Eliza, the flower girl with bad grammar, really bothers me. Reading the parts where she is talking really make my head spin. At times I find myself reading the text aloud multiple times, to the point where my dog leaves his spot next to me on the couch. Her personality is another strike against her. She is a whiny nuisance. Colonel Pickering gives the poor girl money instead of buying her sad excuse for flowers. The other drenched citizens taking shelter from the pouring rain, insist that she leaves the money because they are all being watched by a nosy man in the back. After this, she begins to repeatedly cry phrases such as, "I am a good girl" or "I aint done nothing wrong". If I had been her I would have taken the money as profit (Hey, I'd have more flowers to sell anyways) and not care what some man taking notes thought of me. She instead whines once again.
After the whole ordeal with the man, she shows up at his house. He, who we now know is Mr.Higgins, is meeting with Mr.Pickering to discuss Higgins study of linguistics. Eliza wants Higgins to teach her to speak better than she does now, which would be a miracle in the making if you ask me, so that she will be able to attain a job at the flower shop. Now if I were her, I would have never gone to Higgins after the whole scene it caused the previous day. She was so worried about what everyone thought of her going up to a gentleman, and in turn she shows up at his house- what a great way to avoid the problem !
This far into the book, and I'm still uncertain what Pygmalion means. So I decided to do what my first grade teacher taught us to do when we come across a word we don't understand-look it up. I searched in the dictionary and found the following definition: "a king of Cyprus who makes a female figure of ivory that is brought to life for him by Aphrodite"(Credit: Merriam-Webster). I haven't read any further so my only guess to the relativity of the tittle is the following: Higgins makes Eliza into a "perfect female figure". Of all of my pondering, this is the only logical reason I am able to imagine, but when I write the next post I will hopefully know the real answer.
