ACT 2 WK BK NO 1 PGS 116 TO 118

ACT 2 WK BK NO 1 PGS 116 TO 118

(i)                  Nicola warns Louka about the way she behaves with her mistresses : Catherine and her daughter Raina. Nicola feels that Louka is disrespectful to them. We had been told in the introduction to Louka in Act 1 that she is “so defiant that her servility to Raina is almost insolent. She is afraid of Catherine, but even with her goes as far as she dares”. Nicola as the senior servant has seen this and is warning her of such behaviour.

(ii)                Louka is insolent to Raina. For example when Raia had told her in Act 1 that they must obey Catherine and leave the windows closed, when Louka shows her how to keep the window opened, Louka makes a “grimace” at Raina and goes out swaggering showing her disrespect to her. In showing Raina how to keep to keep the window opened she was actually encouraging Raina to be disobedient to her mother.

(iii)               The “mistress” Nicola is talking about in this extract is the mistress of the house – Catherine Petkoff, the wife of Paul Petkoff and the mother of Raina.

       Nicola says that Catherine is very “grand”, that means large hearted and trusting and is not a person who is suspicious of her servants. But Catherine is very decisive if she suspects that any servants is defying her and will immediately dismiss such a servant.

(iv)              According to Nicola, if Catherine would suspect that Louka was defying her she would immediately dismiss her.

(v)                Louka says that she will continue to defy her mistress because she says that she does not “care for her”. Even though Louka is a servant Shaw has portrayed her as a more modern working class girl for whom class has no meaning. She believes in her own self worth – what the then upper classes might term “proud” and “defiant”. Louka will continue to act in ways which emphasise her equality with especially Raina.

This tells us that some people might think of Louka as proud and defiant, but others might consider her as a strong modern girl challenging the traditional hierarchical structure.

(vi)               Nicola is a man who lives by the traditional conventions of society. He is a servant and he plans on being a trustworthy and faithful servant. He believes that his master and mistress are above his stature in society and he accepts it as such without any resentment.

         Louka, on the other hand, does not accept the conventional norms of society. She strongly believes that she is only doing a job and that job does not make her less of a person than the people for whom she works. She is thus a modern girl.