The "famous" Professor Higgins. - Reflection part 1

Professor Higgins acts as he is above all and he is the most genuine human being on the planet, or at least in his town. He treats the poor Ms. Doolittle like she is his personal puppet, and he has no remorse towards her or even acknowledges that she is even a real live human being with such so-called feelings. Not that she doesn't have any feelings at all, we all do, but Mr. Higgins looks past that and just sees Eliza as being an experiment that will do anything he says.

All comments aside, who is he to judge someone that never had the opportunity to have a proper education? It is not necessarily a choice then it is priorities, and by priorities- I mean its the 1900s people, things weren't exactly like how they are now. Education was always based on class, from my understanding, if your family had money then the kids would have the opportunity to have the education and expand to college and explore the world to get more knowledge. However, if your family was poor, well then this is where the priority comes in, unlike the rich who doesn't really have any priority, the poor mainly had to set their kids to work to help the parents earn wages. Now in Eliza's case, her dad was a drunk and used any income they receive to waste his life away on beer and he remarried different women, which I am guessing since Eliza mentioned in Act II, that her sixth stepmother kicked her out; she could be exaggerating?

Higgins acts like he has the right to judge her and her knowledge of language, he seems to be taking advantage of her thinking "well, here is a girl who doesn't really understand our concept of what we are up to, so let's pretend we want to help her, but instead it is a mockery that we are making out of her." I could be wrong, but again who is to say what's wrong or right. Poor Eliza Doolittle seems she is lost and that she is in the right hand, but Professor Higgins just seems like a stuck up person who cares only about himself and has no respect or manners towards anyone.

 My thinking is everywhere, but this is what is on my mind about the "famous" Professor Higgins; or should it be infamous? Hmm, well either way, there are so many things to say about the Professor good and bad and we all need to come to terms at this point in the book, is he the good guy or the bad guy? He could be both, because he helps her to become a duchess and sure he seems rough around the edges or outside, but inside I think he has a kind heart and only means well. After all, how can you make such drastic changes on someone in six months if you are always too kind and let them think they can get away with not even trying to collaborate with you. My relationship with Professor Higgins seems like a love/hate relationship, but I just hate that he takes advantages of Eliza in the beginning all for a bet. She came to him willing to pay for lessons, instead he turns it around like he found her (technically he did) and tries to make it into benefiting him more than her; she is getting something out of it though by learning how to speak properly.

Welcome to the mess of my minds' thought process on the book Pygmalion.

A little reflection on Pygmalion

I really enjoyed the parallels in the third act between how Higgins himself felt that there were certain traits one cannot change about himself while being in the process of changing Eliza. It's funny, really, how Higgins and Eliza are rather proud, stuck-up, individuals from the start of the play, and those traits are what most manifest themselves in the final moments of the play.

And I really don't mind the ending. Yeah, when I first finished it was kind of a 'what' moment, but after dwelling on it for a minute or two I really like how Shaw refused to apply the cookie cutter romantic ending to his work, even refusing to make Freddy and Eliza live a charmed life in his epilogue. That part made me sad, but that's what made me feel more for Eliza, which I think is more powerful and more important than feeling okay about a story because at the end everything got wrapped up with a nice bow.

Morality = $$$

           Of all the characters in Pygmalion I found Eliza’s father to be the most interesting. His presence throughout the play is miniscule, but the scenes he does have a part in do well explaining who he is and how he views the world. He knows he’s poor.  He even calls himself an “undeserving poor”. He also knows he has many vices, but because he is an “undeserving poor” he is not held to the high moral standards that the upper class is. To him morals are based off how much money one has in their bank account. He is poor so it is expected that so are his morals. I would venture to say that Mr. Doolittle’s opinion of morals would coincide with many other people of that time period, as well as our present day. To me this belief is a fallacy because I can think of many cash rich people with terrible morals and many cash poor people with impeccable morals.

            Now it wasn’t Mr. Doolittle’s view on morals that interested me so much as what he says on his second visit to Mr. Higgins. In this scene he goes to Mr. Higgins furious that he has inherited a large sum of money, entirely because of a letter of recommendation that Mr. Higgins writes. In my experience few people would be furious after winning the lottery, which is what is so shocking about how he reacts. If we take a closer look though we understand that he isn’t angry about being rich, but instead is angry about the higher standards that he is now expected to exhibit. His days of boozing are over and he is now being forced by the morality that middle class money brings to clean up his act. Although I differed in my beliefs on morality from Mr. Doolittle, I respected how honest he was with himself and the other characters in the play. 

Imitations. Kelsey Anderson Reflection #1

The universal dream, for those who wish to seem, those who wish to be, must put aside the alienation and get on with the fascination, a tune that has wailed since 1981 from the vocal chords of Geddy Lee, lead singer of Rush. The lyrics to the melodic song Limelight, seem like they came straight from Pygmalion. Mr. Higgins, a blunt man with intimidating intelligence, says that all individuals are savages mangling themselves trying to fit into society. “They might as well be blocks of wood. I might as well be a block of wood,” Higgins says of his students and himself. Blocks of wood are carve-able. They can be transformed and altered into whatever the carver, or artist, desires. The sculptor finds something beautiful and influential enough to want to recreate. Ultimately the sculpture is an imitation of what the creator believes is desirable. Individuals, too, in society seek to imitate something they perceive to be desirable and something they think others will perceive as desirable. All the world’s indeed a stage and we are merely players, performers and portrayers, each another’s audience, Limelight plays on. Rush couldn’t have synthesized lyrics more reflective of Higgins sentiments. Higgins recognizes that the customs in high society are just facades, ways to deter from the fact that we’re all humans and our inherent individuation isolates to our own world, our own reality. Higgins knows that people want to avoid loneliness and therefore want others to perceive them in attractive ways to avoid lonesomeness. He monetizes off of this natural human tendency. It’s no wonder he frequently treats people poorly, he can see their intentions and perceptions. That alone allots a state of power in social situations, and a capability to manipulate the people in them. Higgins saw Eliza alienated in her low-class life and, while often petulant and rude, he chose to show her that even if she learned a different dialect that she would still be her flower-girl self and that some people would fall for her learned behaviors and others would see through her portrayal of high-class jargon. Higgins demonstrated that every person, including himself, is bound to living life on a stage, performing portrayals of who we want to be, and the performer is the realest one in the audience. The performer may execute intricate acts of self-deception, but that at the end of the day, that individual will always know where they’ve come from in society. He proved that the upper class, with its capricious customs, could be rendered to believe that Eliza was of high society namely because of her imitation of fancy speech and dress.

Reading Reflection #1

"So before you point fingers, be sure your hands are clean". This is a famous song lyric from the song "Judge Not" by Bob Marley. It is not uncommon for people to judge others, ignoring that they too have faults themselves. In the novel Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw, Higgins tell his mother his "…idea of a lovable woman is somebody as like you as possible. I shall never get into the way of seriously liking young women: some habits lie too deep to be changed." (Act III). This was a moment that piqued my interest in the novel. The irony is that he believes there are traits too deeply rooted within  him that cannot be changed, yet he has no doubt he can transform Eliza from a flower girl to an elegant duchess. This is a common misconception among people in society today. It seems as though people have forgotten everyone has weaknesses, just in different forms. To assume your sins are lesser than another’s is foolish and wrong. Higgins believes he is superior to Eliza simply because he is more knowledgeable. What about morals? Are those of less value than intelligence? The irony is apparent, and Higgins is completely blind to it all. This correlates with modern day society, where some downplay their own faults, yet exaggerate when others makes a mistake. This could be a twisted way of making themselves feel better about their own lives: knowing others are morally corrupt in a way which, to them, is worse than their own personal sins. This is all created in their own minds and a personal opinion of where certain sins lay on the morality ranking scale. It all goes back to being narrowed minded. These types of people have a perception of reality which is misconstrued, to an extent that they are now a judge of what morals are of a higher value and which sins are worse.

Reading Reflection

Siena Caldera

English 240

Reading Reflection

“Eliza did the trick, and something to spare, eh—Thank god it’s over!”[A.IV.S,14] are the words spoken from Professor Henry Higgins, a professor of Phonetics. He has placed a bet on a poor flower girl, Eliza Doolittle, that he can turn her into a duchess with his expertise. At the final straw, he ends up winning the bet because she was able to accomplish what he taught her. While sitting at the fireplace, Pierce, the friend who placed the bet on him, congratulates him and those words really took Eliza by shock. Higgins was a rich bachelor who really didn't care for woman at all, but going through those last six months of training the stubborn Eliza, he saw potential and something special in her. She was a young woman who would not stand down for anyone, and when she found out that she was just an experiment, her feelings became hurt. For six months she did what he wanted and listened to his rules in order to become what he saw potential in. He was paying for her to be educated, but that wasn't who she was deep down. You can’t change someone’s way of life and how they think just after six months. She confronts him after finding out his idea the whole time, and for Higgins, he isn't used to being backfired on. After those six months Higgins started to see a light towards women, especially towards Eliza. She was able to stand up for herself and be able to argue back what she thought was right, which I think started to make Higgins act soft towards her. After she runs away he realizes that he is a harsh man and that women are way more than what he gives them credit for. He tries to say his apologies but in the end she doesn't change who she is and goes back to her old life. Eliza is stubborn but she was able to break even the most horrible man in town to really look at how he was treating someone;  a real person, not something that you can just throw away when you’re done. It was a big life lesson to him that you have to treat people the way you want to be treated because you never know what a good thing is till it’s gone.

are we saposed to write about are reading for the week?

Im not sure If im supposed to do this. Any way k was reading pigmalia and the bath seen with Eliza and the maid was really interesting. It is kind of a I site on how drasric the two side of there society are Eliza says she has never taken off all her cloths at any given time because she is afraid the cold will kill her. But Mrs pearce (the maid) says mr higgens sleeps naked. If something was natural to me I would also be hesitent about some one telling me something that was contradictory especially if it was something I did to survive. I think mrs pearce could of handle her scene with Eliza a lot better if she just showed some kindness and talked hrr way through the bath. Instead of triping her into the tub.