Both Kate Chopin’s “The Awakening” and George Bernard Shaw’s ”Pygmalion” use conflict to illustrate how a parent’s attitude can affect the morals and individuality of women in society.
Conflict between father and daughter is prominent in Shaw’s “Pygmalion”. Eliza’s father Alfred Doolittle is a dustman who gives “vent to his feelings without reserve” and is not constrained by middle- class morality. Doolittle goes to the house of Professor Higgins seemingly to get his daughter back, but instead brings her luggage and does not want to be the man “to stand in my girl’s light”. Doolittle brought Eliza’s luggage as his duty as a father to check up on her after two months of not seeing her but rather does it because he knows Eliza is in the company
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If you dont you’ll be sorry for it after. If you do, she’ll be sorry for it after; but better her than you, because you’re a man, and she’s only a woman and don’t know how to be happy anyhow.” Doolittle is cunning and disregards Eliza as if she is some other woman besides his daughter. He does not care for her well being, but rather has this notion that all women are the same and that men are slaves to women and their needs. The unmistakable tension between Eliza and Doolittle is revealed when in Act 2 when Eliza says, “… You don’t know my father. All he come here for was to touch you for some money to get drunk on.” Eliza is very familiar with her fathers drinking habits and has come to terms with her fathers inability to change. Doolittle replies, “Well, what else would I want money for?” which solidifies that he has no intention to become a different man and refuses to be constrained by society, and even his daughter. Louis Crompton similarly comments on the relationship of Eliza and Doolittle stating, “Eliza yearns above all things to join the respectable lower middle class. Doolittle, finding that his job