Comparison Of Eliza Doolittle And Proper Lady
Throughout life there will be points when people try to change each other. Sometimes it is for the betterment of the changed person; other times it is the opposite case. In the cases of Eliza Doolittle, and Gracie Hart they are changed to become more proper ladies. Both of these female protagonists have a teacher figure that transforms them, but both do so in different settings to meet different expectations, and the climax of each plot differs as a reflection of these differing circumstances. Both leading ladies end up with a teacher archetype whose role it is to make them more feminine and into more of a “Proper Lady”. In the musical film, My Fair Lady, Henry Higgins makes the boast that he could turn the common flower girl, Eliza Doolittle, into a dutchess that would pass even in the royal ball that was to be held later that year. Thus he and his friend Colonel Pickering set about trying to teach Eliza to speak
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Higgins has to bring Eliza up to the standards of twentieth century royalty. He had to train her to act sophisticated, appear to be of high status, speak as a proper lady of the time, and eventually earning him the jibe from his mother,”You’re a pretty [baby] playing with your live doll.” Alternatively, Victor has to get Gracie to act like a pageant queen, which proves to be a task of lesser difficulty, but still a difficult one none the less. Gracie doesn’t even consider herself feminine as shown when she says to her FBI partner,”I can’t talk girl talk with a guy in my head! I can’t even do it with me in my head!” However, to meet the expectations of the Miss America pageant he has to teach her to at least be able to act like a feminine woman. His main hurdles are getting her to smile, and pretend to have a burning desire for world peace which she considers to be degrading, but in the end it is still an easier task than Higgins
Higgins has to bring Eliza up to the standards of twentieth century royalty. He had to train her to act sophisticated, appear to be of high status, speak as a proper lady of the time, and eventually earning him the jibe from his mother,”You’re a pretty [baby] playing with your live doll.” Alternatively, Victor has to get Gracie to act like a pageant queen, which proves to be a task of lesser difficulty, but still a difficult one none the less. Gracie doesn’t even consider herself feminine as shown when she says to her FBI partner,”I can’t talk girl talk with a guy in my head! I can’t even do it with me in my head!” However, to meet the expectations of the Miss America pageant he has to teach her to at least be able to act like a feminine woman. His main hurdles are getting her to smile, and pretend to have a burning desire for world peace which she considers to be degrading, but in the end it is still an easier task than Higgins