Comparison Of Eliza Doolittle And Proper Lady

Throughout life there will be points when people try to change each other. Sometimes it is for the betterment of the changed person; other times it is the opposite case. In the cases of Eliza Doolittle, and Gracie Hart they are changed to become more proper ladies. Both of these female protagonists have a teacher figure that transforms them, but both do so in different settings to meet different expectations, and the climax of each plot differs as a reflection of these differing circumstances. Both leading ladies end up with a teacher archetype whose role it is to make them more feminine and into more of a “Proper Lady”. In the musical film, My Fair Lady, Henry Higgins makes the boast that he could turn the common flower girl, Eliza Doolittle, into a dutchess that would pass even in the royal ball that was to be held later that year. Thus he and his friend Colonel Pickering set about trying to teach Eliza to speak
properly, which they believe is the most important part of getting her to be able to pass as a duchess. On the other hand, Gracie Hart, of Miss Congeniality, is a less willing student due to the circumstances under which, she is paired with Victor Melling. He is very similar to Henry in many ways, so much so that at one point in the film Gracie says to him,”You know, you’re gonna get yours, Henry Higgins.” This allusion directly references the other work, showing their strong intertextuality.

Both of these teachers are trying to teach their respective ladies to conform to the expectations of diverse worlds.
Higgins has to bring Eliza up to the standards of twentieth century royalty. He had to train her to act sophisticated, appear to be of high status, speak as a proper lady of the time, and eventually earning him the jibe from his mother,”You’re a pretty [baby] playing with your live doll.” Alternatively, Victor has to get Gracie to act like a pageant queen, which proves to be a task of lesser difficulty, but still a difficult one none the less. Gracie doesn’t even consider herself feminine as shown when she says to her FBI partner,”I can’t talk girl talk with a guy in my head! I can’t even do it with me in my head!” However, to meet the expectations of the Miss America pageant he has to teach her to at least be able to act like a feminine woman. His main hurdles are getting her to smile, and pretend to have a burning desire for world peace which she considers to be degrading, but in the end it is still an easier task than Higgins
had.

The climax of each plot varies drastically as well given the differences between the settings and the characters involved. In the case of Eliza, she wanted to learn to be lady-like, and she was motivated by economics. She wanted to become a “proper lady” so that she could get a job in a proper flower shop, rather than continuing to sell flowers by herself on the side of the street for just barely enough to get by with. Her major turning point comes when she begins to master saying the phrase “The rain in Spain stays mainly in the plain.” Conversely, Gracie resists becoming more feminine, at least in the beginning of her story. The climax of her story has more to do with her attitude towards becoming a proper lady. When the FBI think they’ve caught the culprit behind the planned murder at the pageant, she chooses to stay, showing that she is, and at the same time, becoming, willing to become more effeminate and participate in the pageant.

Both of the protagonists of My Fair Lady and Miss congeniality have someone in their lives who changes them greatly. Their plots also manage to remain different in ways more than simple setting changes despite having such strong intertextuality in the form of an entire character archetype.