My Fair Lady is such a classic musical that it is difficult to escape its influence when reading George Bernard Shaw’s play, Pygmalion today. Eliza Doolittle keeps turning into Audrey Hepburn, Henry Higgins into Rex Harrison, and Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loew’s score plays in the background. Much of the film’s screenplay stays close to the original, and the characterizations are so similar that the film may at first seem a faithful adaptation of the play. There are, however, major differences between Shaw’s play and George Cukor’s musical which become more evident when the play and film are compared. Nigel Alexander goes so far as to say that “neither the directors of the film nor the author of the musical version understood Shaw’s Pygmalion” (Shaw, p. 21). It will be argued here that the film makers fundamentally misunderstood Eliza’s development after Higgins taught her to be a lady; or, to put it another way, the kind of woman Pygmalion’s Galatea, when given life, actually becomes.
The myth of Pygmalion and Galatea tells the story of a Cypriot sculptor who loses interest in women when he witnesses the behavior of local prostitutes, but then falls in love with the statue he carves out of ivory. With the intercession of Venus the statue comes alive, after which the sculptor and his creation marry and have a son, Paphos. Higgins is also a confirmed bachelor who has a low opinion of women but that is mostly because he admires his mother so much. In the film and in the play, at least in the beginning, his interest in Eliza is scientific in nature, not romantic. He explains himself in the play by telling Colonel Pickering, also a bachelor and a scientist, that “women upset everything. When you let them into your life, you find that the woman is driving at one thing and you’re driving at another.” Shaw’s Higgins supposes that “the woman wants to live her own life; and the man wants to live his; and each tries to drag the other on to the wrong track. One wants to go north and the other south; and the result is that both have to go east, though they both hate the east wind” (Shaw, p. 23). In the film Lerner’s lyrics, even though they are witty and highly polished, justify the professor’s celibacy by drawing on the kind of sexual stereotypes that would have revolted Shaw. In the song “I’m Just an Ordinary Man,” marriage is likened to the Spanish Inquisition and a noose around a man’s neck, women are accused of jabbering and chattering too much, of invading a man’s privacy and taking over his home, and Higgins claims that when a man wants to talk of Keats and Milton “she only wants to talk about love” (metrolyrics). Shaw’s acknowledgement of the equality of men and women is manifested in Eliza’s development into Higgins’s equal; as he says, “you and I and Pickering will be three old bachelors together instead of only two men and a silly girl” (Shaw, p. 71). Lerner’s idea that women exist only to frustrate men carries over into an Eliza who, at the end of the film, is still expected to fetch Higgins’s slippers.
This fundamental sexism shows in the way the film focuses on Eliza’s transformation from flower girl to duchess, beginning with an unpromising series of pronunciation lessons that go on for so long that Higgins’s domestic staff beg him to stop. She makes no progress at all until one day, at three in the morning, Higgins gives her the pep talk she needs to get her over the last obstacle, and she begins to pronounce her vowels and aspirates perfectly, the suggestion being that she makes the extra effort to please him. Her first test, or rather the first test of his ability as a teacher, comes when she attends the races at Ascot where she might have passed except for her spontaneous cry of “move your bloomin’ arse!” to urge on her horse. The next test comes at an embassy where she dances with a prince, and a rival phonetics expert declares that she is of Hungarian nobility. Alexander calls this “a variant of the story of Cinderella” in which a commoner is revealed to be a princess in real life, “a romantic transformation, while Shaw’s play is the story of a practical and possible one” (p. 21). Shaw did not believe that a higher social rank made one human being better than any other, but he did believe that life would improve if the English would teach their children to speak their own language. When his Higgins teaches Eliza to do so, she is transformed from a flower girl into an independent woman. The film, on the other hand, turns her into precisely the kind of woman Higgins sings about in “I’m an Ordinary Man” who will go on to the “enthralling fun of overhauling you.”
In the play Eliza is tested in Mrs. Higgins’s home where she has a conversation with three members of the impoverished gentility, Mrs. Eynsford Hill, her daughter, Clara and her smitten son, Freddy. Professor Higgins has earlier observed that he will “have to consider not only how a girl pronounces, but what she pronounces” (Shaw, p. 37), and on the first test Eliza pronounces her words in the manner of the upper class but her choice of words still reflects her origins. “What become of her new straw hat,” she asks the Eynsford Hills, “that should have come to me? Somebody pinched it; and what I say is, them as pinched it done her in” (Shaw 41). Higgins passes this off as the “new small talk” but her diction and meaning show that the transformation is far from complete. To Higgins the challenge is to create a new being; or, as he puts it, “to take a human being and change her into a quite different human being by creating a new speech for her. It’s filling up the deepest gulf that separates class from class and soul from soul” (Shaw, p. 45). It is made clear in the play that transforming Eliza’s soul is far more important than merely teaching her to pass for a lady. In the film, however, that point is never raised, although it is obvious that toward the end Eliza is a different person, one who thinks for herself and is able to hold her own in her discussions with her former teacher.
The film’s directors may have understood that point but may have chosen not to emphasize it so as to leave the romance intact. That is common practice when novels and plays are adapted for the screen and one that Shaw anticipated. He added a sequel to the play to prevent a romantic interpretation of its ending after seeing the actors take charge of the play’s interpretation. In the sequel he sketches in what will happen after the play ends. Eliza will not marry the professor, a point left ambiguous in the film and in the play, but unambiguous in the sequel where Shaw writes:
Will she look forward to a lifetime of fetching Higgins’s slippers or to a
lifetime of Freddy fetching hers? There can be no doubt about the
answer. Unless Freddy is biologically repulsive to her, and
Higgins biologically attractive to a degree that overwhelms all
her other instincts, she will, if she marries either of them,
marry Freddy. (p. 74).
He goes on to say that Galatea would like to “just drag him [Pygmalion] off his pedestal and see him making love like any common man” (p. 80). This paradoxical statement turns Higgins into the statue and Galatea into the one who brings him to life, a transformation Shaw takes pains to show never happened. In the film, however, Higgins has been humanized by Eliza, as is shown by his inner struggle during the song “I’ve Grown Accustomed to Her Face” and his jealous rage at the idea of her marrying Freddy.
Higgins takes Eliza from a reflexive thinker to a reflective one, from a girl who can be persuaded with chocolates to a woman who makes up her own mind. This change has been effected through language but only in part. Eliza herself, in the play, attributes her transformation to the way Colonel Pickering behaved toward her. He addressed her as Miss Doolittle, stood up when she entered the room and generally treated her like a lady. Eliza says that “the difference between a lady and a flower girl is not how she behaves, but how she’s treated” (Shaw 62), a point omitted from the film but a crucial one in her transformation. It is when Eliza throws the slippers at Higgins’s face that the transformation is complete. Although outwardly she still behaves like the flower girl, quick to anger, responding without first thinking and often without understanding, she will admit in the ensuing discussion that she doesn’t understand Higgins’s statement, that she is too ignorant (Shaw, p. 50). From that point on she starts behaving less spontaneously but more rationally. Her triumph is behind her, and her two mentors are thinking about their next project. Now she is independent and must decide whether to go after Higgins or marry Freddy.
Another element that is downplayed in the film is Higgins’s abusive treatment of Eliza in the beginning of the play. He is more than merely insensitive toward the flower girl, but downright brutal. Several times he seems to be threatening her physically, saying he should “throw her out the window” (Shaw, p. 15), and telling his housekeeper, Mrs. Pearce to “take all her [Eliza’s] clothes off and burn them … and if she gives you any trouble, wallop her” (Shaw, p. 18). Eliza has no way of knowing whether he is serious or not and reacts accordingly, but not against the possibility of physical harm. Eliza comes from a subculture in which abuse and exaggerated threats are common; when she first meets Higgins, for example, she tells him he should be “stuffed with nails” (Shaw 12) for catching her in a lie; and the story she tells of her aunt being “done in” is another indication that Eliza the flower girl has a great deal of tolerance for abuse. She does feel sexual threatened, however, which is why she keeps protesting that “I’m a good girl I am!” In the film, Higgins may seem callous in his treatment of Eliza but the setting, homey, distinguished and scientific, along with the twinkle in his eye, helps her to understands that he does not mean her any real harm. The woman who emerges from the time spent in a more civilized environment does take abuse to heart but she can also fight back. Lisë Pederson, in her comparison of Pygmalion with The Taming of the Shrew, notes that Higgins’s bullying treatment of Eliza does not change even though she changes dramatically in the course of the play (p. 79). However, he does not want to bully her into submission; on the contrary, he likes her best when she fights back. He is the one who loses control when she threatens to teach others what he has taught her, a case of Galatea subduing Pygmalion, according to Pederson (p. 83).
The main difference between the play and the film is that in the play the main theme is always in focus, whereas the film offers many distractions from Eliza’s development. The songs and the lavish production numbers offer a mild satire on society and strengthen the film’s romantic side. The biggest deviation from the play takes place when Eliza dances with Higgins and Pickering in celebration of her having mastered the pronunciation exercises. After the dance, Higgins and Pickering leave the room, talking about the next phase, but Eliza is left alone in a romantic afterglow singing “I Could Have Danced All Night,” a song that could not possibly apply to Pickering, and therefore indicates she has fallen in love with Higgins. That alone makes the final scene in the film less ambiguous than the play’s ending, and all her protests after running away from Higgins’s house seem manipulative. In fact, after she is taken back from Mrs. Higgins’s house, the professor’s mother is heard to exclaim “Bravo, Eliza!” as though she has scored a triumph over her son.
By having Galatea fall in love with Pygmalion, the main point Shaw makes – that Higgins turns Eliza into a woman by teaching her her own language – is undermined. This is a Cinderella who throws the slippers in her prince’s face, says Charles A Berst, a Galatea who is beyond her maker’s control, and an Eve who recaptures her soul (p. 72). “Eliza has developed from spiritual infancy toward the subtle maturity of Mrs. Higgins, and her gentility is almost an integral part of her personality. She has achieved a true sense of union with society and, in the process, has found considerable spiritual freedom,” says Berst. In the film, however, her increased powers of articulation only make her more capable of manipulating her man into giving up his bachelor status.
Works Cited
- Alexander, Nigel. “The Play of Ideas.” Harold Bloom, ed. George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion. New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1988.
- Berst, Charles A. “Pygmalion: A Potboiler as Art.” Harold Bloom, ed. George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion. New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1988.
- Pedersen, Lisë. “The Taming of the Shrew vs. Shaw’s Pygmalion: Male Chauvinism vs. Women’s Lib?.” Harold Bloom, ed. George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion. New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1988.
- Shaw, George Bernard. Pygmalion. Sioux Falls, SD: NuVision Publications, 2008.