When Lerner and Loewe turned Shaw’s Pygmalion into a musical, they took a compelling story with a problematic ending and made it both better and worse. Their songs added richness, depth and vitality to both Eliza’s character and Higgins’. And that makes Eliza’s crawling back to Higgins at the end nothing short of devastating.
The added richness starts with Eliza’s “I Want” song. It sounds pretty modest: just a warm room, a comfortable place to sit, some chocolate, and someone special who treats her tenderly and takes good care of her. Meanwhile, her friends are singing about castles in Capri and jaunts to Paris. But, Eliza’s dreams are the boldest: they’re out of reach but actually possible. She’s not a wishful thinker. She’s one of those souls who sees a challenge as an opportunity to trade the hand fate dealt them into the hand they want instead. Eliza lives in the gutter, but she doesn’t see herself as belonging there, and the moment she has an opportunity to climb out, she takes it.
Next, with Higgins’s Conditional Love Song (“I”m An Ordinary Man”) we learn that his confirmed bachelorhood may not be quite as voluntary as he claims. He’s evidently let women in his life before and it turned out poorly (he became selfish and tyrannical and the women became jealous, exacting, and suspicious nuisances). Bachelorhood is safer. And maybe there’s a reason for that. I wonder if Higgins is autistic. He has some tells: his profound special interest in phonetics, his lack of a verbal filter, his longing for order, the way he finds certain sounds distressing, his distaste for social gatherings, his obliviousness to what he’s supposed to wear at Ascot, the way he sees Eliza’s faux-pas as humorous rather than shaming. Some of his boorish lines may be rooted in demand avoidance (“ I can’t change my nature and I don’t intend to change my manners”) and rejection sensitivity (“She’s an owl, sickened by a few days of my sunshine! Very well! Let her go! I can do without her!”). If Higgins is autistic with a history of failed relationships, his determination to remain a bachelor could be more about not knowing how to navigate romance than about indifference.
The big breakthrough in their relationship happens when Higgins stops decreeing mindless drills for Eliza, and instead looks her in the eyes, and talks to her about the grandeur of the English tongue and his confidence that she will conquer it. Conquer she does, starting with her very next sentence. But he’s done some conquering as well. Having just been treated as an equal by someone who, at the same time, expressed confidence in her determination and her capacity to be more than she currently is, Eliza’s heart responds with soaring wonder. She sings, “I Could Have Danced All Night” and the die is cast. We no longer care nearly as much about the embassy ball as we care about Eliza’s and Higgins’ eventual union.
For a while afterwards, the signs are promising. Higgins has abandoned tyranny and actually treats Eliza with consideration at the Ascot races. He doesn’t notice that anything has changed in their relationship, though. He’s too preoccupied with a dizzying mix of his longstanding special interest (phonetics) and his new consuming interest (the vibrant woman in his home with the brilliant mind and the eagerness to face down any challenge he places before her). When his mother urges him to give up, he protests, “Give it up? Why it’s the most absorbing experiment I’ve ever tackled. Pickering and I have tried with every possible sort of sound a human being can make, things it took me years to get hold of. And she picks them up in a shot. It fills our whole lives. Teaching Eliza. Listening to Eliza. Dressing Eliza. Inventing new Elizas.”
It’s curious how he mixes admiration for her and her capabilities with the presumption that he can “invent new Elizas” as if she weren’t the agent who’s reinventing herself. But Higgins doesn’t want to admit to Eliza’s personhood. He is determined not to let a woman in his life and he’d be loath to have her leave his life, so he can’t let her be a woman. This shows up again, right before the ball, when Pickering takes issue with his lack of anxiety and complains, “What of the girl? You act as if she doesn’t matter at all.”
Higgins responds, “Oh rubbish, Pickering. Of course she matters. What could possibly matter more than to take a human being and change her into a different human being by creating a new speech for her. Why, it’s filling up the deepest gulf that separates class from class and soul from soul. She matters immensely.” Once again, he’s claiming to be the one that’s changed her. But what about that “filling up the deepest gulf that separates… soul from soul”? It appears his soul is being drawn to hers. But he cannot admit how immensely she matters without also pretending that he is the one who is in control of her destiny.
Then, she triumphs at the ball, bringing a close to their teacher/pupil relationship. He no longer has any power over her. Society believes her to be noble and the gulf between soul and soul has been fully filled. What a terrifying prospect for Higgins who has no roadmap for this! So, he grasps after the power he’s lost, strutting around and crowing about his triumph while Pickering and all the servants ignore her completely. To the servants, she’s still a flower girl. To Pickering, she’s becoming something like a delightful business acquaintance - not quite a friend - and easily forgotten in his rush to congratulate his buddy. To Higgins, she matters too immensely to acknowledge, but he betrays that he’s been aware of her presence the entire time when everyone else has vacated the room and he requests, without looking her way, that she put out the lights.
The scene that follows is painful to them both, but most especially to Eliza, who actually buys and is stunned by his show of disdain and indifference.
The next time we see the two together, Higgins arrives, frantic and disordered, to tell his mother she is gone, only to find Eliza there, having tea. He still can’t admit that he cares, but the evidence is too strong for Eliza to have any doubt. Caring isn’t enough though. She wants consideration, to be seen and treated as an equal, while he continues to objectify her, calling her “baggage,” “idiotic,” “fool,” “impudent hussy” and, what’s worse, “this thing I created out of the squashed cabbage leaves of Covent Gardens.” This scene is absolutely vital, because the story is not about Eliza becoming able to pass as a duchess at a ball. It’s about her fully claiming her autonomy, independent of the person who has the most power with her. It takes him raising his hands to wring her neck, her defiance and his shock before she realizes that her worth does not depend in any way on his opinion. The song she sings then, “Without You,” demolishes whatever power he may still have been holding over her. It is her moment of ultimate, personal victory.
So what does he do? Filled with admiration at her independence, but unwilling to accept the loss of his power over her, he tries to claim her victory for himself. As she sings her final line, “I can do bloody well without …” he interrupts with his own song, “By George, I really did it! I did it! I did it! I said I’d make a woman and indeed I did!” It doesn’t matter that he follows up with “Eliza, you’re magnificent! Five minutes ago, you were a millstone around my neck. Now you’re a tower of strength, a consort battleship! I like you like this!” He’s offering admiration while trying to deny her self-determination.
She replies, “Goodbye, Professor Higgins. I shall not be seeing you again,” and walks out of his life.
Or so it seems. Only, later the same day, when a revengeful fantasy about turning her away after Freddy inevitably abandons her (“I’ve Grown Accustomed to Her Face”) has failed to console Higgins’s angst, Eliza comes back. There’s no explanation for that. In the glow of her new-found self-respect (and I promise that’s a glow that does not quickly fade), could she possibly be missing his dismissiveness too keenly to stay away? We don’t know. But she enters from behind him as he listens to her voice on his recording machine, then announces her presence by speaking the next line herself. Higgins is overjoyed, but instead of a humble apology or a rush to make her welcome, he leans back, pulls his hat down over his eyes and asks, “Eliza? Where the devil are my slippers?” And Eliza smiles.
This ending was bad enough in the film version of Pygmalion. But after the song “Without You,” which crystallizes Eliza’s independence from Higgins in a way the play doesn’t even approach, and after his interrupting song that tries to steal her victory away, it’s undeniably worse. It turns her victory on its head and it cannot stand.
Director Bartlett Sher did not let it stand in the 2018 Lincoln Center revival of the musical. He replaced Eliza’s line “Goodbye, Professor Higgins. I shall not be seeing you again,” with “What you are to do without me I cannot imagine.” This at least gives her a reason to come back. It’s a wellness check. And when he sees her, Higgins goes toward her, then stops, and delivers, “Eliza? Where the devil are my slippers?” as if he’s in a daze. She puts a hand on his face, tenderly, then turns away and walks off the stage. We don’t really know whether there’s any future for the relationship, but if there is, it’s not with Eliza as a doormat. That, I think, is about the best a director can do to heal the ending while honoring copyright.
But in these newsletters, I get to write about the changes I wish I could make. And that ending doesn’t quite work for me. It doesn’t solve the problem of Eliza’s future when she can’t return to the world she came from and she doesn’t want to marry Freddy, whatever George Bernard Shaw thought? It’s really a tragic ending for Higgins, whom we still like, despite his despicable, maladaptive but not actually malicious behavior. And it doesn’t give us any reason to believe in the happy union we’ve been shipping for these two ever since Higgins vowed to never let a woman in his life.
So, here’s the ending I wish we could give them. First of all, Eliza needs a reason to reappear in the final scene. Perhaps it is that, in her distressed departure from Higgins’ home, she left her Chinese fan behind.
She keeps her line, “Goodbye, Professor Higgins. I shall not be seeing you again.” I think that’s important because of how it underscores her determination not to yield to a relationship where she’s treated as inferior.
Higgins’s reactions stay the same, until the end of his fantasy about slamming the door on her face, partway through “I’ve Grown Accustomed to Her Face”. Right after he sings “Let the hell cat freeze” he stops and realizes what he’s just been saying.
HIGGINS
Marry Freddy, Eliza!
SHE’S NOT ACCUSTOMED TO THE WAYS
I’VE PUSHED HER FROM MY HEART
MY SCORN, MY CLAIMS
TO ALL HER GAINS
WERE SECOND NATURE TO ME – ALL
THE PUSHING OFF, THE REELING IN.
I COULD NEVER MAKE HER HAPPY,
SHE’D BE ALWAYS IN A PET.
IT’S TOO MUCH MY HABIT
TO BE BREAKING NOW – AND YET –
AFTER ALL SHE’S LEARNED FROM ME,
COULD I NOT LEARN FROM HER?
ACCUSTOMED TO HER FACE.
HIGGINS turns on the gramophone, collects ELIZA’s Chinese fan from the mantel, and stares at it as he sits and listens. At “she’s so deliciously low, so horribly dirty,” he deflates, drops his head in his hand. ELIZA enters from within the house. She pauses, and watches HIGGINS shudder when he hears himself say, “This draggle-tailed guttersnipe.” ELIZA turns off the gramophone.
ELIZA
I washed my face and ‘ands before I come, I did.
HIGGINS
Eliz – Miss Doolittle!
ELIZA
(drifting towards him)
I came to collect my Chinese fan. You found it.
HIGGINS
Of course.
(Takes a step toward her, then pivots and walks away).
You know, E… Miss Dolittle, I’ve become quite attached to this item. I’m not ready to part with it, except on exchange.
ELIZA
How dare you! What is there for me here?
HIGGINS
Not in exchange for yourself, Miss Dolittle. For lessons on how to treat a lady.
ELIZA
Here’s your lesson. You don’t bully her and take her possessions hostage.
HIGGINS
Why, you brazen hussy! I’m trying to..
(Collects himself with effort and hands her the fan)
Forgive me. But what else am I to do, Eli… Miss Dolittle? Who can teach me if you won’t?
ELIZA
Colonel Pickering.
HIGGINS
Pickering teach me? My manners are quite as good as his!
(SHE stares, incredulous. PICKERING enters)
Alright. But he can’t give me the motivation.
PICKERING
Teach you what?
HIGGINS
How to win – and keep – a lady’s affections.
PICKERING
Miss Dolittle, I’m intrigued.
ELIZA
The temptation is almost irresistible. He’s so deliciously arrogant. So horribly obnoxious.
(The music of I COULD HAVE DANCED ALL NIGHT reaches a crescendo in the orchestra as HIGGINS bows to ELIZA and the CURTAIN FALLS for …)
THE END
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Oh, I enjoy that ending so much. That's so much better.