Middle Class Morality

Living up to someone’s expectations can be an extremely grueling task. If one is too focused on the way they look, act, and talk to please someone else, it can be easy to lose sight of one’s own identity. This can be dangerous because if one becomes too used to this kind of lifestyle, they carry the risk of being trapped in a way of life that someone else sees best fit for them. In the play Pygmalion, George Bernard Shaw gives an excellent portrayal of how people in the middle class disconnect themselves from anybody below them. Qualities and morals are basically not taken into consideration at all, but rather how polite, well dressed, or well spoken someone is around others. The audience is given an account of how lower class people, specifically Alfred Doolittle, transform themselves so the middle class will accept them. What he finds out along the way is that he must completely desert his old way of living and put on a front so the middle class people he is around will see him as one of their own. By showing the process of Alfred Doolittle’s transformation, Shaw is able to show that being part of the middle class is not as good as it first seems. Alfred wants to better himself, but once he became a part of the middle class, he had the realization that he would never fully be able to speak, act, or live completely for himself. When the audience is introduced to Alfred Doolittle, he is seen as a dirt poor, uneducated drunk looking for some help from Higgins, a conceited professor of the middle class. While talking to Higgins, it is clear that Doolittle is seen as inferior. Not only does Doolittle talk differently than Higgins, but Higgins also undermines him constantly because he thinks he is above him. DOOLITTLE: Listen here, Governor. You and me is men of the world ain’t we? HIGGINS: Oh! Men of the world, are we? You’d better go, Mrs. Pearce. (26-27).
Once Doolittle even starts to compare Higgins and himself, Higgins treats him as if he were not even human. This just shows how disconnected the middle class is with the poor. Doolittle is only trying to reason with Higgins the only way he knows how, but since it is not normal to him to interact with people like this, Higgins immediately shuts Doolittle out. He is so close minded to anyone outside his level of society that there is no way he would even consider what is being said even if it were a valid statement. Higgins’ reaction is a perfect example of not only how the middle class treats the ones they see as inferior, but also shows why people who are less fortunate, such as Doolittle, are scared to pursue people in the middle class for anything at all. It seems that the lower class is well aware of their differences, but since people like Higgins are so quick to judge and ignore them, they will always be in a constant struggle to exist with each other. DOOLITTLE: I’m one of the undeserving poor: that’s what I am. Think of what that means to a man. It means that hes up agen middle class morality all the time. If theres anything going, and I put in for a bit of it, it’s always the same story: ‘Youre undeserving; so you cant have it’ (27).
Doolittle is explaining that even if a person of the lower class wants something they do not have, people from the upper class look at it as if they are looking for a handout even if the person is in dire need. This is not because Doolittle is a bad person, it is because he is looked at in a negative way because of the way he looks and talks. People of the middle class really only see the poor as a nuisance, but the poor see it as a struggle both to survive and coexist with the middle class. Once Doolittle is actually able to gain the opportunity to progress and fit in with the ones that use to despise him, he sees that being a part of the middle class is not as good as he thought it would be. Doolittle is one of the few from the lower class that is actually able to make a transformation to a middle class citizen. When the audience sees him again he is basically an opposite of what he was before. He is well dressed, well mannered, and is seen as an acceptable member of the middle class. It seems that Doolittle should be happy with his current circumstance, but after experiencing what it is like to be part of the middle class first hand, he reminisces about how simple his life once was. DOOLITTLE: Who asked him to make a gentleman of me? I was happy. I was free. I touched pretty nigh everybody for money when I wanted it, same as I touched you, Henry Higgins. Now I am worrited; tied neck and heels; and everybody touches me for money…I have to live for others and not for myself: thats middle class morality. (58)
Doolittle realizes that all of the standards that he must adhere to in the middle class are actually more of a burden then a privilege. When he was a poor man he did not have to worry about pleasing anybody. Now Doolittle has to be extremely conscious of the way he carries himself because of the possibility of being judged by another member of the middle class. Another problem he has come to find is that once other people are aware of his fortune, they always try to find a way to get something out of him. When he was poor, he really only had to worry about himself. Doolittle realizes that if he wants to stay a member of the middle class he must make sacrifices not for himself, but for other people around him. Even with his change in class, Doolittle is still the same exact person he was when he was dirt poor. The only change he really makes to himself is the way he dresses and talks around other people. Doolittle can never really be his true self around these people if he wants to remain in the middle class because if he were, he would end up right where he was before. He is basically trapped into an identity that is never really his to begin with. Being accepted by a certain group definitely seems nice at first, but Doolittle is able to show that for one to be truly happy, one has to live up to their own personal standards, not those of someone else. Shaw is able to show that if people want to remain in this middle class lifestyle, they will never fully be able to express who they really are. This forces people to live by guidelines instead of living by their personal values. Alfred Doolittle’s transformation is a prime example of how easy it is for one to lose sight of whom they truly are to become acknowledged by somebody else. Although his life seems better when he is part of the middle class, he finds that people were only accepting him because of the act he was putting on not because of who he really was as a person.

Work Cited
Shaw, George Bernard. Pygmalion. Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, Inc, 1994. Print.

Cited: Shaw, George Bernard. Pygmalion. Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, Inc, 1994. Print.