Pretty Woman is no more than a remake of Pygm

Both Professor Higgins and Edward Lewis come from affluent and high-ranking social classes, where respect and power is earned through their ed

Before being ‘sculpted’ into the ‘perfect’ woman, both Vivian and Eliza were treated harshly by people who thought themselves socially superior. Vivian’s expedition to the exclusive stores on Rodeo Drive, ends in her feeling degraded by the shop assistants’ refusals to wait on her. Eliza also is treated as a lower being by Professor Higgins when he first meets her, describing her as a ‘squashed cabbage leaf!’ However, after their metamorphosis, both women are admired for their beauty, as mentioned before, and treated as ladies. The contrast of the treatment of the women, before and after their transformation, shows that society would only admire and respect women who adhered to the feminine ideal of the time. While Higgins was convinced that it was a person’s speech that indicated their social class, and positioned them, Bernard Shaw seems to have a bigger viewpoint of the social hierarchy. He was attacking the preconceived notion that people assumed that the upper classes were superior essentially due to the lower classes being lazy and naturally inferior .By enabling Eliza to be mistaken for a princess through her diction, fine apparel and social moulding of Higgins and Pickering, Shaw was satirising the superior attitudes of the upper classes by showing that someone ‘inferior’ could be up to their standard.

Edward Lewis, moreover, is introduced in the text Pretty Woman, as a successful asset stripper who ‘buys companies and sells off the pieces’. Edward’s social status is displayed by his ability to reside in the exclusive Regent Beverly Wiltshire Hotel. Through its luxurious setting, the Hotel depicts the notion that its residents would be very wealthy. Edward has been highly educated which is disclosed when Vivian and Edward discuss their schooling years, Edward tells Vivian he ‘went all the way’, indicating he had extensive education, especially in comparison to Vivian. Edward must have had a privileged childhood as his ‘first car was a limousine’ and his money earns him respect and power with his peers, such as Phillip Stuckey who says ‘I have pledged my life to you’. As Edward notes the influence of wealth when taking Vivian shopping, ‘stores aren’t nice to people, they’re nice to credit cards’. Edward earns Vivian the reverence of the store managers by telling them that he was going ‘to spend an obscene amount of money, so we are going to need a lot more help sucking up to us’.

Vivian’s apparel also conveys her social standing and to a greater extent her profession as a prostitute. On Hollywood Boulevarde, where she sells her ‘wares’, Vivian fits in with the other ‘working girls’ with her revealing clothes, heavy make-up and her ‘boots held up by a safety pin’. She keeps her boots black by using a black permanent marker to erase any wear and tear on them, instead of, perhaps, buying a new pair. Vivian though, we know, is not wealthy. She cannot afford to pay her rent money for her small, run down, apartment and prefers to escape seeing her landlord by using the fire escape ladder. As she searches for her room-mate Kit, on Hollywood Boulevard, the viewer can see that the area is accustomed to prostitutes, drug-dealers and, as Vivian happens to stumble on, dead bodies.

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