"Pygmalion" -- George Bernard Shaw

     As a child, I watched the movie "My Fair Lady," so I was pleasantly surprised when I realized that this was the original stage play the the movie was adapted from.

     "Pygmalion," by George Bernard Shaw, is a social commentary on the different social stratas in early 20th century London. It tells of the story of Professor Higgins, Colonel Pickering, and their attempt to change Eliza Doolittle, a flower girl on the street, into a young woman fit for proper society, specifically a duchess.

     The title "Pygmalion" comes from the legendary figure of Cyprus. Pygmalion is best known for being in Ovid's Metamorphoses X,  in which he is a sculptor who carved a woman out of ivory. Disgusted by the behavior of the women of his era, Pygmalion decides to live alone and unmarried; he then goes on to create a statue more perfect than any living woman. Despite his claim that he was not interested in women, Pygmalion falls in love with his sculpture and prays to Venus for her to be brought to life; subsequently, the statue is brought to life and they live happily ever after.

     In Shaw's play, one could argue that  Eliza Doolittle is being brought to life through speech by Professor Higgins and Colonel Pickering. Professor Higgins embodies Pygmalion in a way, what with his aversion to women. In Act II, he says that, to him, women "might as well be blocks of wood." Unfortunately, he has a penchant for swearing, forgetting his table manners, and a terribly quarrelsome nature.  One could argue that because of these negative qualities, Colonel Pickering and Mrs. Pearce also embody Pygmalion, but in a lesser way. Colonel Pickering teaches her self-respect by treating her with respect  and dignity. Mrs Pearce changes her outward appearance, which is just as important as her manner of speech. Together, the three of them make a perfect Pygmalion figure.

By and large, language is a tool for concealing the truth. -- George Carlin

     This article was an extremely interesting read. George Orwell's argument that the English language is in a bad way is valid, and in my opinion, true. Orwell states that writing in the English language is being plagued by extreme vagueness and overall ineptitude. He goes on to say that this is occurring because of a growing reliance on metaphors that are outdated and lack meaning; he claims that these metaphors are popular because they save the author from the task of being original and creating phrases for themselves. Orwell claims that such a reliance shows that the author is not interested in what it is that he or she is writing about.

     Orwell goes on to discuss the use of flowery language and how it is really not a necessity. Most people tend to think that using high-brow language is a mark of someone's intelligence, or their class. That is definitely not always the case. Anyone has the ability to go through a thesaurus and find words that they think makes them sound intelligent; At the end of the day, it's not the words one uses to convey ones meaning/argument that count, it's the ideas behind it. This reminds of how much my teachers/professors stress that flowery language and fluff does not a good paper make; instead, it may make you seem as though you know very little. If your ideas are concrete, there will always be a simpler way to say it.

     This brings me to another point in Orwell's article: politicians. Orwell argues that politicians use this decline in language, and meaning, to their advantage, which I whole-heartedly believe is true. Most politicians cannot write a speech (or have one written for them) that does not include some type of metaphor, or an abstract concept in place of a concrete idea. Like Orwell said, political language is "designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind."

     This growing reliance on metaphors and flowery language is still a major one, and like Orwell said, this isn't something that can be solved all at once. Instead, we can all try to change our own habits.
   

Women have been taught that, for us, the earth is flat, and that if we venture out, we will fall off the edge. ~Andrea Dworkin

     I was happy to see that when answering the question of "What is Feminine Criticism?" the essay split up the idea by country. I believe that depending on ones country of origin, a feminist critic may have differing ideas about the construction of the feminine gender. Unfortunately, the essay really only described feminine criticism from the point of view of women who were white and from the Western world. There are many other feminists who did a lot in their own countries to further the position of women in their societies, like Urvashi Butalia in India or Uchida Jenko in Japan. Overall, I wish the essay would have focused on a more diverse selection of feminist critics, but it was a good read nonetheless.

     Too see what it was that French, American, and British feminists focused on was interesting. I could see why they chose to focus on the things that they did, as they are of cultural importance for them; for example, in France, words have genders. I know that as someone who has studied French for the past 6 years (with all female teachers), it has been pointed out more than once, and with a quiet (and sometimes not so quiet) discontent that words that are feminine gendered are most times abstract, or things that are small or frivolous. For instance, the word "mouse", une souris, is feminine, whereas the word "skeleton", un squelette is masculine. The gender of the word "organ" (orgue) is masculine when speaking of the body part; when speaking of the instrument, it becomes feminine. For French feminist critics to focus their attention on language and deem it "phallocentric" did not really surprise me when I thought about it.

     American and British feminist critics were kind of similar, but they focused on different areas. They worried more about what had been written rather than how, but the Americans tended to focus on rediscovering women's history through the writing of women and the emotion behind it, while the British turned their attention to the more political side of things. When I think about it, it makes sense that American critics were more focused on the emotional side of things, because I believe that as a whole, American society is much ore emotionally demonstrative than our British counterparts. As someone who grew up with a British mother, I know that not every British person is an emotionless bot with a stiff upper lip, but they are very focused on moving forward rather than spending time on displays of emotional incontinence. For them to focus of the political sad of things and criticize American feminists was something I kind of expected.

   I really enjoyed this reading. It was interesting to see each cultures influence on what feminist critics thought to be the most important idea when dissecting the construction of the feminine gender.