George Bernard Shaw's "Pygmalion" Essay

The first thing Offred finally works the nerve up to steal is a daffodil from one of Serena Joy's arrangements. Even Jezebel's, where the Commander takes the Offred, is decorated with flowers. Flowers are also used to disguise things that are ugly or terrifying; the narrator compares the bloody mouth of a hanged man, for example, to the red tulips in Serena Joy's garden. Flowers are often considered symbols of beauty or fertility. In The Handmaid's Tale, they're given special attention as objects that can bloom and grow at a time when few women can. From a technical standpoint, flowers are also the part of a plant that holds the reproductive organs. They're constant reminders of the fertility that most women lack. It seems the older Wives are seeking to hang onto their attractiveness and fertility by decorating themselves with flowers and tending gardens: "Many of the Wives have such gardens, it's something for them to order and maintain and care for" (12). Serena Joy takes a bizarre pleasure in mutilating flowers. Perhaps these are attacks Serena Joy would like to make on the Handmaid, who can be seen as a flower living in her

After Higgins, confesses to his undying love for Eliza. Eliza decides to leave Higgins’s home because felt that it would only hurt Higgins more to have her stay another moment in his home because she did not share the same feelings for him. She now resides at the home of Mrs. Higgins.

her household she resorts to outside sources, making herself a victim to boys, which creates a

Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw is a play that shows a great change in the character Eliza Doolittle. As Eliza lives in poverty, she sells flowers to earn her living. Eliza does not have an education. This shows through the way that she does not have the most proper way of speaking. This happens through when Eliza is speaking to the other characters when she meets then when she is still at a low level of poverty in her life. To understand the reasons Eliza is able to change and be changed into an almost Cinderella like character. With Eliza going from and growing and changing through the hardship she faces. In the play Eliza begins with no confidence and works towards having a way to reach trough from learning during her life

The flow of the novel starts as Woolf finds the opening line of her new novel: "Mrs. Dalloway decided she would buy the flowers herself." The flowers would proof an important metaphor in the book. This thought of buying the flowers herself would link Woolf and Clarissa. Clarissa states the same words to her lover in preparing for Richard's party. And yet the flowers would reappear in Laura Browns life as her husband buys flowers for his own birthday. Flowers that normally represent life and color ironically represent sadness and loneliness in this novel.

her own person, and increasingly a part of the society in which she is an

This sudden change in character shows that an upgrade in social class not only changes the way that people look at you but that it can also have many benefits as well. Going against the thesis, there is one character, Colonial Pickering. Colonial Pickering is a friend and a safe haven to Miss Doolittle. She trusts him, and with good reason, from the beginning to the end of the play, he treats her the same, like a lady. ?Colonial Pickering is a compete contrast to the character of Henry Higgins in terms of manners and behaviour. Colonial Pickering is Shaw?s evidence that wealth and poverty can mix.? (Galens and Scampinato, 245). Most characters in Pygmalion expect the rich and poor to stay separate except for the open hearted and minded, Colonial Pickering.

Mr. Higgins and Colonel Pickering decide to take her to a horse track to test out her skills. The track, of course, is dominated by the upper class. They are all dressed up in gorgeous gowns and nice suits. When Mr. Higgins’ mother finds out about Eliza coming to the horse track, she is disgusted that her son invited a common flower girl to her private box. The upper class does not take too kindly to the lower class. They enjoy and respect their differences, sometimes even push it. While at the track, Eliza screams at a horse to move its “bloomin’ arse,” in her native lower class, crude language. The people of the horse track are shocked by this and cannot believe what they heard. After this, Colonel Pickering wants to call off the bet with Mr. Higgins. Pickering does not believe Eliza could be taught to walk and present herself as a lady at the Embassy

begins to realize her self that she does not have to continue living her life in

act that she went mad. When she was forced to take care of herself, she could not handle

Throughout the novel, there are flashbacks of Clarissa spending her summer at Bourton and her living in the present of wartime Britain. This is significant because most of the time Clarissa reflects on the past and she connects it to her current life while all of these events are happening in a single day. In the beginning of the novel Clarissa buy flowers for the party she is hosting later on in the evening, the flowers being symbolic in the novel representing her love and joy for them. “How fresh, how calm, stiller than this of course, the air was in the early morning; like the flap of a wave; chill and sharp and yet (for a girl of eighteen as she then was) solemn, feeling as she did,

She is there to take lessons for her speech. Colonel Pickering offers to pay full expenses for Higgins to tun Eliza into a lady and pass her off as a duchess. Higgins accepts.

In the Victorian England period, how a person is viewed by society determines everything. What kind of jobs are available, who it is ok to marry, and even who is acceptable to interact with. How a person is viewed can change their life for better or for worse, and sadly women during this period must work twice as hard as their male counterparts to get the crucial social respect needed to succeed in their societies. How a person appears and how they dress plays a big part on how someone is viewed, but flower-girl-turned-duchess Eliza Doolittle must learn the hard way that just because a person fits the outside criteria of a lady does not exactly mean she would be treated as so, by society and most of all her mentor Henry Higgins. Throughout the play, Pygmalion, By George Bernard Shaw, the author makes the theme of prejudice against women very apparent by the way they are treated in society and the unreasonable expectations they are held up to, making it very difficult for women like Eliza Doolittle to move up in society and be seen as equal in the eyes of those above them.

Eliza, in the climax scene vulnerably asks Higgins, why he made her a sophisticated Duchess if her never cared for her, and why did not he thought of the trouble it would make for her, on which Higgins shocking reply says:

Social standing is central to the plot of George Bernard Shaw’s play “Pygmalion”. The portrayal of class identity in Shaw’s play appears to be a criticism of the distinctions between high society and the poorer classes in Victorian England. Shaw’s aim was to portray how the upper-crust of Victorian society viewed the lower classes, as evidenced by Higgins’ treatment of Eliza upon her first visit to his laboratory; Higgins treats her as though she is too stupid to understand that he is insulting her. The assumption is that the wealthy view the lower classes as being somehow lesser. So what is it that Shaw is trying to impart upon the reader? Shaw appeared to show open disdain not just for the upper class of society but for society in general, and Pygmalion may be interpreted as an open criticism of class distinctions in Victorian England.