“Worse than two fathers” : Steampunk Pygmalion and a new look at double standards and the language of things in the digital realm

In keeping with recent steampunk productions of Pygmalion, this article presents a retro-futuristic reading of how Shaw’s play engages with language. Focusing upon the pressures operating on Liza when Higgins is “worse than two fathers” to her in seeking to win his wager with Pickering, I demonstrate how her position as both object and agent delivers the play’s criticism of attitudes to language, and also exposes literary and scientific discourses used to construct ideas of standard English in the nineteenth and early twentieth century. Extending the implications of contemporary performances by drawing parallels between Liza and Ada Lovelace - also positioned by two fathers in Byron (literature) and Babbage (science) - I then use the play between the organising figures of Pygmalion and steampunk fiction to assess how Shaw’s work offers new perspectives on the production and re-production of data as language in the digital world of twenty-first century audiences.

http://www.siue.edu/pll/