Poor Freddy

I had heard of Pygmalion before we started reading, but I never even knew it was a play. When I began, I was glad to see it was fairly easy and entertaining to read, except for the first bit of the attempt at the flower girl's dialect. That took a few times to get through.

I actually found the beginning of this play to be quite humorous. First, the townspeople think Higgins is a cop and for some reason the flower girl is extremely scared of this. Throughout the first act, the flower girl is ridiculous and made me laugh because pf her extremely unnecessary reactions to everything. I literally laughed out loud when Higgins ans Pickering find each other without knowing it when they were looking for one another all along. And then, to top it off, poor Freddy comes back with a cab finally and the two ladies have gone off to the bus and left him! This is certainly a great start and I'm not even to Act 2 yet.

"Politics and the English Language" - Orwell

Orwell's point seems to be that in our modern world intelligent writing means many difficult words must be strung together to say simple ideas. I agree with this in academic writing because we are often told to learn new vocabulary in order to spice up our essays. However, many people do not actually know what they are saying when they use these words because they misconstrue their meanings.

Despite this, I believe we are headed down the opposite path as of today. We are too simplistic because of the social networks (and also text messaging) that we communicate through. Words are often abbreviated and language has become unimportant in that way: words do not matter, so you do not have to write them out fully. We are taking advantage of writing because we use it everyday, though we do not practice it correctly everyday.

My AP Literature teacher used to tell us not to use words that have no meaning, such as "great" or "very" or as Orwell says "human," "natural," or "sentimental." I have never understood this because these words do mean something as long as they are in context. All words have meaning. I think the point my teacher (and Orwell as well) was trying to make is these words are used today as filler words - words that do not particularly mean anything, but seemingly give your sentence a little extra. In overusing these words, we have hollowed out their actual meanings and replaced them with many meanings so that they might fit into many sentences. This is unfortunate because we have taken away the validity of our language and made it frivolous just so we could use a few extra words to make us seem more intelligent. It seems simple - use the words you need and leave out the ones you do not. The most intelligent people are the ones who put ideas into words that everyone can understand.

The Riddle of Femininity

“marriage compounds the problems of Catherine’s life” (469)

I believe this partial quote explains much of the feminist viewpoint of Wuthering Heights. It is interesting that it Catherine is able to choose who she “wants” to marry and at the same time, she is unable to choose. She loves Heathcliff, but due to pressures of society, she marries Edgar because of his higher social class. This makes her decisions and actions the center and the basis for Wuthering Heights. The way she is so commonly influenced by society – in her maturation as well as her marriage to Edgar – makes Catherine an example to the question “’what is a woman’” (470)? Pykett explains that because of this, femininity is a by-product of society – “reinforce, rather than derived from woman’s ‘nature’” (470). Pykett also offers that Catherine’s “double-self” directly proves the latter theory. In childhood, Catherine’s wildness with Heathcliff is seemingly her nature. Then when she stays at Thrushcross Grange, she is suddenly changed into a “proper young lady.” Hindley’s wife even insists that they must not let Catherine stray back to her old ways, implying how she has once been was all along natural. In this way, society has imposed it’s beliefs on Catherine and changed her indefinitely – so much so that she chooses a man she does not love over one she is madly in love with. The fact that society has this much influence over her is a reflection of oppression. Catherine is not truly in control of her choice for marriage, yet society is. Catherine does not truly pick Edgar, society does. And Catherine is certainly and negatively affected by this as she physically loses herself and her decisions in the end.