Elevating Class and Language Between Two Plays Essay

A person’s linguistic communication is frequently connected to his or her societal position. A individual from a higher position will hold a different idiom of the same linguistic communication than person from lower position.

Peoples brought up in hapless milieus or poorness are acute to cursing and have small concern to talking decently as their linguistic communication was intended. Peoples from high society are the opposite. They are really much concerned with utilizing their verbal accomplishments and their rhetoric.

and they are able usage it as a signifier of power over others. These thoughts of linguistic communication between categories can be seen in the dramas “The Tempest. ” by William Shakespeare. and “Pygmalion” by Bernard Shaw. Though Shaw’s drama is much more focussed on the linguistic communication based transmutation of “Eliza Doolittle. ” and the interaction between her and Professor Higgins. Shakespeare’s creates a similar relationship between the humble Caliban. and his maestro Prospero.

Both plays show that a superficial alteration in instruction. or linguistic communication. can non realistically change a individual or their societal category.

instead the existent alterations to these characters are made internally. Both Eliza and Caliban come from hapless backgrounds. Eliza is a really hapless flower miss with awful English.

She swears frequently. by stating “bloody” invariably between sentences. As Shaw describes her ab initio as “the flower girl” she is unsympathetically described as ugly and gross outing.

“Her hair needs rinsing instead severely: its mousey colour can barely be natural. She wears a cheapjack black coat that reaches about to her articulatio genuss and is shaped to her waist” ( Shaw. 13 ) .Even her speech pattern makes her experience like a 2nd category citizen. Beneath all of this. Eliza is still a proud miss.

“I’m a good miss. I am” ( 2 ) . Because “The Tempest” contains charming.

Caliban is born the boy of the asleep enchantress Cycorax. Like Eliza. Caliban besides maintains his pride as he believes he is the rightful proprietor of the island which Prospero subsequently took control over.

Besides like Eliza. much of his address is riddled with slurs and cussing. His diabolic blood allows Prospero to handle him like a lower category. subhuman monster.

similar to how Professor Higgins dainties Eliza like a lower category citizen due to her expressions. her demeanour. and accordingly her societal position as a flower miss.In response. Caliban responds with ill will whenever Prospero calls for him.

“As wicked dew as e’er my female parent brush’d/ With raven’s plume from unwholesome fen/ Drop on you both! a south-west blow on ye/ And blister you all o’er! ” ( 20 ) . and Prospero responds in sort by directing liquors to hassle him and pinch him. The extent of the transmutation that larning linguistic communication had over both characters is limited to being merely a tool for them to utilize while unluckily ( to their Masterss ) maintaining the same personality. What changes to Eliza is most decidedly a surface degree alteration and non a deep individuality degree alteration. at least through the length of the experiment.Though Higgins manages to transform Eliza’s visual aspect from that of a low-status flower miss to that of a refined immature lady. she remains a Cockney flower miss underneath her frontage of a proper speech pattern talking proper English. Her existent personality remains persistently unchanged until the terminal of the drama.

This is the same with Caliban who. through larning linguistic communication from Prospero. remains acrimonious. hateful. and covetous throughout “The Tempest.

” Caliban remains “ungrateful” for being taught linguistic communication by Prospero. “You taught me linguistic communication. and my net income on’t/ Is I know how to cuss. The ruddy pestilence free you /For larning me your linguistic communication! ” In this popular quotation mark. Caliban uses the linguistic communication taught to him against Prospero to expose his disgust towards Prospero’s attempts to alter him.It besides draws a crisp similarity between the intervention between higher and lower categories in both dramas. Eliza’s relationship with Higgins’ linguistic communication is similar to Caliban’s relationship with Prospero in that both Eliza and Caliban understand linguistic communication as a reminder of their low societal position compared to their “masters.

” Both characters besides remain “ungrateful” in the narrations of their “masters. ” when they are largely more concerned to maintain their ain personal self-respect. The difference in narrations between the characters learning linguistic communication.

and those learning it in both dramas is really similar.Both Higgins and Prospero. in their apprehension of what they are making by learning Eliza and Caliban linguistic communication.

are learning them a manner to promote their position. Because both “masters” are concerned with societal position. they believe their pupils should strongly value their gifts of linguistic communication instruction. Both Higgins and Prospero besides consider their topics extremely thankless. When Higgins mother objects to his experiment. Higgens rejoinders.

“You have no thought how terribly interesting it is to take a human being and to alter her into a quite different human being by making a new address for her. It’s make fulling up the deepest gulf that separates category from category and psyche from psyche. ’ ( Shaw. 78 ) . ” while believing that altering Eliza’s address will non merely alter her category. but her psyche.

At the flood tide of the drama between Higgins and Eliza. after Eliza asks to return the properties Higgins gave and Lent to her. Higgins becomes disquieted. “If these belonged to me alternatively of to the jewelry maker.

I’d ram them down your thankless pharynx. ” He experience so strongly the importance of linguistic communication in self-improvement. that he failed to see that it did non hold an honorable impact on Eliza. This is similar to how Prospero views Caliban as thankless towards his instruction of linguistic communication. “Abhorred slave. / Which any print of goodness wilt non take. / Being capable of all ailment! I pitied thee. / Took pains to do thee speak.

taught thee each hour…”As can be seen here. it is apparent that Prospero fastidiously underscores and exaggerates the value of the linguistic communication he taught Caliban. “…One thing or other: when 1000 didst non. barbarian. /Know thine ain significance. but wouldst gabble like/ A thing most beastly.

I endow’d thy purposes/ With words that made them known. But thy vile race. / Though thou didst learn. had that in’t which/ good natures/ Could non stay to be with ; therefore wast thou/ Deservedly confined into this stone.

/ Who hadst deserved more than a prison. ” Here Prospero acknowledges that category and linguistic communication. though related. are non needfully tied together.

He makes a point that Caliban can non get the better of his category through learning linguistic communication. Cursing in Pygmalion has an interesting double usage. It is chiefly expressed in the word “bloody” by both Eliza and Higgins.

Their usage of it. nevertheless. shows the difference in category between the two.

Eliza. who has been hapless all her life. thinks nil of utilizing the word since she has been around it all the clip. It is a simply an adjective or a harmless signifier of look to her. Shaw intentionally makes Eliza’s address terrible in order to foreground that one’s address is dominated by their environment.Higgins.

on the other manus. knows the usage of this word and uses it to show his choler and defeat. Finally Eliza does do usage of her erudite idiom. and it helps her greatly. It allows her to get married a adult male of the upper category and get down her ain concern.

as Higgins foreshadowed.This alteration was merely able to come about after the internal ego regard she gained by supporting her self-respect from Higgins after the slipper incident. Caliban. a slave who ironically speaks in the same baronial poetry and Prospero.

besides benefits from the erudite linguistic communication in the manner he is perceived by the other characters in the drama such as Trinculo. Though at minutes they were both thankless. both Eliza and Caliban became sceptered and were able to derive a sense of freedom from their ain societal category by larning linguistic communication.