aileeka's Friends

The difference between Frankenstein's Monster and Eliza Doolittle
Mrs. Higgins: However did you learn good manners with my son around?
Eliza Doolittle: It was very difficult. I should never have known how ladies and gentlemen really behaved, if it hadn't been for Colnel Pickering. He always showed what he thought and felt about me as if I were something better than a common flower girl. You see, Mrs. Higgins, apart from the things one can pick up, the difference between a lady and a flower girl is not how she behaves, but how she is treated. I shall always be a common flower girl to Professor Higgins, because he always treats me like a common flower girl, and always will. But I know that I shall always be a lady to Colonel Pickering, because he always treats me like a lady, and always will.

For all that he's a fan of My Fair Lady, I don't think my father actually understands the movies and its nuances. It's more than a montage of Audrey Hepburn's trials and tribulations on the way to becoming a lady or a collection of well known songs. It's about what divides the upper class from the low, the elegant from the crass. Beyond Professor Higgin's observation of language, it's about how you are treated by the rest of the world. It's easy to be a lady if you are treated as such, but when the world persists in conceiving you as a flower girl, you have no choice but to act like one -- they will refuse to see the evidence to the contrary. And so if they treat me like an idiotic asshole, I will oblige them by acting like one.

So before you shoot your mouth off declaiming people as rude and insolent, please ask yourself if you have provoked them into it. In fact, while you let loose that stream of insults, please do so in front of mirror -- you will be telling off a much more appropriate audience.

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