My Fair Lady and Pygmalion

 In the 1964 musical movie “My Fair Lady”, based on a stage musical from 1956, based on a stage play from 1913, female lead Eliza Doolittle returns to Professor Henry Higgins in the end and a ‘happily ever after’ is suggested. In the original stage musical, though, this did not happen and Eliza decided that she didn’t need to stay with a man who didn’t care about her, her worries, her wants, or her needs.

 

Both versions make it pretty clear that Higgins deserves to be left behind. He’s egoistical, arrogant, and misogynist, looking down on women and especially on women who have a heavy lower-class accent, such as Eliza. Eliza, on the other hand, does see the use of bettering herself - even if her original dream is not to dance at the embassy ball, but to find work in a flower shop instead of selling her flowers on the streets. It’s both a simple and, with some proper phonetic training to do away with her Cockney accent, an attainable dream.

Higgins treats Eliza badly, despite her making all the effort. It’s clear he, despite all his knowledge of phonetics, can’t understand how hard it is to unlearn an accent one has spoken for all of one’s life. He also sees all of her eventual success (she can pass for a duchess at the embassy ball) as his doing and his alone, as if Eliza hadn’t had anything to do with it.

It’s no wonder that, under these circumstances, Eliza doesn’t want to stay with him. They have an argument and she leaves his house. Yet, Eliza is in a difficult state - she no longer fits with her past, can’t just return to the streets where she lived. Her father (due to Higgins’ meddling) has changed his life, too. She isn’t satisfied with her other suitor’s actions (all talk, no action). When she ends up with Higgins’ mother, the two women quickly agree upon how Higgins did her wrong - there is, simply speaking, also no reason for Eliza to return to Higgins, no matter how his opinion of her has changed.

Yet, the movie was a movie and people tend to expect a certain outcome, so the return of Eliza was added to the story and a happy end (more for Higgins than for her) was created.

In its original version - Eliza leaving Higgins for good -, the musical makes much more sense, given how Higgins treats her.

 

The story of Pygmalion, which was used as the title for the original stage play, has a man who despises women fall in love with an ivory statue he’s created, wishing for her to be real. His prayer is answered by Aphrodite, who makes the statue come to life for him, so he can live with her.

In the original stage play, the statue is replaced by a beggar girl whom a king wants to take as his wife and thus educates to make her fit the position (as Higgins does with Eliza, if for other reasons). The story is then shifted to Edwardian England in “My Fair Lady” in 1956, with the woman becoming a lowest-class flower-seller and the man becoming a renown professor of phonetics. The general manners still feature in the education, but making Eliza speak ‘like a duchess’ (aka without discernible accent) takes the top spot.

While the original Pygmalion got to keep the woman he created (and isn’t training a woman to take the position as your wife very much like ‘creating’ someone, too?), this is not the case with Higgins - and for good reason. Pygmalion (both in the myth and in the stage play) created his significant other out of love, wanted to be with her, have her by his side. Higgins created ‘Duchess’ Eliza to prove he could. He cared none for her feelings, her future, or whatever damage he might do to her prospects with his actions. He wanted to prove that he was right and that was all which counted (hence his shameless ‘look how well I did’ song after the ball). Therefore, it makes sense that he, unlike Pygmalion, wouldn’t stay with his creation. She became uninteresting to him the moment he reached his goal.

That Higgins then realizes that he has grown used to her (perhaps even loves her), is his problem, not hers. He’s made his position clear, Eliza takes the hint, and goes to find out what to do with the rest of her life (Kim Newman’s “Angels of Music” suggests that her training was so perfect that she could emulate everyone afterwards, becoming a perfect spy, but that’s not canon). It’s a much more satisfying end, teaching him a lesson as well, than the one from the movie.

 

What lesson does it teach to the audience, though? Well, that Higgins is a jerk, clearly. It also teaches the women something, though, especially in the original musical - that if you are with a jerk and you realize he doesn’t care about you, unless it’s how you relate to him, drop that guy and find someone else, even if it’s hard. Men can learn not to be like Higgins - or they might lose what they took for granted. Unfortunately, the movie version erases these lessons, instead teaching women to accept that their husband/boyfriend is a jerk and live with it and men that it’s fine to treat your wife/girlfriend badly. The first pair of lessons is good, the second is not.

 

I think we need a new version of this story on screen - a new movie version of “My Fair Lady”, no matter whether as a musical (that might not fly, right after “Cats”) or as a regular movie. This time, though, it needs to end the right way - the way the stage musical ended. Eliza must walk away from the abusive jerk who promised her a better life, but doesn’t care about her future, once he’s proven his point. If that leaves him missing her and longing for her, all the better - that’s the lesson he has to learn.

This way of ending the story of Pygmalion, not with him getting the ‘perfect’ wife, but with the woman walking away from him because he didn’t care about her wants and needs, can be a strong message and can potentially create strong character arcs for a story, both for a female and for a male protagonist.

 

If you want to write a relationship story and you don’t have a ‘happily ever after’ in mind, consider “My Fair Lady” and consider showing that training a woman to be your perfect wife can backfire hard on a man. It might make for an interesting and challenging story to write and something more unusual to read.