How do you think a “poor flower girl’s” internal thoughts would be? Do you think they would change based on her appearance and her associates? Who is Eliza? Eliza Doolittle is a character in the play Pygmalion written by George Bernard Shaw , who played as a young adult was poor and didn’t keep up with herself. She was a flower girl who wasn’t well respected. Eliza changes throughout the book because in Act I, she was dingy and didn’t feel clean or look clean. Her speech was very bad. She got help from a man named Henry Higgins and his mother Mrs.Higgins. But now, in Act V, she is highly dresses catching others’ eyes when she’d walk in the room. She respects herself more than she did in the past. However, Eliza Doolittle’s thoughts has changed …show more content…
In Act I, Eliza talked down on herself by calling herself poor and things live that. In the text, it states, “He’s no gentleman, he ain’t, to interfere with a poor girl”. ( Page 20, Book ) This connects to my statement because this shows her referring to herself as a poor girl and she’s talking bad about herself. Another reason Eliza changed internally is because she does not see herself as a bum or poor anymore. She has saw that she needed to keep up with herself. She also wants to feel respected. According to page 119 of Pygmalion, it states, “Your calling me Miss Doolittle when I first came to Wimpole Street. That was the beginning of self-respect for me.” This shows that she is beginning to respect herself and think highly of herself. This proves that Eliza has changed …show more content…
At the beginning, people didn’t think highly of her but now, people do. When she came in Higgins’ laboratory, she came dressed differently and she looked good and looked like she kept up with herself. She is starting to have a different mindset of her appearance. For example, on page 74 of Pygmalion, it states, “ Eliza, who is exquisitely dressed, produces an impression of such remarkable distinction and beauty as she enters that they all rise, quite fluttered. Guided by Higgins’s signals, she comes to Mrs.Higgins with studied grace.” This proves that Eliza is changing her mindset, which occurs to affect her thoughts about herself, her speech, and her appearance. Eliza, first described as "not at all attractive," has become incredibly desirable thanks to some nice clothing, jewelry, and a few months of training. Also, Eliza has learned to that people who treat her with no respect cannot bring her down or allow her to go back to where she was in the beginning. Based on Act V in Pygmalion, Eliza has learned that nobody can bring her down. It states, “You know I can’t go back to the gutter, as you call it, and that I have no real friends in the world but you and the Colonel. You know well I couldn’t bear to live with a low common man after you two; and it’s wicked and cruel of you to insult me by pretending I could.” This means that no matter what anybody has to her, she will never go back down the path she was just on.
At the start of the novel, Eliza Haywood places her protagonist in a very interesting, unique position, with regards to society of the time. The nameless main character is first illustrated in a playhouse, observing the interactions of the strangers around her. She notices a prostitute, surrounded by a swarm of men. “She could not help testifying her contempt of men who...threw away their time in such a manner, to some Ladies...the greater was her wonder, that men, some of whom she knew were accounted to have wit, should have tastes for very depraved” (257-258.) “Fantomina”, as she later comes to be called, oversees all of this. Haywood seems to put her above this crowd of men and prostitutes, while she observes and makes judgments on the nature of their behaviors. She expresses that she is disgusted by the mindlessness of the men in this situation. One might argue that this depicts a reversal of gender roles. Typically, men would look at women in this way, and the male character wo...
Eliza’s blatant disregard for the concern of those around her contributed heavily to her demise. Had she listened to her friends and family when they told her to marry Mr...
One might question if Eliza really had any choice in her situation. Early in the novel she declares, "What a pity . . . that the graces and virtues are not oftner united!" (Foster 22). While Sanford possessed all the suavity she desired and Reverend Boyer all the integrity, she could find no companion who possessed both. This lack of options seems to be what truly destroys Eliza. It may have been within Eliza's power to be a True Woman, but due to the societal constraints imposed upon her, it does not seem at all possible for her to have been a happy woman.
Everyone has once been someone that they aren’t necessarily ashamed of, but something they aren’t anymore. When you’re in school, everyone is different; between the popular kids, the jocks, the cheerleader, the dorks, the Goths, and all the other “types” of people. In “Her Kind,” Anne Sexton shows that she has been a lot of different women, and she is not them now. In this paper we will be diving into the meanings behind the displaced “I,” the tone and reparation, and who Anne Sexton really is and how that affects what she is trying to let people see through this poem.
Before overhearing the conversation, Lizabeth already has a sense of guilt as she finishes attacking Miss Lottie: “Suddenly I was ashamed, and I did not like being ashamed.” The conflict of not being either a child or an adult yet both together has been in her mind badgering her. After overhearing the conversation, she realizes that she is the oldest kid of all the kids she plays with, and she should be aware of her responsibilities for their
The epistolary novel challenges gender roles because in a society where the most accepted form of female writing was letters, the epistolary novel gives a new voice to women. The letters written by the characters especially the women go hand in hand with new republican virtues of society. Women were becoming more educated and their letters became more frequent. The epistolary form gives a sense of realism. It allows the reader to dive head first into the lives and problems of the characters, it is set up in a way where the reader ultimately knows more than the character does. This style of writing allows us to get the story from each character as an individual, which is important because if told from another character, events and emotions might get lost in translation or become skewed. Through reading Eliza’s letters, the audience can get a grasp of her personality, her morals, her humor, and her intentions. Eliza’s voice is strong and as she begins to decline her voice starts to dwindle and become muffled and eventually lost. Through being able to see how her voice gets lost, the reader can get a real sense of her decline as a character. Eliza begins to fade and other characters start to step into the light. Eliza’s letters are what makes her relatable and without these snippets from Eliza, the audience might not want to side with her. William Brown Hill’s preface to The Power of
Indeed, Victorian women are molded into the socially calibrated model of The Looking-glass self, a structural theory in which Cooley proposes that people shape their identity largely based on their understanding of how other perceive them, and the social environment thus serves as the “mirror” that reflects desirable images of themselves. According to Cooley, the stages of The Looking-glass self involves imagining how one looks to others, imagining how other are judging her, and finally developing herself through such possible judgement. A hypothesis can be formed here, that Victorian women must develop this looking-glass self by concealing socially or individually unacceptable impulses from their consciousness. In the case of Clarissa, she represses her rather primitive sexual feelings toward Sally for fear of social judgement, and must construct an identity reflective of the feminine qualities desired by the society. But Clarissa’s looking-glass self is quite problematic, because it is only a manifestation of her attempt to repress real emotions. All forms of repression, according to Freud, cause disease within the mind and body— they will gradually boil inside the beings and finally explode. Interestingly, Clarissa never “explodes” her repressed feelings
Martha’s actions throughout the play can be seen as her attempt to act like a typical American female during 50s and 60s. During this time period, women were expected to have a child and to be good wives. However, Martha doesn’t have children. If a woman didn’t have children, she was ultimately a failure. She says, “I disgust me. I pass my life in crummy, totally pointless infidelities...” Martha thinks herself that she is a failure due to lack of reproduction. Martha created the story of a son because she truly wants a child. She also creates the story because she wants to fit into society. She wants to become a woman that society expects. Because she does not want to society to view her as an inadequate woman, she is tremendously irrational about her illusional son. Martha and George start to create a story of their son with precise details from Martha’s delivery, son’s physical appearance to his experiences at school and summer camp, with some contradictory details. Martha explains that her son is a balance between George’s weakness and her “necessary greater strength.” When George finally ann...
Eliza is a slave on a plantation that raises her to be a “good” Christian. To Eliza, her masters
When Miss Brill is sitting in the park observing passers-by, she notes “two young girls in red” who were met by “two young soldiers in blue … and they laughed and paired and went off arm-in-arm” (Mansfield 176). And later Miss Brill sees “a beautiful woman [come] along and [drop] her bunch of violets” (Mansfield 177). Miss Brill admires the beauty of these young people with their bright and vivid colors. To her the vivid colors represent life, passion, beauty, and happiness, all fulfilling elements that she believes she lacks. Later when she is studying herself she realizes that now in her older age “her hair, her face, even her eyes, [were] the same color as the shabby ermine, and her hand, in its cleaned glove, lifted to dab her lips, was a tiny yellowish paw” (Mansfield 177). All the colors that she notices in herself are dim and muted, communicating to the audience that Miss Brill feels her life much reduced from the brilliant excitement and color that it had once been. When observing the young people she sees red, which is commonly symbolizes passion and love; blue, which is frequently associated with innocence, youth, order, and serenity; and purple, which conveys richness, vibrancy, and royalty. In contrast the only colors Miss Brill mentions when critiquing herself are a muted brown and a yellowish color. The brown represents the confusion that is
In this instance Molly blatantly confronts Tilly with the truth, which is attempting to change characters, and their perception of her through clothes, will not be enough to deter the hatred as they are incapable of change. Such as in the case of Gertrude whom Tilly transforms outer appearance, to be perceived the way she wishes to be. Thus, the appearance and power of a dress is incapable of masking a character’s true self, a notion which is pertinent to the human
Higgins and Eliza still sharing the archetypes of the teacher and student get into an argument. The argument starts with Higgins explaining that he does not specifically treat her poorly but treats everyone poorly. Higgins explains, “the question is not whether I treat rudely, but whether you ever heard me treat anyone else better,” (Shaw, 77). Eliza threatened to leave although Higgins explained that she has no money or skill besides speaking properly and proposes that she marry someone rich. Insulted, Eliza threatened to marry Freddy which deeply bothers Higgins because he feels that the idea is a waste of his work on specifically on someone like him. This particular detail shows how Higgins does value his creation and work of art not wanting it to be wasted. In the end, Eliza leaves and later ends up marrying Freddy who together opens a flower shop. Even though there is some similarity in the theme of loving one’s own creation, Shaw’s Pygmalion does not compare to the archetypes in the myth Ovid’s Pygmalion as the movie did.
As to the relationship with their teachers, both students become more self-confident and their teachers become dependent on them, be it in a materialistic or personal way. Yet it is Eliza who complains about Higgins ignorance and carelessness whereas Frank reproaches Rita for her superficiality. At the end Eliza has regained her pride and improved her standard of living although Eliza remaining a social misfit.
Eliza, was supposedly deranged from her difficult birth to her daughter and the abuse of her husband.
A full change for Eliza comes when she begins being able to take care of herself and others. Berst explains “Eliza grows as a woman (not a lady) though progressively rising to the engaging this counter force and coming to grips with alternatives--Freddy and independence” (Berst 133). The differences between Eliza and Cinderella are that we see a happily ever after for Cinderella marring the prince. A similarity is that Eliza has reached her goal and she may not be at the top of society.