Character study of Shirley Valentine.

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Character study of Shirley Valentine

At the opening of the play we see Shirley Bradshaw, a typical middle aged housewife being taken for granted. She is treated as a domestic slave rather than a person. People assume that that she will do whatever they want her to do whenever and all they have to do is click their fingers. As a person Shirley feels isolated and alone, she has no one that she feels she can talk to properly. She has got all these feelings locked up inside that she can not let out because no one will listen. To show how desperate she is, she ends up talking to a wall in her kitchen:

(E.g. I like a glass of wine when I'm doin' the cookin; - Don't I wall? Don't I like a glass of wine when I'm preparing the evening meal?)

Shirley thinks she is worth nothing. When she looks in the mirror she sees the boring middle-aged Shirley Bradshaw. She has no self-confidence. She longs to be the old Shirley Valentine. The woman everyone wanted to be the girl at school that broke basically every rule, the person that went out