English Literature books summary

helped Wickham to seduce Georgiana) to tell him. When Darcy found the

couple, he tried to convince Lydia to leave, but she refused. That being

the case, Darcy tried to get Wickham to marry Lydia, which Wickham had no

intention of doing. Darcy offered Wickham money in order to persuade him to

marry Lydia. Darcy then waited until Mr. Bennet had left for Longbourn and

went to inform Mr. Gardiner of all that had occurred, explaining that he

felt guilty for not having exposed Wickham's character sooner.

Mrs. Gardiner concludes the letter stating that she is sure Darcy's

actions are motivated by his love for Elizabeth, and relates to Elizabeth

how much she thinks that he would be a good match.

In reflecting on the letter, Elizabeth is sensible of all the

mortification and suffering which Darcy must have gone through in the

process of getting Wickham to marry Lydia. She does not think, however,

that his regard for her could possibly be the primary motive, and she still

does not think that there is any hope that he will marry her.

Elizabeth's reflections are interrupted by Wickham. They have a guarded

conversation in which she makes it clear that she knows more about

Wickham's true past than he would like, but she avoids provoking him for

Lydia's sake.

Volume III, Chapter 11 Summary:

Lydia and Wickham leave for Newcastle, where his new regiment is

stationed. Lydia's good-byes are not very affectionate. Mrs. Bennet is sad

that she will not be able to see her daughter for a long time.

Mrs. Bennet hears from Mrs. Phillips that Mr. Bingley is planning to

return to Netherfield in a few days. Jane tells Elizabeth that she does not

want to see much of him. Elizabeth, however, after having seen him while on

vacation with the Gardiners, is sure that he is still partial to Jane, and

thinks that perhaps Mr. Darcy may have told Bingley that he now approves of

the match.

Mrs. Bennet plans to invite Bingley to dinner. Jane is obviously

disturbed by his coming and is pained by the constant mention of his name.

Mr. Bingley and Darcy come to pay a visit at Netherfield. Elizabeth

begins to hope that Darcy's affections for her are not shaken. When they

come in, Elizabeth is pained by Mrs. Bennet's cold reception of Darcy in

comparison with Mr. Bingley, considering how much she owes to Darcy.

Elizabeth is also mortified by her mother's jubilant announcement of Lydia

and Wickham's marriage. Darcy speaks little during the visit. When the

gentlemen are leaving Mrs. Bennet invites them for dinner.

Volume III, Chapter 12 Summary:

During the dinner party, Bingley sits next to Jane and Elizabeth is

convinced that he still admires her. Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth are sitting

too far apart to be able to speak, and circumstances prevent them from

conversing after dinner. Elizabeth is anxious and annoyed because she wants

to speak with him very badly. Mrs. Bennet is extremely pleased with the

dinner and is sure that Bingley and Jane will soon be married. Mr. Darcy is

going back to London but will return in 10 days.

Volume III, Chapter 13 Summary:

After a few days Mr. Bingley calls again, and the day after he joins

them again for dinner. Mrs. Bennet contrives to get Jane and Bingley alone

together, but is unsuccessful. The next morning Mr. Bingley joins Mr.

Bennet to go hunting, and he then stays for dinner. Mrs. Bennet is this

time successful in arranging for Jane and Bingley to be left alone

together. When Elizabeth walks into the drawing room she finds them there

alone in earnest conversation. Bingley quickly leaves and Jane tells

Elizabeth that she is the happiest woman in the world. Jane then goes to

tell her mother, and Bingley, who had gone to speak with Mr. Bennet,

returns and receives Elizabeth's congratulations. All are very happy.

Bingley now comes to visit Netherfield every day.

Volume III, Chapter 14 Summary:

Early the next morning Lady Catherine unexpectedly comes to visit.

Lady Catherine is, as usual, domineering and arrogant in her conversation.

She tells Elizabeth she would like her company for a walk outside. Lady

Catherine tells Elizabeth that she has come because of rumors that Darcy

and Elizabeth will soon be married. Elizabeth answers her inquiries curtly

and without revealing the fact that Darcy has not proposed to her again.

Lady Catherine tries to forbid Elizabeth to marry Mr. Darcy, but Elizabeth

is insensible to her entreaties and threats. Lady Catherine is furious and

leaves.

Volume III, Chapter 15 Summary:

Her conversation with Lady Catherine throws Elizabeth into a great

discomposure of spirits. She is not sure what the cause of Lady Catherine's

suspicion is, but she is uneasy about the fact that Lady Catherine will

surely try to influence Darcy not to propose.

Mr. Bennet tells Elizabeth that he wants to speak with her and relates

to her the contents of a letter from Mr. Collins in which he says that he

has heard that Mr. Darcy may propose to Elizabeth and advises Elizabeth not

to accept because of Lady Catherine's disapprobation. Mr. Bennet thinks the

letter is extremely amusing because he still thinks that Darcy is

indifferent to Elizabeth and that Elizabeth hates Darcy.

Volume III, Chapter 16 Summary:

Within a few days Mr. Darcy returns to Netherfield and he and Mr.

Bingley come to Longbourn early in the day. Jane, Bingley, Darcy,

Elizabeth, and Kitty take a walk. Jane and Bingley lag behind the rest, and

eventually Darcy and Elizabeth are left to walk together alone as well. As

soon as they are alone Elizabeth expresses to Darcy her gratitude for his

assistance in the affair with Wickham and Lydia. Darcy replies that he

wishes she had not found out, but adds that what he did was done for

Elizabeth's sake. Elizabeth cannot say a word. Darcy tells her that his

affections are no different than they were when he proposed, and asks her

to tell him if hers are the same as well. Elizabeth informs him that her

sentiments have changed and that she will now gladly receive his assurances

of continued affection. He is overcome with delight upon hearing this and

speaks warmly and fervently about his love. Lady Catherine's attempt to

dissuade him from proposing only had the effect of giving him hope by

letting him know that Elizabeth was not decided against marrying him.

They speak about the last proposal, both apologizing for their lack of

civility. Mr. Darcy had been tortured by Elizabeth's reproof "had you acted

in a more gentleman-like manner." This and her other reproofs on that night

humbled him and led him to realize his selfishness and conceit. Elizabeth

tells Darcy that his letter slowly removed all her former prejudices. When

Darcy met Elizabeth at Pemberley, he wanted to show her immediately that he

had changed as a result of her just reproofs.

Darcy tells Elizabeth that before leaving for London he had told

Bingley that he had been wrong in interfering with Bingley's relationship

with Jane and that he was now sure that Jane was really attached to him.

This assurance from Darcy gave Bingley the encouragement he needed to make

the proposal.

Volume III, Chapter 17 Summary:

At night, when she is finally able to speak with Jane alone, Elizabeth

tells her what has happened. Jane is incredulous. But eventually Elizabeth

convinces her that she is serious and that she really does love Darcy.

Elizabeth explains her reasons for previously concealing her affection, and

reveals to Jane what Darcy did for Lydia. Jane is extremely happy for her,

and they spend half the night talking.

The next morning Mrs. Bennet is annoyed on seeing that Mr. Darcy has

again accompanied Bingley to Longbourn, and suggests that Elizabeth go for

a walk with him to keep him out of Jane and Bingley's way. Elizabeth is

quite happy to comply. Bingley greets Elizabeth with such warmth that she

is sure he knows of her engagement. During their walk Elizabeth and Darcy

decide that Darcy will ask Mr. Bennet's consent in the evening and that

Elizabeth will speak to her mother.

After Mr. Darcy speaks with Mr. Bennet, Darcy tells Elizabeth that her

father wants to speak with her. Mr. Bennet is shocked because he thinks

that Elizabeth hates Darcy. After long explanations she assures Mr. Bennet

of her affection for him. She also tells him of what Darcy did for Lydia.

He is surprised and happy for his daughter.

At night Elizabeth tells her mother of the engagement. Her mother is

shocked but extremely happy in thinking of how rich Darcy is. Her former

dislike of him is completely forgotten.

The next day her mother acts remarkably well toward Darcy, and her

father tries to get to know him better and is pleased with him.

Volume III, Chapter 18 Summary:

Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy converse playfully about how he fell in love

with her in the first place and why he took so long to propose the second

time. He tells her that his second proposal was all thanks to Lady

Catherine, her warning having given him hope of Elizabeth's affection.

Elizabeth asks him when he will tell Lady Catherine the news, and he goes

off to write to her, while Elizabeth goes to write to Mrs. Gardiner.

Miss Bingley's reactions to Mr. Bingley's engagement to Jane are

affectionate and insincere. Miss Darcy's reaction to news of Mr. Darcy's

engagement is one of genuine delight.

The Collinses come to stay at Lucas Lodge because Lady Catherine is so

angry at the engagement. Darcy deals well with the obsequiousness of Mr.

Collins, along with the vulgarity of Mrs. Philips and Mrs. Bennet.

Mrs. Bennet is extremely happy and proud at her daughters' marriages. Mr.

Bennet misses Elizabeth and often goes to visit her at Pemberley.

Bingley and Jane leave Netherfield after a year and move to

Derbyshire, because their closeness to Mrs. Bennet and the Meryton

relations is too much to bear even for them.

Kitty now spends most of her time with her sisters, and is much

improved by their example and society. Mary stays at home and keeps her

mother company on her visits.

Lydia soon writes to Elizabeth to congratulate her and ask her to see

if Mr. Darcy will use his money and influence to help Wickham. Elizabeth

replies negatively, but does send Lydia money that she saves by economizing

in her private expenses.

Miss Bingley drops her resentment of Darcy's marriage because she

wants to retain the right of visiting Pemberley. Georgiana and Elizabeth

become very close and very fond of one another. Relations with Lady

Catherine were broken off for a while, but Elizabeth finally convinces

Darcy to attempt a reconciliation, and Lady Catherine comes to visit them.

Darcy and Elizabeth are always on intimate terms with the Gardiners, to

whom they are grateful for having brought them together.

Pygmalion by B.Shaw

Context

Born in Dublin in 1856 to a middle-class Protestant family bearing

pretensions to nobility (Shaw's embarrassing alcoholic father claimed to be

descended from Macduff, the slayer of Macbeth), George Bernard Shaw grew to

become what some consider the second greatest English playwright, behind

only Shakespeare. Others most certainly disagree with such an assessment,

but few question Shaw's immense talent or the play's that talent produced.

Shaw died at the age of 94, a hypochondriac, socialist, anti-

vaccinationist, semi-feminist vegetarian who believed in the Life Force and

only wore wool. He left behind him a truly massive corpus of work including

about 60 plays, 5 novels, 3 volumes of music criticism, 4 volumes of dance

and theatrical criticism, and heaps of social commentary, political theory,

and voluminous correspondence. And this list does not include the opinions

that Shaw could always be counted on to hold about any topic, and which

this amboyant public figure was always most willing to share. Shaw's most

lasting contribution is no doubt his plays, and it has been said that "a

day never passes without a performance of some Shaw play being given

somewhere in the world." One of Shaw's greatest contributions as a modern

dramatist is in establishing drama as serious literature, negotiating

publication deals for his highly popular plays so as to convince the public

that the play was no less important than the novel. In that way, he created

the conditions for later playwrights to write seriously for the theater.

Of all of Shaw's plays, Pygmalion is without the doubt the most beloved and

popularly received, if not the most significant in literary terms. Several

_lm versions have been made of the play, and it has even been adapted into

a musical. In fact, writing the screenplay for the _lm version of 1938

helped Shaw to become the first and only man ever to win the much coveted

Double: the Nobel Prize for literature and an Academy Award. Shaw wrote the

part of Eliza in Pygmalion for the famous actress Mrs. Patrick Campbell,

with whom Shaw was having a prominent affair at the time that had set all

of London abuzz.

The aborted romance between Professor Higgins and Eliza Doolittle

reflects Shaw's own love life, which was always peppered with enamored and

beautiful women, with whom he flirted outrageously but with whom he almost

never had any further relations. For example, he had a long marriage to

Charlotte Payne-Townsend in which it is well known that he never touched

her once. The fact that Shaw was quietly a member of the British Society

for the Study of Sex Psychology, an organization whose core members were

young men agitating for homosexual liberation, might or might not inform

the way that Higgins would rather focus his passions on literature or

science than on women. That Higgins was a representation of Pygmalion, the

character from the famous story of Ovid's Metamorphoses who is the very

embodiment of male love for the female form, makes Higgins sexual

disinterest all the more compelling. Shaw is too consummate a performer and

too smooth in his self- presentation for us to neatly dissect his sexual

background; these lean biographical facts, however, do support the belief

that Shaw would have an interest in exploding the typical structures of

standard fairy tales.

Characters

Professor Henry Higgins Henry Higgins is a professor of phonetics who

plays Pygmalion to Eliza Doolittle's Galatea. He is the author of Higgins'

Universal Alphabet, believes in concepts like visible speech, and uses all

manner of recording and photographic material to document his phonetic

subjects, reducing people and their dialects into what he sees as readily

understandable units. He is an unconventional man, who goes in the opposite

direction from the rest of society in most matters. Indeed, he is impatient

with high society, forgetful in his public graces, and poorly considerate

of normal social niceties the only reason the world has not turned against

him is because he is at heart a good and harmless man. His biggest fault is

that he can be a bully.

Eliza Doolittle f Eliza, The Flower Girl, Flower Girl, flower girl,

The flower girl, the flower girl g "She is not at all a romantic figure."

So is she introduced in Act I. Everything about Eliza Doolittle seems to

defy any conventional notions we might have about the romantic heroine.

When she is transformed from a sassy, smart-mouthed kerbstone flower girl

with deplorable English, to a (still sassy) regal figure _t to consort with

nobility, it has less to do with her innate qualities as a heroine than

with the fairy-tale aspect of the transformation myth itself. In other

words, the character of Eliza Doolittle comes across as being much more

instrumental than fundamental. The real (re-)making of Eliza Doolittle

happens after the ambassador's party, when she decides to make a statement

for her own dignity against Higgins' insensitive treatment. This is when

she becomes, not a duchess, but an independent woman; and this explains why

Higgins begins to see Eliza not as a mill around his neck but as a creature

worthy of his admiration.

Colonel Pickering Colonel Pickering, the author of Spoken Sanskrit,

is a match for Higgins (although somewhat less obsessive) in his passion

for phonetics. But where Higgins is a boorish, careless bully, Pickering is

always considerate and a genuinely gentleman. He says little of note in the

play, and appears most of all to be a civilized foil to Higgins' barefoot,

absentminded crazy professor. He helps in the Eliza Doolittle experiment by

making a wager of it, saying he will cover the costs of the experiment if

Higgins does indeed make a convincing duchess of her. However, while

Higgins only manages to teach Eliza pronunciations, it is Pickering's

thoughtful treatment towards Eliza that teaches her to respect herself.

Alfred Doolittle Alfred Doolittle is Eliza's father, an elderly but

vigorous dustman who has had at least six wives and who "seems equally free

from fear and conscience." When he learns that his daughter has entered the

home of Henry Higgins, he immediately pursues to see if he can get some

money out of the circumstance. His unique brand of rhetoric, an

unembarrassed, unhypocritical advocation of drink and pleasure (at other

people's expense), is amusing to Higgins. Through Higgins' joking

recommendation, Doolittle becomes a richly endowed lecturer to a moral

reform society, transforming him from lowly dustman to a picture of middle

class morality he becomes miserable. Throughout, Alfred is a scoundrel who

is willing to sell his daughter to make a few pounds, but he is one of the

few unaffected characters in the play, unmasked by appearance or language.

Though scandalous, his speeches are honest. At points, it even seems that

he might be Shaw's voice piece of social criticism (Alfred's proletariat

status, given Shaw's socialist leanings, makes the prospect all the more

likely).

Mrs. Higgins Professor Higgins' mother, Mrs. Higgins is a stately

lady in her sixties who sees the Eliza Doolittle experiment as idiocy, and

Higgins and Pickering as senseless children. She is the first and only

character to have any qualms about the whole affair. When her worries prove

true, it is to her that all the characters turn. Because no woman can match

up to his mother, Higgins claims, he has no interest in dallying with them.

To observe the mother of Pygmalion (Higgins), who completely understands

all of his failings and inadequacies, is a good contrast to the mythic

proportions to which Higgins builds himself in his self-estimations as a

scientist of phonetics and a creator of duchesses.

Freddy Eynsford Hill Higgins' surmise that Freddy is a fool is

probably accurate. In the opening scene he is a spineless and resourceless

lackey to his mother and sister. Later, he is comically bowled over by

Eliza, the half-baked duchess who still speaks cockney. He becomes lovesick

for Eliza, and courts her with letters. At the play's close, Freddy serves

as a young, viable marriage option for Eliza, making the possible path she

will follow unclear to the reader.

Summary

Two old gentlemen meet in the rain one night at Covent Garden. Professor

Higgins is a scientist of phonetics, and Colonel Pickering is a linguist of

Indian dialects. The first bets the other that he can, with his knowledge

of phonetics, convince high London society that, in a matter of months, he

will be able to transform the cockney speaking Covent Garden flower girl,

Eliza Doolittle, into a woman as poised and well-spoken as a duchess.

The next morning, the girl appears at his laboratory on Wimpole Street

to ask for speech lessons, offering to pay a shilling, so that she may

speak properly enough to work in a flower shop. Higgins makes merciless fun

of her, but is seduced by the idea of working his magic on her. Pickering

goads him on by agreeing to cover the costs of the experiment if Higgins

can pass Eliza off as a duchess at an ambassador's garden party. The

challenge is taken, and Higgins starts by having his housekeeper bathe

Eliza and give her new clothes. Then Eliza's father Alfred Doolittle comes

to demand the return of his daughter, though his real intention is to hit

Higgins up for some money.

The professor, amused by Doolittle's unusual rhetoric, gives him five

pounds. On his way out, the dustman fails to recognize the now clean,

pretty flower girl as his daughter.

For a number of months, Higgins trains Eliza to speak properly. Two trials

for Eliza follow. The first occurs at Higgins' mother's home, where Eliza

is introduced to the Eynsford Hills, a trio of mother, daughter, and son.

The son Freddy is very attracted to her, and further taken with what he

thinks is her affected "small talk" when she slips into cockney. Mrs.

Higgins worries that the experiment will lead to problems once it is ended,

but Higgins and Pickering are too absorbed in their game to take heed. A

second trial, which takes place some months later at an ambassador's party

(and which is not actually staged), is a resounding success. The wager is

definitely won, but Higgins and Pickering are now bored with the project,

which causes Eliza to be hurt. She throws Higgins' slippers at him in a

rage because she does not know what is to become of her, thereby

bewildering him. He suggests she marry somebody. She returns him the hired

jewelry, and he accuses her of ingratitude.

The following morning, Higgins rushes to his mother, in a panic

because Eliza has run away. On his tail is Eliza's father, now unhappily

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