I'll tell you why!
That water was BOILING!
Look at all that steam that was coming out of the bathtub! The whole room was filled with white clouds! That's how hot the water was!
If people were trying to force me into scalding hot water, I'd be screaming for my life as well!
It may be hard to believe for us modern types, but coming from the lower class, she may never have had a "proper" bath in life. Certainly, there would have been no indoor plumbing where she grew up. Most likely there was a corrugated tin container you squatted in and someone who would heat several buckets of water and pour them over you. And that would probably only be for special occasions (birthday? baptism? wedding?) I'll bet she usually had a washcloth and a bath towel to take a "whore's bath." Young'uns, that means swipe yer pits, crotch and a--hole!
"May I bone your kipper, Mademoiselle?"
I saw a movie, and I think it was "The Hunchback of Notre Dame" where the reigning Monarch was having his first bath in two years, ugh!
sharehaving his first bath in two years, ugh!No, because:
It's a bit exaggerated. a weekly bath was quite common in working class households, a tin tub in front of the kitchen fire would be filled with hot water, and it is unlikely that a bath would really have been such a shock to a girll ike Eliza.
shareI believe Liza was screaming for modesty reasons. There was some commentary on the exaggerated modesty of the "lower classes" (coming from inexperience with the finer things I guess) - whereas people with experience know you must remove your clothes to bathe properly. I believe women from Liza's background were more at risk of their reputations being ruined if they were immodest, since a lot of poor women were prostitutes. (I'm a good girl, I am!) It was a class difference thing. And of course, Higgins household paid her no mind and just put her into the bath and scrubbed away.
shareHave you any idea how COLD bathrooms used to be before central heating? I grew up in an unheated house, and in winter when you ran a bath the bathroom steamed up so badly you could hardly see the towel rail.
shareWe didn't have a bathroom until we got a council house when I was about 7. Before then, we had an outdoor toilet and no running hot water. When I was very little, I'd have a bath (filled from the kettle) in a tub on the rug in front of the fire. To have a proper bath, we'd visit my aunt's council flat, which had central heating, running hot water and a bath.
A kiss on the hand may be quite continental,
But Arkenstones are a girl's best friend…
We had one of those claw-foot bathtubs, which are now considered antiques. And yes, I can attest to the bathroom ALWAYS being the coldest room. The first "shower" we had was when my father bought a footlong hose that attached to the tub's faucet and you held the other end over your head and got spritzed.
May I bone your kipper, Mademoiselle?
"my father bought a footlong hose that attached to the tub's faucet and you held the other end over your head and got spritzed."
You must have been very, very short people.
When the play Pygmalion was first produced, a real flower girl called Eliza Keefe wrote to the Daily Express giving her views on the play. She had this to say about the bath scene:
"I didn't like Mrs Patrick Campbell's astonishment at having a bath. Why, we always ave a bath once a week. Some of em may go for a fortnight, but they're only a few."