Pygmalion

4 Pages 934 Words

Rappaccini’s Daughter and Eliza Doolittle are two young women who are trying to find there way in life. Although they are maturing in different environments they are both hampered in there search by society as well as a few individual men. This is illustrated in the short fiction Daisy Miller by Henry James, and in the play Pygmalion by Bernard Shaw.
Daisy Miller is a fiction about a young expatriate in Europe. Daisy is a very beautiful intelligent young women who attracts the attention of many young men. Daisy is very flirtatious and being that she is from America she is much more open with the young men around her than is believed to be permissible at the time. This causes her many problems both with a man who she is in love with as well as with the society around her. The other expatriate Americans are slowly repulsed by her not wanting to be associated with someone who has as bad a reputation as Daisy.
Pygmalion is a play about a young flower girl in England who is taken up by a professor of phonetics. Eliza is a very poor young wretch who is trying to survive on her own by selling flowers on the street. She goes to Professor Higgins hoping to buy lessons to improve her speech and get a better job. Higgins is intrigued by her and makes a bet with another man that he can pass her off as a duchess. The rest of the play is about Eliza’s struggle to adapt to her newly found status in society.
The women in Daisy Miller were very cruel to Daisy, treating her like she was a floozy and a bad person. The first woman in the play is Winterbourne’s aunt who refuses even to meet Daisy. “I must decline the honour of her acquaintance. I am an old woman, but I am not too old—thank Heaven—to be shocked!” This is what Mrs. Costello tells Winterbourne when he asks her to meet Daisy. She says this because Winterbourne tells her that he may take her to the Castle Chillon, when he has only known her a few minutes. Mrs. Costello cannot...