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    File: \DP\0192\01920.TXT         Thu May 19 22:14:25 1994
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Title:       Works of G. B. Shaw
Book:        Pygmalion
Author:      Shaw, George Bernard
Critic:      Rockman, Robert
Affiliation: Professor Of English And Drama, Bard College

Pygmalion: A Romance In Five Acts (1912): An Overview

Introduction

     In a Greek legend, Pygmalion, a sculptor and ruler of Cyprus, was known
for his dislike of women. But when he had carved an ivory statue of the
goddess Aphrodite, its charms so overwhelmed him that he fell in love with it.
The goddess answered his prayer to bring the statue to life, and he married
the women it contained, who was then named Galatea. Shaw's play is a variation
on this legend, with Professor Higgins as Pygmalion and Eliza Doolittle as
Galatea. The review of the play that follows adheres to the text found in the
edition of complete plays and not to the "reading version" which incorporates
scenes Shaw wrote for the 1938 film of Pygmalion.

Characters

Professor Henry Higgins

     A confirmed bachelor, about forty; a professor of phonetics.

Eliza Doolittle

     A Cockney flower girl, under twenty.

Alfred Doolittle

     Eliza's father, a dustman (trash collector).

Colonel Pickering

     Friend of Higgins; a retired officer.

Freddy Eynsford-Hill

     A pleasant young man of the upper class.

Mrs. Enysford-Hill

     His mother.

Miss Clara Eynsford-Hill

     His sister.

Mrs. Higgins

     Henry Higgins' mother.

Mrs. Pearce

     Higgins' housekeeper.

Parlormaid, A Bystander, and Pedestrians at Covent Garden in Act I.

Preface

     This preface was little to do with the play, and Shaw saves his remarks
on that for the section he calls the sequel to Pygmalion (see below, following
Act V). The prefatory material is mostly a description of Henry Sweet, a
professor of phonetics at Oxford, touches of whom are in the characterization
of Higgins in this play.

Act One

Setting

     Covent Garden, after the theatre. The porch of St. Paul's Church, during
a heavy summer rain.

     An assorted group of people stands in the porch of St. Paul's, huddling
there in protection against a sudden and heavy rainstorm. Mrs. Eynsford-Hill
and her daughter Clara look impatiently for Freddy Eynsford-Hill, whom they
have sent to find a cab. When he returns without one, they, complaining, send
him off again, and as he goes off a second time he collides with a flower girl
(Liza or Eliza) and spills her basket of wares. She calls after him
familiarly, quite by accident hitting upon his correct first name, then sits
on the curb to rearrange her flowers. Mrs. Eynsford-Hill, who has overheard
their very brief exchange and misunderstands it, wishes to know how this
poorly dressed and badly washed girl, with a thick Cockney accent, comes to
know her son, and so buys some flowers from her, over Clara's protest. The
flower girl explains, just as an elderly military-looking gentleman
(Pickering) rushes to the shelter of the porch. The girl tries to sell him a
flower. He refuses her, but gives her some small change anyway. She is warned
against taking the money by a bystander, who says there is a man taking notes
of everything she says. The girl is alarmed, fearing she will be reported by a
detective to the police and accused of addressing gentlemen for immoral
purposes; she begins to cry out and attract the attention of everyone in the
shelter of the porch.

     Now the notetaker (Professor Higgins) turns and tells her to be quiet,
then reads off in phonetic Cockney what she has been saying. Others intervene
and tell him to leave the girl alone. But the notetaker asks the girl a number
of questions that suggest he knows where she was born and where she comes
from, and he surprises some of the others, especially the elderly gentleman,
by telling them their locality. He does the same for the Eynsford-Hills, to
the annoyance of Clara, and then offers to find then a cab. But the rain has
stopped now, and mother and daughter make for the bus nearby as other
pedestrians move off, leaving the elderly-gentleman, the flower girl, and the
notetaker.

     Now the notetaker discloses that his profession is phonetics, the science
of speech, and that he makes his living by improving the accents of socially
ambitious people. He can, for example, take in hand this flower girl (all the
while complaining in "awful-sounding" Cockney) and in three months' time pass
her off as a duchess at an ambassador's garden party. Now the elderly
gentleman introduces himself as Colonel Pickering, author of Spoken Sanscrit,
and the notetaker proves to be Henry Higgins, author of Higgins' Universal
Alphabet. Each knows the other's work and wanted to meet. They go off to
discuss their interest in speech, but Higgins first throws the flower girl
some money. Freddy returns, having found a cab, but now the ladies have gone.
No matter. The flower girl sweeps by him and hires the cab for herself with
the money she has got that evening, leaving Freddy astonished and wondering.

Comment

     The primary interest of the audience in this act is usually in Higgins'
performance (almost a theatrical one, it is remarked). His identification of
people by their accents makes him seem a man of mysterious powers, and Shaw
cleverly delays telling us who he is, a professor of speech, until the last
minutes of the act. We see some traits of his character too: he tends to be
impatient and heedless of feelings, unsentimental. There is some humor in his
bullying of the flower girl, his mimicking of her ugly speech, just as there
is in the contrast between her appearance and language and the elegance she
affects at the end when taking a cab.

Act Two

Setting

     Higgins' laboratory-drawing-room. Eleven o'clock the next morning.

[See The Drawing Room: The drawing room of Mrs. Higgins]

     In his laboratory, which doubles as a living room, Higgins is giving
Colonel Pickering a demonstration of the methods and equipment he uses to
discriminate vowel sounds. Mrs. Pearce, the housekeeper, enters to announce
disapprovingly that a common young woman wants to see the professor. He is
puzzled, but decides it will be instructive to record her voice, it she has
an unusual accent, and so asks Mrs. Pearce to admit her. The girl who now
enters is the flower girl, tidied up and loudly dressed and trying to appear
businesslike. Higgins is annoyed and disappointed, Pickering somehow touched
by the girl, whom he treats gently in the conversation that follows, whereas
Mrs. Pearce scolds her for putting on airs and Higgins thunders and bullies
her. Her name is Liza Doolittle, she says, and she has come to ask Higgins to
give her speech lessons so that she may obtain a job in a flower shop once her
speech is ladylike and genteel. She heard him say last night that he was not
above giving lessons, and she is ready to pay all of a shilling an hour, which
amuses and interests Higgins, who figures that the sum is a large portion of
her daily small income. Pickering is interested too; he makes a wager, all the
expenses of the experiment, that Higgins can't do what he spoke of the night
before, pass this girl off as a duchess at an ambassador's garden party.
Higgins considers, then decides on the spur of the moment. He will do it in
six months, in three if Liza is quick enough, and he orders Mrs. Pearce to
take away Liza's clothing, clean her up and give her new things to wear. The
girl is outraged at this and Mrs. Pearce asks him to consider the wisdom of
his action; Eliza must have parents or may be married. Higgins now tries to
be winning to Eliza, half mocking her, though, with the description of the
young men who will certainly want to marry her when he has transformed her.
Eliza thinks his talk is crazy and starts to leave, then changes her mind and
comes back. Mrs. Pearce persists. Though the girl says she has no parents and
is not married, still there is the question of what basis she is to live on in
this house. Will Higgins pay her? And what is to become of her once the
experiment is finished? But Higgins' answers are only half serious, and he
refuses to consider consequences. Resigned to his ways, Mrs. Pearce takes
Eliza from the room.

     Pickering, though, follows up the housekeeper's questions. He makes
Higgins, who confesses himself unable to deal with women, assure him there
will be no attempt to take advantage of Eliza's position. Mrs. Pearce comes
back into the room to ask Higgins to please be careful about his language
before Eliza, and to mind his boorish table manners. He promises to do as she
wishes, and she goes out, only to return in a moment and announce that a Mr.
Alfred Doolittle, a dustman, is at the door, making inquiries about his
daughter. Pickering anticipates trouble, but Higgins seems to relish a fight
and asks that Doolittle be sent up.

     But there is no quarrel, first because Higgins cleverly disarms Doolittle
by acting as though he is ready to give Eliza over to him at once if he should
choose to play the outraged father, and second because Doolittle is such an
engaging rascal that he manages to throw Higgins off his guard. He had
discovered from a neighborhood child that Eliza was here and has come with
her luggage. All he wants is five pounds for her on which he proposes to have
a spree with his common-law wife. Higgins is so taken with the dustman's
attack on hypocritical middle-class morality and the defense of his rights as
a member of what he calls the undeserving poor that he wants to double the
money Doolittle asks. But Doolittle will not have it, arguing that too much
money would make him cautious and destroy his enjoyment. And finally with the
money in hand, about to leave, he nearly collides with a young woman entering
the room in a Japanese kimono. He does not recognize Eliza, who speaks of him
critically after he has gone and begins to talk snobbishly. Higgins warns her
of her old friends. But she doesn't care, and when Mrs. Pearce says that new
clothes have come for her to try on, she rushes out excitedly.

Comment

     The most arresting and amusing character in this second act is Alfred
Doolittle. His arrival provides a fresh turn in the action and a bit of
suspense when we hear that he is Eliza's father. His scene with Higgins is
built on the principle of reversal. That is, from his determination no to be
taken advantage of, we expect the strong-minded Higgins to triumph. But
Doolittle so delights him with his unconventional opinions that Higgins is
completely won over and is soon offering the man twice what he has asked.
Doolittle's speech on middle-class morality may seem slightly out of place in
this play, somewhat forced into its context; but that is chiefly because we
have come to think of this play, such an immense success as a musical comedy,
My Fair Lady, as being not completely typical of Shaw in its themes. But see
the discussion below of the sequel, and consider Higgins' remarks all through
the play about the inconsistencies and ironies of prevailing social
conditions.

Act Three

Setting

     The drawing-room of Mrs. Higgins. Between 4 and 5 PM.

     Waiting for guests to visit her on her receiving (at home) day, Mrs.
Higgins is distressed when her son Henry bursts into her drawing room and asks
her to receive a flower girl he has picked up and trained to speak correctly.
Her son's manners put people off and she wishes he would go away. But he is
preoccupied with Eliza, congratulating her rapid progress in pronunciation and
complaining that it is what she says that is the problem; therefore he has
instructed her to limit her conversation to the neutral topics of weather and
health.

     He is on the point of going when the parlormaid announces Mrs. and Miss
Eynsford-Hill whom Higgins faintly remembers from their accent but cannot
place. Then Pickering comes in and Higgins, who has been indifferent to the
company, is cheered at the prospect of a larger group for Eliza to meet.
Freddy arrives and greets the other men in his fashionable indolent manner of
speaking. Soon the parlormaid announces Eliza, beautifully dressed and having
an air of great self-possession. In the scene that follows she speaks as she
had been warned, only on her set topics. Of the weather she speaks with such
killing precision the Freddy is instantly amused. On health, she tells of the
sensational death of her aunt, at some length and in a style that mixes
carefully correct grammar with lower class slang and that surprises the
ladies. Higgins hastily excuses the slang as "the new small talk," but soon he
makes a discreet signal to Eliza and she gets up to leave. Freddy,
completely smitten by her unusual charm, offers to accompany her, but she
chooses to leave alone and he goes out on the balcony to catch another look at
her. Mrs. Eynsford-Hill comments unfavorably on the new way of speaking, but
Clara is quite taken with it and at Higgins' mischievous suggestion promises
to try it out on other people. She and her mother leave and are followed by
Freddy, who confusedly hopes he will see Miss Doolittle again at Mrs. Higgins'
home.

     Higgins and Pickering are pleased with Eliza's first test in polite
society, but Mrs. Higgins is not, pointing out that the girl gives herself
away in every sentence and that mostly because she has unwittingly copied
Henry's brusque way ofrtalking. She inquires into arrangements at her sons'
house, and is assured that everything is proper there. Higgins adds that Eliza
has become very useful in helping around the house, and he compliments himself
on having devoted so much attention to her training and this most interesting
experiment that will bring one class closer to another. He and Pickering break
into an enthusiastic praise of Eliza's quickness at learning new things,
including music, cutting across each other's remarks until Mrs. Higgins has to
quiet them both. Soberly she tries to get them to consider the same question
Mrs. Pearce had asked earlier: What is to happen to Eliza after the lessons
are finished? What is she to do? When is she to go? There is no worse fate
than having an education that puts her above her station but does not provide
her with the income to keep up her new position. But the men answer her
vaguely and generally, Higgins promising to find some light employment for
Eliza. They then leave in high spirits over their success, and Mrs. Higgins,
bothered by their indifference and unable to go back to letter writing,
exclaims, "Oh, men! men!! men!!!"

Comment

     In this act Eliza-Galatea begins to come to life, a woman emerging
gradually from the work of art Higgins-Pygmalion is so proud of having made.
But so far she has come only half to life. Mrs. Higgins is concerned about the
future of this "living doll" (Mrs. Higgins' words) that amuses her son and
Pickering. She points to the genteel poverty of the well-bred Eynsford-Hills
as an example of what lies in store for a girl who has not the means to keep
up a new social position. Eliza has impressed the naive Clara and made a
conquest of Freddy in a deliciously comic scene (in the 1938 film version of
the play, in the reading version, and in the musical comedy, it is in this
scene that Shaw has her make the famous observation that "The rain in Spain
stays mainly in the plains."); but the serious problem of what to do later
with Eliza remains.

[Hear Eliza Observes]

Act Four

Setting

     Higgins' laboratory. Twelve o'clock on a summer night.

     The voices of Pickering and Higgins are heard in the hall, then Eliza
comes from the landing into the laboratory. She is beautifully dressed in
evening clothes and is very tired as she sits dispiritedly on the piano bench.
Pickering and Higgins enter, conversing, and Higgins looks about for his
slippers. He does not find them at first, and because he barely notices Eliza,
he does not see her leave and return to place the slippers at his feet on the
hearth. She sits as before and listens to the two men review the evening's
events. Eliza has been a great success at the garden party, then at dinner and
later at the opera. But now Higgins confesses he has been bored by the whole
experiment, and especially so when he saw he would easily win his bet.
Pickering comments on the really professional style in which Eliza deported
herself, and saying goodnight, goes up to bed. Higgins prepares to go up too
and turns to tell Eliza to put out the lights. This is too much for her.
When he turns back for his slippers, she hurls them at him and astounds him
with a show of anger. She calls him a selfish brute who would throw her back
in the gutter now that she has won his bet for him, and she attacks him
physically and has to be restrained by Higgins. She keeps lamenting her lot,
asking repeatedly what is to become of her. Higgins tries to comfort her,
moderating his tone, to assure her she is suffering from nerves. He suggests
that she will not have a hard time finding somewhere to go, something to do;
she might even marry after all, not all men are perennial bachelors like
himself and the Colonel. Pleased with his advice, he takes up an apple from
the dessert stand and eats it. Quietly, Eliza informs him she is not for sale
to any man who happens to fancy her, and says she wishes he had left her where
he found her. Higgins then reminds her of the flower shop she wanted to open
and of the possibility of Pickering's setting her up in it. But Eliza is not
receptive to this idea. She is deeply offended by his cool behavior and asks
him to define what has been bought for her as part of the experiment and what
she may keep. Higgins says all the clothing they have purchased is hers, if
that's the ungrateful way she feels, but not the hired jewelry. When she
offers to return a ring he has bought for her, he angrily throws it into the
fireplace, and she sees that she has wounded him. Higgins is furious and tries
not to show that she has somehow got at him where it hurts, but when he
leaves the room he cannot help slamming the door savagely behind him, calling
her "a heartless guttersnipe." Alone, Eliza smiles at her triumph, does a
mocking imitation of Higgins' exit, and then searches for the ring he has
thrown down.

Comment

     The statue has come fully to life and in this act has revealed a soul.
Eliza suffers from Higgins' indifference to her fate, from the casual way he
and Pickering discuss her. She wants to hurt him, to get back "some of her
own," and she does so by making him lose his temper and show that he can be
hurt himself even if he has no respect for the feelings of others.
Thematically, this act repeats the question of the earlier one: What is to
become of a newly manufactured duchess who cannot go back to selling flowers
on the streets?

Act Five

Setting

     Mrs. Higgins' drawing room. The next morning.

     The parlormaid comes in to tell Mrs. Higgins that the professor and the
Colonel are downstairs and telephoning the police. They are, it turns out,
looking for Eliza, who has disappeared, having left Higgins's house early that
morning. They do not know that Eliza is upstairs, where, Mrs. Higgins
instructs, she is to remain until sent for. Higgins and the Colonel are upset
and distracted when they come in, Higgins especially put out by the
inconvenience of Eliza's sudden leave-taking. She has kept his appointments in
order and done him small services.

     They are interrupted by the appearance of someone the maid announces as a
Mr. Doolittle, a gentleman. Thinking this might be some relation of Eliza's
they have not met and to whom she might have gone, the two men are eager to
meet him. He comes up, and proves to be Alfred Doolittle again, now dressed in
formal clothing. His luck has changed, he has come into a great deal of money,
but he is not happy. He reproaches Higgins with having delivered him over to
middle-class morality. In a spirit of fun, Higgins had given Doolittle's name
to an American millionaire in search of England's most original moralist, and
in his will this man has left money trust as long as Doolittle agrees to
lecture up to six times a year on moral reform! Doolittle complains of having
lost his old lower-class comforts and of being forced into new confining
respectability. It is too much to expect him to give up the money, so there he
is, trapped. Mrs. Higgins sees this new wealth was a solution to the problem
of Eliza's future, but Henry protests that he bought Eliza from Doolittle and
will not allow her father to interfere now. Mrs. Higgins discloses that Eliza
is upstairs, scorns the heartless treatment of the girl by her son and the
Colonel, and offers to have Eliza come down if Henry will watch his manners.
She requests Mr. Doolittle to retire for a moment to the balcony.

     When she comes in, Eliza is very calm, assured, dignified. She sits down
and takes up a piece of needlework and does not allow herself to be rattled
by Higgins' attempts to treat her as a piece of property or a creature he has
made. Instead she addresses herself to Pickering, thanks him for the kind and
gentlemanly way he has always treated her, never like a flower girl and
always like a lady - and that, she says, is what makes the difference between
the two, not how a girl behaves but how she is treated. She can always learn
how to dress properly, and a Higgins can teach her to speak correctly, but a
Pickering with good manners and gentleness can give her the self-respect that
makes her forever a lady and nevermore a flower girl. She says in answer to
the Colonel's invitation that she can not go back to Higgins' place in
Wimpole Street, to which Higgins retorts that without him she will relapse in
three weeks and go back to the gutter. No, says Eliza, the lesson has been
well learned, and she does not believe she could utter any of the old sounds
again.

     But suddenly Doolittle, in the room again, touches her on the shoulder
and she emits a long-drawn Cockney howl that delights Higgins. Doolittle tells
Eliza that he is to marry her stepmother that morning and asks his daughter
to attend. When she leaves the room a moment to get ready, Doolittle confesses
to the men that he has never told Eliza that he was not married to her mother
either. Pickering and Mrs. Higgins will come to the ceremony too. Eliza
returns and says again she will not go back to Wimpole Street, a matter, says
her father, in which he will not interfere.

     The wedding party leaves, except Eliza, because Higgins stands before the
door and will not let her pass. Now they have it out. Higgins wants her to
come back, but he tells her he will not change for anyone. He is not a snob;
he is like her father in that he will treat a duchess as he would a flower
girl and a flower girl as a duchess, if he likes. He tells Eliza he will
indeed miss her, that he has grown accustomed to her voice and appearance. To
which she replies that he has both, in photographs and recordings, if he
should ever feel lonely. But it is her soul he will miss; he is concerned for
life and humanity. He wants no more slipper-fetching from her, he wants no
affection, he wants fellowship and a friendly relationship in the pleasant old
way that he and she and Pickering enjoyed. He will adopt her, if she likes,
settle money on her, and he will not see her thrown away on Freddy
Eynsford-Hill, who, she now discloses, has been writing her romantic letters.
She wants kindness and love from somebody. Higgins wants only to be natural.
Eliza does not know which way to turn: She is reluctant to go back to Wimpole
Street, she can never go back to Covent Garden, and she will not live with her
father. But she will have independence all the same. She thinks she has
answer. She will teach. Teach what? Higgins wants to know. What he taught
her - phonetics. Didn't he once say she had a better ear than his own? And she
will begin by working with one of his competitors. This is too much for
Higgins, who threatens to wring her neck if she goes near the man, and lays
hands on her. This is Eliza's second great moment (the first was her wounding
of him in Act IV), and she defies him, telling him to wring away, she knew
someday he would strike her! This is the way to get at him, not to be afraid
of him. Higgins admires her, preferring this behavior to snivelling and crying
for affection and being his servant.

     Mrs. Higgins comes in to say the carriage is waiting for Eliza. Higgins,
who is too unruly in church, must stay behind. Very cheerful and
self-satisfied, Higgins gives the departing Eliza a few little errands to
perform, thinking he has settled their quarrel and that she will come back and
be a jolly old bachelor like him and Pickering. But Eliza refuses him. Mrs.
Higgins fears Henry has spoiled her. But Higgins reassures her that Eliza will
do as he asks.

Sequel

     The play may seem to end in a somewhat unresolved fashion, but Shaw
explains himself in the pages that follow the last act of the drama. There
will, he writes, be no "happy ending" of the usual sort, even though Pygmalion
is a romance (the word refers to Eliza's exceedingly improbable transformation
from guttersnipe to duchess); Eliza will not marry Higgins simply to satisfy
the sentimentalists and so spoil the drama. Eliza's decision is a firm one;
she is young enough to find her way in tee world, and though she will not
marry the professor, she will keep him as a friend because she has a strong
interest in him and he in her. There are other reasons for not marrying him:
he is more than twenty years her senior; she knows intuitively that no other
woman can win him because his mother is an "irresistible rival" owing to her
wealth, charm, intelligence; and Eliza does not want to be an interest
secondary to that he takes in his work; she will always resent his superior
way with her, his clever attempts to coax her and evade her anger after he has
bullied her.

     But Shaw says Eliza did marry Freddy, which should not be a surprise to
anyone. She could cope with him and eventually with the economic difficulties
their marriage brought. His mother was too poor to help them, and Doolittle,
having risen even more in the world, found he was spending too much to be able
to help out. It was the Colonel who rescued them. He helped the young couple
open a flower shop, continued his support when they got into financial
difficulties, and gently tried to keep the peace when Higgins became too
openly amused at the idea of Freddy's doing any real work.

     But at last, under great their effort, the business began to prosper, and
soon they were in a position to do without Pickering's aid. Eliza, Shaw
concludes, his still influential in Wimpole Street. She gets along with
Higgins as well as she can, loves the colonel, and defends Freddy against
Higgins' derision. She is sure that Higgins never really meant it when he told
her he would miss her if she left. She knows he is self-absorbed and yet not
selfish in a common way. But he makes her uncomfortable, the relation of
Pygmalion to Galatea being "too godlike to be altogether agreeable."

Comment Act V And Sequel

     Act V provides another confrontation of Eliza and Higgins, continuing and
resolving that begun in Act IV. Higgins is as rude and unfeeling to everyone
else as he is to her (notice his brusqueness with his mother and the
Eynsford-Hills). Because he is no respecter of classes, he is like her father,
thinks Eliza. All of this to Higgins is a sign of strength. But Eliza wants to
be loved and respected. She cannot fully appreciate his argument that she has
a soul and so must be above such trivial considerations. Her plea is touching,
but Higgins wants her to avoid self-sympathy. And he wants to get round her.
For a moment she is almost taken in by his appearing to soften and become
human, then realizes she is not much more important to him than his carpet
slippers, or if she is, it is only as a proof of his skill in creating a work
of artifice. Because they are essentially incompatible, Shaw rejects the
ordinary coming together of lovers at the end of a comedy. His play, he
implies, is above easy and secondhand inventions. His interest, too, is in his
social, not his romantic, them. He enjoys the ironic and to him deeply
comic resolutions that he does supply in the place of the happy ending. What
are they? t1) The gap between classes is closed by education and, as Higgins
argues, there is no difference in human substance or soul between one person
and another, only a difference between opportunities; (2) a secondary proof of
this is in the subplot of Doolittle's adventures. A dustman at heart and by
profession, he rises in society, thanks to a stroke of fortune that belongs to
the traditions of farce, and makes a show of his origins that delights his
social superiors; (3) there is a third motif in the Eynsford-Hill passages.
Freddy is completely taken in by Eliza and genuinely worships her. That she
is of humble origins makes him love her all the more. She is much cleverer
than Freddy, his patchy middle-class education having fitted him for nothing.
At first his mother and Clara are opposed to the opening of the shop, Shaw
tells us in the Sequel, but eventually Clara goes into business, gives up her
idle pretensions to gentility, is converted to the doctrine of work and
self-advancement after reading socialist writings, and becomes a credit to her
family and to herself. To repeat: All of this is what interests Shaw in
Pygmalion and not the false prospect of wedding bells for the hero and
heroine. In the film, the ending is ambiguous, the suggestion left that maybe
there will be a marriage; in My Fair Lady, Higgins seems genuinely repentant,
and the audience is led to expect again that there will be a romantic
conclusion. But in the original stage version Shaw is more Shavian than his
adaptors and improvers.

Analysis Of Selected Characters

Henry Higgins

     He is a man dedicated to his work and short of patience with those who
disagree or get in his way. He has been so petted and indulged by his charming
mother that he will never change his habits, especially that of bachelorhood.
He has more than a little touch of the genius figure so frequent in Shaw's
plays. He is mocking, eccentric, disrespectful, hostile to fools, attractive
to women, moody, devastatingly intelligent, heedless of feelings when they
conflict with his own sense of things, a little childlike and childish, a
believer in the ideal rationally conceived and worked for, and yet a poet in
his own way.

Eliza

     Her beauty and natural dignity are obscured at first by the mud and low
speech of Covent Garden. But they are there, just as the ideal figure in the
stone waits to be released by the hand of the sculptor. When she comes to
life, Higgins has reason to be proud of his handiwork. She exceeds his
expectations. She is no match for his caustic wit, but he has unwittingly made
of her a splendid human being who is superior to her creator in feeling. He
wants to keep her a statue, but by challenging him and making him finally meet
her on her own terms, she transforms herself into a person.

Alfred Doolittle

     His characterization contributes to the fairy tale element of the play.
His surprising transformation from dustman to the exponent of a new morality
is accomplished by the force of his own wit and by the readiness of people to
believe in him. Shaw means the Doolittle strand of the plot to be satirical,
to make another point about class distinctions (they obscure merit, Eliza's or
her father's). And Shaw provides laughter by the gullibility of Doolittle's
audience of eager supporters, by the easy success the dustman has in
respectable society.

