This essay examines how George Bernard Shaw, despite his self-proclaimed socialist philosophy, ultimately portrays capitalism as an inescapable reality in both Pygmalion and Major Barbara. Through close readings of Eliza Doolittle's economic independence and Undershaft's arms-dealing pragmatism, the paper argues that Shaw's characters are forced to engage with the existing capitalist economy rather than resist it. Eliza's transformation leads not to communal dependency but to entrepreneurial self-sufficiency, while Barbara's idealism crumbles when a capitalist's cheque proves more powerful than moral purity. Shaw's irony, the essay contends, ultimately endorses working within the world as it is rather than withdrawing from it.
George Bernard Shaw called himself a socialist, and both Pygmalion and Major Barbara criticize middle-class aspirations and social pretensions. His socialist philosophy surfaces with a certain irony in Pygmalion, when Henry Higgins observes that Eliza's offer to pay him in shillings is the greatest sum he has ever been offered — he who has taught heiresses how to speak. Higgins notes that, viewed in relation to what the young woman earns, such a sum is virtually a fortune.
This sentiment echoes the socialist ideal that everyone gives what they can and receives what they need. The poor flower girl will pay her tutor what she can and receive in return the great gift of education. Ultimately, however, Higgins accepts no money and instead demands Eliza's complete consecration to his system of speech — a price she never expected to pay. Thus, in an economy absent of money, there is also great danger: Eliza must enter the working world to truly achieve her freedom, belonging neither to the category of student nor to that of a duchess who has no need of wages.
The overall plot of Pygmalion can also be read as a defense of capitalism, whereby the ability to generate an image and an income — as Eliza learns to do — becomes the true determinant of success, rather than the language and identity one is born into. Higgins's economy of irony and socialist valuation falls to the wayside as Eliza becomes a teacher in emulation of the man who taught her.
She earns her own income as a result, supporting the aristocratic Freddie and refusing to become part of the non-capitalist, communal household of Higgins and Pickering — an arrangement in which all of her needs were provided without the exchange of money. Although money might be something to be disdained in theory, it is the objective medium by which the real world operates, as one cannot indefinitely live in genteel poverty like Freddie, or as a dependent like Eliza, relying on a teacher for necessities such as clothes and food.
Eliza does not learn to behave like a duchess because refinement is intrinsically superior to her Cockney origins. Rather, by acquiring these skills she equips herself to participate effectively in the existing economy, however imperfect that economy may be. Her choice to establish herself as an independent teacher rather than remain within Higgins's household is therefore Shaw's most pointed illustration of the tension between socialist idealism and capitalist practicality.
The communal arrangement — where Eliza wanted for nothing materially yet possessed nothing of her own — ultimately proved untenable. True freedom, Shaw implies, requires economic agency, and economic agency in the world as it exists means engaging with capitalism on its own terms.
"Undershaft embodies amoral capitalist profit motive"
"Barbara's moral purity crumbles before capitalist power"
In other words, Barbara has learned that even good people must live in the real world and abide by the real economies of capitalist development. To remove oneself from the economy that stands, bad or good, may do real harm. Thus, Eliza learns to speak like a duchess not because refinement is intrinsically more correct than her Cockney accent, but because in doing so she engages with the existing economy in an effective and independent manner.
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