ABSTRACT
MATURATION OF SHAVIAN WOMEN: A STUDY OF THE
MATURATION PROCESSES OF FEMALE PRATOGONISTS IN
PYGMALION AND MRS. WARREN' / S PROFESSION
M.A., Department of English Literature
May, 2009, 112 pages
George Bernard Shaw is a celebrated playwright for his depiction of emancipated
women. His women, regardless of the conditions they are in at the beginning of the
play, experience a maturation process in the flow of the events and especially
discussions which direct the change in his characters. In this thesis, the maturation
processes Vivie Warren and Eliza Doolittle experience are analyzed in the plays
Mrs. Warren' / s Profession and Pygmalion, respectively. Vivie is a typical Shavian
heroine who is educated and free-spirited even at the beginning of the play. At the
end, she chooses to start a professional life breaking with the domestic and social
boundaries by rejecting to see her mother or marry Frank. Likewise, Eliza, who is a
simple flower girl at the beginning of the play, seems to bear the free spirit Vivie
has because she earns her living and makes her own decision of taking phonetics
courses, which causes the events in the play to take place. At the end, she rejects
marrying to support her life and chooses to pursue phonetics as a profession to earn
her living. As a result, her free-spirited personality leads her to her maturation
process. In this study, it is concluded that no matter what their starting point is, both
Shavian women bear the characteristics of New Woman at the beginning of the play
which facilitates their progress into New Women at the end of the plays.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:METU/oai:etd.lib.metu.edu.tr:http://etd.lib.metu.edu.tr/upload/2/12610618/index.pdf |
| Date | 01 June 2009 |
| Creators | Dortkulak, Funda |
| Contributors | Alpakin Martinez Caro, Durrin |
| Publisher | METU |
| Source Sets | Middle East Technical Univ. |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | M.A. Thesis |
| Format | text/pdf |
| Rights | To liberate the content for METU campus |
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