In Act I of the play
by , the audience meets Eliza Doolittle, the flower girl. The setting is
Covent Garden during a torrential rain storm. Freddy, hurrying to do his mother's bidding,
rushes off to find a cab. Unfortunately, he bumps into a flower girl, Eliza, and all her flowers
are ruined: "Te-oo banches o voylets trod into the mad" (Act I). When her violets are
trod in the mud, Eliza protests to Freddy's mother who gives her a sixpence
for the ruined flowers.
Afterwards, the mother asks the flower girl how she
knew her son's name. Eliza answers offhandedly that Freddy or Charlie, it's all the same to her.
She was merely trying "to be pleasant." Therefore, the mother's motivation is to repay
Eliza for the damaged flowers and then after to question the flower girl as to how she may know
her son's name.
No comments:
Post a Comment