Both Pygmalion And Wide Sargasso Sea, However, Deconstruct Our Notions Of

Both Pygmalion and Wide Sargasso Sea, however, deconstruct our notions of what being a woman means by exposing the extent that issues of femininity are a creative social process rather than an innate biological a priori. In the former, Higgins and Pickering systematically build a woman who, just like in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (Shelley, 1994), then outgrows her creator:
Higgins: By George, Eliza, I said I'd make a woman of you; and I have. Ilike you like this.
Liza: Yes: you turn round and make up to me now that I'm not afraid of you, and can do without you. (Shaw, 1937: Act 5)
And this is also the sense with Wide Sargasso Sea and the narrative of Antoinette who, of course, continues to blind her husband in the fire at Thornfield Hall, a mimetic repetition of the killing of her brother in the early pages of the book.
Taken together we can see, I think, a similar but changing view of womanhood in these two texts. In Shaw there is a more simplistic, nineteenth century class based approach that, by 1966 and the publication of Wide Sargasso Sea had developed into what can be seen as a complex network of signification and social constructs. This shifting situation says more, perhaps, about the changing face of society than anything else.