WHAT BECAME OF ELIZA DOOLITTLE?A case study of the sign in fiction PART 3: WHY ELIZA DOES NOT MARRY FREDDYPART 1 | PART 2
In Semiotica 44-1/2 (1983), pp. 75-93. |
WHY ELIZA DOES NOT MARRY FREDDY
The idea of Eliza's marrying Freddy is improbable for the following external reasons:
(1) It is a semiotic principle that the central conflicts of a drama are acted out between its central figures.
(2) The romantic tension between Eliza and Higgins is a sizable factor in Pygmalion.
(3) It is Higgins, not Freddy, who is a central figure of comparable stature to Eliza.
From these premises it follows that the audience expects a relationship (of whatever kind), not between Eliza and Freddy, but between Eliza and Higgins. The first of these three points I have already discussed. It therefore remains to demonstrate that the struggle between Eliza and Higgins is far from being merely Bentley's 'battle of wills, but not of sex' (1947: 122), that Higgins (and most decidedly not Freddy) is a central figure in the play, and that the conclusion follows from the premises.
The fact that Higgins, not Freddy, is the central figure of Pygmalion, should be so obvious as hardly to need any further analysis. Whereas Higgins is on stage for almost the entire play, Freddy appears only twice -in the first act, and at Mrs. Higgins's at-home. (He has 21 lines altogether, including three 'Ahdedo's). He neither appears nor is mentioned again until the last act, when Eliza rather surprisingly announces that he writes her several love letters a day. (We are to some extent prepared for this by Mrs. Higgins's question in the second act, 'Would you like to meet Miss Doolittle again?'; to which Freddy replies 'eagerly', 'Yes, I should, most awfully'). Even if Freddy does set the whole plot in motion by knocking over Eliza's flowers in the first act, his part is from the quantitative point of view the smallest one (apart from Mrs. Higgins's maid, and some people outside Covent Garden in the first act). Nor could anyone claim that his lines are so interesting that the qualitative factor should outweigh the quantitative.
In the 1941 version, Freddy also appears in a scene between acts four and five, where Eliza runs into Freddy in the street after she has walked out of Higgins's house in a temper. This is admittedly a love scene of sorts, but Shaw's total failure to characterize Freddy, even in a scene of this kind, shows that neither his interest in the man nor his wish to make him a major character has grown appreciably between 1912 and 1941- in spite of the postscript!
It may at first seem less obvious that there is a romantic element in the relationship between Eliza and Higgins. But the possibility of such a relationship exists from the moment when Eliza first sets foot in Wimpole Street and Higgins decides to turn her into a duchess. Mrs. Pearce introduces the theme:
PICKERING. You're certainly not going to turn her head with flattery, Higgins.
MRS PEARCE (uneasy) Oh, don't say that, sir: there's more ways than one of turning a girl's head; and nobody can do it better than Mr Higgins, though he may not always mean it. I do hope, sir, you wont encourage him to do anything foolish,
HIGGINS (becoming excited as the idea grows on him) What is life but a series of inspired follies? The difficulty is to find them to do. Never lose a chance: it doesn't come every day. I shall make a duchess of this draggletailed guttersnipe.
(Shaw 1972: 691)
Higgins, of course, avoids the subject, and Colonel Pickering takes it up again. Higgins again pretends not to understand what he is getting at, but Pickering doesn't give in until he has got a serious answer to his question:
PICKERING. Excuse the straight question, Higgins. Are you a man of good character where women are concerned?
HIGGINS (moodily) Have you ever met a man of good character where women are concerned?
PICKERING (rising and standing over him gravely) Come, Higgins! You know what I mean. If I'm to be in this business I shall feel responsible for that girl. I hope it's understood that no advantage is to be taken of her position.
HIGGINS. What! That thing! Sacred, I assure you. (Rising to explain) You see, she'll be a pupil; and teaching would be impossible unless pupils were sacred. I've taught scores of American millionairesses how to speak English: the best looking women in the world. I'm seasoned. They might as well be blocks of wood. I might as well be a block of wood. It's ...
(Shaw 1972: 701ff.)
Which is no guarantee that when 'that thing' has become a beauty, and a personality to boot, and when Higgins's task of teaching her upper-class English is finished, he may not begin to have second thoughts!
When Doolittle comes to collect his five pounds for Eliza, he takes it for granted that she is being installed as Higgins's mistress-he has come to 'rescue her from worse than death'. The conversation slides over into moral discussion, and the question of why Doolittle doesn't marry his 'missus' leads into his advice to Higgins-that he should marry Eliza 'while she's young and don't know better'. The next conversation- between Doolittle and Eliza-also makes it clear that Doolittle never doubts for a moment that the relationship between Higgins and Eliza is intended to be an erotic one.
In the third act, when Higgins tells his mother that he has a girl in tow, Mrs. Higgins also assumes that he is talking about a love affair-which gives Higgins the chance to explain that he is far too bound up with his mother to bother about young women.
The dialogue makes it clear that the question of marriage is a recurring theme in their conversations:
MRS HIGGINS. Do you know what you would do if you really loved me. Henry?
HIGGINS. Oh bother! What? Marry, I suppose?
MRS HIGGINS. No. Stop fidgeting and take your hands out of your pockets.
(Shaw 1972: 722)
When the Eynsford-Hill family appears, the question of marriage again comes to the fore. Clara's problem is how to get hold of a suitable man. Shaw states in a stage direction that she 'considers Higgins quite eligible matrimonially'. In every relevant respect Clara is the polar opposite of Eliza. She gladly dispenses with the fragment of personality she can be supposed to have, in order to bring Higgins into line-which needless to say, makes her wholly uninteresting to him. When Eliza is introduced (a moment that, according to Shaw's stage direction, 'produces an impression of ... remarkable distinction and beauty' [1972: 727]), Mrs. Higgins also becomes uneasy about her position in the household: 'Colonel Pickering: will you tell me what is the exact state of affairs in Wimpole Street?' At first both the men fail completely to understand. It is of course Pickering who first sees what she means; whereas Higgins-yet again- obstinately refuses to read between the lines.
MRS HIGGINS. Colonel Pickering: will you tell me what is the exact state of things in Wimpole Street?
PICKERING (cheerfully: as if this completely changed the subject) Well, I have come to live there with Henry. We work together at my Indian Dialects; and we think it more convenient ...
MRS HIGGINS. Quite so. I know all about that: it's an excellent arrangement. But where does this girl live?
HIGGINS. With us, of course. Where should she live?
MRS HIGGINS. But one what terms? Is she a servant? If not, what is she?
PICKERING (slowly) I think I know what you mean, Mrs Higgins.
HIGGINS. Well, dash me if I do! I've had to work at the girl every day for months to get her present pitch. Besides she's useful. She knows where my things are, and remembers my appointments and so forth.
MRS HIGGINS. How does your housekeeper get on with her?
HIGGINS. Mrs Pearce? Oh, she's jolly glad to get so much taken off her hands; for before Eliza came, she used to have to find things and remind me of my appointments. But she's got some silly bee in her bonnet about Eliza. She keeps saying 'You don't think, sir': doesn't she. Pick?
PICKERING. Yes: that's the formula. 'You don't think, sir'. That's the end of every conversation about Eliza. (...) (Shaw 1972: 733)
MRS HIGGINS. Colonel Pickering: don't you realize that when Eliza walked into Wimpole Street, something walked in with her?
PICKERING. Her father did. But Henry soon got rid of him.
MRS HIGGINS. It would have been more to the point if her mother had. But as her mother didn't something else did.
PICKERING. But what?
MRS HIGGINS (unconsciously dating herself by the word) A problem.
PICKERING. Oh. I see. The problem of how to pass her off as a lady.
HIGGINS. I'll solve that problem. I've half solved it already.
MRS HIGGINS. No, you two infinitely stupid male creatures: the problem of what is to be done with her afterwards. (Shaw 1972: 736ff.)
It seems unlikely that Mrs. Pearce means the same by her warning as Mrs. Higgins, who is seeing the social angle of the problem when she asks what is to become of Eliza when the experiment is finished.
The social and erotic aspects are woven together in the last act. It is hard to believe that Higgins is so immensely anxious to get Eliza back to Wimpole Street just so that she can fetch his slippers for him. On the contrary, Higgins's declaration 'But (with sudden humility) I shall miss you, Eliza. (. . . ) I have grown accustomed to your voice and appearance. I like them rather' (1972: 775) seems to be the nearest thing to a declaration of love that one can imagine Higgins making. Higgins uses various methods to try to persuade her to return. Finally he offers to adopt her, but then switches quickly over to the erotic plane: 'Or would you rather marry Pickering?' (1972: 777)
The idea is, of course, as absurd to Eliza as it is to the audience: Pickering is surely a most uninteresting character. We have never heard a word about Eliza's relationship with him except that he treats her with distant politeness - unlike Higgins, who has a markedly personal relationship with her, even if he ill-treats her. Eliza's answer is therefore logical: 'I wouldn't marry you if you asked me'. This puts the erotic problem at the center of interest. Now we hear about Freddy's fervent wooing, and it is clear that his passion is hardly requited. Eliza's feelings come closer to pity: 'Freddy Hill writes to me twice and three times a day, sheets and sheets. (...) He has a right to if he likes, poor lad' (1972: 757). This expression of Eliza's reveals her attitude to Freddy-one hardly feels sorry for a lover if one responds to his (or her) feelings.In the love scene between the fourth and fifth acts (mentioned above) Eliza's behavior is again described in a way that strengthens the impression that she is hardly in love with Freddy.
He (Freddy) loses all self-control and smothers her with kisses. She, (hungry for comfort), responds. (Shaw 1972: 754; my italics)
When Higgins says to her (in the big resolution scene in the last act) 'In short, you want me to be as infatuated about you as Freddy?', and she replies 'No, I don't. That's not the sort of feeling I want from you' (1972: 778), one is tempted to conclude that by and large it is not this devoted admiration that she is looking for. Moreover, she is all too like Higgins in her need for a worthy opponent. And they both fulfill this mutual need in the glittering dialogue. Eliza's idea of competing with Higgins and becoming a teacher of phonetics makes her his equal. (In reality her original idea-of taking lessons so that she could be an assistant in a flower shop-was a far bolder one. Higgins is therefore fooling himself when he insists that he has made a woman of her. He has possibly taught her to express herself at his level, to develop the personality which she had already given proof of in the second act.) 'I like you like this', he says, and suggests once again that she should return: 'You and I and Pickering will be three old bachelors instead of only two men and a silly girl' (1972: 781).
Shaw develops the theme up to this point. What follows is, to use a musical term, more like a coda. In both versions of the play Higgins is obviously convinced that Eliza will return. The audience must surely agree with Higgins that Freddy is unworthy of her. It is therefore not at all unreasonable to suppose that the emotional relationship between Eliza and Higgins may develop in the way that most of the characters in the play expect.
An analysis of Pygmalion shows-as I hope I have managed to demonstrate-how Shaw builds up expectations in the audience of a more serious bond between the hero and the heroine. The stage directions are highly interesting in this connection. Here Shaw himself has to take the whole responsibility; here he cannot interpret the text through hypotheses about how his own imaginary characters would behave if they were people in real life. This is exactly what he does in his postscript:
Nevertheless, people in all directions have assumed, for no other reason than that she became the heroine of a romance, that she must have married the hero of it. This is unbearable, not only because her little drama, if acted on such a thoughtless assumption, must be spoiled, but because the true sequel is patent to anyone with a sense of human nature in general, and of feminine instinct in particular. (Shaw 1972: 782)
But, as Canio very rightly puts it in Leoncavallo's I Pagliacci, 'Il teatro e la vita non son' la stessa cosa'-'theater and life are not the same thing'. For in the world of the theater, the principle holds that the main interest is bound up with the central figures, that the essential conflicts are acted out between these figures, and that what is not stated does not for the most part exist, Higgins-not Freddy Eyusford Hill-is the central male figure in Pygmalion. The erotic theme may not be the main one in Pygmalion, but it is an important one. The audience therefore expects romantic developments between Higgins and Eliza.
Shaw is also very right when he remarks in the preface, writing of 'Eliza's' plan to marry Freddy, 'Our own instincts are not appealed to by her conclusion' (1972: 783). It is every bit as improbable as Higgins's curtain-line in the final version indicates: 'Pickering! Nonsense: she's going to marry Freddy. Ha, ha! Freddy!! Ha ha ha ha ha!!!!! (He roars with laughter as the play ends).'
Notes
1. Pygmalion was written in 1912, and was produced in Germany and Austria before Terry put it on (with Mrs. Campbell as Eliza) in London. The film was made in 1938, with Leslie Howard playing Higgins. Then came A. J. Lerner's musical My Fair Lady, which has also been filmed in its turn.
2. 'Le spectacle théatrale est construit (en general) comme une sorte très particulière de suite d'evénements intentionellement produits pour etre interprétés. La sémiologie du théatre ne sera rien d'autre que la recherche enfin méthodiques des règles (s'il y en a) qui gouverne cette production très complexe...' (Mounin 1970: 94).
3. The changes that the text underwent in its various adaptations (or, to use a fashionable term, transformations) are interesting material for a semiotic study in their own right. It is significant, for example, that the scene at the ambassador's reception, where Eliza wins her great victory, was first written for the film. (Cf. Bentley 1947: 119ff., where the author examines why 'what ought to have been the climax seems to have been left out'.) Goodman (1971: 301-302) comments upon this question: 'To be sure, Shaw had initially conceived of a ballroom scene but, as a practical man of the theatre, had omitted it from the play for reasons of economy. He once told an interviewer: "Plays begin in all sorts of ways. I can sit down without an idea in my head except that I must write a play, and a play comes.... As to Pygmalion, the scene in which Eliza makes her successful debut at the Ambassador's party was the root of the play at its inception. But when I got to work I left it to the imagination of the audience, as the theatre could not afford its expense and it made the play too long. Sir James Barrie spotted this at once and remonstrated. So when the play was screened, I added the omitted scene, as the cinema can afford practically unlimited money, and the absence of intervals [intermissions] left plenty of time to spare." To the millions who have been entertained by the musical comedy and motion picture versions of Pygmalion, the ballroom scene has proved to be one of the highlights.' 'Highlight' certainly is the right word for the ballroom sequence, but the real climax does not come with Higgins's transformation of Eliza into a mechanical doll. It comes in the last act, when she regains the independence and personal integrity that she showed in the second act-before the experiment had begun.
It is equally significant-and for our purposes even more relevant-that Higgins was played in the film by the 'romantic lead' of the 'hero' type, Leslie Howard.
In My Fair Lady Mrs. Higgins's at-home is transposed to the Ascot Races, and Eliza's lines have been made coarser-to name only two of the most obvious changes. It is also interesting that Bentley (1946: 32) considers that Pygmalion was 'transferred to the screen with little alteration'. These changes are probably typical of those made when a text is transposed from one medium to another or from one art form to another, but it is only recently that-through semiotics-they have received much attention.
4. In an interview in Reynolds News in 1939 (included in Shaw 1972: 821-823) Shaw discusses this question. He clearly does not consider that Eliza's return in itself implies a happy ending:
'In a note to the stage version of "Pygmalion", you deplored what you called "readymade, happy endings to misfit all stories," Yet you allowed such a ready-made happy ending to be substituted in the film version of "Pygmahon." why
'I did not. I cannot conceive a less happy ending to the story of "Pygmalion" than a love affair between the middle-aged, middle class professor, a confirmed old bachelor with a mother-fixation, and a flower girl of 18. 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 20 directors seem to have turned up there and spent their time trying to sidetrack me and Mr. Gabriel Pascal, who does really know chalk from cheese. 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.'
5. This makes it all the more interesting that Freddy's part is much larger in the film than in the play, and larger still in the musical. In the latter he even has his own solo number (Act 1, Scene 8).
6. 'Three different endings,were shot for the film. The first followed Shaw's script to the letter. Although none of the film-makers approved of such a cold and realistic conclusion, this version was filmed in case Shaw should object to any other. The second version was a compromise between Shaw's ideas and a happy ending which everyone agreed was not good. The third ending has Higgins listening to an old recording of Eliza's voice, as Eliza enters and continues where the recording leaves off, saying, "I washed my face and 'ands afore I come, I did." Higgins, in a triumphant gesture, pushes his hat over his face. This was the ending that won Shaw's approval and that found its way, along with many other details from the film, into My Fair Lady.' (Goodman 1971: 315)
Mr. Lerner's stage-directions indicate clearly how much he shares the popular, very unShavian instinct that Higgins is in love with Eliza:
HIGGINS slowly walks over to the machine by the door and turns it on. ELIZA'S voice is heard on the speaker. He goes back to his desk and decides to sit on the stool rather than his own chair behind the desk. His hat still on, his head bowed, he listens to the recording.ELIZA'S VOICE
I want to be a lady in a flower shop instead of selling flowers at the corner of Tottenham Court Road. But they won't take me unless I talk more genteel. He said he could teach me. Well, here I am ready to pay, not asking any favour-and he treats me as if I was dirt. I know what lessons cost, and l'm ready to pay. (ELIZA walks softly into the room and stands for a moment by the machine looking at HIGGINS)
HIGGINS' VOICE
It's almost irresistible. She's so deliciously low, so horribly dirty. (ELIZA turns off the machine)
ELIZA
(Gently) I washed my face and hands before I come, I did. (HIGGINS straightens up. If he could but let himself, his face would radiate unmistakable relief and joy. If he could but let himself, he would run to her. Instead, he leans back with a contented sigh pushing his hat forward till it almost covers his face)
HIGGINS
(Softly) Eliza? Where the devil are my slippers? (There are tears in ELIZA'S eyes. She understands) The curtain falls slowly. (Lerner 1958: 128)
7. Goodlad uses the term central character and appears to identify it with the concept of the 'hero': 'The central character (sympathetic hero)' (1971: 161).
8. Styan identifies empathy with sympathy: 'If the character is to have real interest, and not just invite the cold curiosity which a psychological case-study might, we must be made to feel that he is enough like us to capture our sympathies.' (1965: 66). Bentley (1965: 268ff.) considers, on the other hand, that his attitude (that the leading characters of a play should be not only 'believable' but also 'likeable') is a common critical attitude that 'makes it hard going for the old masters'. It would seem to be a characteristic feature of popular drama that it arouses sympathy for the central figure as well as identification with him. (When discussing Pygmahon, Shaw's stage direction in Act Two is of particular interest here: Higgins 'remains likable even in his least reasonable moments'.)
9. 'In comedy, even if one cannot identify oneself with anybody on stage, one has a hero to identify with, nonetheless: the author' (Bentley 1965: 308). 1 am not wholly convinced that this is really a general principle of comedy. In Tartuffe, for example, which I discuss later, the audience certainly does not identify itself with the villain, and hardly with the author; but rather with those who unmask the villain, and who stand for reason and love.
10.'The drama's element is time; and drama is a brief form' (Bentley 1965: 79).
11. This is also the reason why 'the garden party, a dinner party, and the opera' (i.e., the occasions on which Eliza wins Higgins's wager for him, and that are mentioned in the fourth act of Pygmahon) are not shown on the stage, and in the film and the musical are all telescoped into the ambassador's reception (cf. note 3).
12. 'After only a few speeches, a reader or spectator may soon become adept at identifying the kind of character he has to reckon with, and it is convenient to divide characters into the 'flat' and the 'round', or the two- and the three-dimensional, as they are sometimes called. They are flat when they are recognisable and predictable and show us only one aspect of human nature; they are round when they are individual and unpredictable and to be judged as complete beings.' (Styan 1965: 67ff.)13. The problem however, is far more complex than I have demonstrated here. See, for example, Sjögren's discussion of Ophelia's innocence (1958: 98).
14. 'Truth is stranger than fiction, for fiction makes sense in a way that truth does not' (Bentley 1965: 39).
'In our own times The Merchant of Venice (1596-97) has acquired a bitter taste. The comedy of Antonio the merchant has turned into the tragedy of Shylock the Jew. (...) Since the plot turns on Bassanio's wooing of Portia, it seems reasonable to assume that the light tone was meant to predominate throughout; and it alone governs the whole of the last act. But it is the portrayal of Shylock that makes the deepest impression-on a modern audience.' (Fredén 1963: 384ff., my transl.)
16. There is clearly a tendency for the central figure to become the 'name part' (cf Hamburger 1967: 149).
17. The Merchant of Venice, like Tartuffe, is a comedy in the sense of having a happy ending. If one examines the two plays more closely, one finds that-different as they are in other ways-there are other resemblances. In both plays it is a figure of power who restores the social order; in Molière it is the King as a deus ex machina; in Shakespeare-with a trifle motivation-it is the Duke in the courtroom scene. In both there is a central figure who is in fact a rascal, and who may be about to destroy the finances and the loves of the other characters. In both there is a plainly farcical scene with much the same structure: Orgon's return in Act One, Scene Five of Tartuffe, and the dialogue between Tubal and Shylock in Act Three, Scene Two of The Merchant. In Tartuffe the dialogue switches between Dorine's account of Elmire's illness and Orgon's constant questions, not about his wife's health, but about Tartuffe's. In The Merchant it switches between Tubal's 'good' news of Antonio's imminent bankruptcy, and his account-presented as almost catastrophic-of Jessica's extravagance.
One puzzling question is why Tartuffe should have been thought so dangerous a play that the Church felt obliged to forbid its performance. The name part-like all the others-is a 'flat' one (see note 12) and conforms completely to the commedia dell'arte tradition. Tartuffe is fully characterised as a villain long before he makes his first entrance. His defenders, Orgon and Madame Pernelle, are-from the theatrical point of view-so caricatured and ridiculed that the audience can reasonably draw the conclusion that he is indeed the repulsive figure that his opponents make him out to be. Moreover, Molière gives him no chance of becoming interesting in the ambivalent sense. There is not a single line that suggests any extenuating features, or any motive other than his material welfare.
If nobody can possibly identify with Tartuffe or his defenders, why then did the Church regard it as a dangerous play? Bentley (1965: 264ff.) tries to explain this strange fact by saying that the play is an attack on piety. It is true piety, he claims, that drives Orgon into his absurdities-not bigotry. And Tartuffe himself may, according to Bentley, be truly pious. In this ambivalence 'lies the whole scandal of this famously scandalous masterpiece' (1965: 265). The argument is at first sight striking-it would explain why the Church banned the play-but unfortunately it does not match the text. The reasons for the Church's violent reaction to the play have to be looked for elsewhere.
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What became of Eliza Doolittle? 93
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