"I shouldn't mind a black eye--I've had one before."
Who says the black eye was given her by a man? Eliza doesn't, Shaw doesn't, and Alan Jay Lerner doesn't. Have we actually become so Victorian once again that we can no longer believe that a woman working as a costermonger might give another a black eye--for poaching on "her" territory, perhaps, or for suspicion of poaching on "her" man? (Not that Eliza has ever actually had any lovers: she's 18, and there's no reason to suspect she's lying when she repeatedly insists she's a "good" girl.) But more to the point, it was generally assumed in those days--and generally assumed correctly--that everybody of every gender who had grown up in the mean streets of London had come by a black eye or two in the course of that process. It didn't necessarily imply child abuse at home. Wherever the incident took place, and whoever delivered the blow, it was one of the many ills caused by grinding poverty and obvious injustice, which together breed violence. |
