Eliza Identity
Eliza, from beggar to woman with pride within six months, what has changed? In the play, Pygmalion which was written by George Bernard Shaw, a poor uneducated flower girl, who speaks with a cockney accent, has wanted to learn to become a lady just to make her living. But what to become of her after six months being train by the professor of phonics? Despite her self-confidence identity, Eliza’s inner characteristics have changed tremendously as well as her external identity.
At the start of the play, Eliza Doolittle was introduced as a poor and dramatic Flower Girl, who was coming from the street with a cockney accent. Although at first, she was acting immature, later on, her identities transforms throughout the play to be a more mature person. As it clearly states in Act I, Eliza was hysterically screaming in public and started to defend herself unreasonably. It stated: “[still hysterical] I take my Bible oath I never said a word—”. Eliza was very hysterical when one of the standby men says that there’s someone took note of everything she says, without listening to the notetaker she started to scream. This clearly shows that she was acting so immature, even though the notetaker was trying to talk to her, but she wasn’t paying any attention.
After six months of training, Eliza grows to be more like a lady and a woman with pride. Later on in the play when they meet again, Eliza initially performs a small talk, therefore she overlooks Higgin’s rudeness. It stated: “How do you do, Professor Higgins? Are you quite well?” As its clearly expose in the dialog, Eliza performs a conversation with Higgins as if nothing ever happened before. Moreover, she acknowledged Pickering for six months of training and purposely insulting Higgin that she wouldn’t have such a ladylike manner if Pickering wasn’t there. Eliza new attitude demonstrates that she is a woman with pride, and try to impress herself that she’s stronger that Higgin thinks she was.
Despite her self-confidence identity, Eliza inner characteristic has changed considerably as well as her external identity. In conclusion, Eliza internal identity has changed extensively as is has compared in Act I and Act V. Due to her desire to impress how strong she is and being reasonable during her conversation with Higgins, her internal identity has unexpectedly changed over time, as well as her external identity.