A Study of Ironies in Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion

Pygmalion is deemed as one of Bernard Shaw’s greatest plays which ruthlessly expose the hypocrisy of the capitalist society and its morality with humorous and sarcastic language.Based on textual and research analysis,this paper tends to analyze ironies from two aspects:verbal irony and situational irony.In the characterizations of Mr.Doolittle and Higgins,Shaw uses enormous ironies to satirize the hypocrisy of the morality of appearances,the money-oriented capitalist society and the hypocrisy of themselves.In terms of the situational ironies,the contrasts between characters’expectation and actual situation satirize the hypocrisy and blindly arrogant of Higgins and the Victorian prudery,while the outcomes of events departing from reader’s expectation satirize the difficulties of class-rising and the ignorance and fragile of the old aristocrat.