It was back to the routine this week. With my editing completed over vacation (yay!), I took a step back from that project to refresh my brain.

To do so, I decided to read Pygmalion since it was left at the bottom of my vacation stack. I don’t know about anyone else, but I find the character of Henry Higgins super aggravating. I didn’t love him in My Fair Lady, but actually seeing some of his lines so plainly laid out on the page (for example, “You will soon see whether she has an idea that I haven’t put into her head or a word that I haven’t put into her mouth,”) made me realize just how obnoxious he is!

Fortunately, George Bernard Shaw provides an afterword to the play explaining that Eliza does not, in fact, end up marrying Higgins but Freddy instead, since Freddy actually values her as a person instead of a subject. Alas, My Fair Lady, the musical based on the play, does not strictly follow the playwright’s intentions, which explains why I was never fully satisfied with the ending. Honestly, I’m not fully satisfied with the ending of Pygmalion either, even with the afterword; I want Higgins to realize what a condescending tool he is and change his behavior.