What is the concept of the play Pygmalion?

Shaw's basic
concept is to show that social
class, which is very important in a hierarchical society like
England's, is
not inherited genetically but learned. In other words, social class is a
product
of nurture, not nature. Many upper class people at the time (1913)
thought that superior genes
were passed down through parents and grandparents
and that people of lower-class
"stock" were genetically inferior to them. The
poor quite simply were born, to their
minds, unable to acquire the attributes
of middle- or upper-class people and must accept their
lowly status in life.
Shaw wanted to puncture and ridicule this myth.

To do

this, he has Henry Higgins, an upper-middle class linguist, enter into a bet that he
can
transform lower-class Cockney flower seller Eliza Doolittle into a person
who can be passed off
as a lady in the highest echelons of society. He does
this with stunning success by having Eliza
bathed, dressing her in good
clothes, teaching her upper-class manners, and most importantly,
teaching her
to speak with an upper-class accent. By the end of the experiment, even dukes
and
other aristocrats are convinced she is of their class. This proves that
class is learned, not
inborn.