The Ambiguities of Pygmalion

In a 1939 newspaper article entitled "Bernard Shaw Flays Filmdom's 'Illiterates,"' Shaw, responding to interviewer Dennison Thornton's question about why he allowed a "ready-made happy ending" for the 1938 film version of Pygmalion, wrote:

I did not…. Nothing of the kind was emphasised in my scenario, where I emphasised the escape of Eliza from the tyranny of Higgins by a quite natural love affair with Freddy. But I cannot at my age undertake studio work: and about twenty directors turned up there and spent their time trying to sidetrack me and Mr. Gabriel Pascal … They devised a scene to give a lovelorn complexion at the end to Mr. Leslie Howard; but it is too inconclusive to be worth making a fuss about.¹

Shaw's irritation and weariness are palpable, and it's easy to understand both reactions. Ever since the play's initial production in 1914, he had been engaged in a tug of war with the public and with directors and actors over the interpretation of his most popular play. Shaw insisted that Eliza should strike out on her own as an independent person at the play's end, but in that 1914 production Sir Beerbohm Tree, the first Higgins, ignored Shaw's explicit directions and threw flowers at the departing Mrs. Pat Campbell, the first Eliza, before the final curtain. That was a foretaste of the play's future, in which directors and actors regularly found ways to bow to the popular demand that Eliza and Henry should end up together, never mind what the author wanted.

In the New Mermaids edition of Pygmalion, editor Leonard Conolly chronicles this long conflict and its causes in a lucid introduction, which also includes a perceptive tour through the life and career of the author, the sources and cultural contexts of the play, as well as its themes and characters, recent criticism, production history, and the evolution of the text. Throughout this compact but comprehensive discussion, Conolly uncovers the play's multiple ambiguities and traces the origin of some of them to Shaw's sources and creative choices.

He points out, for example, that Shaw's reliance on the Pygmalion myth and his decision to give that name to the play foreshadow the disputes about the relationship between Higgins and Eliza. After all, in Ovid's rendering of the myth, after Pygmalion creates Galatea, his statue of a perfect woman, he falls in love with it; and when she comes to life, they do become lovers. Of course, Shaw then set out to do what he usually did with popular myths and familiar theatrical genres: subvert tradition for his own purposes. In this case, Conolly continues, Shaw wanted to reshape the Pygmalion story to reflect what he considered a more important influence, Ibsen and his play, A Doll's House. Eliza Doolittle was to be Shaw's Nora Helmer, a woman finally able to make her own choices about her life and future after escaping not only from the trap of poverty and ignorance but also from the manipulative, doll-like treatment she was receiving from Higgins and Pickering.

One can argue that the Eliza we see at the end of the play does embody Shaw's intention: when she snaps her fingers and tells Higgins she doesn't care about "your bullying and your big talk," and then a few moments later sweeps out of the room, confident that she can take care of herself, and leaving Higgins to his own devices, she does seem like a "fine and independent Galatea," in the words of Errol Durbach (as quoted by Conolly), one of a number of critics who compare Pygmalion to A Doll's House.² Others, including a number of feminist scholars, are not so sure. Conolly cites as an example the declaration by J. Ellen Gainor that Shaw's sequel to the play—in which Eliza and Freddy (now married) open a flower shop and, having a rough time making a go of...