Recommendations
Books Like Pygmalion
Best books to read after Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw
Readers who love Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw are drawn to its combination of social comedy, feminist argument, and the question of what transformation really means — they want plays and novels that deal with the English class system as a system of performance, the position of women in that system, and the comedy and tragedy of transformation.
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The Importance of Being Earnest
by Oscar Wilde
Wilde's companion in the tradition of the British play organized as a critique of the English class system. Both are the two great British plays about the class system as a system of performance: Wilde's through pure comedy; Shaw's through the social experiment of transformation
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Major Barbara
by George Bernard Shaw
The companion Shaw play — Barbara Undershaft and her father the munitions manufacturer, arguing about money, poverty, and morality. The companion investigation of what idealism can do in a world organized by economic power: both are plays in which a woman's idealism is tested against a man's worldly cynicism
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Heartbreak House
by George Bernard Shaw
The companion Shaw play written after the First World War — Captain Shotover's Sussex house in the gathering storm. The darker companion to Pygmalion: where Pygmalion is still comic in its confidence that problems can be solved through clear thinking, Heartbreak House has lost that confidence
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A Doll's House
by Henrik Ibsen
Ibsen's companion in the tradition of the play about a woman's self-determination — Nora Helmer's decision to leave her husband. The ending of Pygmalion (Eliza leaving Higgins) is Shaw's deliberate echo of Nora's departure; Shaw was deeply influenced by Ibsen and described Pygmalion as an Ibsenian demonstration
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Mrs Warren's Profession
by George Bernard Shaw
The early Shaw companion about a woman's economic choices and the hypocrisy of society's judgments — Mrs. Warren and her daughter Vivie. Both are companion investigations of economic power and the position of women: both organized around a woman's attempt to use the only resources available in a society organized to limit her options
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Sense and Sensibility
by Jane Austen
Austen's companion in the tradition of the literary investigation of the English class system and its relationship to language, manners, and self-presentation. Both conclude that the English class system is a system of performance, not of essence — a conclusion that is both liberating (performance can be learned) and devastating (essence doesn't matter)
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The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
by Anne Brontë
Brontë's companion in the tradition of the novel about a woman's insistence on her own independence in a society that denies it. Both are companion investigations of women's self-determination: Brontë's more radical in its insistence on the woman's right to leave; Shaw's more philosophical in its investigation of what transformation actually produces
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Overture to Death
by Ngaio Marsh
Marsh's 1939 companion in the tradition of the British novel about the class system's comedy and violence concealed in village life — Inspector Alleyn investigating a murder at an amateur theatrical performance in a Dorset village. Both Pygmalion and Overture to Death are investigations of what happens when people perform class roles that don't quite fit them, and both deploy the comedy of class aspiration alongside its costs
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