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Strong Literary Characters: Eliza Dooliitle and Nora Helmer


            Henrick Ibsen's A Doll's House and Bernard's Shaw Pygmalion are two plays that show occurrences between two female protagonists: Nora Helmer and Eliza Doolittle, whom their relationships with the people around them lead to powerful outcomes and decisions that ultimately transform their lives.
             At the beginning of the play, Eliza is an unimportant and uneducated flower girl who tries to make a living, but no one traces her existence. Gifted with intelligence, strong power, and self-esteem, she accepts to being taught in becoming a duchess by Higgins, a noble-class professor of phonetics. During her stay at Higgin's house, Eliza becomes his interest, not as a human being who utters words in a deplorable way, but to be used for his research in order to speak like a lady in a flower shop. Thus regarded as a functional housemaid . She worked so hard in learning his lessons, meaning that she has the right stamina for doing things right and behaving like a lady. She complains of becoming a slave and treated like his property hence feeling to be a useless person.
             On the other hand, at the beginning of the play, Nora seems completely happy with her husband Torvald. She responds affectionately to him and speaks with excitement about his new job. She is also pleased in the company of her children and friends .Even if she is uneducated, but she has agency and decision-making skills in paying the debt she had to help her sick husband. She does not seem to mind her doll-like existence, in which she is cuddled, pampered, and patronized. She is painted as a shallow woman who is overly concerned with material delights. More important, once the secret of Nora's loan is revealed, her interest in money stems more from her concern to her family's welfare than from pretty desires. .
             In Pygmalion, Eliza's great sensitivity made a sharp conflict with Higgins, which shows the traditional role of women's independence on men.


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