Lisa Napell Dicksteen

May 19, 2005

Why Can’t the English Learn to Speak?:

From page to stage to screen with George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion

There are so many wonderful things to do with this story I hardly know where to begin, so, I’ve made a little list:

1. Apparently Shaw took his title (and I imagine some of the character of Henry Higgins himself) from the Greek legend of the misogynist sculptor who falls in love with his sculpture of a woman. This being a Greek myth, he prays to Aphrodite who brings his sculpture to life; he is thrilled, and names her Galatea. Henry’s view of women could charitably be called unimpressed, early on he says “I find that the moment I let a woman make friends with me, she becomes jealous, exacting, suspicious, and a damned nuisance.” (The deconstruction of this single sentence could easily fill most of an afternoon – what does he mean “let a woman make friends with me”?)

2. Unlike the myth, Eliza Doolittle becomes an independent person with a mind of her own in all modern versions of the story. In the film and musical comedy versions of course, a romance blossoms between them that Shaw never intended or alluded to in his original text. This could lead to a study of the way things change when Hollywood and/or Broadway interfere and a discussion of which ending seems more “true” to the characters as they have been created.

3. Henry’s lament, “Why Can’t A Woman Be More Like A Man?” might be paired nicely with “Adelaide’s Lament” from Guys and Dolls and/or “There Ain’t Nothin’ Like a Dame” from South Pacific in order to begin a rousing discussion of the different expectations put upon the different genders by society in different times – and how they have (or have not) changed since these songs were first sung.

4. Closely related to this theme are Henry’s protestations regarding the damage done to men who have allowed women into their lives. In the musical version, he sings “An Ordinary Man,” and I think it worthwhile to have students consider what type of a social-construct, what sort of position women are in generally, in a world described this way:

…let a woman in your life and your serenity is through
She'll redecorate your home, from the cellar to the dome
Then go to the enthralling fun of overhauling you
Let a woman in your life, and you're up against a wall,
Make a plan and you will find, she has something else in mind,
And so rather than do either you do something else that neither likes at all.

5. And, leaning toward a more psychoanalytical type of lens, what kind of guy is Henry anyway? He’s not gay (he and Eliza do fall in love in the end – at least in the movie and musical comedy versions), but he is very closely tied to his widowed mother, no father figure in sight, a little self-involved, and maybe a little OCD. What makes someone grow up to feel this way about women? Students can make up heartbreaking stories of past loves lost. They can deconstruct the text to prove that he is gay after all and really wants to be with Pickering. They can consider his relationship with his mother through Freudian, Oedipal, and other psychiatric lenses – as long as they can find something to back up their theories in the text.

6. Very early in every version of this story Henry meets Eliza Doolittle and pronounces judgment upon what he considers her abuse of the English language, saying, in part, to the girl he has reduced to frustrated tears, “A woman who utters such disgusting and depressing noise has no right to be anywhere, no right to live. Remember that you are a human being with a soul and the divine gift of articulate speech, that your native language is the language of Shakespeare and Milton and The Bible. Don't sit there crooning like a bilious pigeon.”

This scene, coupled with the text from the song that follows this exchange in the musical comedy and the movie, could lead to a great discussion of dialects, including BVE, and why some people will always consider “their” dialect superior to all others. Henry wonders,

Why can't the English teach their children how to speak?
Norwegians learn Norwegian, the Greeks are taught their Greek
In France every Frenchman knows his language from 'A' to 'Zed' -
The French don't care what they do, actually, as long as they pronounce it properly.
Arabians learn Arabian with the speed of summer lightning.
The Hebrews learn it backwards which is absolutely frightening.
Use proper English, you're regarded as a freak.
Oh, why can't the English -
Why can't the English learn to speak?

7. The previous text can also be used to generate discussion regarding a more Marxist interpretation, and a closer consideration of the power behind being the class that makes the decisions about who’s English is the “best” English, and the lack of power in being everyone else. This is something that has not gone away, even in America, and is most likely something students will be able to sink their teeth into.

8. The approaches and examples in numbers five and six could also be used to begin a serious discussion of code switching – which is one of the underlying texts of the entire story. Eliza moves from the gutter into the palace simply by learning the lingo, and she never gives up her personality, her “home culture,” her integrity, or her sense of self – it’s a great example of the reasons for learning to speak and write like “the man” in addition to the way one’s friends communicate, and how it can be done like putting on a different suit of clothes – you’re still you inside the suit. This would be interesting to students as at this age they themselves are trying on different personas and figuring out who their “true” selves are.

9. There are wonderful paeans to the beauty of the English language throughout the text, as when Higgins tries to encourage the disheartened and frustrated Eliza as she struggles to master the pronunciation of the “royal tongue.” Think what you're trying to accomplish,” he tells her. “Just think what you're dealing with. The majesty and grandeur of the English language. It's the greatest possession we have. The noblest thoughts that ever flowed through the hearts of men are contained in its extraordinary, imaginative, and musical mixtures of sounds. And that's what you've set yourself out to conquer Eliza, and conquer it you will.”

This might make a good do-now. Post this quote on the board and have students take a position vis a vis language as a person’s greatest possession when they first enter the room. A rigorous debate should follow.

10. The scene at the races, added to the performed versions of the text very early in the transformation from page to stage as a more dramatic version of the drawing-room visit, will make young readers and viewers think immediately of the modern-day homage in “Pretty Woman.” And isn’t that just an updated version of “My Fair Lady”? A comparison between the two might yield some interesting discussion.

11. Of course there are parallels to Cinderella, which might lead to a modernization of that famous fable. How would it come off today? What would be different, what remain the same? (I would attempt to exclude all references to “Pretty Woman” in this portion of the discussion.)

12. Another aspect of the scene at the races and in the parlor is the reaction of the “genteel classes” to Eliza’s less-than-delicate talk – including the famous moment when she encourages a slow colt to “move yer bloomin’ arse!” Had they not thought of her as their equal (which they do, based on the fact that Henry’s mother introduces her as a member of their society, she is impeccably dressed, and well spoken) they never would have talked to her at all. Connecting this to the way these same women treated her when she was what Henry called “a guttersnipe” not six months previously, will give the students another chance to consider snap judgments, judging the proverbial book by its cover, first impressions, and how much more latitude the wealthy are given as a matter of course.

13. Just before the big unveiling, Henry tells Pickering what he thinks he’s doing with/to/for Eliza, “take[ing] a human being and change[ing] her into a different human being by creating a new speech for her? It's filling up the deepest gap that separates class from class and soul from soul.” There is a lot for the deconstructionist and the Marxist to pull out of those two sentences.
14. Returning to the issue of class, there is the wonderful exchange between Eliza and Henry after the success of “his” experiment in which she bemoans the fact (as his mother predicted would happen) that now she can’t go back to the gutter, but neither has she anywhere else to land. She sees things much more realistically than the coddled, spoiled, absent-minded professor.

Eliza: What am I fit for? What have you left me fit for? Where am I to go? What am I to do and what's to become of me?
Higgins: Oh, that's what's worrying you, is it? Oh, I wouldn't worry about that if I were you. I'm sure you won't have any difficulty in settling yourself somewhere or other. I hadn't quite realized you were going away. You might marry, you know. You see, Eliza, all men are not confirmed old bachelors like me and the Colonel. Most men are the marrying sort - poor devils! Anyway, you're not bad-looking. You're really quite a pleasure to look at sometimes. Well, not now, of course, when you've been crying, you look like the very devil. But I mean, when you're all right and quite yourself, you're what I would call attractive...I daresay my mother might find some fellow or other who'd do very well.
Eliza: We were above that at Covent Garden.
Higgins: What do you mean?
Eliza: I sold flowers. I didn't sell myself. Now you've made a lady of me, I'm not fit to sell anything else.

Students might engage in a debate about this conversation – is marriage a form of prostitution, do women use their bodies to get financial security, did it happen more then than it does today – what differences do they see, what similarities? What options might Eliza have today that she doesn’t have in the time-place-milieu in which the story is set? If they wrote the story today (not as was already done in “Pretty Woman”) how would they end it? Go back to the text or go for the Hollywood romance? Have her take her new finery and a bunch of money from Henry and go start her own language school, or flower shop, or modeling agency? Have her marry Freddy – and what would that be like? Have her marry Henry AND start her own business? (The first question in this segment would have to either arise naturally from the students’ discussion or be generated very carefully, and probably should be saved for 11th or 12th graders who are more likely to be able to discuss it.)

The possibilities are endless… and that’s before I have any input from the students themselves, who are likely to take off in unforeseen and wonderful directions of their own. I only hope that in time I become able to discern when to rein them in and when to throw the lesson plan out the window and run to catch up with them.