lover by giving life the statue of woman that he carved.