In George Bernard Shaw's classic play "The Flower Girl", he created two characters with very strong personality characteristics, the heroine is the flower seller Eliza from a poor background, and the hero is Higgins, a high-class phonetics professor. This script is unique among George Bernard Shaw's many works, and is most talked about for the special relationship and personality characteristics of the hero and heroine.
In the general view, Professor Higgins successfully transformed the flower girl, so that Eliza gradually transformed from a vulgar woman at the bottom into a noble upper-class lady, Higgins is undoubtedly a shaper, and Eliza is a reformer, and Eliza has completed her growth in the process. In fact, in six months of shaping and changing, both people have truly grown and changed.
01
Originally two unrelated people, the fate came from a chance encounter on the streets of London late at night, Professor Higgins was obsessed with studying the regional characteristics of different voices, and Eliza was loudly shouting at the gentlemen and ladies who came out after the banquet in the street with a rough pronunciation of "Cockney", which attracted Higgins' attention, and he hid behind and silently recorded her various pronunciation tones...
When Eliza learned that a gentleman was quietly writing down everything she said, she mistook it for a secret detective, and she cried and was overwhelmed, but immediately said to Higgins, "I have the same right to stay here as you." She was very independent at heart, and soon she was no longer afraid and weak, and she loudly emphasized that selling flowers was her right, and the poor also had the right to live. This shows that Eliza's personality traits have a strong and equality side.
Although Eliza believes that the nobility and the poor are equal in personality, she is also attracted to the aristocratic life and consciously yearns for and learns. When he heard Higgins and Colonel Pickering make a bet that they would turn her into a lady in six months, she was really moved.
Of course, Eliza's original intention in learning standard English was only to get a more decent job, but when she really saw the life of the nobility, she was involuntarily seduced by gorgeous clothing and rich food. Some of the dramatic scenes, such as Eliza's attraction to higgins' creamy chocolate candy in her hand and her swallowing, show her inner desire to change her appearance and live a life that marked high society.
At this stage, Eliza tried her best to imitate all aspects of the upper class and strive to become a lady of the upper class.
When Eliza successfully won the attention and praise of the ambassador's ball after transforming from external dress etiquette and inner pronunciation, and when Higgins and Pickering celebrated the victory, Eliza felt the indifference of the aristocratic class at that moment and realized that she was just a bet. So Eliza angrily slammed her slippers into Higgins, and the result woke her up.
After Eliza left Professor Higgins, she returned to the place where he used to live happily, like a bystander, and then to see the people at the bottom who had been begging for a living together, but she couldn't go back to the past, and she didn't belong here anymore. When she crossed a class, she could no longer integrate into the original world.
Like a big dream, it is impossible to return to the living state of the commoners after waking up, she has seen the life of high society, and she has been a "princess" and is not willing to return to her original state of life; If she continued to stay in Higgins' house, her self-esteem would not allow her to rely on Higgins's wealth and be treated as an appendage to live under the command of her. Eliza's self gradually awakens, and she struggles to find a way out in the process.
Unlike the film version, Shaw's play does not explain Eliza's whereabouts, she wants to marry the suitor Freddie, but she and Freddy do not have a deep affection for the foreshadowing, or as the script mentions, using what she learned from Higgins to become a teacher, which is also a possibility. But one thing is clear, at this time, she is no longer the flower seller of the past, nor is she willing to be a puppet bet in the aristocratic circle, and she has clearly refused to be "stepped on under her feet" again.
At this time, Eliza retained the dignity and generosity of the noble lady, and also retained the self-reliance and self-reliance of the flower seller, and it was at the end of "The Flower Seller" that she really grew up independent, she was a real self, a new self, beyond the past.
After this period of aristocratic training, she has grown into a more perfect person. All this change, thanks to the cultivation and influence of Professor Higgins, who, like Pygmalion in Greek mythology, shaped a new Eliza.
02
Let's talk about the male protagonist, the male protagonist Higgins is a professor of phonetics with outstanding knowledge, his solid professional skills and obsessive research spirit are really admirable, and he is respected as an upper-class class. At the same time, it can be seen that he is a man with the arrogance and traditional ideas of the inherent aristocratic class, and all his words and deeds and performances look more like a big boy who has never been separated from the relationship with his mother, which makes his behavior somewhat childish and ridiculous.
Higgins, as a gentleman of the upper class, although knowledgeable and rich, lacked the minimum respect for women. The linguist who claimed that Shakespeare's language was his native tongue repeatedly exploded in his words to Eliza, and words such as "garbage", "vulgarity", and "dirty" appeared one after another, becoming discordant sounds in his noble status. When Higgins scolds her for "a woman with such an ugly accent, she shouldn't be anywhere, she shouldn't live in the world at all", and it can be seen that there is a rude and mean personality in saying these words.
Professor Higgins turned out to be an out-and-out celibacy. In fact, he has a very natural prejudice against women, which looks more like a big boy mentality, he is intoxicated in his career, lacks attention and understanding of women's psychology, and has a degrading stereotype.
There's a wonderful clip in The Flower Girl that leaves Professor Higgins after Eliza feels apathy and disregard. At this time, Higgins showed a strong inner conflict.
He murmured a long monologue to Colonel Pickering, very eloquently expressing Higgins' attitude toward women and his reasons for his original insistence on celibacy. He repeated the question: "Why can't women be like men?" This process is actually reflecting on himself, reflecting on his attitude.
03
The two people get along after the change, we can see at the end of the script. When Higgins finally found Eliza in her mother's house, she had changed her previous submission, and unlike the hysterical anger of the previous night, after a huge psychological collision and serious thinking, she understood her real needs, what she wanted, and how she should express herself.
Meeting Higgins again, Eliza is already "kind, calm, and natural.". This calm gesture surprised Pickering so much that he forgot to stand up and say hello. This calm posture, not humble to show their attitude, can be said to be the best interpretation of an aristocratic lady's temperament.
At this time, Higgins had to look at Eliza in a different way, and it was Eliza who taught him to look at women equally, especially women from slums, and gradually learned to understand women's psychology and understand what equal respect is. He had to look at Eliza with disdain, and he found a relationship of dependence in his heart.
In fact, we can see from this that the Pygmalion effect is working subtly, and the changes that Eliza is expected to change are slowly becoming a reality. However, the influence is mutual, and when Professor Higgins corrects Eliza's voice and behavior, when he exerts influence on others, Eliza has unconsciously completed a transformation of him.
The growth of two people, one is a bright line, the other is a dark line, between the influence and the influence, between the shaping and the being shaped, quietly in the transformation, in the change. Therefore, the inseparable and constant relationship between these two people is the biggest point of the script.
When we read the story of "Flower Girl" today, although time and space are not in one dimension, the relationship and mode of getting along with people still bring us a lot of inspiration. People's growth is a lifelong subject, we get along with the people around us, the influence is actually mutual, may be subtly influenced by the people around us, hoping to constantly run into a better self.
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