T.C.

ISTANBUL AYDIN UNIVERSITY

INSTITUTE OF GRADUATE STUDIES

ABJECTED WOMEN: A KRISTEVIAN READING OF

BERNARD SHAW’S PYGMALION AND AUGUST
STRINDBERG’S MISS JULIE

MASTER’S THESIS
Şeyma Günsel ÇELEN

Department of English Language and Literature

English Language and Literature Program

JUNE, 2022
 T.C.
ISTANBUL AYDIN UNIVERSITY
INSTITUTE OF GRADUATE STUDIES

ABJECTED WOMEN: A KRISTEVIAN READING OF

BERNARD SHAW’S PYGMALION AND AUGUST
STRINDBERG’S MISS JULIE

MASTER’S THESIS
Şeyma Günsel ÇELEN
(Y2012. 020003)

Department of English Language and Literature

English Language and Literature Program

Thesis Advisor: Assist. Prof. Dr. Sanaz Alizadeh

Tabrizi

JUNE, 2022
APPROVAL PAGE
 DECLARATION

I hereby declare with respect that the study “Abjected Women: A Kristevian
Reading of Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion and August Strindberg’s Miss Julie” which I
submitted as a Master’s thesis, is written without any assistance in violation of
scientific ethics and traditions in all the processes from the project phase to the
conclusion of the thesis and that the works I have benefited are from those shown in
the References. (06.06.2022)

Şeyma Günsel ÇELEN

i
 FOREWORD

I would like to express my deepest gratitude and respect to my supervisor

Assist. Prof. Dr. Sanaz Alizadeh Tabrizi. From the beginning of my graduate studies,
you have constantly amazed and illuminated me with your vast knowledge. You have
taught me extremely unique theories and encouraged me to incorporate them into my
writings. Thanks to your assistance, I have been able to develop my academic skills
further. My thesis process has been agonizing. Nevertheless, you never cease to assist
me and correct me whenever I needed help. Without you, I would not have completed
my thesis. From the bottom of my heart, thank you for always believing in me and
trusting me. May your path be filled with happiness, joy, and good health.
I would like to thank my father, Alper Çelen and my mother, Leman Çelen.
Without you, I would not be where I am today. Throughout my life, you have provided
me with everything that I could ever ask for. You have always worked hard for my
future. Whatever I do, I will never be able to pay my debt to both of you. Father, ever
since I was a little girl, you have always told me that when a young person dedicates
herself to hard work and stduy in their youth, the benefits will allow them to have
comfort throughout their life and advised me to focus on my education. You have
believed in me more than I believe in myself. Thank you for being my rock and made
me realize my power. Mother, I still remember the days you dropped me off at
kindergarten. Nineteen years later, If I am thanking you in my foreword, that is because
of your immense sacrifices and supports. Even before I realized that I wanted to pursue
an academic career, you were saying that one day I was going to be an academician.
Thank you, mother and father, for knowing me more than I know myself. I am lucky
to have been born into this beautiful family. I will always be grateful to you. I dedicate
my thesis to both of you.

June, 2022 Şeyma Günsel ÇELEN

ii
 ABJECTED WOMEN: A KRISTEVIAN READING OF
BERNARD SHAW’S PYGMALION AND AUGUST
STRINDBERG’S MISS JULIE

ABSTRACT
In Modern Drama, two of the most significant discussions are issues of gender and gender
equality. Both August Strindberg and Bernard Shaw are notable pioneers of modern drama,
whose plays Miss Julie and Pygmalion address gender and social roles. Strindberg’s Miss
Julie and Shaw’s Pygmalion address the difficulties the woman protagonists Julie and Eliza
suffer from in their society. Both of the protagonists are ostracized by their surroundings in
regards to their gender and their attitudes towards social classes. Miss Julie, a higher class
woman, is ostracized by a lower class servant, Jean. On the other side, Eliza Doolittle, a lower
class woman, is cast out by a higher class man, Mr. Higgins. However different their classes
are, the women are still the targets of victimization. Throughout the systematical ostracization,
Julie and Eliza end up in wretched situations. The storylines, the protagonists' traits, and their
socioeconomic strata are all vastly different in both plays. The characters' fates, however,
remain the same: their paths lead to disaster. It is not a coincidence that they both meet their
demise towards the end of the plays. Therefore, the thesis aims to examine the plays using
Julia Kristeva's abjection theory (1962) and Arnold Van Gennep's liminality theory (1909) to
discuss and determine the extent to which Julie and Eliza are exiled from their contexts in
which standardized and certain values are held and accepted. Being unorthodox and
unconventional, both of the women challenge norms and boundaries, which lead to their
inevitable downfall. By utilizing the theories and comparing the plays, it is suggested and
thoroughly discussed that Julie and Eliza are abjectified and liminalized beings, wandering
around rules and restrictions of different social spheres and morals while threatening
constructed social values. Not accepted by society, Julie and Eliza perish as liminal abjects at
the end of the plays.

Keywords: Liminality, Abject, Kristeva, Abjection Theory, Miss Julie, Pygmalion

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 İĞRENÇLEŞTİRİLMİŞ KADINLAR: BERNARD SHAW’IN
PYGMALİON VE AUGUST STRINDBERG’ÜN MİSS
JULİE’SİNİN KRİSTEVİAN OKUNMASI

ÖZET
Modern Tiyatroda en önemli tartışmalardan ikisi cinsiyet ve cinsiyet eşitliği
konularıdır. August Strindberg and Bernard Shaw Modern Dramanın en mühim
öncülerindendir. Strindberg' ün Miss Julie'si ve Shaw'ın Pygmalion'ı kadın baş
kahramanların kendi toplumlarında yaşadıkları zorlukları ele alır. Her iki karakter de
toplumsal sınıflara karşı tavırları ve cinsiyetleri açısından toplum tarafından
ötekileştirilirler. Üst sınıf bir kadın olan Julie, alt sınıf bir hizmetçi Jean tarafından
dışlanır. Sosyal sınıfları ne kadar farklı olsa da, her ikisi de mağduriyetin hedefindedir.
Sistemli dışlamanın tamamında, hem Julie hem Eliza acınası durumlarla karşılaşır. Her
iki oyunda da hikaye örgüsü, baş karakterlerin özellikleri ve sosyal sınıflar gibi büyük
farklılıklar vardır, ancak karakterlerin sonu aynı olur, yolları yıkımdır. Oyun
sonundaki nihai çöküşleri sadece rastlantı değildir. Bu tezin amacı, Julie ve Eliza'nın
standart ve kesin değerlerin tutulup kabul edildiği çevrelerde ne ölçütlerde dışlandığını
görmek için, Julia Kristeva'nın Abjection Teorisi (1982) ve Arnold Van Gennep
tarafından ortaya çıkan Eşiktelik Teorisi (1909)' ne dayanarak incelemektir. Aykırı ve
geleneksel olmayan iki karakter de -onları kaçınılmaz sonlarına sürükleyen- kaide ve
sınırlarla mücadele eder. Teorilerden yararlanarak ve oyunları karşılaştırarak, Julie ve
Eliza'nın bu kaide ve sınırlarla mücadele ederken bu kavramlar etrafında dolaşırken
aşağılanıp dışlandığı, bu sırada da sosyal değerleri tehdit ettikleri önerilmiş ve
kapsamlıca ele alınmıştır. Toplum tarafından kabul görmeyen Julie and Eliza,
oyunların sonunda eşiksel abject olarak yok olmuşlardır.

Anahtar Kelimeler: Eşiksel Abject, Kristeva, Abjection Teorisi, Madam Julie,

Pygmalion

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 TABLE OF CONTENTS

DECLARATION .................................................................................................... i
FOREWORD ......................................................................................................... ii
ABSTRACT .......................................................................................................... iii
ÖZET ..................................................................................................................... iv
TABLE OF CONTENTS ........................................................................................v
I. INTRODUCTION .............................................................................................. 1

II. ABJECTION AND LIMINALITY THEORY ................................................ 12

III. MISS JULIE AS A LIMINAL ABJECT ....................................................... 23

IV. ELIZA DOOLITLE AS A LIMINAL ABJECT ........................................... 33

V. CONCLUSION ................................................................................................. 46
VI. REFERENCES ................................................................................................. 54
RESUME ..................................................................................................................62
I. INTRODUCTION

Modern Drama, which dates back to the Victorian Era, was a new art form in
which the conventions and morals of the earlier century were challenged. August
Strindberg, a Swede playwright, and Bernard Shaw, an Irish playwright, have been
considered the pioneers of modern drama.
In the Modern Era, writers yearned to show the “New Man” in their plays, who
has inverted snobbery with an inability to free himself from class consciousness,
(Dukore, 1992: 100) because the ridge between the lower class and higher class was
strikingly obvious and the man could either could not escape, or heavily affected by
the social fate surrounding him. In addition to this concept of the ordinary modern
man, with the emergence of advocates of gender equality and women emancipation,
constructed gender roles and stereotypes were being questioned and/ or challenged.
For that reason, Modern Drama’s main focus is on these two issues. Accordingly, the
two major playwrights of the modern era, August Strindberg and Bernard Shaw, were
concerned with those issues and tackled them in their plays. Their mindset about these
issues differed and were related at the same time. So as to be capable of examining
two modern plays Miss Julie, written by Strindberg, and Pygmalion, written by
Bernard Shaw, and the issues inherent in them, the reader must be familiar with
Strindberg’s and Shaw’s influence on modern drama and their concepts on these
issues.
The modern era, as Alastair Bonnett states in Left in the Past: Radicalism
and the Politics of Nostalgia, “is characterized by change and a far more intense and
urgent relationship with loss. . .” (2010: 20). Both Strindberg and Shaw demonstrate
change and the relationship with loss in their plays, yet, in different aspects. However,
their motives and solutions surrounding change and loss differ from each other. For
example, during the modern era, the concept of gender equality was introduced and it
came into heavy effect on the intellectual discussions, Shaw discredited socially
conditioned reflexes such as men’s superiority over women, and favoured to work for
reform by using moral principles, instead of aggressively promoting revolution
through rejecting all established social structures. He defended the equality and aimed

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to show that in his life and plays. Strindberg, on the other hand, approved of the past
notion of men’s superiority and opposed reforms and changes that were being done on
this issue at his time, for to him, there was no thing such as gender equality.
Even though they differed from each other substantially in gender equality,
Shaw and Strindberg are considered as the giants of the modern drama. As a matter of
fact, almost any treatise on the modern drama starts with Strindberg and holds him
responsible for its development (Oster, 1969: 300). Furthermore, even though their
concepts and notions about genders are contrasting with one another, what is
interesting is that Shaw acknowledged Strindberg as the master of modern drama
(Kaufmann, 1962: 101) regardless of their separate ways of thinking. Moreover, in
addition to praising Strindberg as the master of modern drama, Shaw, almost single-
handedly, determined the development of modern drama (Innes, 1994: 96) and
transfered the conflict of modern drama from the physical to the mental place. Thus,
Strindberg and Shaw are the lords of modern drama in their own unique ways.
However, what is fascinating about them is how they contrast each other and
how either one contributes to the other interchangeably. Evert Sprinchorn explains the
relationship between them as:

If they had been horses, they would instinctively have run off in opposite directions,
and it is difficult to imagine them hitched to the same wagon. Shaw and Strindberg
seem to have little in common. Yet on some important issues they were brothers in
arms. Temperamentally they were opposites . . . [but] philosophically they were at the
end yoked together. (1993: 9)

As it is stated here, they seem as if they completely differ from each other -in our case,
the issue of gender equality-. However, at the end of their concepts and how the plays
end, Shaw and Strindberg arrive at the same conclusion, from entirely different paths.
For that reason, in this thesis, how they construct the plays -Miss Julie, by Strindberg
and Pygmalion, by Shaw- substantially are different in terms of social classes and
character’s motives and how the plays are concluded with the same outcome are
analyzed and discussed. So as to analyze the plays in an entirely different light and
come to a logical conclusion, Kristeva’s Abjection Theory and Van Gennep’s
Liminality Theory are utilized to have a better understanding of the outcomes of the
plays.
In Chapter II, abjection theory and liminality theory will be introduced and
thoroughly discussed so as to construct the foundation on the discussions regarding

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Miss Julie and Pygmalion. Abjection Theory was first introduced by Julia Kristeva in
her book Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection in 1982. Kristeva explains that the
abject is what a human being as a subject tries to separate from his identity and culture.
The first abject is a mother, because a baby as an individual realizes that he and his
mother are separate beings, so that means he has to create his own identity apart from
the mother. When the baby grows into a culture, he rejects and abjectifies other
concepts or notions, such as a man abjectifies women, or a person abjectifies sex
workers, or a nationalist abjectifies refugees. The reason for that is to draw a
reasonable border between the individual and the unwanted concept that he does not
wish to accept. The unwanted and detested concept becomes the abject in the subject’s
life. According to Kristeva:

the degradations of the abject help to serve a constitutive function: . . . the abject
becomes recognizable through the act of expulsion, through the putting-out that, in
one stroke, constitutes and maps the boundary line between in and out. (Dever, 2000:
191)

In other words, the subject excludes the abject in order to protect his identity from
negative concepts. During the process, the subject turns away the abject and rejects it
after being nauseated by it. For example, a human being as the subject can also
abjectify his friend after learning that he has been doing evil deeds to him since the
start of their relationship. That so called friend startles him more than an ordinary
enemy because the enemy’s motives are clear. However, the abject friend is much
more dangerous for him since he has been hiding the evil living inside him throughout
their relationship. For that reason, his personality is much more ambiguous, which
poses a threat to the subject since the abject defies borders. Even though the abject is
ostracized, it manages to penetrate into the life of the subject and horrifies the subject.
That is the reason why the abject is particularly menacing, for despite the fact that the
subject gets rid of the abject, it never recognizes a border; moreover, it always
challenges borders. The abject does not exist in a certain and specific sphere in which
it cannot disturb or deteriorate the subject; it exists as a fluid entity wandering through
limitations and spheres. Liminality theory, which the reader is going to explore in the
next paragraph, also defies borders, it also suggests that there are notions and entities
inhabiting the in-between stages in life. For that reason, Abjection and liminality
theoris are beautifully connected with one another and contribute to each other. When

3
the two theories are utilized to analyze and discuss Miss Julie and Pygmalion, the
reader easily comprehends the level of Julie’s and Eliza’s existence as excluded
women, whose identities are never accepted or favoured by the society, which
determines their downfall.
Liminality Theory was introduced by Arnold Van Gennep in his book The
Rites of Passage (1960) Arnold van Gennep argued that an individual’s life consists
of a series of transformations from his birth to his death, and there are different stages
in his life. To be able to move smoothly from a different stage to another, ritual
ceremonies are held to ease the path of the individual through different stages of his
life. He further suggests that there are three stages that a human being experiences
while moving from a concept to another: first stage is separation -preliminal stage-,
second stage is transition -liminal stage-, and the last stage is incorporation -
postliminal stage- (Gennep, 1960: vii). For example, a seventeen year old individual
cannot legally consume alcohol in Turkey, because he is seen as an underage by law.
However, when he is eighteen years old, he is legally considered as an adult; thus, he
can. During the day of his eighteenth birthday, he recognizes that during that day, his
life is going to change significantly because he will be able to do everything he could
not do the day before because of his age. For that reason, his eighteenth birthday carries
the utmost importance in his life. Therefore, people surrounding him throw a party to
celebrate his leaving childhood to be an adult. The birthday party is significant for him
because it carries a figurative importance which makes it easier for him to go into the
next stage of his life. At first, he is separated from his old age on his birthday. Second,
he goes through a transition from childhood to adulthood when he realizes that he will
be held legally and strictly responsible for everything he does. At last, he is considered
an official adult the day after his birthday. He is finally incorporated into the adult
world. The rite of passage exemplified here can be seen as a healthy rite of passage
because the former child becomes an adult by completing all three stages. However,
that is not always the case. It is possible for a human being to permanently stay in the
transitional -liminal- stage. Because the transitional stage mainly functions as a path
to connect the phases separation and incorporation, it is an inbetween stage in itself. If
an individual stays in the transitional stage permanently, which is also called liminal
state, it is not favoured because of the liminal state’s nature. As Sylvia Karl states that
liminal phase in ritual is characterized by elements of uncertainty, crisis, and conflict;

4
it is the conflictive phase between the old and the new status of an individual or of a
society (2014: 734), one can conclude that the liminal state is not to be inhabited
permanently due to the challenges it occupies. For that reason, staying in that in
between state may be detrimental for the individual. However, even though it may be
detrimental for the individual, it also has advantages which Farha Gannam argues that
In the liminal state, an individual is neither here nor there but is "betwixt and
be-tween." He or she is in some sense "invisible" and does not have to abide by the
social norms that usually regulate his or her conduct (2011: 793).
Now that the individual does not belong to any of the categories within a society, he
has the freedom to linger around the concepts and standards without completely
conforming to them. Bossche and Wennerscheid further claims that

These characters [individuals in the liminal state] can be seen to withdraw from the
norm, to position themselves outside of the normativity of majority standards. They
choose to linger in a carnivalesque, anarchistic liminal phase, which is void of
institutional control, and not to integrate into the normative centre. (2018: 2)

Considering all the descriptions given above, the individual in the liminal state, or a
liminal individual, carries both advantages and disadvantages within himself because
of his liminality. Because he is in the inbetween state, he can act freely as he wants;
however, due to the fact that he does not belong to a standard concept or a class in a
society that he lives, he is excluded from it, because any society constructs its identity
through norms, standards, and certain classifications. In Miss Julie and Pygmalion, we
observe and discuss the liminality of the women protagonists. Julie and Eliza are
wandering through the standardized concepts and classes of the society they inhabit,
and both of them are excluded.
As it is seen from the explanations and discussions in the thesis, the connection
between the abject being and the liminal being is blatant. Society expels these beings
in order to protect itself and its standardized values. However, even though they are
excluded from society, they do not cease to exist on their own. Moreover, they
challenge and frighten society because of their fluidity and their not recognizing any
sharp boundaries inherent in it. For all of these characteristics of the abject and the
liminal, Julie in Miss Julie and Eliza in Pygmalion are suggested as liminal abjects and
discussed according to these notions.

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 Right after abjection theory and liminality theory are introduced and connected
with one another, how society perceives women as abjects and liminal beings are
exemplified in order to construct the basis of the characters’ existence in their societies
in order to analyze Julie and Eliza as liminal abjects. We have already suggested that
the first thing an individual abjectifies is the mother and her body. Now that the mother
is abjected, women’s abjectification becomes inevitable, for a mother is a woman.
Shortly after a baby abjectifies his mother, he enters into the culture.
Throughout civilization, the woman is culturally abjected as the ‘impure
seductress’. The first case of the abjectification is Adam and Eve’s Fall from Garden
of Eden. Eve has been held responsible for Original Sin because Adam is only believed
to have listened to her and acted accordingly, which resulted in their expulsion from
heaven. Moreover, by not obeying his order of ‘not eating the fruit’, Eve has also
disobeyed God. For that reason, women are portrayed as sinful and impure abjects,
and their portrayal continues as such throughout history. Even though they have
committed the sin together, society only disapproves of Eve because in a patriarchal
society, the negative characteristics men do not want to see in themselves are placed
upon women, therefore, the woman is abjectified. In addition to abjectifying women
as sinful and impure creatures, men also abjectify a woman because she has the power
of creating a new life and giving birth. Women’s reproductive power terrifies men, for
they become aware of the fact that within life, there is an inevitable death. They are
reminded of death through women’s reproductive power. Therefore, in order to draw
a safe line between them as living beings who are healthy, men abjectify women once
more not to recall that death is a natural process just as birth.
Apart from men’s detesting and abjectifying women, they also exploit the
women and their body. With regards to Freud’s Pleasure Principle, it is natural for a
human being to chase pleasure throughout their lives. Therefore, men hypocritically
use the women that they abjectify for their own pleasure. For that reason, in addition
to abjectifying women so as to construct their own identity in positive characteristics
by placing negative characteristics upon women, men also objectify women and use
them for their bodily pleasures because they are aware that women cannot do anything
about it in male dominated societies.
To summarize, with the examples and discussions, the reader concludes that
the first abject is a mother as a result of the necessity of an individual’s obligation to

6
create their separate identity from her.Then, in a society, women are abjectified by
men throughout civilization in order for them to construct their identity with positive
characteristics, and protect their identity by stating that every negative characteristic
belongs to women. Moreover, In addition to their abjectifying women, men also
exploit women by objectifying them. All of these explanations and examples play a
significant role in analyzing Julie and Eliza as abjectified women.
Along with abjection theory, liminality theory also plays a substantial role for
the reader to comprehend how women are perceived as liminal beings in a society. In
the twenty-first century, there is a new construct that is called “hookup culture”,
meaning that women and men can have consensual sexual intercourse with one another
without having a romantic relationship. It might seem to the reader that the role of
women and men are the same within the hookup culture. However, hookup culture is
detrimental to women. The reason for that is gender roles attributed to men and
women. In the twenty-first century, men are believed to inhabit active and assertive
energy, whereas women are believed to inhabit passive energy, thus, seen as an active
realm, sexual intercourse carries advantages only for men. However, the hookup
culture carries disadvantages for the women, because she enters into a realm that only
favours men. Furthermore, because she wants to take an active and assertive role in a
male dominated sphere, she gets into the liminal state. As an entity who is supposed
to be ‘passive’, she is wandering around being more ‘active’. Thus, if a man is in the
realm of hookup culture, he is favoured and even encouraged; however, if a woman
takes part in that realm, she is scolded because she tries to be active like men. In
hookup culture, the woman is liminalized because she is not passive like a standardized
woman, nevertheless, she cannot be active without any negative consequences just like
a man, because activeness is a man’s characteristic. Thus, she is now a liminal being
without any set borders. In addition to her being liminalized, she is also objectified and
abjectified. She is now used for sexual pleasure and for her body. Then, she is looked
down upon by society. She ends up being an objectified liminal abject. Julie in Miss
Julie experiences all of these because she has had a premarital sex with Jean. She is
liminalized when she enters into the realm of men, then she is objectified for Jean’s
pleasure, and in final she is abjectified by Jean. As it is seen from the example,
liminality and abjection exist together and are better utilized when they are
intermingled with one another.

7
 Along with hookup culture and women’s position within the hookup realm,
there is another great example showing women’s liminalization: breastfeeding. Before
having a baby and becoming a mother, the woman’s body and her breasts were
considered as sexual objects, however, now that she has delivered a baby and
breastfeeds him, patriarchal society is perplexed because it cannot thorougly determine
where her position is now. The woman as a sexual object has now entered into the
realm of motherhood. Therefore, she cannot be an entirely independent sexual being
anymre. The breasts, which have been sexually desired by men in the past, now serves
as a nourishment for a baby. Thus, the woman in the eyes of herself and society is now
liminalized. She has entered into a new stage in her life, however she cannot eradice
her former stage of sexuality. For that reason, after bearing a child, the becomes the
liminal being and tries to exist in that liminal state, for she is neither a sexual being,
nor a solely mother now.
With the help of the two examples above, the reader is now able to understand
how women are liminalized in a patriarchal society. Even though the women
protagonists in Miss Julie and Pygmalion are liminal beings in terms of their social
classes, it is still useful to exemplify women’s liminalization in terms of their gender
so as to show the reader how women in general are abjectified and liminalized in a
society.
Now that the reader is familiar with both abjection and liminality theories and
their examples, the reason why these theories are utilized to analyze the plays and their
outcomes can be better understood. How society perceives the abject and the liminal
is exceptionally similar, for both of them do not recognize any borders or constructs
in a society. The society constitutes its morals and rules by drawing definite borders.
Therefore, the liminal and the abject disturbs a society because of their fluidity and
defying any borders. As a result, the society always feels restless because of the
abject’s and the liminal’s unpredictable and chaotic nature.
Julie and Eliza are perfect examples of the abject and liminal beings in terms
of their gender and social classes. Even if they are in the realms of different social
classes, they cannot escape from abjectification and liminalization. As a higher class
woman, Julie is continuously abjectified and liminalized by lower class people; and as
a lower class woman, Eliza is consistently abjectified and liminalized by higher class
individuals. The theories are paramount to analyze Julie and Eliza and their downfall

8
at the end of the plays. Even though they belong to opposite social classes, they cannot
escape from abjectification and liminalization. After the thorough examination of Julie
and Eliza as liminal abjects in Chapter III and IV by utilizing the theories, the reader
will be able to observe the plays in an entirely different light. Moreover, the reader
will be able to figure out whether emancipation is possible for Julie and Eliza at the
end of the plays.
In chapter III, before starting to analyze Julie as a liminal abject, the playwright
August Strindberg’s upbringing and thoughts on genders and gender equality are
discussed In order to have a better understanding of the play. Now that there is enough
understanding of Strindberg’s opinions about women, men and gender equality, Miss
Julie is better analyzed since the crucial elements in the play reflect Strindberg’s
perceptions such as men’s superiority over women. Miss Julie is depicted as a liminal
abject. She is an exiled woman in her environment. She is identified as a higher class
woman because of her ancestry, and there are certain standards to which a higher class
woman is expected to conform. A higher class woman should act elegantly according
to society. However, Julie does not behave lady-like. On a Midsummer Eve evening,
she has fun by doing whatever she wants, such as dancing and closely interacting with
lower class men. A lower class servant man, Jean utters that Julie acts crazy again,
which indicates that this is not the first time Julie has acted like that; moreover, the
statement also demonstrates how Julie is perceived by a lower class man. As time
unfolds, Jean and Julie get intimate with each other and they have sexual intercourse.
After the deed, Jean starts to look down upon Julie more than before and ostracizes
her. He abjectifies her as a whore and says that even a lower class women would not
have premarital sexual intercourse. Moreover, he dehumanizes her by comparing her
to an animal. Along with Jean, the other villagers and Kristine also abjectifies her by
never approving of her behaviours toward lower class men. They constantly imply that
she is a crazy and a queer being. In addition to her gender and social class, they also
abjectify and liminalize her by stating that she is queer. They view her as an
unpredictable individual and ostracize her accordingly. On the whole, her gender, her
social class, and her sanity are repeatedly abjectified and liminalized by other people,
which brings Julie’s downfall. At the end of the play, she is both mentally and
physically abjectified. Julie carries significant abject qualities such as defying any
borders, terrifying and threatening the subject, however, at the same time, intriguing

9
the subject. Julie also carries significant liminal qualities such as defying borders,
belonging to neither ends and always wanderin around opposite spheres. She is
depicted as a liminal being from the beginning to the end of the play. Moreover,
towards the end, her abjectification systematically increases which deteriorates her
well-being. Therefore, at the end of the play, by Jean’s ultimate manipulation, she has
no choice but to kill herself to escape the life she has endured as a liminal abject.
In chapter IV, Shaw’s opinions about genders and gender equality will be
introduced and discussed. Moreover, his solution to gender inequality will be analyzed
so as to observe if Shaw himself abjectifies women with his new concept. Then, the
play is analyzed accordingly and Eliza’ situation is closely observed. In Pygmalion,
Eliza Doolitle, a lower class flower girl, fascinates Mr. Higgins and Colonel Pickering,
higher class men on their first encounter on the street. Higgins bets Pickering that he
can turn her into a lady by altering her dialect and manners. Being a linguist, Higgins
is interested in her dialect, thus, he wants to work on her. However, when she comes
into his house, Higgins’ helper and he does not want to take her home because of how
filthy she looks. However, Higgins eventually agrees to do so, and he starts working
on her. However, he does not care about what will happen to her afterwards. The only
thing he considers is his experiment on Eliza. He treats her like a laboratory rat, and
makes it obvious to Eliza that if she wants, she can go back to his ‘gutter’. While
working on Eliza for six months, there are two events where Higgins shows Eliza off
to higher class people to observe her progress. The first event takes place in Mrs.
Higgins’ house and when Eliza and other higher class people are in a conversation,
Eliza starts to talk about her aunt and her illnesses, which is unacceptable for higher
class as they prefer small talk. Even though she is being worked on, she cannot
completely remove her former identity, which leaves her stuck between her old and
new world. The second event takes place at the ambassador's garden party and Eliza
behaves according to a higher class lady. For that reason, Higgins and Pickering are
content with their hard work and agree to finish their ‘experiment’. After their
statements about how tiring the project was, Eliza gets agitated and upset. She has now
realized that as a human being, she did not matter anything to Higgins. She is only
liminalized because of her former social class and the new class she has been instructed
upon. Moreover, with the help of Higgins’ statements, she realizes that even if she was
a higher class lady, his behaviour towards Eliza would not change positively because

10
Higgins treats every women in a rude and distant manner. Eliza is both abjectified and
liminalized by Higgins in terms of her gender and social class. She has never been, or
never will be accepted as a human being in the eyes of Higgins because he does not
like women in general. Moreover, now that she has been recreated as a lady, she feels
like she can never go back to selling flowers or living her former life. However, she
does not feel like a higher class lady, either. Therefore, she is liminalized in terms of
social class. She is neither a lower class nor a higher class. She only wanders around
them. Furthermore, at the end of the play, Higgins is extremely sure that Eliza will
come back to his house after running away from him, which implies that Higgins still
does not see her as a higher class lady. As a result, Eliza has been a liminal abject
throughout the play because of her gender and her social class. She was never
embraced as an autonomous individual. She has been treated unkindly by Higgins
because of abjectification. Moreover, after Higgins’ experiment on her, she is unsure
of where she belongs in the social ladder.
After comprehending abjection and liminality theory, and observing examples
of the theories on women in a social environment, the reader is able to understand how
these theories play a vital role in discussing women’s place in society, for in Miss Julie
and Pygmalion, both Julie and Eliza are abjectified and liminalized by the components
of the society where they belong.
Now that Julie and Eliza are separately analyzed with the help of abjection and
liminality theory in chapter III and chapter IV, the conclusion chapter compares and
contrasts both of the characters and their ways of surviving in a society. The reason
for their comparison is to thoroughly comprehend the inevitable outcome of both of
the characters in terms of their being a liminal abject. First of all, because of their
gender, Julie and Eliza are abjectified. Being an abject, Julie carries the characteristics
of an abject. She defies borders and constructs, moreover, she threatens the subject at
the same time. In addition to her abjectification, Julie is also objectified by Jean in
order to have sexual pleasure. Eliza is also abjectified by Higgins. Higgins himself
states that he does not treat women nicely, thus, his attitude towards Eliza is always
condescending. The main reason for both of their abjectification is their gender.
However, in their liminalization, their social classes play an immense role. Both
protagonists belong to completely different spheres in society apart from their gender.
Julie is a higher class woman, while Eliza is a lower class one. However, even if they

11
are in different social classes, their outcome is the same: both of them are liminalized.
They both yearn to act free from their social boundaries; the former does not conform
to ‘elegancy’ of a higher class woman, the latter is stuck between the two classes. Their
liminalization comes from their not obeying to only one sphere. Because of their
fluidity in regards to complying with the standardized notions in a society, they are
both abjected and liminalized. Therefore, because of the persistent abjectification and
liminalization they endure and experience, both characters end up destructed, either
psychologically or physically.

12
II. ABJECTION AND LIMINALITY THEORY

To be able to fully comprehend the abjection theory, introduced by Julia

Kristeva first, one must be familiar with Jacque Lacan’s imaginary order and mirror
stage in his psychoanalytic work because while constructing abjection theory, she is
following Lacan’s footsteps, even though she goes in a different direction at some
point.
According to Lacan, between six and eighteen months, the child realizes that
he is a separate human being from his mother, and this awareness provides the
foundation for his attempts to construct his identity as a separate person. But this
process is not easy and even traumatic for the baby since he thought he and her mother
shared the same identity. Now he is in the confusing, strange and unknown realms of
the ego. For that reason, he tries to come up with a personal identity by creating a
fantastic, ideal, and imaginary self. At this stage, the baby creates "I" as a coherent and
unified being. However, “on the realization of the imminent presence of the Other, the
Self is divided, and this marks . . . [his] breakdown” (Mambrol: 2016). Moreover,
along with the difficulties of his fragmented identity, now that he is getting older, Now
the baby has to express his demands and needs with language. Because of the
arbitrariness of the language, the baby feels restless and stuck as he/ she tries to put
their thoughts, expressions and desires into an arbitrary construct, a language. The
language is unfamiliar to him, therefore, he cannot express himself in the way he
wants. The baby is now immersed in language and grows resentful of the mother
leaving because now the individual is left alone with the outside world without her
mother’s help. Having been influenced by Lacan, Kristeva comments on the separation
of the child from the mother: “child must agree to lose the mother in order to be able
to imagine or name her” (Summers-Bremner, 1998: 18). Therefore, the -bodily-
separation implies the ability to name what isn't you: ‘Only I am responsible for
expressing myself and my needs. I am not mother. Mother isn’t me. She cannot help
me.’ However, now, not only separating himself from the mother and trying to express
his needs, the individual has to create a line separating himself from the negative things
he does not want to have in himself. In other words, he constructs his identity by

13
keeping the positive notions he wants to see in himself within him and expelling the
negative traits away from himself. Therefore, Kristeva and her Abjection Theory step
in here because Kristeva states that the abject has only one quality of the object- that
of being opposed to I. (1982: 1) Thus, one can conclude that there is a juxtaposition
between the subject and the abject. An individual expels the abject in order to protect,
or even, redeem himself from the unwanted abject. However, expelling the abject is
extremely difficult, because Kristeva explains the characteristic of an abject as:

A massive and sudden emergence of uncanniness, which, familiar as it might have

been in an opaque and forgotten life, now harries me as radically separate, loathsome.
Not me. Not that. But not nothing, either. A “something” that I do not recognize as a
thing. (1982: 2)

As the reader understands from her explanation, the process of expelling the abject is
agonizing because of its fluidity. It is not me, but not only itself either.It carries the
personality of its own and mine, and this is where the danger starts. The line between
subject and abject becomes thinner and makes me weaker for fear of turning into an
abject or carrying its values within me. Moreover, abject is

radically excluded [by I] . . . [however] it draws me toward the place where meaning
collapses. A certain “ego” that merged with his master, a superego, has flatly driven
it away. It lies outside, beyond the set, and does not seem to agree to the latter’s rules
of the game. And yet, from its place of banishment, the abject does not cease
challenging its master. (2)

Therefore, the abject is fatal, because its exile from the subject itself does not conclude
in guaranteeing that the subject is and always will be free from that, instead, the abject
always threatens the subject. Consequently, the border that the subject has constructed
between the abject and itself is not permanent since the abject defies borders. As
Kristeva further argues that abject is thus not lack of cleanliness or health that causes
abjection but what disturbs identity, system, order. What does not respect borders,
positions, rules. The in-between, the ambiguous. The composite (4). Abject is
borderless, which makes it free from the boundaries and the rules. It has the freedom
now, freedom to flourish by its own after being expelled by I, and that is what frightens
the subject.

14
 To have the better picture on the readers’ minds, Kristeva has exemplified the
abject in different scenarios and has given reasons for their abjectifications. The most
striking of them is the example of a dead body:

The corpse (or cadaver: cadere, to fall), that which has irremediably
come a cropper, is cesspool, and death; it upsets even more violently the one who
confronts it as fragile and fallacious chance. In the presence of signified death—a flat
encephalograph, for instance—I would understand, react, or accept. No, as in true
theater, without makeup or masks, refuse and corpses show me what I permanently
thrust aside in order to live. . . There, I am at the border of my condition as a living
being. My body extricates itself, as being alive, from that border. . . . the corpse, the
most sickening of wastes, is a border that has encroached upon everything. (3)

It is one of the most fearful abjects, for it has shocked me because as a living being, I
abjectify death in order to emphasize my aliveness. I create the abject and put it aside,
away from myself. However, when I run into a dead boy, life and death intermingle
with one another because I have constructed my identity upon being alive, and now
that I have seen death in the form of a dead body, I become terrified because the curtain
that separated my identity and the abject has now been pulled.
In order to finalize setting the foundation of abjection theory for further
discussion in the thesis, the last example blatantly demonstrates the fragility between
the subject and the object:

In the dark halls of the museum that is now what remains of Auschwitz, I see a heap
of children's shoes, or something like that, something I have already seen elsewhere,
under a Christmas tree, for instance, dolls I believe. The abjection of Nazi crime
reaches its apex when death, which, in any case, kills me, interferes with what, in my
living universe, is supposed to save me from death: childhood, science, among other
things. (4)

The subject gets highly agitated after seeing death tainting the objects that are
considered as symbols of liveliness, for the abject even corrupts the things that should
not have any affiliation with it.
As in the definition of the abject theory and the abject as a notion, we can see
that, even though it is ostracized from the subject, it does not respect boundaries. For
that reason, the reader is able to infer that the abject survives in an inbetween state.
With this aspect of the abject, we can connect abjection theory and liminality theory.
The term liminal has derived from the Latin word ‘limen’, which means a boundary,
a corridor. A corridor is a passageway connecting two different rooms or structures. It

15
holds no value on its own. It only enables us to arrive at a place, a place which holds
a whole value. Its only function is to go from one room to another room. In literary
terms, liminality means an in-between, transitional stage. As a literary term, liminality
is first stated by Arnold Van Gennep. In his work, Rites de Passage, (1960) he explains
liminality and liminal space in literature and further introduces the process of
liminality. For Gennep, a movement has three phases. First one is separation. In the
separation process, an individual or notion is separated from a secure structure. In the
second phase, liminality, the individual or a notion wanders at an uncertain existence.
The last phase is incorporation. In the final phase, the individual or the notion comes
back to the secure, demarcated border, however, it does not dwell inside a well-set
boundary. The individual or the notion now has completed its metamorphosis and
exists in its own unorthodox and unique realm within a society. It frees itself from the
sharp-edged structures. In that light, the abject and the entity in the liminal state are
significantly alike as neither of them have borders. Furthermore, both of them are fluid.
In order to understand the existence of liminality within an environment, Sarah
Gilead argues that: “The liminal state is necessarily outside the ordinary classificatory
systems, "betwixt and between the positions assigned and arrayed by law, custom,
conventions, and ceremonial” (1986: 183). In other words, a liminal being, for
instance, is in the gray area in the eyes of society because he does not belong to an
ordinary classification. For example, as we are going to analyze in both Miss Julie and
Pygmalion, the protagonist women do not conform to a singular social class, be it
lower class or higher class. As for their class identities, it is discussed that they do not
solely carry the characteristics of a certain class. However, the liminal beings do not
choose to be liminal being just because they do not believe or conform to any of the
social constructs, instead,

Liminal figures attempt to negotiate between multiple aspects of their fluid identities.
These characters can be seen to withdraw from the norm, to position themselves
outside of the normativity of majority standards. They choose to linger in a
carnivalesque, anarchistic liminal phase, . . . and not to integrate into the normative
centre. (Bossche& Wennerscheid, 2018: 2)

That is to say, liminal beings wander in the liminal state not because they do
not believe in any construct, but because they have more than a certain inclination
towards the social constructs. They create an alternative space for themselves.

16
However, their creating an alternative space is not approved by majority. Thus,
Northrop Frye states that in literature, the liminal beings are separated into two groups.
He argues that

In fiction, there are two main tendencies, a 'comic' tendency to integrate the hero with
his society, and the 'tragic' tendency to isolate him. . . In tragedy, the transgression of
conceptual and behavioral rules leads to punishment and expulsion, which in turn
enunciates a seemingly universal truth of the human condition, thus indirectly
confirming the underlying models, systems, and frameworks that make possible the
social order. Tragic suffering is justified as a culturally conserving force, not arbitrary,
but part of an essential process that helps to fix social structure or that prevents its too-
rapid revision. (2009: para. 54)

Therefore, liminal beings have two paths. In Miss Julie and Pygmalion, the
liminal beings’ fate is tragic. In the plays, existing in a liminal space in regards of
social classes conclude with the women protagonists, Julie and Liza, downfall and
restlessness. Apart from showing the consequence of entering into the realm of
liminality, the negative outcome of a character in a literary work serves as a warning:
boundaries are valid and significant, they are not to be crossed, but to be conformed
appropriately. Smudging social constructs and categories only concludes in
catastrophe, even though the liminal beings are in a transformative power.
Moreover, as Victor Turner states: “liminal individuals are polluting, and thus
dangerous, to those who have not gone [nor will go] through the liminal period” (1982:
98). Just as the abject poses danger to an entity or a structure, liminal individuals pose
a threat to the constructed society that has already set strict boundaries. Therefore, both
abjection and liminality are strongly interconnected with each other in their ways of
defying and challenging borders, and because of their abjectification and
liminalization, which are to be argued in the following parts of this chapter, women
are considered as liminal abjects.
Now that the reader is able to comprehend abjection theory and liminality
theory, and that they are interconnected, how abjection and liminality are applied to
the plays Miss Julie and Pygmalion, in terms of gender and social class are to be
firstintroduced through literature review of the theories; then, the two theories’
function in analyzing and studying the plays in a new light are to be thoroughly
suggested.

17
 To be able to analyze Julie and Eliza accordingly, the reader has to comprehend
the initial process of an individual’s abjectifying the mother. According to Kristeva,
there is a universally experienced period . . . in which the child rejects the mother's
body as abject and redefines the self in terms of his or her own body” (Mebed, 2013:
3). In other words, it yearns to becomes from the realm of the mother’s existence. To
be able to survive on his own, the child starts to create his identity by ostracizing and
pushin the mother away from himself. Therefore, the initial universal experience of
separation between the mother and the child functions to abjectify the mother as “the
abject is the site and timing (synchronic and diachronic) of the child’s dramatic split
from its symbiotic union with the mother” (Symes, 2016: 7). Because the dramatic
split between the mother and the individual is the first exemplification of abjection,
the mother’s abjection plays a significant role throughout an individual’s life, which
is explained in this chapter.
In Kristeva’s own words, she argues that `[f]or man and for woman the loss of
the mother is a biological and psychic necessity, the first step on the way to autonomy.
Matricide is our vital necessity,” (Stone, 2012: 118). The word matricide functions as
a -figuratively- brutal procedure in which the individual has to kill the mother in order
to be autonomous. Therefore, the child kills the mother, the woman for his own sake.
In addition to killing the mother, the individual abjectifies the woman as it is argued:

In this respect, the female body becomes the abject body which has to be expelled in
order to achieve subjectivity. [Moreover,] . . . psychoanalytical studies have tried to
construct “a femininity” in patriarchal terms and attribute this femininity to the female
body. Thus, the female is culturally and socially marginalized, oppressed and
excluded in the patriarchal society. In this respect, the female body is associated with
the abject which represents the subject"s and society"s repulsion towards a threat that
has the potentiality to disrupt its boundaries.” (Aktari, 2010: 60)

From the statement, a reader can understand that the first thing abjected is the
mother and maternal body, thus a woman. Therefore, a man abjectifies a woman and
femininity throughout his entire life in order to stay in the safe zone of his masculine
identity.
In addition to the fact that an individual kills his mother to be able construct its
own identity when he is an infant, a woman is also abjectified in a social and cultural
context. This abjectification derives from the conventions of societies and the reason
for that is to secure themselves from the negative aspects that they fixate upon the
subject, in our case, the woman.

18
 Nearly in every culture, the story of the fall of Adam and Eve are significantly
described and argued upon. Adam and Eve have fallen from the Garden of Eden after
Eve ‘seduces’ Adam, and that knowledge passed down from generation to generation.
Moreover, Eve has been highly accused of the fall because she is the one who was
tricked by the serpent, then informed Adam about what he has to do, which led to their
downfall. Because culture symbolizes the woman as the real sinner and because culture
plays a critical role in shaping an individual, women are generalized as to being the
seductress, “. . . mysterious, insatiable, and all that men cannot control-although try to
control and restrain her by all means at their mores, rules, decrees, laws-” In other
words, to construct his identity only with positive aspects, men attribute all the
negative notions to women, consequently, in the end, because “she is disobedient to
God and man, and for this they [women] are equally associated with that which is
abject” (Lawless, 2003: 245). Therefore,

It is Eve's disobedience and "sin" that led to a dichotomized view of male as pure and
clean, on the one hand, and female as loathing and defilement, on the other.
Correspondingly, because religion is the inseparable part of the culture, Adam and
Eve’s story paved the way to introduce women as abject. The depiction and suggestion
of Eve’s abject being is told, reinforced, and re-told throughout civilizations. (244-
245)

However, even though an individual abjectifies the mother and the woman, the
individual becomes restless because abject does not simply respects orders, nor
boundaries.“The nascent subject, shuttling between the predicament of maternal
claustration and its patriarchal obverse, autonomy, finds herself called upon to
reconcile the irreconcilable, in a context in which her very survival is on the line”
(Dever, 2000: 191).
With respect to the plays that are analyzed according to abjection theory, the
individuals abjectifying the woman are both men. Jean and Higgins in Miss Julie and
Pygmalion enter into a loophole because they encounter so many different types of
women and femininity in their lives. They strive, but fail, to flee the wretched, the
abject. Specifically Julie and Eliza as the abjects constantly put Jean and Higgins in
danger, as a consequence, then they become more and more agitated and disturbed by
the abjects who know no limits. Therefore, in Miss Julie and Pygmalion, Jean and Mr.
Higgins find themselves in an endless struggle as they seek to destroy the women who
disrupt and threaten their identity because while trying to survive and create their

19
identities, and dispose of women, the subjects are devastated because they cannot run
away from the abjects, nor negotiate. There, their continuous agony starts.
In addition to women’s abjectification in terms of subject’s yearning to dispel
all negative aspects from himself, according to Kristeva, in a male psyche, a woman
exists in a peripheral and ambivalent position. The reason for this is the reproductive
capacity. Her body can only remind man of his own mortality (Hoeveler, 1992: 391).
Because the woman reminds man of his own mortality, the man is constantly aware of
the danger of death. Therefore, the man continually tries to push the woman away and
ostracize her. In that way, he tries to stay in the safe zone, even though it is nearly
impossible because the abject always threatens the normal, ordinary one with a
disturbing existence. Kristeva further argues the topic: “Fear of the archaic mother
turns out to be essentially fear of her generative power. It is this power, a dreaded one,
that patrilineal filiation has the burden of subduing” (1982: 77). Because the moment
a being is born into the world, its death starts, and seeing women with their
reproductive power reminds them of the harsh reality that they are eventually going
to die. Thus, generative power of the woman is a menace to the man. Therefore,
patriarchy tries to suppress the power of the woman by abjectifying her.
Even though men abjectify women to protect themselves and their identity,
they hypocritically exploit women by objectifying them to their own advantages. The
motive behind it can be explained by Sigmund Freud’s pleasure principle. According
to him, human organism is naturally predisposed to gain positive experiences of
pleasure and to hold on to this pleasure. . . [In addition to that,] the organism is
predisposed also to escape or avoid pain or displeasure” (Freud, 1961: 2). In other
words, along with abjectifying woman, a man starts to objectify the woman by using
the woman, especially her body, to gain positive experience. The exploitation of the
woman starts here. For example, in Miss Julie, Jean tries to climb the social ladder by
having sex with Julie and trying to elope with her. However, when he arrives at a
deadlock, he has no other choice but to convince Julie to kill herself, and at the end of
the play, he manages to do so. Moreover: “male domination constructs and disposes
of the abject bodies of the women . . . Women are "very useful" because they are not
going to cause trouble and are easily cowed by male figures” (Taylor, 2010, p. 465).
In other words, in a capitalist society, men first draw the boundary of manhood and
exclude the things they do not want to face or see in themselves. After that, they

20
abjectify the woman and her body. However, they find a way to make use of the body.
They use their bodies and then dispose of them. The entire process is a win- win
situation for men because they construct their identity and leave what they fear outside
of their identity, and then use the woman body for their own pleasure, for they know
that they can suppress the woman in a patriarchal society.
Hence, abjectification of a woman is initiated as a need for the individual’s
separate identity from the mother, and with the help of culture and traditions within a
society, it is further emphasized to create the distinction between the man and the
women. In following chapters, the reader will observe how women’s abjectification is
applied to the plays, and make use of the analyzes of the play within the light of
Kristeva’s abjection theory.
Along with the notion of the abject, the liminal state and liminality plays a
significant role in describing women and showing their positions in a society.
Moreover, combined with abjectification and liminalization of their gender, women
also suffer because of their social classes, regardless of the fact that they can suffer
from either lower class or higher class, concluding with their desperation as liminal
abjects.
In Gender Liminality: The Effects of Gender Inequalities on Female
Subjectivity in Hookups & Relationships, Jules Ostro argues that the modern woman
is liminalized through ‘hookup’ culture (2017). In our era, the term ‘hookup’ means a
casual sexual encounter (“Hookup,” n.d) without the boundaries of a serious
relationship or committing to a relationship. In that sense, a man and a woman meet
together to only have sexual intercourse. However, hookup culture endangers woman
because
While the hookup space purports itself as a fun alternative where both sexes can
receive sexual pleasure outside of relationships, it is suggested that women are judged
more harshly than men for pursuing sexual pleasure outside of relationships. (2017:
5)

In the twenty-first century, the characteristics attributed to masculinity have slightly

evolved. Man’s active energy, in contrast to the woman’s passive energy, is favoured
in terms of having sexual intercourse by the society, however, the woman’s
participatition in such an act is reprimanded. Jules Ostro further suggests that, in the
hookup space “heterosexual women find themselves enacting their agency in relational

21
spaces that have been historically predominated by a binary that privileges men and
reproduces double standards” (2017: 2).
In other words, while they are in the same space, the man is advantageous for he is
solely doing what privileges himself, nevertheless, the woman is trying to take an
active role in the man’s realm. The hookup space is considered to be benefical to a
man’s masculinity, however, it is looked down upon if a woman actively takes part in
that. As we have observed in the abjectification of woman, the woman is used for
pleasure, and then she is figuratively exiled by the moral codes in the society. The
gender inequality regarding the hookup culture is further argued as:
While women are slut-shamed, it appears as though males are encouraged by
their peers to fulfill a standard that promotes the fraternal objectification of women
while posing low-to-no risk to the male, which essentially translates to pursue and
achieve as much sexual activity as possible (Ostro, 2017: 8).
Therefore, one can conclude that the hookup space is a safe space for man, for it does
not carry a moral risk for him; however, a woman’s engagement with the space is not
acceptable by the patriarchal society because the woman is objectified. Therefore,
when the passive woman tries to break the boundary of her gender (femininity), the
woman enters into a liminal status of having to work very hard to maintain her
autonomy, because the woman, by trying to have a casual sexual intercourse, taints her
innocence and dignity which is expected from her in the society.
Journalist Laura Sessions Stepp argues that, in the twenty first century,“girls
can’t be guys in matters of the heart, even though they think they can” (Armstrong et
al., 2010: 23). In her argument, she asserts that masculine-agency and casual sex are
strictly endeavors of the male gender. Therefore, whenever a woman enters into the
hookup space, she enters into the liminal space, the reason for that is casual sex is the
path belonging to man. Therefore, when the woman enters into that path, she gets stuck
owing to the fact that she demonstrates and utilizes a masculine act; however, during
the hookup, she is inevitably objectified by the genuine masculine subject. Therefore,
she does not have any choice but to wander around as a liminal being. We can explain
the sexual relationship between Julie and Jean in that light. As a woman, Julie chooses
to have sex with Jean. However, because having premarital sex is only acceptable
when men do so, after the act, she not only is in the liminal state, but also is exiled,

22
abjectified by the man. From the example of Julie and Jean, the reader can clearly see
that liminality and abjection are connected with each other.
In addition to hookup culture, there is one more concept that puts a woman into
a liminal state: breastfeeding. As Patricia Mahon-Dalya and Gavin J. Andrews
suggests in their article: Liminality and breastfeeding: women negotiating space and
two bodies that a breastfeeding woman potentially moves into a ‘new world’ by
experiencing a new natural state and activity (2001: 65). The reason for that, is the
potential conflict between the breast as a sexual object and milk provider was a
common issue (72). In other words, the breast of a woman was once considered as a
sexual object before entering into motherhood; but now that she gets to use her breasts
to feed her infant, the function of her breasts become ambiguous. Therefore, the
woman’s identity as a person enters into the liminal state because for her husband, the
individual who is the representative of patriarchy and patriarchal society, her identity
as the woman and the wife becomes much more complex because of her motherhood.
For that reason, the new mother who breastfeeds her child experiences both a physical
liminal state and a social liminal state. The individual is not solely a mother, nor a
wife. She does not fit into the either world as a liminal being. The individual might
seem like she is solely disadvantageous now. However, what is interesting about
liminality is that it offers both risks and opportunities, for individuals and
organizations alike (Tempest et al., 2004: 507). In other words, along with its negative
effects, liminality opens new doors of opportunities. In this individual’s case, for
instance, she can experience both the old world and the new world. However, because
a society flourish within its own rigid structure, it does not favour the fluidity of the
liminal being.
Under those circumstances, with the examples and analysis of hookup culture
and breastfeeding mother, the reader is now able to connect the liminality theory with
women and their liminalization. Even though the protagonists, Julie and Eliza, are
mostly liminalized in terms of their defying and/ or wandering around the social
classes, their gender play an undeniable role in their overall situation because in the
society they live in, the moment they enter into the liminal state of any social construct,
it is dramatically easier for people to abjectify them further because the culture and
civilization are mostly based upon the structures that men created.

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 As the reader has the essential knowledge about abjection and liminality
theories, their relation in analyzing Miss Julie and Pygmalion in a new light needs to
be explained. The thesis specifically utilizes abjection and liminality theory, for how
they are perceived by the society is significantly similar. Because both of them do not
inhabit solely one notion or space, they always pose a threat to society which
constitutes its culture based upon certain borders and boundaries. The abject, and the
liminal, however, always carry the possibility of destroying these borders, or to
penetrate them and mix two separate notions together. Because of their unpredictable,
destructive and reconstructive power, the society and its elements never feel safe when
they become aware of the abject and the liminal.
Julie and Eliza in Miss Julie and Pygmalion are the ideal examples of the abject
and the liminal beings. They are abjectified because of their gender and their social
classes, moreover, they are also liminalized due to their social classes. The theories
carry the utmost importance in analyzing the plays, because they allow us to see how
women, even if they belong to the opposite classes, are perceived and treated. At the
end of both of the play their fates are fatalistic. Julie, as a liminal abject, kills herself;
and Eliza, as a liminal abject, suffers because even though she is considered a higher
class after her transformation, she is still expected to do lower class work by the
society. In chapter III and IV, Julie’s and Eliza’s situation are thoroughly explained
and discussed through utilizing abjection theory and liminality theory. After the
extensive analysis of the characters through these theories, whether emancipation for
them is possible is discussed and concluded accordingly.
For those reasons, this thesis Abjected Women: A Kristevian Reading of
Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion and August Strindberg’s Miss Julie,aspires to analyze the
two plays within the lights of Abjection Theory, introduced by Julia Kristeva, and
Liminality Theory, introduced by Arnold Van Gennep. This extensive analysis and
further discussion are significant to understand the motive behind these plays and to
find an answer as to whether emancipation is possible for Eliza and Julie.

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III. MISS JULIE AS A LIMINAL ABJECT

In order to have a better understanding of Julie’s being a liminal abject in Miss

Julie, the reader must be acquainted with August Strindberg’s views and comments
about women and gender equality.
Having been born into a family where his father is an upper class, and his
mother is a lower class individual, Strindberg has witnessed both differences in gender
and in social class in the household. However, his feelings towards her mother are
much more complicated than he feels towards his father. Because his mother rejected
him in favor of his brother, he sometimes was disgusted by her, sometimes he thought
that she is the dearest creature on earth, and sometimes he thought that she was not
giving him love and nourishment. (Brustein, 1962: 138) With the lights of his
interaction with the first woman in his life, it is safe to assume that, as a person and a
writer, his mindset and attitude towards women was shaped according to the first
notion of a female gender. Thus, according to Robert Brustein, because of his
complicated relationship with his mother
Strindberg had split his mother in two-the chaste Madonna and the erotic Belle Dame
Sans Merci-and unconsciously recapitulating his early feelings later in life, he
vacillated between an intense worship of the female and an even more intense
misogyny. Strindberg was himself aware, in more lucid moments, that his misogyny
was "only the reverse side of . . . [his] fearful attraction towards the other sex. (1949:
139)

Therefore, Strindberg was already biased towards women from his interaction with a
mother figure and that played a significant role in his future mindset, shaping the
context of his artwork.
During his adulthood, Strindberg had a strong negative attitude towards women and
gender equality after witnessing the newly introduced gender equality ideas in the
society. While intellectuals like Henrik Ibsen in his era started to favor gender equality
and emancipation of women, he states that: “Feminine emancipation is a chimera. a
dream from which will be a sad awakening. Woman, if she wants equality, must drag
man down to her level, for she can never attain to his” (“Strindberg on the Inferiority
of Woman”, 1895: 188). Us, as readers, can deduct only even from this statement that

25
he does not believe in equality. On the contrary, according to him, he sees men as
superior beings, and women as the inferior ones. Therefore, he believes, there is no
such thing as feminine emancipation or gender equality. Moreover, by his witty word
choices, he degrades women even further by implying that they are at the bottom of
sexes, and the only way to reach equality is to drag the superior men to their levels.
In addition to his own mindset and criticism of the notion of gender equality,
he also harshly criticizes the other intellectuals such as Henrik Ibsen for touching upon
and/or favouring the subject of an oppressed woman’s eventual emancipation in his
play, A Doll’s House:

The famous Norwegian male blue-stocking had written a play on the subject
[women’s emancipation] and all feeble minds were obsessed by a perfect mania of
finding oppressed women everywhere. I fought against those foolish notions, and
consequently was dubbed “misogynist,” an epithet which has clung to me all my life.
(Schleussner, 1913: 207)

As a consequence, he belittled the reality of women’s oppression in his time.

Furthermore, according to him, along with being an illogical and arbitrary notion,
gender equality was a notion that contributed to degradation of men. He says that:

What, asks Strindberg, is the cause of this unreasoning fury against man? for is it not
he who, after all, has bestowed upon woman the benefits of culture, the right of
holding property, and the numberless other privileges? Man, not woman, has produced
civilization. (“Strindberg on the Inferiority of Woman”, 1895: 188)

In his eyes, this entire notion of gender equality was not introduced to empower
women, instead, it would harm men because to him, only the men were responsible
for the creation of an advanced society, thus, women cannot have the right to rise more
than they do. In addition, by carrying his argument ,that men are losing their power in
the process of women’s emancipation- further, he states that as a social construct,
marriage would benefit women staying home.

For the sake of „domestic" peace the man consents to anything and everything, for
domestic peace is one of his boldest hopes of matrimonial bliss. In most of the cases
the wife rules within the house, and the husband outside it. This is not disadvantageous
to her. She engages the maids, she decides what the family is to eat, and how the
children are to be brought up; she also usually holds the purse-string. In most cases
the husband hands over his income to his wife, and gives her pocket-money, which
she may spend without being obliged to say how. He himself has to notify her every

26
 ore he wants for cigar – and punch! Thus the wife cannot be regarded as a slave.
(Strindberg, 1972: 33)

As it is evidently seen from his utterances, women staying in the realm of a house was
not to be seen as a negative thing for him, instead, it should be considered a prestigious
advantage for a woman as the woman is now free to have men’s financial belongings
without being questioned. According to Strindberg, which can be understood from the
example of marriage, there is a ‘sexual war’ between women and men since for him,
women are not questioned after their deeds, but men are. Therefore, he saw the sexual
war as a Darwinist struggle for men since men, who created civilized values, gets
weaker and loses to woman. (Sprinchorn, 1993: 9) In his eyes, women’s being stuck
in the household, in the private realm does not pose a threat to him. Nevertheless, in
addition to his explanation about advantages of a marriage for a woman, while
explaining men’s and women’s role in marriage, he criticizes the upper class’s
understanding of marriage as:
When the community began to demand security for the child, and invented
matrimony, and when possessions and social standing followed in its train, natural
feelings were forced into the background, and were branded by the upper classes as
sensuality which must be concealed under a cloak of gallantry (Strindberg, 1972: 33).
Therefore, in addition to favoring the notion of marriage for women, he himself is
aware of the fact that marriage as a social construct is controlled by the upper class.
To sum up, If the reader is to combine Strindberg’s mindset about marriage,
women’s emancipation, and thus, indirect men’s degradation -in his eyes-, Strindberg
does not think positively about gender equality or women’s emancipation as for him,
it degrades and drags men, who created civilization, down. For that reason, by using
literature, he yearns to give power back to men, whose superiority is injured because
of these newly introduced notions.
Accordingly, in his earlier plays such as Miss Julie, Strindberg blatantly
demonstrates the superiority of man and the inferiority of women. He shows men’s
superiority by creating strong men because for him, the most admirable characteristic
of a man is strength -strength of will, strength of intellect, strength of body (Brustein,
1962: 144). In contrast, the women he creates in his plays are“the "third sex" . . .whom
he detested for their masculinity, infidelity, competitiveness, and unmaternal attitude”
(168). In other words, Strindberg detested the woman emancipating herself by
assertiveness. By no coincidence, he detests seeing these characteristics on a woman

27
since masculinity, competitiveness, and unmaternal attitude are characteristics only
belonging to men, and these characteristics inherent in a woman would mean that the
the border between man, the subject, and the woman, the abject would be transgressed.
He did not want to see the subject’s qualities on an abject as it threatens the subject
itself. For that reason, in Miss Julie, he portrays Julie as the third sex, and concludes
the play with her tragic downfall. With further examples from the play, the reader will
be able to comprehend how Strindberg, as the author, successfully manipulates the
characters and their outcomes according to his belief system.
Miss Julie was written by Strindberg in 1888. It takes place in the estate of a
Count in 20th century Sweden. The two protagonists are called Miss Julie and Jean.
Miss Julie is a higher class woman, daughter of the Count, and Jean is a lower class
man, the Count’s servant. On the Midsummer Eve evening, Miss Julie behaves
recklessly by dancing with another lower class man and by making it too obvious that
she is attracted to Jean. Being a strong, ambiguous and power-lust character, Jean tries
to turn Julie’s infatuation for him into an advantage. Even though he does not like Julie
as a person, he feels he can use Julie to his advantage by climbing up the higher class.
The characters have sex and prepare to run away to Romania, however, their attempt
proves to be unfaithful: after their sexual intercourse and the severe dispute following
the act, finding no way out, Julie commits suicide after Jean manipulates her to do so.
Throughout the play, she is abjectified by Jean and other lower class character
Kristine. She is continuously called queer and mad. Moreover, she is consistently
criticized for not acting according to her class. Therefore, Jean’s systematic
degradation of her contributes to her downfall. Lower class people like Jean or Kristine
or the people in the village do not respect her. They always gossip about her. She is
abjectified because other people try to secure their own identities by creating a sharp
border between what they see as an abject, anormal and normal. For people like Jean,
Kristine, and the people in the village, Julie carries the unwanted values the people do
not want to see in themselves. Therefore, by drawing a line between themselves and
Julie, lower class people constitute and declare the notions they do not want to be a
part in. As an individual, she feels lost and fragile because she does not believe in the
importance of social classes, nor men’s superiority over women, and in a world which
constructs its structure based upon these two things, she cannot survive as a liminal
abject. The origin for her liminality comes from being brought up almost like a boy by

28
her mother when she was younger. Ergo, when she grows up, she continues to defy
social norms such as gender stereotypes and patriarchy. She does not act according to
these constructs in which she is expected to do so. She has created an alternative space
to which only she belongs. She is not a prude, nor a whore. She is not a man, nor a
woman. She is not a higher class, nor a lower class. She is not insane, nor sane. With
her liminal personality, she exists in a predetermined world. In fact, she has the
freedom, still, that freedom is always looked down upon because people abjectify and
liminalize her. By analyzing the preface and the quotations from the play, the reader
will comprehend how Julie is abjected as a liminal being.
Before analyzing the play itself, it is particularly important to analyze the
preface as it shows Strindberg’s mindset and foreshadows the play. In the preface to
Miss Julie, Strindberg states that Julie is “[a] victim of a superstition . . that woman,
that stunted form of human being, standing with man, the lord of creation, the creator
of culture, is meant to be the equal of man” (Templeton, 1990: 468). The playwright’s
statement is significant because the play itself is constructed through his criticism of
the so-called equality between women and men and it demonstrates the already settled
sexual determinism* between the two genders, regardless of their social classes.
Throughout the play, Jean tries to overpower Julie by taking advantage of his gender *.
Julie is abjected as a woman before she is abjected by her social class. In fact, Her
social class is less significant in her abjectification becomes more of a burden for her
because she is expected to behave elegantly and when she does not act accordingly,
she is frowned upon and even dehumanized and compared to an animal. Starting with
her gender and continuing with her social class, abjectification of Julie is prominent
throughout the play.
The first discourse of the play comes from Jean, who announces that Miss Julie
is acting crazy again (Strindberg, n.d.: 75). The reader can interpret that her acting
crazy is a constant act. Moreover, from the beginning of the play, she is introduced as
a crazy young lady in the eyes of readers, therefore, the reader is already prejudiced
against Miss Julie.She is portrayed to be a person wandering through sanity and
insanity. Moreover, the reason for Jean’s calling her crazy is the way she waltzes and
dances with a lower class man. He states that “She [Julie] is crazy I tell you! To dance
like that! And the people stand grinning at her behind the doors” (Strindberg, 2010:
51). Jean abjectifies Julie as a crazy woman just because she wants to celebrate

29
midsummer's eve by dancing happily and extravagantly is enough for people like Jean
–who has been brought up in a patriarchal society where women, especially upper
class, are expected to act solemnly and lady like- to abjectify her. In contrast to Jean’s
attempt to draw the line of characteristics of human beings, the reader witnesses Julie’s
attempt to embrace all the people in her surroundings with these words: “To-night
we’re all just people enjoying a party!” (Strindberg, 2010: 80). Nevertheless, unlike
Jean, Julie does not lean towards generalizing or classifying people. In fact, she does
not care about gender roles and social roles. It stems from her being raised by a mother
who believes in gender equality. In the Midsummer Night’s Eve, when she is called
Miss Julie by Jean, she clearly states that there aren’t any barriers between them now.
She wants him to call her Julie (Strindberg, 2010: 91). However, when there are not
any barriers between them as upper class woman and lower class man, Julie and her
integrity is more in danger, because as a man, the only way Jean would respect her is
if she behaved like an elegant and noble upper class. Now that the barrier concerning
their social class is removed, Julie is vulnerable as she is abjectified because of her
gender. Both of the protagonists in the play and their points of view regarding
classifying –or declassifying- people are shown at the beginning of the play, which
helps the reader get the gist of their mentality from early on.
In addition to calling her crazy, Jean calls Julie ‘queer’ also emphasizes the
fact that her identity is ambiguous. Jean cannot find the words to describe her, because
she does not fit into any labels. She is the uncanniness brought into the world of lower
class people in the play. She is a liminal abject, who is disturbing the order. According
to the liminality theory, She is not I (a lower class woman), not that ( a higher class
woman), not nothing. She is a queer being who terrifies the ordinary people and helps
them to protect their own identity by disposing her. Julie. The abjectification of Julie
is already settled when Jean repeats calling queer to Julie again and again. The border
has been constructed by Jean. However, abject always finds a way to leak into the
normal’s order. The abject does not stop challenging norms and what are called
normal. Even though Jean abjects Julie, he has had sexual intercourse with her and
even plans running away with her. Jean’s abjectifying Julie might seem successful in
his trying to protect himself from the danger of the unwanted, however it is not the
case because in abjection theory staying on the verge of the border, regardless of the
either side, makes oneself as a part of the abject, and the abject becomes a part of the

30
self, which threatens Jean. One example of it is that even though he is disgusted by
Julie, Jean had sex with her. Moreover, Julie is a higher class woman, and Jean is also
trying to be a higher class man. In addition to that, Jean also says that after buying
Count title in Romania, he will make Julie his Countess (61). With the light of these
examples, the reader can see that Julie and Jean are intertwined with one another.
Besides being called queer and crazy, Julie is abjected because of her gender.
After Julie and Jean have sex, they try to come up with solutions. Their initial solution
is to run away to Romania and live happily ever after there, however, their plan do not
work, therefore, the only solution for them is Julie committing suicide. While trying
to accomplish the task, Julie asks Jean what he would do if he was in her place, and
Jean answers:

JEAN. In your place—wait. As a noble lady, as a woman—fallen—I don't know. Yes,

ççççnow I know.
JULIE [She takes up razor from table and makes gestures saying] This?
JEAN. Yes. But I should not do it, mark you, there is a difference between us.
JULIE. Because you are a man and I am a woman? What other difference is
……there?
JEAN. That very difference—of man and woman. (74)

Jean abjectifies Julie and sees her as the morally tainted one. Having sex was once an
idea which is later done by both parties, however, Jean does not see a problem at his
side. According to him, the immoral one in society is only the woman. He does not
have to worry about killing himself, he does not even imagine doing so. This dialogue
between them shows the abjectification in accordance with gender.
What’s more, besides abjectifying Julie, Jean again abjectifies the female
gender by saying: “What am I to do? What do you want? This is getting unbearable,
but that’s what comes of playing around with women. . . “ (Strindberg, n.d.: 101). In
these lines, Jean regrets having sex with Julie because of possible negative
consequences. In addition, here we see the dynamic between the subject and the abject
now. Upon facing the abject closely, the subject is shaken to his core because the abject
never stops threatening the subject. Moreover, at some point, the abject makes the
subject just as herself. After having sex and not finding any solutions, Julie acts
distressed. Agitated, Jean says: “You take my strength from me, too, so that I become
cowardly?” (76). It is mentioned earlier that subject and abject have a very fragile
relationship. No matter how hard the subject tries to push the abject away from itself,

31
the abject always threatens it, and now, Jean, as the subject, carries the abject’s
charactericstics. The subject and the abject are fatefully intertwined now.
To conclude Julie’s abjectification, we can state that Julie is both a physical
and a social abject. Kristeva explains the abject in the simplest image: “What humans
confront when they experience the trauma of seeing a human corpse (particularly he
corpse of a friend or a family member) is their own eventual death made palpably real”
(Felluga, 2011). Kristeva’s exemplification of an abject here is a dead body, which is
a physical abject that terrifies human beings because it reminds them of the fragility
of their lives. However, the abject is not solely a physical one. It can come in any shape
or notion. As a ‘queer insane’ higher class woman, Julie is the minority in the play
who is continuously ostracized by her surroundings. People are scared of Julie,
because she reminds them the possibility that they could go insane and queer, too. For
that reason, for fear of turning into her, they disapprove of Julie.
Besides being an abject, Julie is strictly liminalized in the eyes of Jean,
Kristine, her mother, and people in the village. The lower class males and females
liminalize her because of her behaviours which do not conform to a higher class
woman. Jean says to Julie that“ No, Miss Julie, they don't love you. They take your
food and spit upon your kindness, believe me” (Strindberg, 2010: 59).
In these statements of Jean’s, the hatred lower class people have towards Julie, an
upper class woman, is blatant, and Julie’s defying upper class roles contributes to her
further abjectification. Moreover, Jean also tells Julie

Menial’s whore, lackey’s harlot, shut your mouth and get out of here! Are you one to
lecture me for being coarse? Nobody of my kind would ever be as coarse as you were
tonight. Do you think any servant girl would throw herself at a man that way? Have
you ever seen a girl of my class asking for it like that? I haven’t. Only animals and
prostitutes. (Strindberg, n.d.: 94)

From a lower class man’s mind, one can see the harsh judgement towards Julie. Now
that Jean has had sexual intercourse with her, he starts to talk his truth by humiliating
and degrading her by comparing her with lower class girls and animals. Along with
abjectification, she is now dehumanized by being called an animal. She is ostracized
through her class and gender now and the border Jean draws gets much harsher now
that he has got what he has wanted. Moreover, her liminal space is secured since her
act of intercourse is not even acceptable for lower class people, which results in her

32
belonging to neither of social classes. While talking about her with Kristine, Jean says
that

Miss Julie has a great deal of pride about some things—but not enough about others!
Just like her mother in her lifetime . . . I should say she isn't refined. Why just now out
there she pulled the forester from Anna's side and asked him to dance with her. We
wouldn't do things that way. But when the highborn wish to unbend they become
vulgar. Splendid she is though! Magnificent! (Strindberg, 2010: 49)

This statement of Jean is highly significant because it is commented on two levels: one
is, Jean abjectifies Julie due to her gender and her social class, and the other is he
emphasizes her liminal state by saying she is powerful in some areas, but not in others.
She has neither perfect, nor awful characteristic. She is wandering through the in-
between place. Because of her social class, she cannot act as she wants as there are
certain etiquettes expected from her. However, she does not care about any of them,
which results in her ostracism as a higher class woman by a lower class man.
After experiencing constant abjection and liminalization, Julie starts to feel and
sees herself from a different perspective. For example, when mentioning her parents’
marriage, she says that “. . . when my father courted her [her mother] she declared that
she would never be his wife—but she did so for all that” (64).
Julie’s upbringing also plays an enormous role in her personality because her
mother believed in gender equality, therefore, she brought Julie up accordingly.
Having been raised under these circumstances, Julie is shattered into two pieces, the
first piece is her defying gender roles and social class norms, and the second piece is
yearning to be loved by a man to feel as a whole. She is torn between making any
reasonable decision, thus, she is highly distressed as a liminal being. Moreover, after
deciding to run away with Jean, she states: “What do I care for all that—which I now
cast behind me. Say that you love me—else, what am I, without it? “ (61). Julie has
always put being a higher class woman from behind her personality, and now she is
thinking about eloping with Jean. However, the only way she can construct her identity
at this point is to be loved by Jean, because she does not believe in any other notion
anymore. She feels like she cannot exist without being loved. She feels like she is not
a human being, however, she is not nothing either. Right now, she is in the liminal
space.

33
 As the last example, after their sexual intercourse, she is not regarded or treated
according to her social class. Jean, a lower class man, starts to command her and
behave as if she is a lower class woman. After Julie asks her if she should obey him,
he tells her that “For once—for your own sake. I beg of you. Night is crawling along,
sleepiness makes one irresponsible and the brain grows hot. Go to your,room” (59).
Now that the social class barrier surrounding them is removed, Jean uses his gender to
his advantage. His commanding Julie to leave reminds us of the disposition process a
subject does to the abject along with Julie’s liminality, because she is not a lower class
or a higher class person.
To summarize, in Miss Julie, Julie is abjected in three ways: the first being a
woman, the second being a high class but not acting accordingly, and the last being a
mad woman. She is abjected by Jean, Kristine, and other inhabitants of the village.
Being a lady, she is always anticipated to behave nobly and elegantly. The people
constructing her as an abject gets significantly agitated and ill-disposed of her
behaviours. She is called crazy, constantly mocked, and continuously gossiped about.
Furthermore, she is liminalized because of not conforming to any social class As a
conclusion, in this chapter, the reader can see and witness the process of Julie’s
becoming as an abjectified liminal being in three different levels, which intermingle
with one another.

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IV. ELIZA DOOLITLE AS A LIMINAL ABJECT

Bernard Shaw lived between 1856 and 1950. In his time, women around the
world were considered biologically and socially inferior to men; they did not even
have the right to vote. Bernard Shaw is considered to be one of the pioneer advocants
of gender equality because he believed that women should be emancipated as men in
order to be able to flourish, and the only way for that is to think of themselves before
anyone or any constitution. However, in his time, in a patriarchal society, financial
power and social rights were only given to men, which resulted in women’s
dependency to men. Therefore, women had to stay oppressed by marrying -preferably
upper class- men, which resulted in their oppression and men’s dominancy. About the
entire issue, Shaw had intentions. As Mark Sterner states
Undoubtedly Shaw intended . . . to reinterpret history in order to give voice to the
oppressed women of the world. He spoke passionately on the subject of women’s
emancipation, insisting that “unlesss woman repudies her womanliness, her duty to
her husband, to her children, to society, to the law, and to everyone but herself, she
cannot emancipate herself.” (1998: 148)

With the light of those thoughts, we can see that Shaw wants women to take back the
power that they hold. However, in the society in which he sees those fundamental
issues, Shaw’s want is not something that can be solved easily. For that reason, in
addition to addressing the issues, Shaw also criticizes the society. Edwin Burr Pettet
(1949) states that
. . . [Shaw’s] attack was directed against a society which justified and approved the
double standard of morality, a society in which women did not have the right to vote,
a society which held it illegal for a wife to own any property, independent of her
husband; in other words, a society governed by men for the benefit of men who looked
upon women as merely another piece of private property especially designed for their
personal pleasure. (51)

Therefore, Shaw is one of the individuals who fearlessly challenged Victorian norms
of marriage, sex, and women rights instead of accepting them as the majority of the
society did in his time. With his own words, he declares that

... It is not surprising that our society, being directly dominated by Men, comes to
regard Woman, not as an end in herself like Man, but solely as a means of ministering

35
 to his appetite. The ideal wife is one who does everything that the ideal husband likes,
and nothing else. Now to treat a person as a means instead of an end is to deny that a
person’s right to live. And to be treated as a means to such an end as sexual intercourse
with those who deny one's right to live is insufferable to any human being. Woman, if
she dares face the fact that she is being so treated, must either loathe herself or else
rebel." (Shaw, 1891: 52)

From this statement of his, the reader can clearly observe how women were treated in
the society as non autonomous beings, only belonging to their saviours. After
experiencing these unfair life conditions, the woman has to make a choice between
hating herself or rebelling against the patriarchal society in which she is treated as an
inferior being without appropriate rights.
While Shaw was alive, however, things started to change. The Suffrage
Movement (1903) eventually enabled women to officially vote in the United Kingdom,
which is the start of women’s empowerment in a patriarchal society. However, there
was a problem that Shaw witnessed and mentioned in one of his letters to Mrs. Pethick
Lawrence:

Women should agitate for a proportion of women on every governing body, whether
elected, co-opted, nominated or picked up in the street like a coroner's jury, provided
only their sex was un questionable. . . What you now have in the spectacle of women's
votes keeping women out of Parliament . . . "What a world! (Cherry, 1994: 53)

So Shaw was brilliant enough to see that individuals who hold power, whether they
are male or female, do not voluntarily give up power and that giving the members of
the minority the vote do not guarantee their representation (Cherry, 1994: 55). That
observation might have played a role in his perception of women because after being
oppressed for a long time, women in the Parliament should have aimed to increase
their number. In addition to his individual analyses on women and their rights, there
are statements of other people having lived in the period shortly after Shaw’s death.
Mark Sterner (1998) states that
It is possible that we are [still] not as free from sex-role stereoryping in the final
quarter of the twentieth century as we would like to imagine. A flurry of empirical
studies concerning gender stereotypes in the 1970s found that sex-role stereotyping
remained pervasive despite the apparent fluidity of sex-role definition during the
period. (152)

Therefore, even though Shaw believed in women’s emancipation, it seems that his
conception was neither entirely internalized by him nor the society because a new
notion such as feminism would take many more years to be fully accepted and

36
internalized. Seeing that, individuals living in the twenty first century, we cannot
conclude that in Shaw’s time, feminism was thoroughly recognized and discussed.
There was the questioning of the gender stereotypes, however, those questionings
remained as initial sparks which opened the way to the broad discussions and analyses
on gender and femininity.
In his time, women consulted Shaw about their life conditions. One time, they
ask him about marriage, and he says
the women were perplexed and astonished, when I, who am supposed . . . to
have the most advanced views attainable on the subject urged them on no
account to compromise themselves without the security of an authentic
wedding ring. (Pettet, 1949: 52)

Theferore, we can conclude that Shaw still sees marriage as a woman’s safeguard
because at the end of the day, as a constitution, marriage guarantees her well being
during a time she has to secure herself when an incident happens. He does not say ‘do
not marry’ to young women, because he is aware of the advantages of marriage as a
constitution when it is appropriately built, and thus, he wants this social construct to
be as just as possible to both sides. When it is fairly built, the woman does not suffer
and be desperate, on the contrary, she will be secured. Accordingly, in his plays, he
did not create completely emancipated characters, but portrayed them in the process
of liberation (Crane, 1974: 23). In other words, he did not portray the women as fully
autonomous characters, but the individuals who are in their powerful journey of
transformation.
In addition, while criticizing the society and its constructs, Shaw has come up with a
new limiting notion on his mind. According to him, the main duty of a woman is to
reproduce. He states that

Sexually, woman is Nature's contrivance for perpetuating Nature's highest

achievement . . . As for Man: "Sexually, [he] is woman's contrivance for fulfilling
Nature's behest in the most economical way. [Woman] knows by instinct that far back
in the evolutional process she invented [man] , differentiated him, created him, in
order to produce something better than the single-sexed process can. (Winsten, 1975:
66)

With regard to his statement, it is apparent that the woman's duty in evolution is to
carry man in order to extend the world in ways other than her own. However, in Shaw’s
eyes, as time unfolds, the man born by the woman starts to yearn to be part of another
activities than reproduction, which the woman cannot find the time to participate in

37
since she has the main task of reproducing. This means that the woman and the man
have different duties and mindsets. After the world, and thus, a society, is created by
the woman, the man begins to fill in the empty spots in that society:

He began to think thoughts which she cannot follow, to seek out beauty which she
cannot understand. He became in other words, an instrument of the Life Force in his
own right, striving to advance mankind to a higher level of perfection and doing it
with about as little help from woman as she had from him in the process of producing.
(Pettet, 1949: 57)

Thus, the woman creates an individual, and the man creates the society and its values,
and in these progress, the man, with the power that he has had from the woman, uses
it to his advantage. As Pettet explains:

He steals the mother 's milk and blackens it to make printer's ink to scoff at her and
glorify ideal women with. He pretends to spare her the pangs of child-bearing so that
he may have for himself the tenderness and fostering that belong of right to her
children. (1949: 59)

For the man uses that power both to intellectualize and to look down on woman, there
the problem for the woman arises because now the inequality of power arises again
according to Shaw’s notion.
Apart from his views on women and their rights, as Barbara Bellow Watson
states that in his works, Shaw also had tendency to distinguish between the feminine
task of reproducing and nurturing human life and the masculine task of discovering
knowledge, which simply means women are not altogether emancipated (Sterner,
1998: 150). There is still a stereotype which is only the biological power surrounding
them. According to that, one can interpret that women still cannot be considered as
intellectual beings capable of thinking and expressing new ideas or notions. In other
words, he recreated the traditional division of male and female: the former is the
intelligent one, and the latter has fertility. Hence, on one hand, he believed that
women’s rights and perception of them should be improved; on the other hand, he
creates another limited border in which women resides. “While Shaw intended to
create this kind of positive feminine role model, he was unable to do so as a
consequence of the requisite blinders worn by members of the masculine gender”
(Sterner, 1998: 155).

38
 Even though he favours gender equality and women’s emancipation and he
wanted to express it in his plays, he has a disadvantage: he is a man. While trying to
demolish the feminine gender stereotypes of his time, he could not fully manage to do
so, moreover, he creates new gender-based character stereotypes in his plays. In our
case, for example, Eliza becomes a better version of herself only after an intellectual
man, Higgins, transforms her. Without the help of a man, she would not be able to
have character development or salvation. In that moment, Kristeva’s Abjection theory
comes to our rescue for understanding Bernard Shaw’s mindset. Regardless of his
well-intentioned attempts to women and their rights, as a male, he abjectifies women,
separating them from himself and unconsciously expresses the abjection he has
towards them in Pygmalion, in other words, the abjectification process starting in his
infancy affects his life and thus, writing.
Moving on to the play written by Shaw, (1913) Pygmalion takes place in
London and it tells the story of the protagonist Eliza Doolitle. Coming from a lower
class, she earns her living by selling flowers. However, she is looked down upon due
to her physical appearance and her dialect on the streets.. One day, with his friend
Colonel Pickering, Mr. Higgins, a linguist, runs into Eliza and bets that he can
transform her into a duchess, a higher class lady by giving private courses of language
lessons for six months. With the help of Mr. Higgins, Eliza is transformed into a lady.
Her appearance and her language is considered neat now. However, now that she has
experienced life both as a lower class and a higher class woman, Eliza feels stuck
between two worlds and she is not happy with what she has become because she
eventually realizes that she is neither respected, nor accepted as who she is. She is
continually abjected for being a woman. Moreover, she has to survive as a liminal
being because she has become an outcast both in lower class society and higher class
society. Higgins’ entire interaction with Eliza plays an immense role in her being a
liminal abject because Higgins represents the ideal individual according to society as
a white higher class man. Higgins and Eliza are juxtaposed as the normal one and the
unorthodox one. With the help of the quotations taken from the play, the reader will
be able to understand the extent to which Eliza is abjected as a liminal being.

At the beginning of the play, Eliza agrees to let Higgins help her transformation
because she wants to work in a flower shop. However, the employer does not want her
to work there because of her dialect. She says that she will not get the job unless she

39
can talk more genteel (Shaw, 2004: 21). Banishment from society as a lower class
woman is prominent here. She is labeled and abjected as a lower class woman because
of the way she speaks. The only way she can work where she wants is to be able to
talk more gently. Her experience in selling flowers does not matter to the society and
the employer. The only thing that does is whether she fits in the framework of a kind
employee who speaks neatly. When Eliza goes to Higgins’ house, he does not want to
accept her in the first place. He states that

Why, this is the girl I jotted down last night. She’s no use: I’ve got all the records I
want of the Lisson Grove lingo; and I’m not going to waste another cylinder on it. [To
the girl] Be off with you: I don’t want you. (Shaw, 2004: 20)

He does not respect her as a human being. He sees her not anything more than a part
of his experiment. He does not even see her as worthy as another cylinder. Moreover,
Huiggins’ helper Mr. Pearce also sees Eliza as an abject that is always ready to be
disposed. Pearce tells to Higgins:
Well, sir, she says you’ll be glad to see her when you know what she’s come about.
She’s quite a common girl, sir. Very common indeed. I should have sent her away,
only I thought perhaps you wanted her to talk into your machines. (19)

Her fate stays very much the same from the moment she steps in Higgins’ house.
Because she is a lower class person, her presence in the house does not matter at all
for Mrs. Pearce. Moreover, because she is speaking the dialect of lower class, Higgins
wants to work on her like a laboratory rat. Apart from abjectifying her because of her
gender and social class, Higgins dehumanizes her and treats her as a project to be
worked on. Dehumanization process of Higgins is repeaated in another saying of his.
He says to Colonel Pickering that “shall we ask this baggage to sit down or shall we
throw her out of the window?” (21). Again, in addition to abjectifying her, Higgins
dehumanizes Eliza by calling her ‘baggage’. At this point, she is an abjected, degraded,
dehumanized entity in the eyes of Higgins and the reader. Moreover, she does not even
value her. He is only mindful of his work. He says that “Well, when I’ve done with
her, we can throw her back into the gutter; and then it will be her own business again;
so that’s all right” (27). His plan after transforming Eliza is quite dangerous and
ambiguous for Eliza as after learning how to be a lady and behave as such, she will
have to go back to the place where she was before and that is an unfortunate situation.
As a lady, she will be stumbling in a lower class society. As a consequence, this
statement emphasizes her liminal fate waiting for her after she is disposed as an abject.

40
However, before her disposition, Higgins cannot conceal the fact that he is highly
intrigued by her. Even though he is a bit reluctant to accept her when she comes into
his house, he cannot resist accepting her. He says that “[tempted, looking at her] It’s
almost irresistible. She’s so deliciously low—so horribly dirty—“ (23). From this
statement, we can also conclude that, in abjection theory, although abject threatens the
subject and shakes it to its core, abject and the subject always have an irresistible
dynamic. The subject cannot simply get rid of the abject. In Higgins’ eyes, Eliza is
highly dirty and low. After accepting her, he can accomplish his goal and be satisfied
that he has transformed the odd one into a ‘decent’ human being.
As the play unfolds, Eliza’s father, Mr. Doolitle comes to the Higgins’ house.
At first, he acts like he is concerned about his daughter and that he wants to take her
back, however, as he speaks, the reader can see the real reason why he is there: to take
money from Higgins. It means that in exchange for money, he is willing to sell his
daughter. The female body, besides an abject, is objectified in the play by Mr. Doolitle.
During that scene, in addition to Eliza’s father's remarks about taking money from
Higgins, there is a striking dialogue between Mrs. Pearce and Mr. Higgins. Higgins
implies that Eliza’s father cannot take her away, then, Mrs. Pierce confirms it by saying
“How can he? You told me to burn her clothes” (35). After her deliberate want to be
transformed into a lady, her lower class clothes are burned, which shows she also cuts
ties with her social class in the material realm. Her burnt clothes are symbolic.
However, at that moment, her situation is very fragile because she is left with no social
class where she feels she belongs. She is both abjectified, and in the liminal state.
As a few months pass, Higgins take Eliza to her mother’s house. Mrs. Higgins
does not favour the experiment Higgins and Pickering do, thus, she says
MRS. HIGGINS. No, you two infinitely stupid male creatures: the problem ,,,,of what
is to be done with her afterwards.
,HIGGINS. I don’t see anything in that. She can go her own way, with all ,,,,the
advantages I have given her. (55)

Higgins still cannot see his fault, however, as an intelligent woman, Higgins’ mother
can see the mistake Higgins is about to do and she warns him. However, Higgins insists
on thinking of abandoning her after experimenting on her. That self-centered behavior
does not jeopardize Higgins, but it does endanger Eliza because Higgins merely
attempts to get rid of her without thinking about it, like a subject disposing the abject
away from it. Seeing no problem with it, Higgins tries to justify himself to his mother

41
ny sayin “It is to take a human being and change her into a quite different human being
by creating a new speech for her. It’s filling up the deepest gulf that separates class
from class and soul from soul (p. 54).
In this quotation, Higgins’ explanation of changing and individual can be interpreted
as a process of abjection. For him, language serves as a barrier between two classes
and two souls. Just as the reader witnesses in the play, because of her dialect, Eliza, as
a lower class woman, is separated from the higher class society, in other words, she is
abjectified. In addition to her clothes, her dialect is the thing that had Higgins’ interest.
The dialect is the bridge connecting them with one another.
However, Higgins continues not to take his mother’s criticism well, and states that
he had to work at the girl every day for months to get her to her present pitch. Besides,
she’s useful. She knows where his things are, and remembers his appointments and so
forth (53).
Here the reader can see the relationship between the abject and the subject. No matter
how much they differ from each other, they are still together. Even though Eliza
profoundly differs from Higgins, Higgins can still use her to his advantage because
she is a human being, and that human being can make his life easier by serving him.
Moreover, he tries to ease the situation in the eyes of Mrs. Higgins and tells that:
You let her alone, mother. Let her speak for her self. You will jolly soon see whether
she has an idea that I haven’t put into her head or a word that I haven’t put into her
mouth. I tell you I have created this thing out of the squashed cabbage leaves of Covent
Garden; and now she pretends to play the fine lady with me. (72)

This statement of Higgins is very complex since it shows the level of his
abjectification. It is true that he has abjected her. As the thesis mentioned earlier,
according to Kristeva, the border between the abject and the subject is very sensitive
and transgressable. However abjected she is, Eliza also carries the thoughts and
characteristics of the person who abjectifies her, Higgins.
After spending some time at Mrs. Higgins’ house, higher class guests, Clara, Miss
Eynford Hill, and Mrs. Eynsford Hill arrive.The beginning of their conversation with
Eliza seems like it is going well because of the speaking manners that Higgins taught
Eliza. However, suddenly, Eliza breaks the rule of small talk and starts to talk like that:
Y-e-e-e-es, Lord love you! Why should she die of influenza? She come through
diphtheria right enough the year before. I saw her with my own eyes. Fairly blue with
it, she was. They all thought she was dead; but my father he kept ladling gin down her
throat til she came to so sudden that she bit the bowl off the spoon. (49)

42
In a formal setting at a higher class society, Eliza cannot keep herself from returning
to her lower class storytelling habits for a moment. That scene seems like an actress
taking a break from her role. In a formal setting, almost as a lady, she unconsciously
goes back to her social class because she is torn apart between her former class and
latter class. Just as she is becoming a lady, she is reminded of the old habits. Therefore,
she does not belong to higher class. She is in the liminal state now.
Through the end of the play, after months of educating Eliza, Higgins and Colonel
Pickering takes her to the ambassador’s garden party as a final test to see whether she
can be considered as a higher class lady from now on. Higgins and Pickering are
overjoyed because Eliza makes a very good impression on the guests there. However,
when they get back home, Higgins says to Pickering that “No more artificial
duchesses. The whole thing has been simple purgatory” (58). Higgins’ word choice
carries the utmost importance here because also he is aware that the entire experiment
is like purgatory, however, he claims that solely for himself and Pickering. In a
religious context, purgatory is the place between heaven and hell. The souls there are
in agony, waiting to be redempted. Just as the souls in purgatory, Eliza is in agony, too
due to the fact that she is now a liminal being, created by Higgins. The difficulties
Higgins claims to have been through will end when she leaves the home after the
experiment, but Eliza’s pain will not because she is now an artificial duchess, not a
whole component of any social class, stuck in an inbetween state.
After Higgins and Pickering declare that this experiment has concluded
succesfully, Eliza now becomes highly conscious of what has happened for the last six
months and tells that:
What am I fit for? What have you left me fit for? Where am I to go? What am I to do?
What’s to become of me? . . . I sold flowers. I didn’t sell myself. Now you’ve made a
lady of me I’m not fit to sell anything else. I wish you’d left me where you found me.
(61)

Despite Higgins' efforts to make Eliza's life easier by upgrading her social position,
Eliza now feels even more desperate than before since she no longer fits within either
world. She had a profession where she was happy before Higgins transformed her, but
she can no longer work by selling flowers or anything else because of her upgraded
social status. Thus, without knowing how to continue her life she is tormented by her
liminality. For that reason, she becomes agitated and continues saying that

43
 Oh! if I only COULD go back to my flower basket! I should be independent of both
you and father and all the world! Why did you take my independence from me? Why
did I give it up? I’m a slave now, for all my fine clothes. (79)

Liza feels extremely upset that she is now fundamentally altered and she is in the
liminal stage. She cannot go back to her old life now that she has experienced and
partially internalized the upper class life and resents Higgins. Moreover, even though
she has become a lady, she feels like a slave because she is now stuck between two
worlds while belonging to neither one. She sacrificed her own identity in return for the
fine clothes, in other words, higher class, and after all that has happened, Higgins still
does not respect her. Thus, feeling extremely distressed, she states that

Oh, you [Higgins] are a cruel tyrant. I can’t talk to you: you turn everything against
me: I’m always in the wrong. But you know very well all the time that you’re nothing
but a bully. You know I can’t go back to the gutter, as you call it, and that I have no
real friends in the world but you and the Colonel. You know well I couldn’t bear to
live with a low common man after you two . . . (81)

Unfortunately, the reader can clearly see Eliza's perception of herself as a liminal
abject in light of this statement. She becomes increasingly aware of her transformation
into an upper class lady. However, she is abjectified in the transformation process. She
isn't entirely accepted for who she is. Even though she attempts to follow Higgins'
instructions, she is not completely welcomed and appreciated by him. She too feels
adrift after being transformed into a lady. She is unable to return to the 'gutter,' her
lower-class life. She also claims that she does not feel like she fits in the upper class
because she feels lonely without any true companions who understands and
appreciates her. She is in the realm of liminality, not an upper class, nor a lower class
woman, and thus, she is lost.
In the last scene of the play, the reader witnesses that Eliza has run away from
the house to Mrs. Higgins’ house because she could not stand to be there after she has
realized the truth and her fate. Trying to convince her to come back, Higgins says that
he has grown accustomed to her voice and appearance. He likes them, rather (78). His
statement might seem well-intended to the reader, however, he has a moral behind it.
In Chapter I, abjection theory was given a detailed explanation and analyzed. We have
mentioned that according to the theory, the line separating abject from the abject is
highly sensitive because abject constantly challenges the subject. In Higgins’ and
Eliza’s case, no matter how hard he tries to separate his identity from her and at times

44
disturbed by her, Higgins seems to like Eliza to some extent, in other words, no matter
how hard he tries to abjectify her, Eliza, the abject manages to make herself oddly
familiar and even likable by the subject.
Now that Eliza has fully comprehended Higgins’ mindset, she says that
Higgins only wants her back to pick up his slippers and put up with his tempers, and
fetch and carry for him (76). Eliza is quite aware that Higgins does not want her back
because he genuinely cares for her, but instead he wants her back since he can exploit
her as his helper. Eliza is disturbed by this because Higgins was the one who intended
to make her into a lady, and her being a servant for Higgins is not a lady-like act. Even
though she has taken on a new identity as a lady, she cannot avoid doing what lower-
class people do: serving. She would be his helper before as a lower class lady, but now
she cannot. because serving does not fit into her newly constructed identity. Moreover,
even though she knows the answer, she tells to Higgins that “he may throw her out
tomorrow if she doesn’t do everything he wants her to” (79).
Liza is profoundly mindful of the fact that she is always at risk for banishment by
Higgins, both allegorically and actually. As far as she is concerned, the main way she
can be embraced by Higgins is to only behave according to Higgins’ wants -even
though it is not enough for him to appreciate her- . In any case, being a puppet of him
is an enormous problem for her from now on as it means she is to forfeit her own being
to squeeze into the structure of a respectable individual to Higgins. Moreover, even
though Higgins is now aware that Eliza may not come back to her, he cannot help
himself but says: “If you come back I shall treat you just as I have always treated you.
I can’t change my nature; and I don’t intend to change my manners” (77).
Higgins has always treated Eliza disrespectfully regardless of her transformation. He
sees her as an inferior being even though he himself transformed her into a lady and
worked hard on that transformation. We can conclude that what matters for him while
interacting with a woman is not her social class. What he is concerned with is a
woman’s gender.
Now that the reader understands the level of Eliza’s abjectification as a liminal
being by Higgins, it is functional to explain the basis of Higgins’ being the ultimate
abjectifier for Eliza. Throughout his life, he has a distant relationship with women. He
states that

45
 HIGGINS. I find that the moment I let myself make friends with a woman, I become
selfish and tyrannical. Women upset everything. When you let them into your life,
you find that the woman is driving at one thing and you’re driving at another. (29)

This quotation helps us understand Higgins’ character a bit more as it shows how
Higgins abjectify a woman, not only Eliza, in a broader sense. As a male, he has a bias
towards woman contributing to his abjectification. He interprets having different
characteristics between two individuals negatively. Thus,, his prejudice against
women adds up to Eliza’s being an abject.
Moreover, at the end of the play, he states that he treats a duchess as if she was a flower
girl (Shaw, 2004: 77). This statement is very confusing because Higgins is the one
who wants to work on the transformation of Eliza like a laboratory rat and he acts upon
it by spending a lot of time with her. However, after all, a woman’s social class does
not matter to him because in his eyes, a higher class woman is equal to a flower girl.
Higgins here use the term flower girl to degrade a woman by showing the
juxtaposition. He implies that no matter a woman’s class, he sees them as inferior
beings because of their gender and treats them accordingly.
In final, during a conversation with Mrs. Higgins, he says to his mother thathe
can’t be bothered with young women because his idea of a loveable woman is
something as like his mother as possible (43). Even though Higgins abjectify women,
he implies that he would have a romantic relationship with an older woman with a very
similar personality of his mother. The reader can grasp the fact that even though a
subject ostracizes an entity -in our case, women- by abjectifying it, it cannot
completely annihilate the entity from his own perception and his world. At one point,
abject and the subject meet. Fatefully, the subject and the object are intermingled with
each other, unable to break free.
To sum up, the reader is now able to intelligibly understand how Eliza is
consistently abjectified and liminalized by Higgins, Mrs. Pearce and even her father
from the beginning until the end of the play.
As an abject, she poses a threat to Higgins and Pickering, however, intrigued
by her oddness, they want to work on her and transform her. In the meantime, Higgins’
helper Mrs. Pearce does not respect her and even degrades her just as Higgins.
Moreover, her father sees her as an abject. He only comes to Higgin’s house just to
take the money, not her daughter. He abjects Eliza, does not even insist on bringing
her back home, and he tries to take advantage of her by selling her to buy drinks. As a

46
liminal being, she tries to fit into being a higher class lady, however she fails to do so.
Combined with her lower class roots, higher class knowledge and rules confuses her.
She does not know where she stands and she always feels stuck because of the
liminality.
Considering all of these discussions with the help of the quotations from
Pygmalion, as a lower class female, Eliza is proven to be a liminal abject in two levels.
She comes to be a broken individual, because her journey starts with her abjectification
and continues with her liminality between the two social classes. In the end, she is left
to her own fate in a terrible condition like an abandoned baby.

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V. CONCLUSION

Miss Julie and Pygmalion might seem significantly different to the reader in
terms of the characters and storyline; however, when the plays are analyzed and
discussed within the frameworks of abjection and liminarity theory, the reader sees
that both of the plays conclude in the protagonists’ downfall. What is interesting about
both of the plays and their ending are that they carry a large number of similarities and
differences. In addition, in chapter III and IV, the playwrights’ thoughts about female
gender are explained. After these chapters, the reader presumes that August
Strindberg’s and Bernard Shaw’s understanding of the notion of gender equality and
their criticism of the topic crucially differ from each other. Notwithstanding, as a result
of Strindberg’s statements and Shaw’s solution in regards to gender inequality, there
is only one outcome: the female gender is continually subject to abjectification and
liminality. Therefore, it is no surprise that the plays end detrimentally for Julie and
Eliza even though their paths are different. For that reason, the plays are compared
through their similarities and differences with one another, and, as a result, the
impossibility of their emancipation is proved. However, along with the comparison of
Miss Julie and Pygmalion, comparison of Strindberg and Shaw must be done so as to
understand the motives behind the plays.
Shaw and Strindberg have their own concepts about men and women. Starting
with Strindberg, he suggests that men created civilization and culture. As for women,
he argues that women are inferior and their only roles are to give birth and stay at
home. Moreover, their yearning to be equal with men is dangerous for men, for after
a woman tries to assert herself into that civilization, the man’s works are at the risk of
destruction by a woman.
Nevertheless, Shaw does not state that women are inferior. Instead, he suggests
gender equality. However, while suggesting gender equality, he creates a notion as
Life Force. In his own notion, while he suggests that women should be emancipated,
he attributes only biological tasks to women. In other words, he implies that women
are the biological backbones, men are the structural backbones of the society.
Moreover, Shaw also suggests that it is man who has created civilization, culture, and

48
other social constructs and notions requiring intellectuality. Grace Davis discusses
that, according to Shaw, “ There is another stream of the Life Force which is . . .the
force of genius is interested in developing the intellect of man, to provide the brains
for the life which woman is interested in perpetuating” (1913: 70). Therefore, the
reader can observe how these notions of his are applied to Miss Julie. Higgins, for
example, is an intellectual linguist, trying to educate Eliza.
Nevertheless, we can also observe that Eliza is not depicted as a fully
traditional woman, her main concern is not to give birth and stay in the domestic realm.
She is willing to be educated by Higgins to provide a better life for herself by selling
flowers in the florist shop.
In terms of comparing the plays, there are a number of similarities. For
example, both male characters, Jean and Mr. Higgins exploit Julie and Eliza for their
own benefits. Jean manipulates Julie for his sexual pleasures, and an opportunity to go
to Romania to buy the Count title, therefore, for climbing up social position.
Furthermore, Mr. Higgins exploits Eliza in terms of conducting his experiment. Eliza
is only a tool in the eyes of Higgins on whom he is going to work to prove that he is
good at his work. Her having higher class values does not mean anything for him. The
only thing he cares about is whether he will be successful in his experiment of turning
a lower class woman into a higher class woman through speech, physical appearance,
and manners.
In both of the plays, the women protagonists unconsciously slip into their own
classes on some instances. Eliza, for example, while trying to make a small talk as
Higgins taught around higher classes, forgets that she should do so, instead, she blurts
out and lengthily talks -about her aunt’s dying of influenza and how people might have
poisoned her- , which higher classes do not approve of. As in Julie’s case, she orders
Jean to kiss her foot, and kiss her hand and say thank you. These examples subtly
demonstrate their liminality.
Another thing Julie and Eliza share in common is that both of them are
ostracized through their classes, and abjectified accordingly. Kristine, Jean, and the
villagers imply that Julie’s behaviours are unacceptable as a higher class woman. She
shouldn’t dance or be seen with a lower class man. However, she is even abjectified
by lower class Jean is that even a lower class woman would not have pre-marital sex.
As a result, she does not belong to the higher class, nor the lower class. Similarly, Eliza

49
is ostracized by the employer(s) of the flower shop and Mr. Higgins because she is a
lower class woman, whose manners are not acceptable as they are not neat in the
society. However, when she is transformed into a higher class woman, she is still
ostracized by Higgins, for she is still expected to serve him.
Moreover, both of the characters are dehumanized by the man. Because she
has had sex with a lower class man, Julie is compared to an animal by Jean. In addition
to Julie, Eliza is dehumanized as a “baggage” by Higgins and he even says that he
wantsMmrs. pearce to take the baggage out. The subjects further abjectify Julie and
Eliza by turning them into non-human entities
Both of the characters are not thoroughly accepted or respected. Julie is not
respected by Jean because of her sexual act. She has no value in the eyes of him, he
even utters that ‘even’ a lower class woman would not have sex with a man. Moreover,
he does not accept him as a person with integrity and sanity as he always calls her
queer and crazy. Eliza is not respected by Higgins, because for him, a woman’s social
class is of no use therefore her transforming into a new class does not matter on his
mind; because he would not talk to a woman in good terms either way; instead, he
chooses to treat every woman impolitely. However she is not accepted because
Higgins still does not recognize her as higher class, The last scene of the play shows
us that Higgins only wants Eliza in his house because she might help him with his
insignificant, daily errands like answering phones or bringing him his slippers.
Another reason for their abjectification by Jean and Higgins is their social
classes. Even though Julie is a higher class, and Eliza is a lower class woman, Jean
and Higgins are obsessed with their social classes. Jean always states that Julie has to
act like a genuine higher class woman. As for Higgins, as a linguist, from the first
moment he sees Eliza in the street, he gets intrigued to find a chance to work on her
lower class dialect because it would be advantageous for his ego, as she will be the
proof he is good at his work.
Furthermore, both of these characters are objectified. Jean objectifies Julie in
terms of having sex. He does not have sex with her because he likes her, he does so
because he wants to meet his sexual needs. On the other hand, Eliza is objectified by
three men: Mr. Doolitle, Higgins and Pearce. Her father, Mr. Doolitle, objectifies her
body by trying to sell her to Higgins. Higgins and Pearce also objectify her as their
puppets in the garden party. They show her off with pride as their masterpiece: she has

50
now transformed into a lady. In general, Julie and Eliza are both abjected from
different points.
Even though there are similarities between the plays, there are also striking
differences. For example, Julie is constantly called crazy by Jean and we do not
observe any sympathy Jean shows towards Julie, instead, he shows his discontent
about her while talking to Kristine at the beginning of the play. Moreover, he talks to
Julie herself about how disgusted he is with her: “Menial’s whore, lackey’s harlot, shut
your mouth and get out of here!” (Strindberg, n.d.: 94). In contrast, Higgins says to
his mother that Eliza is like a parrot taking everything he tries to teach her, and at the
last scene, he states that he got accustomed to her voice. Even though he wants her to
utilize her as his helper, he starts to like her personality.
In addition, the women’s parents’ notions and concepts about women differ.
Julie’s mother defies men’s superiority and her father has got no effect on her
upbringing, he is not mentioned apart from his social status. As for Eliza’s parents, her
father does not see any problem with presenting the idea of selling his own daughter
to a man for profit, which implies he sees a woman, even her daughter, as a good to
present to a higher class men. His mindset is that any man can be the owner of a woman
in exchange for a good deal of money; in addition, Eliza’s mother does not have a big
effect on her identity, she is the absent mother figure.
Miss Julie and Pygmalion were written 25 years apart, the former in 1888, the
latter in 1913. August Strindberg and George Bernard Shaw are undoubtedly two of
the most influential writers of their time due to their mindset and artistic skills.
Accordingly, both Miss Julie and Pygmalion are distinctive plays for the reason that
they blatantly show the realities of their time. The reader observes two different
women belonging to opposite social classes. Regardless of their differences, they both
suffer from the society in which they live in, through different paths. However, both
of them are abjectified; thus they become abjects in society. According to Kristeva’s
abjection theory, the abject is an entity or a concept which an individual removes from
himself in order to survive in the way that he wants to. In order to construct an integral
identity or values, or a functional culture, an individual has to go through the process
of rejection and expulsion of the notions or entities that confuses him. The first abject,
therefore, is the mother because the baby and the mother have to separate themselves
from one another, both physically and psychologically. For that reason, the mother, as

51
a woman, is introduced as the first abject to the individual and the first abject’s gender
plays a vital role throughout the individual’s entire life. The woman as a mother is the
outcast now. As the individual grows up, other than his mother, he continues to get rid
of any negative concept that he does not want to see in himself; or example, he disposes
of dirt because he does not want to have it on himself. However, the interesting and
shocking function of the abject is that it does not have a border. For instance, even if
an individual, the subject, expels an entity as an abject, it does not mean that the subject
is free from it for the rest of his life. The abject always threatens the subject because
of its fluid existence. For that reason, the subject is forever doomed to be horrified and
threatened by the abject for fear of its infecting him.
In both of the plays, Julie and Eliza are abjectified. Julie is consistently
abjectified by Kristine, Jean, and other people in the village, for according to them,
she is a crazy person who does not act according to her class. As a higher class woman,
she dances with a lower class man, and have sex with the another. She does not respect
the constructs of the patriarchal society. Jean, Julie and the other villagers abjectify
her in order to protect themselves, however, they are never able to isolate themselves
from Julie. Kristine and Jean work as Julie’s and The Count’s servants, and the
villagers are socially vulnerable because they are socially exposed to her, in other
words, they cannot run away from her existence. Even though they gossip about her
and talk foul behind her back, they cannot completely remove her from their lives.
Therefore, Julie, as the abject, threatens them with her existence and behaviour at all
times. The reason why Jean, Kristine and the villagers are threatened is that there is
always the possibility of abject’s penetrating into their lives. Because of its power, the
abject is regularly feared by the subject since there is a constant risk of ‘deteriotarion’
for their existence. Along with mental and physical abjectification, in the last scene of
the play, Julie is ultimately abjected. She is sent to cut her throat by Jean. The last
scene is striking, for Julie is physically abjected, too. To wrap up, the two most
important aspects contributing to Julie’s abjectification are her gender and her
‘madness.’ Because of them, her most significant roles in Miss Julie are to show how
an abject does not have any limits and how it carries the risk of corrupting a subject
and a culture.
In Pygmalion, Eliza is perpetually abjected, too. Mr. Higgins and Mrs. Pearce
abjectify her in terms of her being a lower class. Moreover, Higgins abjectifies her

52
because of her gender. Higgins sees her only as an experimental tool. He is intrigued
by her dialect since it is a part of his profession. He does not want to upgrade Eliza’s
social class because he wants to make her life better; instead, without second thinking,
he wants to exploit a human being as a laboratory rat just to prove that he can alter an
individual’s social class by changing her dialect, manners, and physical appearence.
He does not even care what will happen to Eliza because he does not see her as a proper
human being. Because of her social class, Pearce and Higgins calls Eliza a baggage, a
garbage bag, and they suggest him to go back to her gutter. Moreover, Pearce does not
even want to let her talk to Higgins because she thinks a man like him would not talk
to a foul-looking lower class person. She physically abjectifies her by trying to get rid
of her like she is throwing out her trash. However, even though Higgins and Pearce,
the subjects, ostracize Eliza as an abject, they interact with her. The three stay in the
same household and spend time together. The border defying abject exists in the
subjects’ life, no matter the motive behind is. Moreover, because the abject threatens
the subject, Higgins says that he even got accustomed to her voice, which means that
no matter how hard the subject tries to expel the abject completely from himself, it is
impossible. Those aspects of the abject are what frighten the subjects until the end. In
addition to Higgins’ abjectifying Eliza in terms of her social class, he also abjectifies
her because of her gender. He never treats her politely, and when Eliza asks her if his
attitude towards her would be different if she were a higher class, he implies that his
treatment would be the same because he does not have sympathy towards woman other
than his mother. Again, she expels Eliza because she is a woman. Therefore, Julie and
Eliza are both abjects as a result of different properties they carry within themselves.
Julie and Eliza are liminalized and they exist in the liminal realm throughout
the plays. We have argued that concepts or entities not belonging to one certain sphere
is a liminal entity. They exist in the in-between stage of two opposite spheres without
belonging to neither one, and because the liminal entity does not have only one certain
sphere to exist, it is not welcomed by the society which has constructed itself through
the idea of borders, classes, and rules. Just as the abject, the liminal also defies borders,
and both of them threaten individuals and society because of their fluid nature. In Miss
Julie and Pygmalion, Julie and Eliza are the liminal beings. Julie is liminalized in terms
of her social class, gender and sanity. Having been born as a higher class woman, Julie
defies behaving as a higher class lady. She drinks and dances with lower class man

53
while having fun. Her manners are seen as extravagant for a higher class lady.
However, she is not regarded as a lower class woman because of her ancestry. In
addition, she gives orders to Jean to make him do her wishes. She is a complex
individual who does not belong to one social class. Moreover, she is in liminal state
because of her sanity. At times, she behaves as if she is mentally ill, nevertheless, she
also behaves like a person with integrity. It is observed that she is mentally restless,
Notwithstanding, she is not an insane person. She is like every human being who exists
in the world with difficulties. She is also in a liminal state because of her gender and
her manners. As a woman, she is expected to be passive, quiet, innocent and elegant.
In contrast to social expectations, she is acting assertively and expressing herself and
her desires loudly. She wants to have sex with Jean, so she gets intimate with him and
does so. She combines complex characteristics within herself and acts however she
likes to act. As a result, she is always in a liminal state, which makes her both free and
ostracized.
Eliza is also a liminal being because of her social class. Higgins tries to
transform her into a higher class lady. Before he starts to work on her, he wants his
helper to burn her clothes to annihilate her social class. After her clothes are burned,
her lower class identity is both physically and figuratively burned too. However, she
is left with no class because the transformation process took six months. Moreover,
during her transformation process, when she is in a conversation with other higher
classes at Mrs. Higgins' house, she starts to talk arbitrarily about the weather forecast
as if she recited what she is going to say. Furthermore, not long after the arbitrary talk,
she talks lengthily about her aunt’s disease and how she was probably poisoned.
Because higher classes hold a conversation through only small talk in Pygmalion, her
lengthy talk juxtaposed with the small talk of the higher class. In final, after the process
ends, she is not happy with the outcome. She talks about how she would prefer to go
back to selling flowers, for she does not know what to do anymore. She gets stuck
between the concepts and morals of lower class and higher class, as a result, she gets
restless and hopeless. As a higher class lady, she cannot go back to her lower class life.
However, she also states that she feels lonely as a higher class because she does not
have any genuine person who would be her friend. For all of these reasons, Eliza has
become a liminal being defying borders and wandering around hopelessly.

54
 In conclusion, with the help of abjection theory and liminality theory, the
extent to which Julie and Eliza have been abjected and liminalized is explained and
discussed.
The main reason why these characters are abjected is because of their gender.
Being women, they are abjected by Jean and Higgins. Both of the woman protagonists
threaten the ‘normal’ male protagonists by disgusting and challenging them. Following
that, their social classes and how they are expected to behave according to their classes
contribute to their liminalization. Both Julie and Eliza experience class struggles. Julie
defies higher class and its social values, however, she occasionally orders Jean to obey
her commands such as kissing her feet. Thus, even though she does not favour higher
class and its values, at times, she cannot help herself act like a higher class individual.
Moreover, she is not respected as a higher class woman by a lower class man. For
those reasons, she is left class-less because people such as Jean and Kristine state that
even a lower class women would not behave like her. Thus, she is a liminal abject. As
for Eliza, she goes through a transformation process from a lower class to a higher
class lady with the help of Higgins. However, despite the fact that Higgins himself has
experimented on Eliza to alter her dialect and manners to fit her into a higher class
lady, he never appreciates or accepts her as who she has become. In the eyes of him,
Eliza is still a lower class woman who is expected to run his errands in spite of all the
education she has got from him. Moreover, Eliza also feels extra agitated as a result of
that transformation, for now she feels stuck and restricted, because for her, it is
impossible to go back to her former life as a flower girl. Nevertheless, she does not
feel comfortable as a higher class lady because she eventually understands that she
does not mean anything to her surrounding apart from her class. Having been abjected
by her gender and liminalized by social classes, Eliza is a liminal abject.
To conclude, even though they belong to entirely opposite social classes,
neither Julie nor Eliza are able to escape from being abjected and liminalized due to
threatening standardized societal norms since society and its components expel and
ostracize the individuals in order to save itself. For that reason, Julie’s and Eliza’s
opposite social classes do not retain them from being similarly ostracized by society.

55
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RESUME

Name Surname: Şeyma Günsel ÇELEN

EDUCATION:

Bachelor: 2019, Istanbul University, Faculty of Letters, English Language and

Literature.

Master: 2022, Istanbul Aydin University, Graduate Institute of Social Sciences,

English Language and Literature

PUBLICATIONS, PRESENTATIONS AND PATENTS:

 ÇELEN, Ş. G. (2022, June). Jack’s Chaotic Enthronement Victory in Lord of

the Flies: Chaos Theory in Golding’s Novel, International Journal of Media
Culture and Literature.

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