My Fair Lady: Analysis of the Play
The purpose of this paper is to introduce, discuss, and analyze the play "Pygmalion" and the musical "My Fair Lady." Specifically it will discuss Professor Henry Higgins and how his attitude about Eliza undergoes a change by the end of the production. George Bernard Shaw's classic story of transformation became one of the most beloved of all Broadway musicals when Alan Jay Lerner turned the story into a musical. In the beginning, Professor Higgins only takes on the task of turning Eliza into a real "lady" because of a bet and because of the challenge of remaking a person into another one, but by the end of the production, he has fallen in love with her, and that makes her transformation truly complete. Professor Henry Higgins begins this play as a self-righteous linguistic snob, a member of the British upper class, who looks down on anyone who has a lesser social position than he does. As the introduction to the play notes, "'Pygmalion' has as its subject-theme the institutions man has constructed to help perpetuate both the privileges of the rich and servility of the poor" (Shaw and Lerner xi). Thus, the play transforms Eliza from a poor flower girl into a "princess" with refined tastes and speech, but it also transforms
He has everything he needs - friends, a good housekeeper, a mother who loves him, so he does not need another woman in his life. He uses the exact same words in the musical, indicating his contempt of Eliza and anyone like her. " He made her into a lady, but he also became a little more understanding in the process. Thus, the musical's happy ending is different from the play, but it does not hide the fact that Professor Higgins is a different man because of his experience with Eliza. I've learned something from your idiotic notions. He is a snobby bachelor who is bossy and does not understand or care about the feelings of others when the play opens, and by the end of the musical, he has become a man in love with a woman he literally created from scratch. He says, "I can place any man within six miles. Two songs in the musical indicate Higgins' change of heart toward Eliza. Eliza had the soul of a lady, she just did not know how to let it out. Higgins has transformed just as much as Eliza has, because he has opened up his heart and let her in, something he could not have imagined just a few weeks before. In fact, Shaw abhorred the distinctions and variances he saw between the wealthy and the poor, and he was a founding member of the Fabian Society, a group that tried to equalize society and eventually transformed into the British Labour Party, so he was quite familiar with the disparities between social classes, and he uses that knowledge with skill in this play (Shaw and Lerner xii). / I've grown accustomed to the tune / She whistles night and noon. A critic writing of the film adaptation of the play with Audrey Hepburn and Rex Harrison writes, "Yes, it's all here, the essence of the stage show - the pungent humor and satiric wit of the conception of a linguistic expert making a lady of a guttersnipe by teaching her manners and how to speak" (Crowther). He sings, "She almost makes the day begin. Another song that indicates Higgins is changing is "Why Can't a Woman be More Like a Man?" Before, he simply felt women were of no use, while now he admits that he simply does not understand them or their actions.
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