Abstract
Тhis intertextual, psychoanalytic study shows that, on the basis of deep-structural similarities
between Ibsen’s Rosmersholm and Shaw’s Pygmalion, Pygmalion appears to be an unconscious
rewriting of Rosmersholm, with Shaw turning Ibsen’s tragedy of repression into his own comedy
of repression. Ibsen’s play, which shows the failure of repression/sublimation to contain erotic
impulses and oedipal guilt, represented a psychic threat to Shaw, which Shaw countered by
reversing the logic and outcome of Rosmersholm. In Pygmalion, Shaw follows Ibsen in showing
two protagonists living together chastely and pursuing higher purposes despite strongly repressed
erotic feelings. But he modifies the nature of the sublimations, repressions, and guilt feelings
enough so that they can be maintained in a comic compromise, instead of leading to a tragic
failure of repression as in Rosmersholm. Both plays thematize and re-enact the process of
repression among the characters, and Shaw’s play serves as an attempt to repress Ibsen’s.