George Bernard Shaw's "The Flower Girl", the beauty of Pikmulion

Pygmalion was a greek mythologist who was the king of Cyprus, but looked down on mortal women, and devoted all his enthusiasm and energy to carving an ivory beauty statue and naming it Galatea, treating the portrait like a wife. He kept praying to the gods to make people come true, and the result was really true; so the two of them married and lived a good life by default.

Reading it now, this story is quite strange, and the private doll, coupled with the soul given by the "gods", becomes a real person. So is this soul a human being? Is there a right to choose? Is it the property of Pygmalion, or the wife of a "slave"? Can she only maintain her words and deeds and maintain her personal image according to Pygmalion's expectations and love? What if Pygmalion's preferences changed? Does she need to re-transform into a statue so that Pygmalion can do some carving and shape it, and then let the gods give a different personality? Will she grow old when she becomes a human? Will you get tired? Will you be angry? Would you like to get out of Cyprus and see the outside world? What would happen if she rejected Pygmalion?

So, this story, which is only half the story, only sees Pygmalion's dream come true, but does not see Galatea's position. What if Galatea, preferring to remain an ivory statue, wants to go through a thousand years and only be a bystander of history? What if Galatea, after gaining the ability to act, would like to travel thousands of miles to see more people? What if Galatea, with a change of personality, did not want to be a gentle and warm wife, but wanted to be a female general who killed on the battlefield?

George Bernard Shaw's "The Flower Girl" is another sense of the story of Pygmalion and beauty. Higgins, a bachelor linguist, made a bet with his friends to transform the poor flower girl Eliza from a "high society" woman. After a three-month training period, Higgins took Eliza to a high-end banquet, which was so successful that attendees thought she was a princess of a certain country. In fact, she just uses a specific accent to say greetings like weather and other nonsense, and maintains an "elegant" demeanor. An empty and boring high society judges a person by subtle stubs; of course it is good to be educated, and a clear and aesthetic accent is certainly good, but does this mean that Eliza is Higgins' work? Teaching is an independent individual, an active learning student, not a work, not a possession. Therefore, the film adaptation of "The Flower Girl", "The Lady" starring Audrey Hepburn, seems to have a big happy ending, but it is blunt and unnatural. Eliza was originally a self-supporting flower girl, educated for better job opportunities, and as a result, after a successful education, became an accessory to the upper class Higgins, a good-looking and successful ornament? This is completely inconsistent with her nature; nor with Higgins' refined egoism.

The ivory statue of Pygmalion was his possession, and he could dress up and treat it as he pleased; but the ivory statue became Galatea with a soul, and it was not his possession, but a person, not his possession. Eliza, whether it's a flower girl with a confused accent or an upper-class girl performing at a dinner party, she's herself, not a work, not an ornament.