Reflexive pronouns.

1. Reflexive pronouns have the categories of person, number, and gender in the third person singular.

	1st person	2nd person	3rd person
SINGULAR	myself	yourself1	himself, herself, itself
PLURAL	ourselves	yourselves	themselves

¹ The archaic pronoun of the second person singular is thyself.

2. Reflexive pronouns refer to the subject of the sentence in which they are used, indicating that the action performed by the doer passes back to him or is associated with him.

In the sentence they are usually used as direct objects.

In that moment of emotion he betrayed the Forsyte in him — for­got himself, his interests, his property — was capable of almost anything... (Galsworthy) (OBJECT)

Reflexive pronouns may be used as predicatives.

When she came back she was herself again. (Hardy) (PREDI­CATIVE)

Reflexive pronouns preceded by a preposition may be used as indi­rect prepositional objects, as attributes and as adverbial modifiers.

He could not see that it would be better to make her feel that she was competing with herself... (Dreiser) (PREPOSITIONAL INDIRECT OBJECT)

"I fancied you looked a little downcast when you came in," she ventured to observe, anxious to keep away from the subject of herself. (Hardy) (ATTRIBUTE)

If June did not like this, she could have an allowance and live by herself. (Galsworthy) (ADVERBIAL MODIFIER OF MANNER)

Reflexive pronouns may be used to form the reflexive voice (in this case reflexive pronouns are structural words):

Undressing again, she washed herself intensively... (Galswor­thy)

And then I dressed myself and came away to find you. (Hardy)

In Modern English, however, reflexive pronouns are not normally used after the verbs wash, dress, shave:

I got up, shaved, washed and dressed.

Note that they are not used after the verbs feel, relax, concentrate, meet.

I feel great after having completed this work.

What time shall we meet?

Sometimes reflexive pronouns are used emphatically:

Moreover, Soames himself disliked the thought of that. (Galswor­thy)

She was never idle, it seemed to him, and he envied her now that he himself was idle nearly all his time. (Galsworthy) I'm not going to do it for you. You can do it yourself.