ipl-logo

Comparing My Fair Lady Linguistics And The Relation To Class, Gender

1053 Words5 Pages

Literature essay #2 Carter Semancik Emily Butler April 21, 2017 My Fair Lady linguistics and the Relation to Class, Gender, and other aspects Language can tell a lot about people in society, especially during the film, My Fair Lady and in the play Pygmalion. One of the main characters, Eliza Doolittle, represents one of the best examples of how language reflects social class. Henry Higgins is another main character in this play/film, who is the main reason for Eliza's transformation from a woman of a low social class to a respected figure. Throughout this essay I will be giving examples of how Eliza changes and how that affects her social status. The film is a bit different from the play but I will be referring to both. This film …show more content…

She sells flowers on the streets to make money and her dad works a lot as well to support the family. Her speech is obviously flawed as indicated in her use of slang terms. Her accent is considered “cockney”. She cannot pronounce many words correctly either. She has other problems with speech such as rhyming slang, replacing r’s with w’s, vowel differences and many others. In the United Kingdom during the late 1900s, people who spoke like this were most likely part of a low social class like Eliza. Higgins one day runs across her and hears the way she speaks and starts taking notes on her. She then …show more content…

The role of correct and proper language impacts Eliza’s life in such a positive way. Mainly and most importantly, it allows her social class to be at its highest potential. It also shows how women can be more highly respected when they use proper language. Additionally, proper language and speech can translate to being highly educated in most cases, which back in the early 1900s was not the norm. Women were typically viewed as the man's possession, but over time and with the help of smart educated women, that norm slowly changed. Even Eliza is represented as a strong independent woman when she decides to make a statement of her own dignity against Higgins after the ambassador’s party. At this point Higgins realizes she is not a duchess nor a mill around his neck, but something that is worthy of his attention. It is even more important during this time period because identity meant everything. For example, the way one talked determined their social class or social standing. Whereas today someone who has a broken southern accent can still prosper which was definitely not the case back in the early 1900s. Overall, proper linguistic habits positively affect people especially Eliza. She is looked at in a whole new way after her language transformation. She goes from a low class women, to a high class, proper women who is

Show More
Related
659 Words | 3 Pages

The plotline of the film mostly follows the plot established by Miller in his play. There are only a few discrepancies that convey the intended message of the play better. In the

Read More
247 Words | 1 Pages

Throughout the play, most of the scenes took place indoors. In the movie there were multiple scenes outdoors and indoors. The directors chose to make this change because it added to the mood and made the movie more exciting by changing the scenery. This change left an impact of excitement

Read More
727 Words | 3 Pages

and “How can I now do it?” allows Edward Stacey to put himself in her position. These questions paint Eliza as a pitiful invalid who is at the mercy of the

Read More
884 Words | 4 Pages

women were casted aside like yesterday’s trash by men who thought they were more superior. the story of Letter of Eliza Wilkinson has a decant understanding of how the people not fighting the war were affected. Similar letter was written during the American revolution war, but convey different and more meaning fool aspects of what happened. A great feeling of both hate and melancholy arose as the story progress. Could she be angry at the British

Read More
1000 Words | 4 Pages

In the summer of 1849, she decided to leave her job as a teacher and return home in hopes of pursuing a better career. This would have been nearly impossible for the majority of women because there were not any job opportunities for an educated woman other than being a teacher. Even though the chances of achieving a different career were slim, Anthony was persistent in what she believed in, because, growing up, she was taught that a woman’s right to speech was worth no less than what a man had to

Read More
666 Words | 3 Pages

This created a gap that “may have encouraged Hamilton’s womanizing” (Chernow 1). By often being busy with their children, Eliza spent less time with Hamilton. Chernow believes that the boredom that resulted from this lack of attention may

Read More
396 Words | 2 Pages

Eliza Pinckney grew up in an uncommon way for a female in the middle of the 18th century. The majority of her childhood was in the West Indies up until her father, a member of the British army, had her go to England to become educated. The reason for that was because he wanted his daughter to be educated. This was significant because women did not go to school; they stayed at home and did domestic duties. When she was in her early teens, Pinckney’s family moved to the States, and they owned plantations and farming properties.

Read More
220 Words | 1 Pages

Also, the opening scene was more similarly represented in the play, than the movie. In the production at Corona, the opening scene was the same as Act 1 Scene

Read More
1022 Words | 5 Pages

The Jim Crow laws weren’t originally named the Jim Crow laws in the reconstruction era (1865-1877) when they were first passed. They were started to called that by the actor named Jim Crow who was a white man who blacked his face and he danced around and sang about not having a care in the world. The Reconstruction era was the period of time after the civil war after the north triumphed over the south. Things weren’t a smooth transition for the people of the south with many people staying as racists and the creation of hate groups and deadly gangs such as the Ku Klux Klan were rampant after the northern soldiers left the south when reconstruction was over. The treatment of the innocent black people was unfair and unjust.

Read More
193 Words | 1 Pages

Language is not a significant part of a person’s character and importance. Many influential men and women of history dealt with speaking impediments and came from uneducated backgrounds. Some of these historical figures include Sojourn Truth, Sir Isaac Newton, and Winston Churchill. Sojourn Truth was born a slave during the late 1700s, she was never taught to read or write and spoke with a deep uneducated accent, but despite this though she became an activist. Sojourner became famous for her speech on human rights’, the abolishing slavery, and women’s right, one of her most famous and well known speeches was, “Aint’ I A Women.”

Read More
1075 Words | 5 Pages

It may skew her thinking and at times be subjective. The intended audience is someone who is studying literature and interested in how women are portrayed in novels in the 19th century. The organization of the article allows anyone to be capable of reading it.

Read More
873 Words | 4 Pages

”(act1) To transforming and saying things like “The difference between a lady and a flower girl is not how she behaves, but how she is treated. ”(act2) Eliza realizes this whole time she has been taught to be a lady but all she really needed to do is to be nice and be much more lady like.

Read More
154 Words | 1 Pages

In “Teenage Girls Have Led Language Innovation for Centuries,” Helen Thompson explains why teenage girls should be praised for revolutionizing the English language over the years. Young women tend to have larger social awareness than men causing them to lead the adoption of new words. Thompson states that women are the “Uber of Language,” due to their control over English. Thompson says women are answerable for 90% of linguistic developments today (1). Thompson argues that young women during Shakespeare’s era conjured up the dramatic change in language.

Read More
1415 Words | 6 Pages

However, in the process of persuading upper class women in addition to the men who overhear, she constructs and perpetuates a rigid class system, in which only the moneyed listeners may achieve. Continuing to contemplate in the beginning of her essay, Mary says, “I thought how it is worse perhaps to be locked in; and, thinking of the safety and prosperity of the one sex and of the poverty and insecurity of the other and of the effect of tradition and the lack of tradition upon the mind of a writer” (24). Once again, she is addressing the few literature upper class women who didn’t meet the model Mary describes. In her cogitation, she reveals the detriment caused by poverty and lack of resources. However, she fails to acknowledge the ability of success to arise out of such adversity.

Read More
1995 Words | 8 Pages

Additionally, society’s expectations are mirrored by Higgins’s expectations of what the ideal woman should be like, which is quite disturbing considering Higgins is anti-feminist. In the play, Higgins goes out of his way to exclaim, “I find that the moment I let a woman make friends with me, she becomes jealous, exacting, suspicious, and a damned nuisance. I find that the moment I let myself make friends with a woman, I become selfish and tyrannical. Women upset everything” (Small book Page 48) So, at this point, it is plausible to question how a man who is against women can be the man who dictates how the “complete” woman should

Read More

More about Comparing My Fair Lady Linguistics And The Relation To Class, Gender

Related Topics

Open Document